Will the last person left working in advertising please turn off the lights when they leave?
Or said another way, how was your year?
Of course, in our efforts to be ahead of the curve (or as is more likely, just wildly out of synch with everyone else on the planet), we got sacked back in ‘24 (to be clear, 2024 was only one of the times we’ve been asked to leave the premises. Which we’re sure comes as no surprise to anyone reading these words).
And while we usually refrain from sharing personal exploits here, because the layoffs – due whether to economic issues, AI, or simply telling the founder he was a fatuous twat who would be the first against the wall when the revolution came (what? That was just us? Sorry), the forced exodus from the industry that fascinates us has been a major theme this year, a year that, we admit, did not lack for “major themes” (Oh look, we kidnapped the leader of a foreign country. There’s another one).
But, and we are certain we will regret these words, we are somewhat, hesitantly, slightly, maybe, optimistic about 2026. Very tentatively, to be sure, but – and believe us, this unnerves us as much as it does you – in much the same way a feeling of apprehension lingers like the perfume of a magnolia in spring – this unnerving optimism has been floating in and out of our consciousness as the miseries of 2025 have passed into the uncertainty of 2026.
Though honestly, why the fuck not?
Because while the year just passed has been miserable, horrifying, indeed fundamentally catastrophic on levels personal, local, national, and international for anyone with integrity or intelligence or compassion – to aim towards success, to aim towards better days should not be characterized as a denial of those horrors, is not an abnegation of these trials. In a sense, it is putting the disaster to work for us.
And while that in no way lessens the power or destruction of the current catastrophe, it is, if nothing else, better than the alternative. Which is to do nothing. And frankly, from where we sit, doing nothing is not an option
But, as the fella said, enough of our yapping.
If you’re new here, welcome to The Year in (the Agency) Review – 2025 edition, our annual year-end post that we’ve been doing for more than a decade and which for some reason shows up the first week of the following year.
In it we ask smart folks from all over the world, three simple questions:
What did you read this year that you loved?
What do you hope to read next year?
What do you wish someone would write because you’d read it in a second?
This edition features six lovely people from across the globe who took time out of their end-of-year madness to provide answers. You will not be disappointed. Please follow them on socials, read/watch/consume whatever it is they produce, and generally celebrate their genius and generosity in a very public and/or monetary way.
Now, we admit that six is fewer participants than in other years. Perhaps that’s fitting as the population of advertising – and of many industries – diminishes. Or perhaps it’s just a reflection of how ridiculously busy people are as the calendar winds down. Or maybe no one likes books any more. Or us. There are almost limitless possibilities.
Much like 2026.
See you in it.
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Rachel Grunbaum – Marketing Micromanager | LinkedIn Locksmith
[Editor’s Note: Rachel insisted she didn’t have a bio, or at least not one she was willing to share with the likes of us. We told her that our policy in cases like this was to throw her name into some off-brand version of ChatGPT to generate something that we could use to introduce her to the many millions of global readers we serve. She was not intimidated by this highly irresponsible practice. Therefore…]
Rachel Grunbaum was born to a family of monks in the Himalayas. A prodigy on the didgeridoo, she attended Julliard on a full scholarship, but lost interest when she discovered Linkedin. Her expertise at Mr. Hoffman’s little toy has made her a highly in-demand consultant on the platform – as she terms it, a “Linkedin Locksmith” – helping everyone from Hollywood celebrities to single-celled organisms find success there.
A former copywriter, feature-writer, grant-writer, and Director of Sales and Marketing chief strategist, Ms. Grunbaum also brings these talents to bear for clients as a “Marketing Micromanager”, developing and implementing winning marketing strategies for a maximum of 3 B2Bs at a time (you can learn more, appropriately enough, at her Linkedin profile). A founding member of The Serendipity Connection, Rachel adds that her love language is books.
What book did you read this year that you loved:
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Investigative journalism is also the career I’d choose if I wasn’t happily working as a marketer, so I didn’t need any convincing to pick up this book. I then pretended I wasn’t an adult with a job and kids, and read this through the night in one sitting. This non-fiction book detailing the rise and fall of Theranos feels like a thriller. It’s captivating, mind-boggling, and marinates in your mind long after the last page.
What book do you hope to read next year:
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Joe Dispenza
An acquaintance who knows me pretty well and is a coach told me I’d love this one. Self-development is very important to me, so I ordered it right away. From the first few pages, it’s clear this is the type of book you need to work through slowly. It’s not just about reading – there’s the doing element.
What book do you hope someone will write because you’d read it in a second:
Marketing’s Reckoning: Earning Back What We Destroyed
Marketing is the second-least trusted profession; just one rung above politicians. Like politicians, most marketers get into this profession for the right reasons and with their heart in the right place, but for too many, it somehow morphs into making noise, and prioritising building our business rather than our clients’. The book Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday gave me an understanding of how we got here for one aspect of marketing. Now I’d love a roadmap for the painful steps required to restore trust in marketing and marketers.
Dan Hulse – Chief Strategy Officer & Partner at St. Luke’s London
Dan is a brand strategist with 25 years experience partnering with iconic global brands and scrappy challengers. After learning his craft at Lowe on brands like Tesco, Stella Artois, Heineken and HSBC, today he’s Chief Strategy Officer of indie creative agency St Luke’s London. The home of Agenda Setting Ideas, St Luke’s helps brands change the conversation, with powerful platforms that drive everything the brand does.
What book did you read this year that you loved?
This year I went back to Robert McKee’s Story.
Around 15 years ago, I was lucky enough to attend his screenwriting course — still the best piece of training any agency has ever given me. Over the years, McKee’s teaching has helped shape the work of more than 60 Oscar winners. I’ve yet to trouble the red carpet, but it has profoundly shaped how I think about brands and communication.
McKee breaks stories down to their fundamentals: why they work, how structure creates meaning, and why some stories satisfy us on a deep, almost instinctive level while others don’t. Much of this comes down to the controlling idea – a belief about life that the story sets out to prove. Not so different from the best brands.
When I first encountered McKee, I was viewing his ideas through the familiar lens of “brand as storyteller.” Reading Story again in 2025, what struck me more forcefully is that brands aren’t just telling stories – they are protagonists in them. And in great storytelling, it’s not what a character says that reveals who they truly are, but how they behave under pressure.
What book do you hope to read next year?
Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure by Maggie Jackson
At SXSW in Austin last year, I went to hear Maggie Jackson talk about her book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Her central idea is a compelling one: uncertainty acts like a performance-enhancing drug for the brain. When we’re unsure, our neurons fire more actively, we take in more information, and we process it more deeply.
Jackson draws a distinction between routine experts (“I’ve done this a thousand times”) and adaptive experts, who approach each situation with curiosity and openness. Her talk was full of real-world examples — from medicine to accountancy — where experienced experts performed worse than their more junior, less certain counterparts.
Listening to her, I couldn’t help but recognise the risk for agencies. Applying existing rules on autopilot. Becoming entrenched in a fixed way of working. I bought the book immediately. It’s been sitting on my shelf, unread, ever since.
2026 is the year that changes. Sorry, Maggie.
What book do you hope someone will write, because you’d read it in a second?
Black Box Recordings: Stories of ambitious brands and campaigns that crashed and burned – by anyone brave enough to share them.
Our industry is excellent at celebrating success. IPA papers, Effies, Cannes… and rightly so. We can learn a huge amount from the best work. But in my own career, I’ve learned far more from getting it wrong. The big swings that miss wildly. The campaign driven by an insight validated again and again in research, only to fall flat in the real world.
I understand why these stories aren’t shared. Even if people wanted to, their clients wouldn’t thank them. So perhaps it can’t be a book. Maybe it needs to be a series of underground meetings – agency and marketing people, egos left at the door, sharing the full, warts-and-all stories of their biggest cock-ups.
Anyone game?
Lee St. James – Founder/Creative Director at OpenlyGray.com
By way of introduction, Lee writes:
I’ve been in the advertising agency world for a long time—so long, in fact, that I’ve turned gray.
My journey began thanks to a master’s degree in Sculpture from VCU and exposure to some incredibly talented art directors and writers in the Richmond ad scene. The VCU Brand Center didn’t exist when I was there. But while working as a designer and illustrator for a local entertainment magazine in Richmond, I discovered the amazing world of advertising.
I have Luke Sullivan and Cabel Harris to thank for my start. They ran award-winning “scam ads” in our little rag, and I spent late nights pasting them into the pages of the book. Reading those marvelous headlines paired with clever visuals, I was hooked.
In short, I discovered the world of ideas, words, and pictures—a magical playground for me.
I’ve since been a global senior creative leader at agencies ranging from TBWA\, Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis, Ketchum, GREY, Arnold, and finally HAVAS. Along the path, I also built a handful of start-ups; all said it has been quite a ride.
And now, we have Openly Gray. OG was created because I’m not willing to stop creating motivating ideas that do some measure of good in the world. We are dedicated to helping brands grow their 50+ audience intentionally. Not accidentally.
What book did you read this year that you loved?
Candide by François-Marie Arouet
My favorite all-time book is Voltaire’s Candide. Published in 1759, it’s a scathing satire that dismantled the prevailing philosophical optimism of the Enlightenment.
I re-read it every couple of years and must be on my 16th run through. You likely know the story of a young man’s journey to find himself, but you may not realize the novella’s relevance to our current world and situations. I heartily recommend picking it up again with that in mind.
Editorial comment: Dissenting voices should never be censored; we only learn from different voices.
What book do you hope to read next year?
It Just Happened by Phil Joanou
I am currently reading a cheeky little freshman novel from writer and director Phil Joanou. It is called: It Just Happened.
Phil is an incredible director of films like State of Grace and U2‘s Rattle & Hum, among others, and countless TV commercials. Truly one of the best.
Mark Twain says of the book: “Huck Finn would have been fast friends with the main character, Billy Burton. I would have too!”
What book do you hope someone will write because you’d read it in a second?
The book I cannot wait to read is titled, wait, I don’t know, because it has not been written.
But I do know that a subject that deeply interests me is religion, and what place it still holds in modern life. Maybe it should be called: God, WTF?
Jim Seath – Executive Creative Director at White Rabbit Budapest
By way of introduction, Jim writes:
I’m Jim Seath, Executive Creative Director at White Rabbit Budapest, currently the most awarded agency in Central Europe (and yes, Central sounds much better than Eastern).
My career started at TBWA London, hired by the floppy-haired Brummie legend Trevor Beattie. When Trev left to set up BMB, I was promptly fired by Danny Brooke-Taylor, which turned out to be one of the better career accelerators I’ve experienced. I landed at 4Creative, Channel 4, where the team went on to win Agency of the Year. I picked up a fair few awards too (to be honest, who wouldn’t in that building?).
After a couple of years, in a moment of questionable judgement, I left and joined AMVBBDO. There, I felt like a kid in a sweet shop. I got my hands dirty helping save Galaxy Chocolate from the scrap heap, wrote exactly 76 scripts, one finally got through and eventually we created the Audrey Hepburn commercial, built entirely from scratch with Framestore. Despite half the industry assuming she was a look-alike (she wasn’t), the awards never came. But the work mattered and Cadburys lost their position. Bingo!
Then a few big global pitches and “It Has To Be Heinz” was born, along with a new global brand identity (Created in 2 weeks I may add) and rolled out globally.
After losing my mum to cancer, I packed up my folio to see if it would carry me around the world. It did: Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Georgia, Dubai.
Post-Covid, I was fired in Dubai by a Mancunian husband-and-wife team and a third woman, a close friend, all from a PR background, just as I landed a £2 million petroleum production account as the production was to start, luckily my notice period made sure I finished the project. They were perfectly pleasant on the surface, but utterly baffled by what I actually did. We weren’t even disagreeing, we were speaking entirely different languages.
Shortly after, I found myself in Budapest, drawn by the familiarity, warmth, and brilliance of the legends at White Rabbit.
What book did you read this year that you loved?
I’ve just finished That Black Pig by Ben Colley, and it’s an absolute belter.
It’s hilarious and beautifully disturbing, a story soaked in excess, murder, muggings, hemorrhoids, hemorrhoid cream, lust, and the strange moral fog of a well-established commercial photographer in London whose past includes porn. What I loved most is Ben Colley’s ability to properly carve out characters. They’re vivid, flawed, uncomfortable, human.
In that sense, it reminded me, cautiously, and with a raised eyebrow, of Haruki Murakami. Less nuanced, far juicier. More punch-in-the-mouth than slow burn, but with the same confidence in letting characters exist rather than simply function.
And this matters to me because I read so many scripts, even from good teams, where characters barely exist at all.
“A girl next door, 30-ish.”
That’s it. That’s the description. FFS
It drives me up the wall.
Characters are everything. Without them, there’s no tension, no truth, no reason to care. That Black Pig understands this instinctively. It’s a bloody good read. Go and buy it. I’ve not nearly spat my wine so many times while reading (I’m writing this in Split, Croatia on my Christmas holidays and their wine is rather good)
What book do you hope to read next year?
I’m finally going to knuckle down and get through 1Q84.
I’ve started it five times. Every time I get intimidated by the sheer number of pages. But the assassin, so precisely, calmly, beautifully described, pulls me back in every time.
I genuinely cannot imagine a woman matching that description existing in real life, which probably means I’ll be single for quite a while longer. Still worth it.
What book do you hope someone will write because you’d read it in a second?
I want someone to write the definitive guide to becoming a charlatan in advertising.
I’ve watched people over the years, people I’ve worked with, people I’ve known, slide into super senior roles that are genuinely unbelievable. Roles of power. Influence. Authority.
And having seen their actual output up close, I remain utterly stunned.
A book about how certain individuals manage to grease their way up the ladder with astonishing confidence, minimal talent, and zero substance would be both educational and deeply therapeutic.
I’d read it in a second. Possibly twice. Possibly with notes.
Andrea Stillacci – Founder & CEO of Herezie
Andrea is the Founder and CEO of the multi-award-winning independent agency HEREZIE.
Founded over 15 years ago, HEREZIE has offices in Paris and Milan, runs campaigns across more than 20 countries and, for the past decade, has been the most awarded independent agency in France.
A former contemporary art critic and DJ, Andrea is a multilingual, multidisciplinary manager with a restless passion for left-field creativity. To further his research, he also founded ANTITESI, a parallel company dedicated to avant-garde, experimental, underground and radical cultures.
What book did you read this year that you loved?
SHOCK FACTORY: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music by Nicolas Ballet
This year has been a particularly special one for me, as I produced an opus that took writer and Centre Pompidou curator Nicolas Ballet more than ten years to complete.
A true labour of love titled SHOCK FACTORY: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music.
Nearly 600 pages and 650 images that bridge, connect and intersect modern and contemporary art with the visual grammars of the industrial music movement. An in-depth journey that opens endless doors for hungry retinas. I’ve read the book nearly ten times, and I still enjoy every single line.
What book do you hope to read next year?
Yes, I admit it: I’ve never read Dostoevsky. Not even a single page while browsing in a bookstore. Nada.
I’m sure it will be a real gateway experience for me. I’m thinking of starting with one of his most intimate and psychologically challenging novels, The Idiot, and then moving on to Crime and Punishment and The Devils, leaving The Brothers Karamazov for the end of the decade if the world as we know it doesn’t end before that.
What book do you hope someone will write because you’d read it in a second?
An essay showing that in the 1960s, William Burroughs was right about nearly everything happening today.Control as a pervasive system. Technology as a tool of control. Behavioral programming. Society as a controlled environment. Resistance through awareness. Burroughs foresaw it all, and his books feel eerily prescient in light of today’s technology, surveillance, and social control.
Cass Zawadowski – Executive Creative Director, Global Brand at Lyft
Global Creative Leader. Strategic Trailblazer. Growth Mindset. With 20 years of experience across North America, Europe, and Asia, Cass specializes in scaling internal creative capabilities and bridging the gap between brand and consumer. From sitting on global juries like the Clios and One Show to leading creative excellence for some of the world’s largest brands, she thrives at the intersection of data-rich innovation and bold storytelling. Fueled by Peloton, a good podcast, and her dog, Murphy.
What book did you read this year that you loved?
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul was one of the most impactful reads this year because it speaks directly to the real tension creative leaders live in every day: how to scale, perform, and survive pressure without eroding what makes the brand meaningful in the first place. Howard Schultz’s account reframes creativity as stewardship of values, culture, people, and customer trust. This book serves as a powerful reminder that creativity at the leadership level is about making hard, often unpopular decisions in service of long-term brand integrity. For a creative leader, Onward reinforces that protecting the soul of a brand isn’t sentimental, it’s strategic, and it’s often the most courageous work we do.
What book do you hope to read next year?
Quantum Marketing by Raja Rajamannar
I am incredibly excited to delve into Raja Rajamannar’s Quantum Marketing, driven by my long-standing admiration for his visionary leadership at Mastercard. Having witnessed his remarkable ability to transform one of the world’s most valuable brands and pioneer the legendary “Priceless” platform into the digital age, I am eager to understand the strategic mindset behind his success.
What book do you hope someone will write because you’d read it in a second?
I’ve fallen deeply in love with sauna culture. And there’s so much evidence (and writings) on how sauna can improve heart and mind health. I’d love to see a book about how sauna can help stimulate creativity. That’s one I’d buy in a heartbeat!
And then…
Well, there’s an old joke in advertising:
Question: How many creative directors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Answer: Does it have to be a lightbulb?
Or said another way, ladies and gentlemen, the legend, Mr. Andy Blood:
Andy Blood – Founder at Move Fast and Hack Things
“When I started in this industry, Andy was one of the highest-awarded creative directors in the world. He then became a creative strategist at Facebook, a publisher, writer, speaker, an industry fellow in two countries, and an AI and tech autodidact. Who better to help you navigate an ever-changing landscape than an ever-changing man?”
As I write this review, I’ve hit a milestone; I’ve breached the 30,000-word mark of a novel I’m writing. By hand. And with no AI involved. I started back in July 2025 and will finish in June 2026, by which time I will have written 60,000 words. These days, many people would scoff at such an idea. Aren’t there better things I could be doing with my time? Well, to my mind, while AI is good at producing novel content, it’s dreadful at producing a novel’s content. (That’s a line I stole from my SXSW Sydney presentation: ‘There is no algorithm for Creativity’, Oct 2025.) And you’ll see this tension play out in my reading choices because I spend half my time in the world of information, and the other half in the world of human creativity. A luddite, I’m not. I teach AI. I’ve studied it. And I build with it. But the one thing I won’t use it for is creative writing. I would rather do that myself. A Bloodite, I am.
As for reading, I get through about 30 books a year. Half through my ears (audible) and half through my eyes (hard copy). And as much as I love visiting bookshops, the hard copies I collect are mostly from free public libraries; the little libraries you’ll often find at the bottom of the street. We call them Lilliput Libraries. One of the biggest ideas of recent times. And I like to visit these cute-as-a-button libraries because I love to be surprised.
So, let’s get to the review, which is in two parts.
1) The library angel at my table.
Five books (in hard copy) which I can recommend. Four of which were chosen for me by the library angel; the serendipitous hand that uncovers books you never knew you wanted to read, but afterwards, were so glad you did. And clearly, someone living near me has impeccable taste because every time they clear out their bookshelves, one of our Lilliput libraries gets stocked full of fantastic reads, and I am grateful. Because I like experiencing other lives. And the more unusual the better. And these five exemplify that. (One of these five books, I purchased. I’ll leave it to you to guess which.)
James (Percival Everett) is a Booker Prize shortlisted novel from 2024 and is a clever re-examination of the familiar world of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, made less familiar through its recentering of the narrative to James, a black slave, and it’s through his eyes and his language that this tale is told and his story unfolds.
Having spent time in Japan, I haven’t done duty with its literature, and both Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) and Breasts and Eggs (Mieko Kawakami) allowed me to at least begin that process. I enjoyed both because of their unique perspective, pace, and point of view. Especially, Breasts and Eggs, which has an unusual premise in that it’s a story about a female protagonist who wants no part in the female biological determinism of ovaries and mammary glands. I’m sure I’m not the audience for this book, but I really enjoyed it, and you might too.
Jerusalem (Jez Butterworth), by contrast, is a play. And by all accounts, a famous, award-winning play. (I hadn’t heard of it.) But having read it, I can imagine Mark Rylance (featured on the cover) being an absolute force of nature in this. It’s an outsider story about the lengths some people go to defend their way of life in a world that tries to rob them of it. Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, the role played by Rylance, is one of the few remaining pure-blooded Romany gypsies living in England and is willing to shed his own blood to preserve his heritage. They should bottle it, and in a way, they do, which is a clever detail in this riotous play. At only a hundred pages, it is as lean and punchy as its anti-hero. I can see why this Jerusalem is exalted.
Labyrinths is a short story collection by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, and is a collection of some of the most original ideas ever committed to page. Described as a ‘mathematical writer’, Borge specialises in mindboggling concepts that are deep and require a lot of thought from the reader. Garden of Forking Paths, perhaps his most famous, predates branching universe ideas from Quantum Physics, and a lot of Borges’s work has insights for our mathematically driven times, most especially the Library of Babel (1941), which envisages a universe-in-a-library containing all the information and content the world has ever produced, the critique of that information, and the critique of the critique, and so on, made available at your fingertips. So very 2025.
2) Theatre of mind/Their voice in your head.
There’s something incredible about hearing a work in the author’s own voice, and most of these books fit that bill. (By way of example, listen to Werner Herzog’s Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which would have been my number one pick this time last year. His signature voice makes an incredible book an even richer experience, and something no one can copy (though many parody). His name doesn’t end in “OG” for nothing.)
Joel Gion has one of those voices. But the biggest shock delivered by In the Jingle, Jangle, Jungle is how good his writing is. Joel has a turn of phrase and patois that Bukowski would envy. All this from a man best known for shaking the tambourine. If you’ve seen DIG, one of the best music documentaries ever made, or its more recent incarnation, DIG XX, which is the 20-year reappraisal of it, then you’ll know it’s the caught-on-camera war between rival bands The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and their dueling frontmen, Ant Newcombe and Courtney Taylor-Taylor. One of whom implodes and one of whom succeeds. Joel Gion bashes the tambourine and smiles his way throughout, while remaining a faithful sidekick to Anton Newcombe, infamous for his dropkicks to the heads of band members and audience alike. Recommended.
A Crack in Everything (Marcus Chown) sucked me in. It is a brilliant telling of the journey of black holes from mythical notion, impossible idea and ridiculous conjecture to accepted fact and finally, a fundamental concept that underpins everything in the universe, in less than a century. And Marcus Chown is a witty, articulate, and expert guide.
Now here’s where the review and the subject matter take a turn.
We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to challenge every single narrative emanating from Silicon Valley. And we can only do this by staying informed, reading and listening widely, then critically evaluating as much as we can. Because if we don’t, like Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, we will find our way of life and our heritage being bulldozed. Superintelligence (Nick Bostrom) will teach you what we are up against. The Ascent of Information (Caleb Scharf) will give you strength. It taught me a mountain, and I quote from it daily. The Empire of AI (Karen Hao) (“Inside the reckless race for total domination”) humbles those who are playing gods and shows them up for who they are.
If I’m to conclude in any way, I’ll pick three books from the ten featured here that everyone ought to read. Because if literature can be reframed as ‘equipment for living’ as the thinker Kenneth Burke suggested it could, then those three books are Superintelligence, The Ascent of Information, and Empire of AI.
And now, having written this, I’m going to go back and re-read Jerusalem, because to hit 2026 out of the park, I’ll need the blood and fire of Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, inside.
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Header illustration by the exceptionally artful Jason Roeder. See more of his fine work here.
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