Last week, our entire team descended on our Cheltenham HQ for two days of strategic planning, knowledge sharing, and forward-thinking. Our annual Vision Day is always a highlight, a chance to step back from client work, align on where we're heading, and get inspired by what's emerging across the marketing landscape.

Setting the Vision

We kicked off with our CEO, Oliver Bruce, sharing more about the PrettyGreen acquisition and laying out what the year looks like for us as an agency. It was energising to see our vision and goals mapped out so clearly, and to align as a team on who we want to be and what we want to achieve in 2026.

From there, the agenda opened up to presentations from team members across different marketing disciplines - each sharing the trends, platform updates, and strategic shifts that are shaping their areas of expertise. These sessions are invaluable, not just for keeping everyone informed, but for sparking new ways of thinking about our work and how we can better serve our clients.

What We're Watching in 2026

We wanted to share some of the insights our team presented, giving you a window into the conversations happening internally and the trends we're tracking closely this year.

Organic Social in 2026: Why Niche Communities Matter More Than Viral Reach

Kritika Naidu, Social Media Manager

One of the biggest shifts in the social media space right now is the move away from chasing viral moments and towards building meaningful niche communities. While mass reach still has its place, we're seeing far greater long-term impact come from smaller, more engaged audiences who actually care, participate, and stick around.

Platforms are increasingly rewarding depth over scale by prioritising conversations, saves, shares, and ongoing interaction rather than passive views. This is changing how brands show up online. Success now looks less like broadcasting and more like belonging. Communities built around shared interests, values, or experiences create space for two-way relationships, not one-way messaging. Whether that's through private groups, comment sections that genuinely foster dialogue, or content designed to invite collaboration, the brands winning in this space are those focused on connection rather than exposure.

In 2026, influence won't come from being everywhere; it'll come from being relevant, trusted, and embedded within the communities that matter most to your audience.

Creative Content Meets AI: Opportunities, Risks, and the Need for Human Insight

Danny Jones, Creative Social Producer

There are a number of different brands experimenting with AI across their marketing in the current landscape, providing lots of food for thought. The fashion industry in particular has adopted AI across their e-commerce, with Zara and H&M both trialling the use of 'digital clones' in 2025. What this means is that creative teams replicate real life photography of models and repurpose this across hundreds of different new images, generating a greater yield of assets which wouldn't be possible from a single shoot day.

AI is also being incorporated across influencer marketing, with a Spanish agency called 'The Clueless' creating their own AI influencer called Aitana who has amassed over 390,000 followers on Instagram! The team at The Clueless plan out Aitana's 'life' and style choices on a weekly basis, and were inspired to do so after facing some challenges when working with real life influencers.

Some of the largest organisations in the world also utilised AI for their Christmas advertising in 2025, with Coca Cola and McDonald's both turning to AI for their festive video marketing. There was some consumer backlash however, with McDonald's pulling their ad entirely after the audience felt there was a lack of authenticity in what was created. Coca Cola persisted with their video, scoring highly in an audience rating, despite some viewers noticing inconsistencies in some of the artwork produced.

It's clear there's huge potential with AI, but what's essential is that behind every production there is a dedicated team of creatives who are in tune with the market and consumer sentiment. This step is vital to ensure the work produced will be well received and aligned with brand goals and market values.

Meta Andromeda Explained: How AI Is Reshaping Paid Social Advertising

Oliver Bridgman, Paid Social Manager

Meta's Andromeda update is a fundamental overhaul of how ads are selected and delivered. The legacy retrieval step (the process that determines which ads are eligible to be shown) has been replaced with an AI-driven retrieval engine.

First disclosed in late 2024 and rolled out broadly through 2025, Andromeda uses large deep neural networks, hierarchical ad indexing, and specialised hardware (including NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchips and Meta's own MTIA accelerators) to retrieve and match ads to individuals at scale, in real time.

The technical shift is substantial as the system now scans millions of creatives and pre-ranks them for each person using behavioural, contextual, and inferred signals before downstream ranking models are applied. This makes ad delivery significantly more personalised and dynamic, with materially higher model capacity and retrieval efficiency than previous systems.

What does this mean for advertisers?

Creative relevance now drives delivery; ads are selected based on how well their messaging and format align with individual user behaviour, not just predefined audience definitions.

Broad targeting paired with creative variety outperforms micro-segmented structures; narrow audience buckets and heavily engineered ad sets tend to introduce volatility under Andromeda.

Meaningful creative diversity is critical; distinct hooks, formats, value propositions, and angles provide the system with the signal depth required to consistently match the right ad to the right user.

Minor tweaks matter less; small changes (such as CTA text or background colour swaps) are often treated as near-duplicates by the model, while performance gains increasingly come from deliberate, material variation.

Ultimately, Andromeda shifts the typical advertisers' process away from manual targeting and toward creative strategy and signal quality. Those who prioritise differentiated creatives, quality conversion signals, and AI-led optimisation at scale tend to see improved delivery and stronger performance results.

PrettyGreen Joins Us

Later on day one, Mark Stringer (Founder and Chairman) and Jessica Hargreaves Paczec (CEO) from PrettyGreen joined us to share their vision for the acquisition, walk us through some impressive case studies, and introduce us more formally to their team. It was inspiring to see the alignment between our agencies and the possibilities that lie ahead. (You can read more about the acquisition in our press release.)

Day Two: Team Building and Healthy Competition

The second day took a different turn as we split into groups for a team building exercise, each tasked with developing a project and crafting a sales pitch to present back to our esteemed panel of three judges. The competition was fierce, the presentations were creative, and there could only be one winner. It was a brilliant way to flex our collaborative muscles and have some fun together as a team.

It was an incredible two days. Getting the whole team together under one roof, sharing knowledge, challenging assumptions, and building momentum for the year ahead is exactly the kind of energy we thrive on. We're excited about what's coming in 2026 and even more excited to bring these insights to the work we do for our clients.

Want to hear more about any of the topics we covered? Whether it's organic social strategy, creative AI applications, or navigating the latest platform updates, we'd love to chat. Get in touch and let's talk about what's next for your brand.