AI's steamed carrot problem, a ketchup ambush, and a bodega built for protein. Indie Spin: The one with a fleet of Leading Women, a Times Square hot dog hijack, and 93% of physicians who apparently don't mind ads. It was a big week for indie recognition - Ad Age's 2026 Leading Women list showed up in what felt like half the feed, and the U.S. Agency Awards handed out some hardware too. But the through-line running underneath everything was AI: not the breathless kind, but the working-it-out kind. Members are launching AI divisions, arguing about whether machines can write with any flavor, and untangling what the EU now counts as a deep fake. Meanwhile the creative kept coming - a giant condiment feud in Times Square, a protein bodega in Brooklyn, and a claw machine at WNBA All-Star Weekend. Here's what Indie Agency News members were up to. The Women Leading the list. Ad Age's 2026 Leading Women list gave the indie community plenty to celebrate. Highdive saw Chief Marketing and Growth Officer Isabel Long named to the list, while Murder Hornet took a table at the lunch to toast Alexandra McInnis, also honored. Hunterblu Media cheered on Jessica Blumberg's recognition, and Special U.S. celebrated client partner École Weinstein of Uber, who made the list with the memorable line that "doing boring work is a waste of everyone's time." McKinney added to the tally with Ufonabasi Brown named an Ad Age Rising Star, and Klick picked up a nod for Stephanie D'Agostino as a 2026 Ragan's Top Women in Marketing honoree in the Tech/Digital category. Trophies and ballots. Beyond the Leading Women, the awards kept stacking up. Stella Rising won twice at the 2026 U.S. Agency Awards, taking Digital Agency of the Year and Media Buying Agency of the Year, with judges citing their clear positioning and how they're adapting to AI while keeping the expertise clients count on. Day One Agency picked up a 2026 Webby Award in Social: Sports for its work with Converse. X&O struck gold at the Small Agency of the Year Awards, and The Perception earned a Mid-Atlantic Emmy nomination for its Indivisible campaign with Visit Philadelphia. Preston Spire landed its Project Lockdown gun-safety work - six kids, one lemonade stand, $10 gun locks sold - in Communication Arts Advertising Annual 67. AI, minus the hype. The most interesting AI takes this week were the skeptical ones. 270B's Creative Director Lynn Bossange argued that AI writing is "the steamed, unsalted carrots of content" - technically edible, totally forgettable - and that the friction of writing is exactly what gives it voice. Awestruck went the other direction and turned itself into the lab, embedding an AI transformation across every department before launching Awestruck AI, a division that builds and deploys working agents inside client businesses. Chameleon Collective spotlighted a sharp piece from SPS Commerce's Michael Svatek arguing that AI can't improve manufacturing until suppliers fix their data first - with 80% of manufacturers planning to spend a fifth of their improvement budgets on smart manufacturing, yet returns falling short. On the legal side, Davis+Gilbert LLP unpacked how the EU AI Act's guidance defines a "deep fake" far more broadly than face swaps - covering AI-generated products, places, and events - while Legal+Creative | Toerek Law noted that agencies are increasingly fielding a simple client question: "Did you use AI for this?" Campaigns worth clicking. The creative had range this week. Rethink hijacked a viral mustard-covered hot dog sculpture in Times Square by showing up with Heinz ketchup, because it has to be Heinz. Quality Meats Creative landed the Ad Age number one campaign of the week for Herb Light. TiNY apologized to the inventor of the extendable dog-scratcher after its Minties "Dog Breath Is Over" spot got picked up by Ads of the World. Witness Me shared RadicalMedia director Dave Meyers' four-part Depop campaign starring Zara Larsson, and Loop.co teamed with Paramount Pictures on a Heart of the Beast poster generator that casts your dog as the star of the show. Experiences you can step into. Experiential and immersive work kept expanding its footprint. The Many flagged that Apple TV will debut Apple Immersive on its Friday Night Baseball broadcast August 28 for Vision Pro users - another sign of where its Catalyst XR work is headed. Project Worldwide agencies Praytell and Motive opened "The Prodega," a protein bodega in Brooklyn, to relaunch Muscle Milk. Praytell separately turned the DICK'S Sporting Goods ScoreCard+ launch into a game, sending Knicks player Tyler Kolek undercover as a store teammate to surprise loyal fans. Innocean USA built a Kia claw-machine AMA with WNBA legend Chiney Ogwumike during All-Star Weekend, and Barbarian led the digital experience design for Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked 2026 lineup. The SXSW vote-getters. PanelPicker season is on, and members are campaigning. Happylucky is making its loudest case yet for "Memory Metrics over Vanity Metrics," arguing our measurement systems haven't caught up to experiential. Gus paired Co-Founder Graham Douglas with PepsiCo's Nick Cline for "How Category Leaders Can Still Be Category Disruptors," moderated by Axios' Kerry Flynn. Saylor wants to spill Tubi's fully reactive social playbook - the streamer that "started with the comments" instead of a calendar. Lupine Creative is backing Kate Wolff's panel on friction versus immediate gratification, and Highdive put up a session on its Jackass-meets-KFC federal-holiday collab. The numbers behind the work. A few members brought receipts. Klick's latest Wire reported that 93% of physicians are receptive to ads, multichannel engagement can drive up to a 9.3x lift in Rx, and an AI early-warning system was associated with 19% fewer deaths among high-risk ER patients. GTE Canada's Jenny Croswell pushed back on the Gen Z-doesn't-watch-TV myth, noting their viewing has spread across linear, CTV, and streaming rather than disappeared. Fuse Create's Rita Steinberg weighed in on what's driving retail media's growth in Canada, and Fohr's James Nord argued in Martech Record that creator marketing still isn't a functioning market. Model B shared Bluevine SVP Casey Akerblom's playbook for a platform with 1M+ customers, $2B in deposits, and $17B in loans delivered. Milestones and small-hours wins. Some anniversaries are worth pausing on. Laughlin Constable is celebrating 50 years of independence, sharing the actual memo that wished its founders well when they made a bet on themselves in 1976. SkyCare Air Ambulance & Charters marked 20 years since its first medevac mission, and Erich & Kallman revisited a decade of work with a look back at its Go-Gurt campaigns from the General Mills years. Quirk Creative congratulated client Quince on crossing $2 billion in sales, crediting the performance TV creative it built around timeless quality at low prices. The human stuff. And then there's the everyday agency life that makes the feed feel real. VaynerMedia ran a string of relatable ones this week, from taking "flexible work from home" very literally to the eternal truth that if you save files normally and not "v5_Final_FINAL," no you don't. Curiosity turned its own brand palette into a guessing game ("which is Curiosity pink?"), and Clever Creative dropped a hot take worth sitting with: your brand doesn't have a marketing problem, it has a decision-making problem. Buntin put it plainly too - the industry is desperate for a fresh voice, and it's time to focus on solving clients' hardest problems. Want to see your agency's work in the next Indie Spin? Indie Agency News members get featured here almost every day. If you're an independent agency doing work worth talking about, join the community and get on the list.

The Top 10 Healthcare Marketing Firms in the U.S. For 2026. Changes in digital marketing & wins at national contests changes the list of Top Healthcare ad agencies. Like marketing for all industries, healthcare marketing has faced enormous changes in the past years, especially in the realm of digital marketing. The emergence of AI-powered search results has displaced sponsored search ads, which have long been the mainstay of healthcare advertisers. New terms, such as AEO for "Answer Engine Optimization" and GEO for "Generative Engine Optimization," have added complexity to how healthcare organizations - and their healthcare marketing firms - approach online visibility. Simultaneously, the healthcare marketing industry has faced a wave of consolidation with hundreds of independent healthcare advertising agencies getting bought up by larger, private-equity-backed behemoths. As a result, The Weinbach Group thought the time was right to revisit its list of the Top 10 Healthcare Marketing Firms in the U.S. In building the list, The Weinbach Group paid close attention to a range of criteria, including major wins at national healthcare advertising contests, use of integrated marketing - not just advertising. So, without further ado, here's its list of the Top Healthcare Marketing Firms for 2026: 1. The Weinbach Group The Weinbach Group claims the top spot following its spectacular performance at the 2026 Healthcare Advertising Awards, including one of only 21 Best of Show honors (out of more than 4,300 entries!) Originally founded as a public relations firm, this independent powerhouse has evolved into a fully integrated healthcare marketing firm delivering digital advertising, direct marketing, and sophisticated website development. Unlike giant national networks powered by private equity firms, The Weinbach Group remains completely autonomous. Its core differentiator is an unparalleled expertise in effectively reaching B2B healthcare audiences - notably physicians - cemented by recent Gold and wins in the specialized Physician Referral category. When it comes to longevity and consistency, The Weinbach Group also shines. This family-owned, Miami-based marketing firm is approaching its 40th anniversary. What's more, they consistently keep clients for the long haul, with some agency relationships spanning more than two decades. 2. Unlock Health Securing a premier position, Unlock Health represents a modern paradigm in medical brand elevation. Like The Weinbach Group, Unlock won a trove of awards on the 2026 industry circuit, earning acclaim for its multi-channel strategies. Their work clinched multiple Gold Healthcare Advertising Awards for digital video ads, total brand campaigns, and radio marketing for elite health systems like the University of Kansas Health System. Beyond advertising, they are an integrated force providing deep direct marketing and data-driven patient acquisition strategies. 3. Omnicom Health Formed as a massive structural shift after Omnicom acquired IPG, Omnicom Health stands as an enterprise titan. Housing elite medical advertising brands like Area 23 and Neon, the network supports global pharmaceutical clients with strict regulatory compliance and heavily funded AI data infrastructure. Sure, their fees might be out of reach for the majority of provider organizations, including major health systems, but they have unmatched infrastructure and funding. 4. EGC Group Based in Long Island with another office in Brooklyn, EGC is another independent healthcare marketing firm that has not fallen (yet) to the private equity bug. They are a full-service agency, and new to its top-10 list for 2026, in part thanks to their exceptional showing at the 2026 Healthcare Advertising Awards, where their breakthrough healthcare initiatives hauled in 8 total awards, including 6 Gold Awards. Like a few other healthcare marketing firms on its list, EGC Group incorporates more than advertising into its client campaigns. They often deliver public relations and direct marketing to their healthcare clients. 5. Publicis Health Like #3-ranked Omnicom, Publicis is huge. As a global agency collective backed by over 8,000 communications and medical specialists, Publicis Health is a household name in pharmaceutical advertising. The network manages multi-channel corporate health initiatives and product commercialization campaigns for big-name pharma brands including industry leaders Pfizer and Sanofi. Given the sheer volume of healthcare marketing Publicis produces, The Weinbach Group couldn't rightly keep them off this year's list. 6. Adams & Knight Known for its dedicated healthcare division, Adams & Knight is the largest woman-owned ad agency in Connecticut, led by CEO Jill Adams. The firm took home multiple honors on the awards circuit, including a Gold Award for specialized foundation publications and a Silver Award for their comprehensive "100% Kids" integrated marketing campaign for Connecticut Children's. They excel at executing highly creative public relations campaigns as well, intricate website development, and regional direct marketing. For provider organizations in the Northeast, Adams & Knight should be on your list of healthcare marketing firms to consider. 7. Klick Health How do The Weinbach Group describe Klick Health? Officially, they define themselves as a global "commercialization partner for life sciences," meaning they handle everything required to develop, launch, and scale pharmaceutical and healthcare brands from clinical phases to market launch. With an estimated $785 million in revenue, Klick Health stands as the largest independent healthcare agency in the world. While their award-winning marketing engine is world-renowned - recently taking top honors at the 2026 Cannes Lions Festival as Healthcare Agency of the Year - marketing is just one cog in their wheelhouse. Beyond healthcare marketing, Klick's massive infrastructure allows them to operate as a technology incubator, consulting group, and scientific research partner. 8. Aloysius Butler & Clark (AB&C) AB&C is another independent creative force with offices in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. They have been on a winning streak when it comes to awards, including for their healthcare marketing excellence. To be clear, though, AB&C is not just a healthcare marketing firm. They also handle clients in other industries. Still, their healthcare communications division does great work in transforming clinical data into immersive lifestyle narratives to solve intricate issues like regional physician recruitment. 9. Healthcare Success A highly flexible, full-service agency that specializes in patient journey optimization and integrated digital/traditional campaigns for small-to-midsize practices and regional hospitals, Healthcare Success consistently ranks among the best in the nation. They have multiple satellite offices from California to New York, and they apply a disciplined, digital-first approach to their clients' healthcare marketing campaigns. 10. Edelman Health Edelman has a long history as an international public relations firm. And, some may question if they are truly a healthcare marketing firm at all. However, their dominance in earned media makes Edelman Health a must-include on this list. In addition to PR, they handle a range of healthcare-related communications from crisis comms to public affairs. If you're considering hiring a healthcare marketing firm, also look at reviews on trusted industry rating sites like Clutch, Goodfirms, and DesignRush.