Most brands don’t collapse overnight. They fade quietly one lost user, one forgotten reason to choose. Each month, we’ll use our data tools to uncover 5 familiar brands losing real buyers while their categories grow or sustain. This isn’t criticism. It’s an early-warning system. See the patterns before decline becomes destiny.

Is your marketing building confidence or just entertaining? Across banking and travel, consumers are more informed than ever, yet less willing to commit. Not because of price or availability, but because they fear regret. This isn’t a media or targeting problem; it’s a creative strategy problem. In this piece, we explore why clarity now beats cleverness, why less-perfect creative often converts better, and how trust— across both message and media— has become the new conversion rate.

Most brands chase reach and wonder why nothing happens. The truth: consumers act after 3–8 meaningful exposures across different environments—not after seeing the same ad again. “3-to-8 To Motivate” explains how real frequency works and why it outperforms reach every time.

Food, beverage, frozen, and household brands are all competing in the same auctions with the same data. What separates winners in 2026 isn’t targeting. I’s creative. As signals flatten and CPMs rise, messaging clarity, speed, and adaptability have become the real growth levers, exposing why legacy agency models are starting to break.

This year proved growth isn’t polite. It rewards the brands and CMOs willing to push past table-steaks thinking, find white space, fix broken funnels, clean up martech, and create work that actually moves culture. From smarter remarketing to tighter social, from buying your own damn products to doing something cool with 10% of your budget, the path forward is simple: get sharper, get braver, get louder.

2025 exposed every weak spot in marketing: KPIs that weren’t defined, pixels that didn’t fire, funnels that leaked, and teams that hesitated when speed mattered most. Our new piece, “What This Year Taught Us About Growth, Part 1,” distills the exact lessons CMOs need to carry into 2026 — from fixing tech and tightening targeting to building campaigns that survive chaos. Growth isn’t about conditions anymore. It’s about conviction, clarity, and speed.

Left Off Madison has been named agency of record for ASR Motorsport, a fast-growing automotive aftermarket company launching and scaling multiple wheel and performance brands nationwide. The partnership brings Left Off Madison into the trenches across strategy, creative, media, and digital—fueling ASR Motorsport’s aggressive go-to-market plans as it accelerates toward category leadership.

As economic uncertainty and new tariffs loom, brands are growing increasingly cautious about locking into joint business planning (JBP) commitments with retailers. Agency leaders, including Left Off Madison’s Boris Litvinov, warn that rising pressure for higher retail media spend—paired with lingering concerns over transparency, measurement, and flexibility—is pushing marketers to hedge their bets. The result: more guarded negotiations, shorter commitments, and a growing reluctance to put all media dollars into any single retail basket.

Left Off Madison has unlocked a new way for brands to reach sports fans—turning MRI-Simmons data into precise, addressable audiences across 100+ platforms, from CTV and social to display. Covering 20+ major leagues and powered by 60,000+ consumer attributes, the platform gives marketers a smarter alternative to expensive sponsorships—delivering true sports-fan targeting with accountability, flexibility, and ROI.

With more than 200 retail media networks competing for finite budgets, agencies are warning brands that a retail media reckoning may be coming. Rising CPMs, pressure for larger spend commitments, and unclear incremental returns are forcing marketers to question whether RMNs still justify the investment—prompting some, like indie agency Left Off Madison, to caution against “blind faith” spending until performance and differentiation are proven.

As retail media networks multiply, brands are facing mounting pressure to spend more to protect shelf space and retailer relationships. What was once a media choice is increasingly a negotiation lever, with RMN commitments implied as the cost of doing business. As Left Off Madison president Boris Litvinov notes, the dynamic can feel like “double dipping,” forcing brands—especially smaller ones—to question whether retail media is delivering incremental value or simply acting as an added tax on growth.

Nearly 40% of U.S. adults now say advertising is “way too annoying,” up 27% in just two years. This isn’t just a media or targeting issue—it’s a creativity, strategy, and accountability problem. As skepticism and ad avoidance rise, better briefs, braver ideas, and stronger client–agency partnerships are no longer optional—they’re essential to earning attention back.

As sports sponsorship costs rise, consumer interest is quietly shifting. MRI-Simmons data shows that leagues like MLB, NBA, and NHL have lost millions of fans, while passions tied to nature and the arts—beaches, aquariums, zoos, galleries, and live music—are growing. For marketers, the most authentic, high-impact sponsorships may now live beyond stadiums, closer to where consumers actually spend their time.

Sometimes the most powerful growth insights don’t come from a brief—they come from the data. While analyzing MRI-Simmons audience data for Panasonic’s HomeHawk security camera, Left Off Madison uncovered an unexpected buyer segment: tropical fish and reptile owners using the camera to monitor their tanks. The discovery led Panasonic to pivot its content strategy, outperform traditional home-security messaging, and ultimately rethink product packaging and retail distribution—proof that rigorous audience analysis can shape not just media plans, but product strategy itself.

Left Off Madison is an independent agency founded by former Dentsu and Merkle executives Rob Douglas and Boris Litvinov, built to reunite media and creative without holding-company overhead. The agency specializes in precision multicultural targeting, using real-time purchase data from independent retailers through its proprietary Tiendita platform—an approach that has delivered outsized sales lift for brands like Panasonic and Ajinomoto.

Gen X was built for this moment. As the original latchkey kids turned pandemic-era anchors, we’ve weathered every major crisis from the crack epidemic to 9/11 to the Great Recession—and came out adaptable, self-sufficient, and steady. Now, as the nation’s ultimate “sandwich generation,” Gen X isn’t just coping through COVID-19—we’re leading.