Effective and enduring creative work lies in embracing timeless principles, writes Quiet Storm’s Rania Robinson.
There’s something grounding (and terrifying) about your agency turning 30. It’s a milestone that makes you look back at the storms you’ve weathered and the lessons that never fade. One truth rose above the rest: the fundamentals of great advertising haven’t changed, and are in some ways more important than ever - but they’ve become harder to uphold.
As we face tighter budgets, closer scrutiny, and an increasingly impatient attention economy, creating breakthrough work in 2026 won’t be about playing it safe against short-sighted metrics; it’s about operationalising the timeless principles that make the most effective and enduring creativity work.
One of the biggest threats to creativity in our industry is consensus culture. Most brands mitigate risk by fitting in the category norms. The irony is, people find it so easy to ignore what’s familiar. According to System1, a simple shot of a cow in a field outperforms 50% of those types of ads. We’re much more motivated by novelty and the dopamine hit that provides, which is what an original idea delivers in spades. Even if it feels a little uncomfortable at first. So create an environment that embraces original thinking and challenges category conventions, backed by grounded and evidenced thinking designed to make your brand stand out.
You don’t need everyone to love your work, you just need the right people to feel seen and understood by it.
Rania Robinson, CEO & Partner, Quiet Storm
Humour remains one of the sharpest ways to gain a competitive edge, but it’s widely underused - not because it has stopped working, but because it polarises. And polarisation feels risky.
But so does mediocrity. When we created a comical, unapologetic ad family for On the Beach - a kid nicking his sister’s ice cream, a mum flinging her flip-flops poolside - it wasn’t for everyone. It’s for the millions who cram a year’s worth of joy into one week of holiday. The ad went on to deliver record sales and three years of consecutive growth for On the Beach.
You don’t need everyone to love your work, you just need the right people to feel seen and understood by it.
Our industry has a habit of chasing shiny things - AR, VR, the metaverse, NFTs, but we believe AI is here to stay. Not because it can replace talent, but because it will force us to rethink how creativity happens. Marketers win when they use AI to expand their creative possibilities, not direct their work.
The essence behind any great advertising has always been the ‘big idea’, and that comes from human insight, taste, timing, cultural relevance, and lived experience.
AI can’t decide what makes people laugh, feel, or share. But it can liberate teams to spend more time finding poignant insights, crafting the big idea and providing a seamless process.
In 2026, perhaps the best question to ask would be, “what more can we all dream up because of AI?”
The most effective work doesn’t require a huge media budget to appear everywhere. It starts with a simple, generous, distinctive idea - something so clear that consumers feel it before they can explain it.
A brand platform doesn’t need endless executions if it behaves consistently. Distinctiveness compounds. ‘You’ve Been Tango’d’ is still talked about 30 years later. Haribo’s ‘Kids’ Voices’ has run for a decade across 23 countries, delivering growth year after year.
A big idea is what you commit to, protect, and build on, until it becomes brand equity.
We’re not just competing with other brands - we’re competing with cat videos, memes, and 23 million TikTok uploads every day. In the sea of distraction, the simplest test of a great idea is whether people choose to see it again and again. If they don’t, you’re just interrupting.
Brand love isn’t built through exposure, but delight. People remember ads that give them something they carry into everyday life - a joke, a moment, a feeling that becomes part of culture.
In 2026, the opportunity isn’t to reinvent advertising, but to protect what has always made it impactful.
The best work will come from the courage to commit to the fundamentals with more conviction than ever. Creativity hasn’t lost its power. But we have to fight harder for it.
Rania Robinson has spent most of her career in non-traditional agencies across account leadership and strategy, working with global brands including Haribo, Mercedes, Virgin, Google and Coca-Cola. A committed advocate for women in the workplace, she served as President of WACL in its centenary year and relaunched Create Not Hate in 2020, the agency's initiative to help underrepresented young people enter the creative industries by unlocking their potential. She is also an influential industry voice, contributing regularly to BBC Radio, Campaign and a broad spread of leading business and marketing publications. Rania’s leadership has been widely recognised. She was named among the Raconteur 50 in 2025 and features in the IPA’s iList, Campaign’s Top Trailblazers, A List and 40 Over 40, Ad Age’s Leading Women, and WeAreTheCity’s Trailblazers.
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