The brands breaking advertising rules — and winning at it

Hello all, it’s edition 130 of The SEG3 Report, and this week I’m looking at D&AD’s Trend Report 2026 and what it tells us about how far a brand can stretch, and what it means for brands and IP trying to break conventional advertising rules.

Plus, our speed reads:

Let’s dive in!

One of the wonderful things about moving to another country is discovering all the niche cultural references that completely passed me by. This includes, but is not limited to, East 17 (which I continually referred to as E16 by mistake), Mr Blobby (nightmare fuel) and a handful of TV ads that my partner delighted in showing me, including both Milky Bar Kid (a jingle he still sings at random) and the gorilla Cadbury’s ‘In The Air’ ad.

What I love about these things is how entirely unrelated to my day-to-day life they are, and yet how much of a place they now occupy in my brain. I certainly don’t need a TV ad to remind me about Cadbury. They’re literally everywhere. But those two ads now live in my head alongside some other incredible TV spots (like Three’s dancing and singing ponies).

Being able to capture and retain this kind of attention is harder than it sounds, as we all know, and for those brands who manage to do it, they are rewarded with D&AD’s various awards, including the coveted ‘black pencil’. 

Off the back of these awards comes D&AD’s Trend Report 2026. It’s more than an awards recap; it’s a deep dive into the creative strategies driving brand advertising.

D&AD cites a few case studies that show where these creatives are looking for inspiration, and the partners they’re choosing. The overlap is what I find most interesting. 

First, Coinbase. Their film drops a background character out of his script and into the real world. It looks digital but isn't. The suits were printed with 2D detailing, and the extras were trained to walk like game characters. The report categorises it as a brand defying category conventions.

In order to defy these conventions, Coinbase borrowed the look and logic of a game world, and spent a lot of effort to make sure that it came to life authentically for those who know that look and logic inside out.

Second, Zillow took a similar approach, arriving inside World of Warcraft just as player housing went live, a feature fans had been asking for for close to two decades. This kismet of timing and idea allowed for a seamless fit of a brand and logo that, otherwise, might have been out of place.

Third, Nissan disappeared almost entirely from the campaign itself. Instead, they enlisted GeoGuessr player Oscar Pearce to drop a Nissan Patrol vehicle somewhere in Australia and design a challenge so hard it would need the efforts of his Discord community to solve it. According to Nissan, it sold 113% above target as a result.

What did these three have in common? Obviously, gaming.

But beyond that, they were non-endemic brands that managed to authentically borrow from gaming visual and creative language to fit naturally in that world. Instead of trying to shoehorn their existing brand touchpoints into something incongruous, they all allowed for flexibility that bridged a seemingly wide gap.

→ Remember, none of these brands had gaming heritage. Each earned its place by starting with something the community already did and leveraging that trust by showing up, having done the research.

D&AD launched a Cultural Influence Pencil this year, and its jury was held to one standard: the work had to be "indistinguishable from culture." In short, if you took the logo off, would anyone still watch, share or talk about it?

This goes back to something Carlotta Rossi-Spencer talked about in The Speakeasy. Banijay’s branded entertainment is held to the same standard: would someone watch a show or spot even without a brand’s involvement? The answer has to be yes.

In the report, Cheil’s Paul Chan, who judged Entertainment, said that fans in sport and gaming spot a corporate cash-grab almost instantly. (And this is a sentiment echoed across almost all of our guests from panels to podcasts!)

It’s the thing that’s most important to remember for anyone navigating a brand partnership, on either side of that deal.

In the Nissan example, they tapped a creator's skill and his community, allowing that to be the driving force behind the campaign (pun intended). I’ve talked before about how creators work best as founding partners, given freedom and autonomy no matter how difficult it might feel to give that up. Nissan’s campaign showed what that looks like in practice, and the success that can come from it.

For rights holders, it changes the pitch from selling inventory to offering a stage where a brand's idea would still be worth watching, or playing, without a logo or badge.

→ Remember, the logo-off test is harder to pass across sports, entertainment and gaming because the people applying it aren’t just consumers but fans — they know the world inside and out and can smell a cynical cash grab.

Another thing the report highlighted was something we’ve talked about before: rule-breaking only works when the brand's personality already lives in a space that allows for rule-breaking. That applies to IP heading the other way, too.

BBC Studios' Shelley Macintyre told us in her episode of The Speakeasy that Bluey has permission to stretch into products for twenty-somethings, while plenty of other children's IP doesn't. The judge is the audience, which she said spots commercial cynicism quickly.

SEGA's Justin Scarpone makes the same case from both ends of the price list, which he explored in his episode of The Speakeasy. Sonic and McLaren need little explaining since, as he said, it doesn't get faster than McLaren, and speed and Sonic go hand in hand.

However, the Balenciaga collaboration sits at the other pole of where a brand can stretch. There's a zip-up hoodie priced at £1,150. And yet, Sonic also sits on shelves at Walmart and Primark.

Though this doesn’t seem as related, it speaks to the same underlying principle: how far can a brand stretch, and where is it stretching? It might seem like Sonic is being spread too thin to sit on a Balenciaga shelf and a Primark one, too, but that isn’t the case.

Justin says that fans accept the brand living in both spaces, so long as there's an option at every price. If core fans can't get value-for-money merchandise, SEGA starts excluding part of its fanbase, and he calls that dangerous.

He also makes the case for bringing the Like A Dragon game, whose core player audience is 70-75% male, to a live stage show in Tokyo. This experience serves the female fans who are overwhelmingly buying the merch (80%) and showing up to the theatre (90%).

In short, "where you fit" isn’t an either-or question; it can be a £1,150 hoodie and a £11.00 kids lounge set. The test is whether fans need an explanation for your brand sitting in that space.

I keep coming back to the Coinbase film, which in its own way reminds me of the Cadbury’s drumming gorilla ad. Because what does a gorilla on a drum kit have to do with chocolate? Nothing! But it’s so cool!

In Coinbase’s case, a brand with less endemic authority in gaming understood how a game world feels, and put in the effort to earn its way in. For IP holders who own that heritage and the fans, you’ll have the easier starting position, but the same questions apply, then, in reverse:

What brands are you partnering with and why? Where in someone else's world could your IP show up that nobody would expect? And could you answer the fans when they ask why your IP is there at all?

Having well-thought-out answers to those questions, as outlandish as they may seem, makes the difference between an award-winning, attention-grabbing campaign and simply an ad.

This is the first music partnership in Gap’s so-called Fashiontainment platform

TL;DR

Why you should care

Most brand and talent deals start with someone already famous, where the fandom has already been built by somebody else, and has its own rules and language. Gap is doing it the other way round. Just Your Type has a following of more than 2 million across social, which is a good start, but this is still a band on the way up.

A multi-year deal means Gap and the band get to build the story together. Fans who watch the band grow through the docuseries will feel part of that journey, and the brand is in the frame from the start.

The mall tour is one of the most compelling (and nostalgic, and very American-feeling!) parts of this strategy. It speaks so clearly to the digital, product, live experience handoff we’ve covered a lot recently. 

Fans get to see the band perform and meet them in Gap stores, so the store becomes part of the fan experience. (Anyone else remember the Virgin Megastore concerts? I met Franz Ferdinand that way!) Gap will also dress the band for select performances, which keeps the collaboration visible on stage and not only on the racks. It also brings fans even closer to the band they love by allowing them to wear the same, or similar, outfits to their favourite idols. That’s an easy win. 

The collection is co-designed by all five members, so the clothes come with faces and personalities attached too, which is a much stronger starting point than a logo on a tee.

This is also the first music collaboration under Gap's ‘Fashiontainment’ platform, which is built around content, licensing and partnerships. JYT is a litmus test, and with a multi-year deal, Gap has given itself time to find out whether fans stick around once the first collection has dropped. It also provides a stress-tested blueprint for future partnerships in the music space and beyond. 

Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!

That’s all for now, everyone - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report. If you found it of interest, please do consider sharing with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too!