From banishing words to embracing weirdness: SHOOK’s hopes for 2026

Instead of the usual 2026 trends, this year SHOOK’s Gemma Moroney is spreading a bit of hope.

It’s January so the trade press is trends a-go-go. So, instead of predicting trends, I’ve decided to pinpoint six hopes (2020-six, geddit?).

This is not a creativity manifesto (that D&AD one got mixed reviews after all), it's just some stuff I really hope happens. 

Hope 1: that clients find comfort in discomfort

I absolutely get it. There’s a geopolitical bonfire. The economy is wobbly at best. Really brilliant people can’t get jobs. You want to keep yours (me too).

But I hope in 2026, clients choose the agencies, thinking and campaigns that make them feel a little kick of adrenaline. Instead of “we’re not quite ready for your creativity yet”, we hear “we’re not quite ready for your creativity yet... and that’s why we want to work with you.”.

It’s not about being reckless with clients’ reputations or brands, it’s about bringing that big, challenging outside-in thinking that agencies do best. 

You don’t even have to agree to the discomfort, you just have to consider it. In-house teams are stronger than ever, so an agency that will (collaboratively) challenge and push you is more important than ever.

Hope 2: that creatives use weirdness as a weapon

When was the last time you saw something properly weird? Like Mr Oizo, the 3 mobile Shetland pony, or Cadbury’s Gorilla. Something that made you say “Where the **** did that come from?”.

With the rise (read: reliance on) of AI, weirdness is our weapon. AI itself admits it wouldn’t have come up with Cadbury’s Gorilla, because it’s illogical. No patterns, no category convention, no taste cues.

So, in a world where machines can make anything eminently sensible (have you asked it to do a report, it sounds 100% plausible until you realise it’s 90% puff), let 2026 be the year you embrace being nonsensically, strategically, creatively, contrary.

Hope 3: that everyone stops settling for samey

That fake apology social post trend that started last year and has still not died a long-overdue death is the tip of this ideas iceberg. Think: if everyone’s doing it, should you?

Other examples here include: using Pete Wicks and Sam Thompson for a PR campaign, launching limited edition Christmas baubles and making merch like candles and bags.

More broadly, I think that the standard of work has got so strong in the consumer PR industry that the work is becoming ironically similar(ly good). We could all do with thinking what makes this unmistakably ‘from my agency, for my client’… admittedly a less clever version of the BBHism when they zig, zag.

Hope 4: that we ban ‘brave’ to describe creative flogging bread/ building materials etc

It’s probably not brave, OK. It might be expensive. It might be dodgy ground with a stakeholder. It might be a bit risqué. But it’s probably not brave.

For an industry that prides ourselves on wordsmithery, relying on the B Word to sell work is so lame. And I don’t know, but if I was a client being asked to be ‘brave’, I’d possibly feel like I was being spoken to like a two year old at the top of a big slide and refuse to go any further?

Call your work brave if it’s something where you or someone in it might have faced death or arrest. But otherwise, can we agree to expand our vocabulary? Punchy, bold, disruptive, provocative, aggressive, triggering, challenging. Just not brave?

Hope 5: that whoever sets Netflix's salary bands takes over all procurement departments

Did you see that million dollar job advert for a Netflix comms role? Wild, right? Or was it?

2025 saw a lot of ‘noughties budgets for naughty KPIs’ briefs. I think we’re all hoping that in 2026, there’s some 2020 vision on getting what you pay for.

Nothing more to add. Except a couple of 000s to some of the 2025 briefs we saw.

Hope 6: that we all get time for our own creativity

We make commercial creativity and if we do it well, it sells stuff, contributes to culture or changes society. It’s a bloody brilliant thing to get paid for doing.

But it’s also not just for you. So to keep doing it, and keep doing it well, I hope everyone gets time and space for what I’ll coin contentment creativity outside of the day job.

For me that’s trying to get better at slam poetry, having a stab at a screenplay and loving letter-pressing.

So there they are, my 2026 hopes. The good news is they’re hopes not trend predictions, so nobody’s going to look back in December and see if I got them right. And if none of them happen, I get to blame other people. Make it a good one, gang.