Most people assume award-winning creative work is a high-wire act: brilliant, risky, and impossible to repeat.
Karen Pearce of Rethink makes the opposite case.
Fresh off Ad Age's 2026 Agency of the Year and ADWEEK's 2025 Independent Agency of the Year, and as the most-awarded independent agency in the world last year, Rethink keeps producing famous, business-moving work on purpose.
Recorded as a Cannes Lions lead-up, this conversation gets into the machinery behind the run. Karen explains why independence lets Rethink protect creative standards instead of chasing scale, why the client's real job is finding sparks rather than poking holes, and how the CRAFTS framework gives a whole agency a shared language for what good looks like.
Karen walks us through the Heinz philosophy that every ad is a product ad, the go-then-grow approach that turns big swings into low-risk reps, and why, going into Cannes, she expects a reclaiming of human craft in an AI-flooded market.
The through-line: bold creative shouldn't feel scary. Build the right system and the right partnership, and the work that wins awards is the same work that drives the business.
Timestamps
00:00 Find the sparks, not the holes
02:08 What's behind the run: independence and the receipts
05:48 Why great creative shouldn't feel scary
09:12 Builders vs hole-pokers: the client's real job
14:27 Famous brands outperform business metrics
19:17 AI, human craft, and the IKEA sleep talkers
22:42 CRAFTS: a shared language for great work
30:57 Heinz: every ad is a product ad
36:24 Go then grow: getting your reps in
44:17 Idea first: when media becomes the creative
References
