Rethink

ADWEEK Opens Submissions for 2026 Agency of the Year

ADWEEK has opened entries for its 2026 Agency of the Year awards, inviting agencies of all sizes to submit work across multiple creative and media categories. For the first time the program adds specific media and performance marketing categories (Global, U.S., Independent Media, and Performance Marketing Agency of the Year). Entries will be judged by ADWEEK’s editorial team on business results, creative/media strategy, talent development, leadership, innovation and impact. Early-bird, standard and extended submission deadlines (with tiered fees) run from July 17 through September 11, 2026. The shortlist will be published in October and winners will be announced in a December 8, 2026 feature; one winner will also design ADWEEK’s December magazine cover. Submission portal and contact details are provided on ADWEEK’s official site.

Rethink Hires Anomaly Veteran to Boost Production Capabilities

Independent creative agency Rethink has appointed Jon Legere as its first chief production officer. Legere, who spent 14 years at Anomaly where he built and ran the in-house Unreasonable Studios, will scale Rethink’s production capabilities across advertising, PR and design and report to global chief operating officer Caleb Goodman. The role is intended to integrate production earlier in the agency workflow rather than treating it as a downstream function. Rethink frames the hire as a response to client in-housing trends and agency model changes; the agency also plans further investments in production and to integrate emerging tools such as AI across its processes.

AI Increases Output — Rethink Team Size to Avoid Loss

This executive briefing argues that generative AI has raised individual output roughly tenfold (from about $300K to $2M per person per year) while leaving coordination costs unchanged, creating a new organizational bottleneck. Using the combinatoric formula n(n-1)/2, the author explains how coordination overhead grows with team size and why the marginal cost of adding a sixth team member can outweigh added capacity. The briefing introduces practical frameworks—'scout vs. strike team' classification, the 'Steinberger Threshold' for who can direct AI agents, and an 'ambition failure' critique of simply doing the same work with fewer people—and includes five diagnostic questions plus a five-prompt kit for leaders to assess whether their orgs are optimized for the AI era.