How Agnostic’s 2025 Achievements Are Fuelling Its Next Chapter

With 2026 now in full swing, you’d be hard pressed to find a business across adland that doesn’t have a firm plan for what the coming year should look like, and exciting ambitions to match. But, that’s not to say every aspiration is created equal. From feasible outcomes to pipe dreams, the spectrum is broad, and the coming months will test which companies can truly walk the walk.

This is something Canadian strategic communications agency Agnostic is confident it can do.

“In 2026, we plan to deepen our understanding of cultural shifts, explore new creative formats, utilise AI to help our clients to understand their market opportunity, and help brands show up in ways that feel relevant and impactful,” says president Sarah Crabbe. “We will also grow our experiential offering, evolve our B2P thinking, and introduce new ways to help clients navigate change.”

For the agency, the seeds of success have actually been planted since early 2025. Coming into the year with the goal of staying “committed to curiosity and ambition”, the team led from the front, and, in the process, received several key pieces of recognition. It was voted one of Canada’s Best Workplaces, maintained its Great Place to Work certification (held since 2022), was named one of Canada’s Top Growing Companies for the second year in a row, and won Strategy Silver PR Agency Of the Year.

But, according to Sarah, while external recognition is something to be proud of, it was secondary to the chance to create “excellent work with inspiring partners”, proving Agnostic’s capabilities to a wider Canadian audience and renewing internal appetites for the next chapter.

“Today, Agnostic is in a place of strong and intentional growth,” she continues. “We are crystal clear about our unique role in the industry, and the work is reflecting that. We launched a new website, sharpened our positioning, and expanded our thinking across consumer goods, financial services, tech and non-profit. We embraced headwinds in the industry and are running towards them, such as agentic AI, earned search, and global restructuring. Right now, there is nothing but opportunity, and we are excited by that.”

Pieces at Play

To best understand the opportunity Agnostic is striving to capitalise on, it’s worth getting a clearer picture of the 2025 milestones buoying the agency’s hopes at the present.

A critical piece of the puzzle was the launch of experiential marketing and events offering Agnostic Exchange, alongside a new B2B approach – something that has since shaped brand platforms, thought leadership, employee engagement work, and long-term communications strategies.

“Both offerings signal that Agnostic is thinking about a client's entire business, not just in a one-off campaign,” says Sarah. “In particular, Agnostic Exchange has opened the door to a new dimension of creativity for us. We have already used it to support clients with events, immersive activations, and cultural pop-ups, such as the Kicking Horse Coffee ‘Blendsigns Tattoo’ activation.”

Here, the agency demonstrated the power of an idea rooted in brand truth, generating 3.7 million earned media impressions, 494 face-to-face interactions, and 67 permanent tattoos in the process, whilst simultaneously proving its proficiency within the experiential space. All outcomes the president sees as reinforcing the fact that strong work can move people, this was just one example of how, in her books, Agnostic has upgraded its ability to support business outcomes and contribute to culture.

At the same time, the agency also placed a huge emphasis on integrating AI into its processes, refining usage under the leadership of Amit Shilton (vice president, strategy) and seeking to understand when it can help, and when it should stay in the background.

“The biggest learning has been that AI supports great thinking, but never replaces it,” Sarah insists. “By using it to accelerate research, strengthen insight, and open up more time for creativity, we have improved the quality and efficiency of our work. Our offering is stronger because our team has more room to think, experiment, and craft ideas with intention. It’s a tool that helps us work smarter, without replacing the human ideas that make the work meaningful.”

This too instilled a great deal of enthusiasm within the company. The decision to “stay focused on what actually matters” and ensure the agency’s employees feel like they’re in an environment where they’re supported – and not threatened by the implementation of AI – has done wonders for the quality of work, fuelling business results in the process. All part of a belief that a culture where people feel “respected and encouraged to grow” is imperative, this focus on the human side of the job is the throughline which guides Agnostic’s 2026 aspirations.

“We adapt quickly; when culture shifts or when a client needs change, we respond with curiosity and energy,” says Sarah. “Whether it is AI driven strategies, experiential work, B2P thinking or cultural strategy, we begin with understanding people. That approach shapes our ideas and shapes how we run the agency. What makes us different is our refusal to stay comfortable. Progress is part of how we work every day, and that mindset has kept us ahead of where the industry is headed.”

‘Better Thinking, Better Results’

If 2025 was the year where Agnostic focused on leaning into new formats, then, for Sarah and the team, 2026 must be all about continuing to broaden perspectives.

The president hopes to see deeper cultural insight, more creativity in emerging spaces, and a continued commitment to work that earns its place in people’s lives. However, she adds that this aim won’t be about changing direction, but rather sharpening focus as culture evolves.

“It all starts with the most important skill: listening. Clients want their brands to move at a faster pace than the people they serve, so we invested in the capabilities that help us identify – and in some cases – shape those cultural signals and turn them into work that works.”

Already, proof of this methodology is in the results. Across the agency’s major undertakings of the previous year, including work for Metro, the Terry Fox Foundation, the Cisco Toronto Innovation Centre 10-year anniversary, Sinai Health Foundation and Canadian Blood Services (in partnership with Diamond), critical success was consistently achieved by leaning into moments that people could share.

“We continued to deliver work anchored in cultural relevance,” says Sarah. “We built programmes that strengthened trust in healthcare, increased public safety awareness and helped global clients communicate with more clarity and empathy. We focused on making innovation feel human and useful. Our experiential work created moments people could share, and our earned‑media strategies helped clients lead conversations, driving a wider and more meaningful reach. All these projects represent the range of what we do well, and that balance is what success looks like for us.”

Of the bunch, the collaboration with Canadian Blood Services is a particularly special highlight for Sarah. Tasked with supporting its new brand platform and an ambitious recruitment goal of one million new donors in five years, here, the team leveraged national spokespeople and localised storytelling to generate more than 670 media hits and 253 million earned impressions.

Not only did this result in exceeding targets by more than 150%, and helping drive a 40% increase in booked appointments, but it spoke perfectly to Agnostic’s ethos, ‘focus on the work, and the rest will follow’.

“This belief has guided Agnostic from day one, shaped every major decision in 2025, and will continue to this year,” Sarah asserts. “It’s been our North Star for almost seven years, and it works. It keeps us grounded throughout our growth. It helped us say yes to the right opportunities, and no to the ones that don’t align. It’s easy to become distracted in this climate, which is why we stay true to the belief of ‘Better Thinking, Better Results’.”

With this in mind, Agnostic’s vision for better thinking and better results in 2026 revolves around continued investment in learning, leadership and culture. Cognisant – and immensely proud – of the fact that the team has already weathered everything from tariffs to fluctuating markets without faltering, a worthy continuation of the agency’s 2025 success, Sarah emphasises, will revolve around staying true to what’s gotten the business this far.

“Our culture is our business,” she concludes. “No great culture, no great talent. No great talent, no great work. No great work, no great business. No great business, no great culture. This year, we want to create the conditions for bigger ideas and stronger thinking. The aim is not to reinvent the direction, but to sharpen it.

“So far, we’ve trusted each other, dared each other to be better, and kept raising our own standards. We ran towards defying expectations. Everything good that happened in 2025 came from that. Roll on 2026!”