What do Claire’s, Whole Foods, and the 49ers have in common?

Every year, agencies publish some variation of the same list: brands we love, trends we’re watching, predictions we’re making.

This isn’t that.

When we talk about our wishlists at Redscout, we’re not talking about big logos for credentials’ sake. We’re talking about brand challenges that feel real, complicated, and slightly uncomfortable. The kind of work that forces an organization to decide something, not just decorate it.

The projects we’re excited by aren’t louder by default. They’re not automatically more digital or more AI-forward. They’re sharper, more integrated, and less performative. What keeps surfacing are inflection points—moments when a category is shifting, a brand is redefining itself, or a business is making subtle moves to stay ahead of the change.

We’ve been fortunate to work on versions of these tensions recently—from helping Quizlet rethink how learning evolves alongside AI, to partnering with Sephora on how retail and culture show up together across the customer experience.

Some of those shifts are happening at the category level.

AI isn’t just a feature set, it’s a behavioral shift. What happens when intelligence becomes ambient and speed is assumed? The brands that win won’t be the fastest, they’ll be the most disciplined. The work isn’t messaging, it’s defining guardrails and deciding what gets built and what doesn’t, who gets credit for it, and how control actually works.

We’ve seen versions of this tension firsthand in our work with tech clients. Their challenge isn’t announcing AI, but deciding how it behaves inside already complex systems, products, and workflows.

GLP-1s are similar. These drugs are shaping identity and daily behavior far beyond the clinical setting. Treating them purely as pharmaceutical products feels strategically lazy. With GLP-1 drugs projected to become a $100B+ market within the decade, the real opportunity is to build something around them—services, education, community, cultural infrastructure. This is a category asking to be expanded, not just advertised. Telehealth platforms like Ro, weight management companies like WW, and the constantly evolving landscape of wellness brands are already beginning to test what that broader ecosystem could look like.

Other inflection points are more brand-specific.

There’s the early-2000s icon Claire's. After filing for bankruptcy in 2018 and now returning with new leadership, the brand sits at a real crossroads. Gen Alpha has arrived and challenger piercing brands are gaining credibility. Claire’s is no longer just ear piercing—it’s nostalgia, experimentation, awkward adolescence, millennial muscle memory. If it’s going to matter again, it won’t be through a visual refresh alone. It needs a north star. A clearly defined audience. Retail and product decisions that actually stake a claim.

A national grocer like Whole Foods Market faces a different kind of pressure. In a world of delivery and Instacart, physical grocery doesn’t earn relevance by default. The store still stands for quality, but the experience itself feels less defined than it once was. Reclaiming that point of view in assortment, layout, and experience is the real opportunity.

We’ve seen similar questions surface in our work with brands like Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank. For longstanding, legacy brands, the real challenge is how the store experience evolves as expectations around shopping, service, and occasion continue to shift.

The San Francisco 49ers sit in another kind of tension. They operate inside a culture obsessed with reinvention, yet their equity is built on continuity. The work isn’t novelty, it’s stewardship; evolving without flattening what made the franchise matter in the first place. When we helped reintroduce Seattle Reign FC to its fanbase last year, we followed this line of thinking: Strategy should show up in an organization’s behavior long before it shows up in design.

These are the kinds of moments we’re drawn to. Not the clean rebrand or the trend cycle, but the harder conversations. The ones that shape what gets built, funded, and protected because something has to give.