The 2026 Case Study Showcase Recap – 8 Standout Case Studies in 90 Minutes

At Setup, we love to create inspirational moments and opportunities for marketers to connect and learn from one another. 

Our 2026 Case Study Showcase on Thursday, May 14, 2026 gave our agency partners the chance to showcase how they think, solve problems, and deliver results, and it gave client-side marketers the chance to ask questions, rank their favorites, and discover new ways of thinking and approaching strategies. 

In less than 90 minutes, attendees experienced a fast-moving lineup of creative breakthroughs, AI-enabled solutions, behaviorally informed campaigns, brand trust strategies, and measurable business outcomes. Like last year, brand attendees also helped score the case studies in real time, crowning winners in three categories: Most Game-Changing Strategy, Best Data-Driven Results, and Brand Favorite Award.

When eight agency partners gave brand-side attendees a rapid-fire, behind-the-scenes look at real work across categories including airlines, grocery, EV adoption, financial services, retail, and more, it led to some attendees even saying, “I'm definitely walking away with some notions on if I have this problem, who I’d reach out to in my future work…”

The line-up consisted of the following agencies representing their work for the following brands:

• The Variable | Charbroil

• Truelio | various global airline partners

• Goodway Group | Stella Rosa

• The Shipyard | Electric For All Campaign powered by Veloz

• Sagepath Reply | Ferrero

• St. John | MIDFLORIDA Credit Union

• Sensis | Covered California

• Material | Whole Foods Market

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1. The Variable + Charbroil

AI-enabled production for a compressed seasonal launch

The Variable opened the event with a case study on how they helped Charbroil concept, create, shoot, and launch a campaign for the 2026 grilling season in just a few months. Faced with late-stage innovation timing and internal turnover on the client side, the agency used an AI-enabled production approach to create video assets, paid content, and product-specific creative at speed—while maintaining fidelity for the grills, food, and environments shown on screen.

The team shared that the approach helped reduce traditional production budgets by nearly 80% and post-production time by over 75%, while creating the flexibility to optimize creative in-market based on what was performing.

2. Truelio + various global airline partners

Reducing friction in loyalty and rewards engagement

Next, Truelio walked attendees through their work helping airline partners improve frontline engagement with co-branded loyalty and rewards programs. Their case study focused on removing friction at every stage—from enrollment to participation to redemption—through a mobile-first, technology-enabled “engagement engine” built for real-world user behavior.

The results were strong: 34% enrollment growth, 6% engagement growth, more than 35,000 rewards claimed, and a 93.7% redemption rate in the first year across participating partners.

3. Goodway Group + Stella Rosa

Turning retail intelligence into incremental grocery growth

Goodway Group presented a full-funnel commerce campaign for Stella Rosa, designed to reposition the wine brand as part of a shopper’s everyday routine rather than only a special-occasion purchase. Using Walmart first-party data, third-party signals, and cross-basket insights, the team built behaviorally aligned audience segments and optimized creative in real time.

Their “outside the cart” thinking paid off. Goodway shared that the campaign drove 4x incremental sales, outperformed the wine category benchmark by 143%, and achieved 20x ROAS, with additional lift outside of Walmart measured through NCS rest-of-market analysis.

4. The Shipyard + Electric For All powered by Veloz

Rebuilding trust in EVs through clarity, culture, and credibility

For Electric For All, powered by the nonprofit Veloz, The Shipyard tackled one of the biggest brand challenges in mobility today: rebuilding trust in electric vehicles amid misinformation, political tension, and consumer uncertainty. Rather than trying to “sell the future,” the team focused on creating a trusted, editorial-style campaign that met skeptical audiences with clarity, simplicity, and a narrator they would actually listen to.

The campaign used Nick Offerman as the voice of the everyman, prioritized trusted media and creator channels, and was agile enough to update creative in response to rising gas prices during the campaign. The result was a 9-point lift in purchase intent, outperforming the original goal of five points, along with strong engagement, site traffic, and breakthrough performance among harder-to-reach groups including rural audiences, women, and people over 60.

5. Sagepath Reply + Ferrero

Laying the foundation for an agentic enterprise

At the midpoint of the event, Sagepath Reply shared how they partnered with Ferrero to move from manual data analysis to a scalable, agent-driven operating model. Their work focused on unifying fragmented data sources, reducing the time it took to generate insights, and creating a branded AI ecosystem—Loop AI—that could support faster, smarter decision-making across the enterprise.

The case study highlighted how AI enablement becomes more valuable when it is paired with strong discovery, cross-functional alignment, and a clear understanding of business goals. Sagepath reported that the pilot helped bring time-to-insight down from days to minutes while laying the groundwork for broader enterprise adoption.

6. St. John + MIDFLORIDA Credit Union

Using humor and cultural truth to drive checking account growth

St. John brought a bold creative approach to the financial services space with MIDFLORIDA Credit Union, developing a customer acquisition campaign aimed at Millennials and Gen Z. Their insight was sharp: younger consumers were not anti-banking, they were anti-bank nonsense. That truth inspired the creation of the “Big Bank Bull” campaign, which used humor, plain-spoken messaging, and a sharply defined antagonist to make MIDFLORIDA’s differentiation feel clear and culturally relevant.

The campaign exceeded its goal of 65,000 new checking accounts by 110%, drove over 44,000 openings from YouTube alone, and delivered a reported 200x ROI based on customer lifetime value. It also earned the 2025 Digiday Award for Best Video Campaign.

7. Sensis + Covered California

Building trust with Hispanic Californians to drive enrollment

Sensis shared how they helped Covered California address a key issue in the customer journey: high awareness, but a trust gap that prevented people from moving into education, consideration, and action. Through research, the team uncovered that the challenge was not what people believed—it was who they believed. That insight shaped a culturally grounded campaign designed to celebrate Hispanic Californians, position Covered California as a community partner, and drive enrollment through trust.

The campaign delivered 75% growth in Spanish-language search, approximately 250 million impressions, and a 66% completion rate, while helping reduce enrollment decline in a difficult policy environment from a national rate of 11% to just 4% for Covered California.

8. Material + Whole Foods Market

Using long-term brand tracking to stay ahead of shifting shopper behavior

Closing out the event, Material presented their ongoing brand tracking work for Whole Foods Market. Rather than framing brand tracking as a static reporting exercise, Material showed how it becomes a tool for identifying the next business challenge before it fully surfaces—whether that challenge is COVID-era omni-channel behavior, inflation, private label performance, or how online behavior is affecting in-store value perception.

Their work illustrated how tracking, when paired with sales data, shopper behavior, ecosystem dynamics, and life-stage insights, can inform smarter strategy over time. Material pointed to outcomes including stronger COVID safety perception, growth for Whole Foods’ 365 private label brand, and a clearer path for evolving the Amazon + Whole Foods ecosystem to support both online and in-store growth.

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And the winners were…

Attendees scored the presentations in real time, and the results were close across the board. The final standings were:

Most Game-Changing Strategy

1. The Shipyard | Electric For All powered by Veloz

2. Goodway Group | Stella Rosa

3. Sagepath Reply | Ferrero

Best Data-Driven Results

1. Goodway Group | Stella Rosa

2. Sagepath Reply | Ferrero

3. Material | Whole Foods Market

Brand Favorite Award

1. The Shipyard | Electric For All powered by Veloz

2. Sensis | Covered California

3. Sagepath Reply | Ferrero

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This year’s showcase proved again that brand marketers are hungry for more than agency credentials—they want to understand how agencies think, solve, and execute. The range of work presented in 90 minutes gave attendees an inspiring, data-driven look at what is possible when strategy, creativity, and performance come together. That format is part of what makes the Showcase such a favorite each year. 

If you would like to connect with any of the agencies featured in this event, or if you’re a brand marketer looking for the right partner for your next challenge, reach out to us. 

At Setup, we help marketers thrive by making these connections.

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Missed out on our event and want to attend the next one? Our next in-person event is our annual half-day summit on October 8th. Join us for the Atlanta Integrated Marketing Summit in partnership with AMA Atlanta, FUSE, Marketing AI Pulse, AIGA, She Runs It, AAF Atlanta, and more. Ticket prices increase closer to the date, but you can use code “SETUP” for the best discount!