March 11, 2026
March 11, 2026
Indy Agency Spotlight: How January Digital Is Redefining Full-Funnel Growth for Apparel & Retail Brands in 2026
A Q&A with January Digital founder, Vic Drabicky and Snapchat’s global head of indy agency, Frank Lee.
Key Takeaways:
Sustainable Growth Requires Measured Discomfort
Creative Freedom is Now a Competitive Advantage
Automation and AI Should Magnify Talent
Fourteen years ago, Vic Drabicky founded January Digital after working in-house at J.Crew and Tory Burch. He saw a disconnect: agencies spoke “agency,” brands spoke “brand,” and strategy often stopped at a deck.
Today, that original tension has evolved into something bigger–and more urgent. In a fragmented media ecosystem defined by AI, measurement shifts, and creative opportunity, January Digital operates as a strategic partner to its clients, many of which are using Snapchat as a growth lever.
We sat down with Vic to talk about how the industry has evolved, what marketers are getting wrong in 2026 (and how to course correct), and why a little discomfort may be the most important growth signal of all.
Q: What are your clients wrestling with right now?
V: Discomfort. The skills that built your career five years ago may not work today. That’s uncomfortable–culturally and professionally. I see this taking shape in a few ways:
AI: This one’s obvious, but ways of working are changing with AI. Brands and professionals alike are up against AI “slop,” a constant stream of new tools, new workflows… it can be a lot. AI can supercharge work, but there’s a steep and fast learning curve. There’s discomfort in how we do work in 2026 that wasn’t even imaginable for many people just a year or two ago.
Measurement: Many marketers “grew up” measuring campaigns based on last-click touchpoints. They educated their internal stakeholders on this, they worked with their agencies to report with it, and now, they need to adjust. Last-click doesn’t cut it anymore–channels are more complex (walled gardens), “credit” can be misattributed, and without a unified channel view, marketers can lose out on channels contributing to real growth. The industry is embracing unified cross-channel measurement (often with third-party measurement partners) more and more, because it’s one of the best ways to determine spend allocation. With that shift comes a new wave of stakeholder education, agency integration with measurement partners, and more.
Creative Experimentation: For years, ad creatives were forced to be rigid (size, x amount of cut-downs)-it got boring. Now, we have tools that allow creative directors to design, iterate, and scale assets faster than ever. It’s like watching a whole group of creatives take a collective deep breath, get reinspired, and also needing to grease the wheels of thinking big beyond the duopoly.
Leaning into these discomforts can help brands drive growth, expand performance capabilities, and create real business impact. We always say: if you aren’t willing to get comfortable with a little discomfort, someone else will, and they’ll leapfrog your brand. We’re always looking at how we can unlock growth–we love working with clients who think the same way.
Q: What’s changed most in the media ecosystem since you founded January Digital?
V: A million things have changed (I’m really old and have been in the industry a long time), but perhaps the most impactful recent one has been the changing industry standard around measurement and success.
Way back, billboards worked. We couldn’t measure them properly to tell people why they worked, but we know they did.
As the industry evolved and became myopic with last-click measurement, major swaths of data were missing, influencing how decisions were made.
Now, measurement tools like MMM are more accessible. The science is back, and we can finally prove that influence works–not just clicks. We can evaluate broader impact across channels–whether it’s Snapchat, experiential marketing, wildposting, or paid search.
That’s pretty empowering. We can pitch clients on a media mix based on whatever unique business challenge they’re trying to solve, and it will be a diversified list of channels and tactics based on what the data shows us.
Marketers need to be testing, diversifying their channel mix, and taking swings to drive real growth for their businesses.
Q: How should brands think about diversification and incrementality?
V: Media concentration has quietly become a risk issue.
Many brands built highly efficient machines inside a couple of dominant platforms. That worked for a few years, but brands are starting to see rising CPMs, creative fatigue, and audience saturation.
So, there’s more openness to diversification, especially when it comes to reaching new customers, which we see with Snapchat. It’s not “try everything,” but rather structured testing.
When designing campaigns you have to:
Set a hypothesis upfront.
If we spend on X, we expect a Y outcome.Agree on the test timeline before launch.
Campaigns have ebbs and flows. Day one might look terrible. That doesn’t mean the channel doesn’t work.Define comparison points clearly.
Before you test, make sure there is a clear set of KPIs you’re benchmarking against.Understand that one test is rarely determinant.
Testing once might push you in a certain direction, but consistent testing is what builds true confidence.
We’re not trying to prove we’re right. We’re trying to drive real impact. That’s what a true integrated partner does. I encourage brands, even the ones we don’t work with, to try and fit campaigns into this framework to see if a channel is really working for the business.
Q: What have you learned about how brand impact shows up differently across platforms
V: Impact depends on the problem you’re solving.
Our agency is channel-agnostic. That’s intentional. If your biggest challenge is customer acquisition, that might require a different mix than if you’re repositioning a brand.
With brands like Steve Madden, the magic happens when appetite for experimentation, audience behavior, and creative ambition align. When we discussed the Snapchat campaign, we had conversations about the audience, the creative opportunity, and how measurable the platform is–it led to really impactful results.
Marketers should choose platforms based on alignment with business goals and audience behavior, not just out of habit.
Q: What matters most for sustainable growth?
V: The recipe hasn’t changed.
Nail your fundamentals. Take educated risks. Measure. Learn. Repeat.
The difference is cadence. Brands are evaluating performance in weeks now, not years. But you still need one eye on long-term brand impact.
Resilience comes from flexibility.
Q: Last question — what emoji describes Snapchat?
V: 🦸🚀
Snapchat is a bit of a slept-on hero or a sleeper hit. Brands need to know that it’s more valuable than they may think. Once people see what the platform has to offer, the results speak for themselves!
