2025, the Year of the Wood Snake, wasn’t exactly gentle on the creative industries. Large shifts across the professional landscape may have felt like a forced unravelling. But if we borrow a lens from the Chinese zodiac, that volatility starts to look less like chaos and more like a necessary shedding.

In Chinese astrology, the Snake is tied to depth, strategy, and transformation through the shedding of skin. Paired with the Wood element, it asks an uncomfortable but clarifying question:
What are you still carrying that you’ve clearly outgrown?

If last year felt friction-filled, that friction wasn’t random, it was a form of feedback. A signal that the people we create for (clients, audiences, collaborators) have shifted, and our work must shift with them.

Listening, in this context, isn’t about adding more.
It’s about removing what obstructs clarity, flow, or genuine connection.

And now comes 2026: the Year of the Fire Horse.

If Snake energy is about shedding, Horse energy is about moving, and not alone. Horses are herd animals. They move fastest and safest together. Add Fire, and we get ignition: momentum fuelled by purpose, speed anchored by direction.

Where the Wood Snake exposed fragmentation, the Fire Horse invites cohesion.
We’ve recognised the need for community; now we choose who we’re running with.

And we’re choosing well.

In our herd at Whitewall are people like Lili, our vlogging expert whose work on A Dish Delish reflects where audience expectations are heading: faster loops, more presence, less polish-for-polish’s-sake. A Dish Delish isn’t over-produced; it’s alive. And that aliveness raises expectations internally, about how quickly we listen, how honestly we reflect, how human we let things feel.

It looks like partnering more deliberately with technologies that reduce friction instead of adding noise, platforms like SpottMe that help audiences feel less processed and more present.

And we’re building thinking at the scale of global stages, World Cup-level arenas, because you don’t sprint toward something abstract. You sprint toward something named.

This year, movement becomes meaningful only when it’s shared, when it’s aligned with the right collaborators, grounded in the right values, and directed toward work that genuinely matters.

For creative leaders, the invitation is simple:

Treat 2025 as your audit.
Recognise what rubbed, bloated, or misaligned. Let it go, even if it once worked.

Let 2026 be your sprint.
Move with the people who are clearly your people. Build work that feels human again. Commit to a direction and refine in motion.

The Wood Snake and Fire Horse together sketch a clean arc for our industry:

We shed what no longer fits.
Then we sprint toward what finally feels true: together.

Running with:
@a_dishdelish
www.spott.me