@purehopedailyhopecore❤️🩹✨️#tiktokgrowthchallenge #wholesome #hopecore #USA #happy

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Once you watch enough hopecore, you start to get served this new sort of ‘staged’ hopecore content, where creators go out and create hopecore moments. In 2022, creator Harrision Pawluk was in a Melbourne food court, handed a woman a bouquet, asked her to hold it while he put his coat on, and then walked away. The whole thing was on hidden camera to capture her reaction. The video went viral with 57 million views.

A Melbourne news station later tracked down this woman (her name is Maree), who felt the video was patronizing and dehumanizing. She said she was made to feel like clickbait. And she’s right - this whole genre is about creating clickbait with unsuspecting people on the street and trying to force emotional reactions from the people that view it. If you think about it too long it’s an actual episode of Black Mirror.

There’s this Czech novelist named Milan Kundera who did alot of writing about this topic. In his work The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he talks about the concept of how “kitsch makes two tears flow, one after the other.” The first tear is about how nice it is to see kids running on grass, the second tear is about how nice it is to be moved together with all of mankind, by the kids running on the grass. The second tear makes kitsch kitsch (get it?).

The first tear is about the kids, the second tear is about you, and it’s a performance for an audience (even if the audience is just you).

@.sunveiljust playing with your friends in the grass. sounds like a dream right. #nature #innerchildhealing #dream #fyp #hopecore

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Emotion in advertising is the second tear through and through. I would venture to guess that the most awarded work is often the most sentimental, and when you look at it a little deeper, it isn't really about the subject it says it’s focused on.

P&G’s “Thank You Mom” isn't really about moms, it’s about signaling that they are a company that would honor mothers, and they delivered it on an Olympic broadcast so you are moved together with all of mankind.

It can also go the opposite way, when Pepsi tried to have Kendall Jenner join a fake police protest and hand an officer a Pepsi. That was an attempt at the second tear applied to police violence, but so far removed from any reality that it came across as fake and disconnected.

For the TikTok flower video to work, Maree has to be a part of it. The genre has to have her be the lonely old woman whose day gets made, and we have to believe that it’s real. She has to be clickbait, she has to be exploited for us to be collectively moved by the video and connected to each other. oof.

I have made this kind of work, I would say most people in advertising have. It’s low hanging fruit, and plays really well when you’re in a brainstorm and low on ideas. And when you pitch emotional driven ideas to clients they feel precious, and they’re hard to push back on and critique, so it’s (honestly) a little bit easier to get them approved.

I think it’s worth taking a step back to consider if the first tear is worth learning to feel in yourself. When you find yourself being “moved” by a piece of content, it’s worth taking a beat to see if you’re being moved by the actual thing itself. If it had to be staged, if it had to be sold to you, is the feeling you’re feeling real?

A ramen company posted this. Maybe it doesn’t matter? Maybe I should go to Sprouts and pick up some Ramen?

@ramenonthestreet"The safe place is not always the best or most interesting place" #streetinterview #interview #nycstreetinterview #ramenonthestreetinterview #hopecore #publicinterview #smilecore #motivation #wholesome #lifeadvice #immiramen #ramen #LifeAdvice #healing #inspiringstories #relatablecontent #aestheticvideo #healingjourney #rawtalks #soulcore #hearttalk #softcoreaesthetic #gentlecontent #deepconversations

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If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

@chriswillxThe World Was Never Against You

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First off: This is definitely the first step before you fully enter the manosphere, content that connects with you and tells you how to be a man. I didn’t need it, I’m the manliest man I know.

Second: I actually really liked how poetic this was. “Your parents always wanted you to be a great son, your boss always wanted you to be a slam dunk hire, every first date was rooting for you to get laid. The deck was never stacked against you, and your failures are completely your own.”

The parallel here is the work of Erving Goffman, who wrote The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in 1965. Erv’s whole point is that everyday life runs on theater, that the interview, the date, the Tuesday all-team sync, all of it is performance, and the audience to the show is what actually keeps it alive. We’re all performing all these things every day, but I like the sentiment that secretly we’re all just hoping everyone makes it through and succeeds. (Thanks manoverse, you’ve really got your finger on the pulse.)

I do thought, think both of these people are wrong when it comes to advertising. Advertising is a performance that nobody wants to see, nobody has a stake in (except for the people making it).

That’s why we make such a big deal out of the Super Bowl, the one time people are actually out there watching ads on purpose, where the audience exists and wants to be engaged in the work.

It’s odd — It’s almost like the people in advertising have to hold two weird, judgmental spaces. We spend a week prepping and then delivering a pitch, where a client flew in specifically to poke holes in the strategy. Then, we publish content into a feed, and an algorithm made up of people’s real feelings gets to decide whether it’s absolute garbage. It’s like performing first for audience that doesn’t trust you inherently and then a second audience that is somehow even more hostile.

So, I think Williamson’s verdict needs an asterisk for the advertising folks. Your failures are yours in the pitch rooms you wanted to win. Most of what we make will be judged by people who never agreed to watch our content in the first place. Keep going anyway, something will hit.

Xx, Caitlin

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Peloton has released its 2026 earnings report, and the results are…interesting. Technically, for the first time in the company’s history, they’ve had an actually profitable year. Honestly, I wasn’t sure post-pandemic we’d see the company ever again.

I think most people know Peloton from the COVID-era. There was a very motivated brand of person that panic-bought a Peloton because it was finally time to focus on their health. Ultimately, the stationary bike became a very expensive coat rack, and killed that one guy on Sex and the City, so the brand decline was quite obvious as COVID started to “wind down.”

But none of this explains why there was a sudden jolt of profits in 2026. The earnings report does show that subscriptions grew and equipment revenue fell. That tells me people who have lapsed using their Pelotons circled back, which is a genuinely interesting trend (if that’s what’s happening).

When you think about it, Peloton is ultimately a delivery vehicle (lol) for workout videos. People sign up for the subscription service, and it creates recurring revenue for the brand, and the audience gets a better, funner workout. Even when Peloton stock was really collapsing at the end of COVID, their subscription levels have always remained pretty stable.

One of the biggest mistakes Peloton made was investing in more bikes when they were seeing their huge surge in sales in 2020. They created a huge volume of equipment, and it started rolling out to consumers right when the vaccine was becoming available. That was a timing problem, and I think any founder that was seeing a huge swell in sales would answer that by working to create more volume of their product.

What to Watch

Now, back in 2026, Peloton is fully leaning into subscriptions and their instructors and further building their content catalog.

@onepelotonWe know you know every word😉 Boy Band Week is almost here, bringing a full week of classes set to the chart-topping hits and unforgettable impact of boy bands. Starts August 10. 💚

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But what do they do next? Should Peloton run as a content company and keep spending on content until people (hopefully) start buying? I think if they keep focused on subscriptions, keep making good content, and continue to see declines in equipment sales, then we know for sure the fad of Peloton has officially passed. Maybe when you’re not sheltering in place, it is nice to ride an actual bike outside in real life. Whatever.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Janine is definitely a real person, but for our purposes she’s a character created by Oren John. His original video is linked below, where he introduces this whole idea:

@orenmeetsworldBeing anti mainstream has become a performance, this is my advocacy for the appreciation of everything

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I love this concept of ‘Aesthetic Distance’ and how brands so often try to use it to signal how important and cool they are. Originally this comes from this guy named Pierre Bourdieu, who wrote the book Distinction in 1979. The whole thesis is really about how people develop their taste: that our taste is not personal; it’s all positioning. Basically, the things you like (and the things you refuse to like) all announce your position.

Enjoying popular things is cheap and easy. Anybody can do it, and there’s a low barrier to entry. It also doesn’t really signal anything about you.

Not needing the popular things requires additional resources. You had to have time available to develop other, unique and different tastes. Maybe you have access to education that gave you a lens to better understand what would be seen (or signal) prestigious-ness.

When Janine says she doesn’t watch TV, she’s displaying the money and the time and the schooling that made it possible not to need what everybody else needs. The refusal to buy into what would be considered mainstream is the flex.

Now, to make all this pretenious-ness actually work, you have to have two elements (according to Bourdieu):

1. The thing itself doesn’t really matter, only the distance. The things that are considered “good taste” will always be changing. That’s part of the game. It’s really all about cost. If it’s free and easy to access, it’s mainstream. If it’s hard to access and expensive, it’s prestigious and exclusive (duh).

2. Your refusal to participate in the mainstream has to be witnessed. Someone has to know that you don't watch ‘Summer House’ or don't have a TV to make it matter. It’s a performance (at the end of the day).

Brands do stuff like this all the time to signal how elite and important they are (and we fall for it).

In January 2021, Bottega Veneta deleted all its social accounts, millions of followers gone, and created a news story. Their CEO told WWD the brand was “merely using their [social channels] differently.” A fan account called newbottega basically became the brand’s new unofficial Instagram.

Lush announced a global Anti-Social media Policy in November 2021, and stepped away from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat. The Row banned phones at its Fall 2024 show in Paris, and gave guests notebooks and pencils instead.

This is all Janine logic at use by brands.

“We don't really do social.”

“We don’t really do press.”

Not needing the channels is creating a clear message about being above it all. But not everybody gets to do that. A DTC startup can't opt out of social; they need to be in the conversation, they need to be present every day. Opting out of something like social media is a “luxury good.”

I would like to pretend I don't engage in this performance of having taste and pretending to be a tastemaker, but I write a Substack about advertising, so draw your own conclusions.

Oren ends his video on what he calls the last true flex: a genuine lust for life. I believe him, but I’m just not sure anyone in advertising can afford to lean into that.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

These brands sit in an odd position, they have maximum trust, maximum awareness, and almost zero daily presence.

Marketing doesn't normally talk about these kinds of brands, because most of the time you have the exact opposite problem. A brand’s budget, media plan, content, and agency partners all exist to make an unknown brand known. But what happens after that step?

Once everyone knows your brand and knows it for a specific thing, suddenly you’re stuck. The question stops being “do people know us” and starts being “what do we mean to them?”

Creating Brand Meaning

Some brands live with consumers every day. Coffee (Starbucks), sneakers (Nike), navigation (Google Maps). Other brands live in a single moment, and you only visit them when a specific moment arrives.

That second kind of brand isn’t failing, but they are capped. They can’t grow beyond the single-moment frequency and typically won’t have a presence in wider culture. Nobody really chooses that association, it just sorta happens to them.

But some brands have solved this problem, and it’s worth looking at how they did it:

Dove

In 2004, Dove was a bar of soap sitting in a very packed aisle in the grocery store. They needed to find a way to differentiate themselves from hundreds of other options. To do that, they leaned into messaging and created the Dove Real Beauty platform. It focused on beauty standards for women and how nothing you saw in ads or in magazines was real. It gave the brand a true point of view and a clear platform that they still use today.

American Express

In 2010, American Express needed a way to better align itself with small businesses. To do that, they created a brand new shopping holiday that was the perfect response to the frenzy of Black Friday, they called it “Small Business Saturday.”

Eventually, the holiday stuck, and now you see small businesses and small towns promoting it each year.

Michelin

I’m not sure if Michelin has gotten full credit for their efforts here, but it’s such an interesting play when you make the connection. In 1900, tire company Michelin started publishing a guide to restaurants and hotels working off the theory that they would recommend restaurants and hotels so that people would drive to these places (and eventually need to buy tires).

The Michelin star now holds significant cultural relevance, and chefs actively try to get one (it’s a whole plot point in “The Bear”).

The Pattern

These companies are all functional brands with a specific product and a narrow understanding of their product from their customers. None of them changed what they sold, but they did change their narrative.

Companies that are stuck in a single brand association tend to reach for a roadmap of product updates, but I think the real solution is storytelling. Give people a reason to meet the brand somewhere else, give them the words to understand where you are trying to go.

The other thing all three of these cases share is time. Michelin’s guide took a long time to become culturally relevant. Real Beauty is more than a decade old (but the platform still works and is still used), and Small Business Saturday took years to stick. Narrative repositioning compounds and takes commitment, that’s just part of the process.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

The idea for the brand (according to Mike Cessario, the founder) was that punk and metal musicians who wanted to drink water on stage were hiding it in energy drink cans because plastic water bottles looked lame and ultra L7 in pictures. Healthy products were packaged for people who wanted to look healthy, and nobody made a product for somebody who didn't fit that mold. That's how they got to water in a beer-format tallboy can.

Cessario launched his brand in Juanuary 2019 with seed funding from Secience Inc, and sold cans through the company’s website. The name was chosen to go against category instinct. “What would be the dumbest possible name to call a water?” is how Cessario posed the question.

What then compounded from there was their non-traditional advertising approach. Liquid Death operates like a small entertainment studio where the content happens to be distributed via the beverage aisle. The output is watched by customers on purpose.

In 2022, they ran a regional Super Bowl spot where a house full of children raged to Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law.”

They convinced Martha Stewart (and her people) to sell a $58 scented candle that looked like a severed hand gripping the Liquid Death can.

In 2021, the company had $45 million in sales and $3 million of that came from merchandise (hoodies, shirts, hats, that kinda thing). That means that customers what the Liquid Death identity to be their identity.

In May 2021, Live Nation made Liquid Death the exclusive water sold at more then 120 of it’s owned-and-operated venues. The tallboy can worked for the concert crowd, and the venues could also tell a sustainability story. Eight months later, Live Nation decided to invest in the brand.

What Liquid Death now owns is a thing a competitor can’t purchase, a audience that treats the brand as a cultural item, not packaging. ANybody can put water in a can (plenty have), but they’ve created a vibe and an identity around the brand.

In March 2024, e.l.f. Cosmetics launched Corpse Paint, a heavy metal makeup collection co-branded with Liquid Death. The first drop sold out in 45 minutes. A second collection showed up in Jan 2026, with six limited-edition lip “em”balms flavored like Liquid Death drink flavors.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

One example of this working in advertising is Avis in 1962. Everyone knew car rental ads were supposed to be kinda braggy, so when DDB's Paula Green wrote "When you're only No. 2, you try harder," it worked for them. They also didn't treat the line as a one-off thing. The self-deprecating No. 2 positioning became their brand platform, and the campaign ran for the next 50 years before it was finally retired in 2012.

The same idea was used to create DDB's "Think Small" work for Volkswagen in 1961, which sold the Beetle to Americans. The creative admitted the car was small and, in one ad's words, kinda ugly.

Ryanair's TikTok is the modern version of this. The channel actively mocks the bare-bones experience of flying on a Ryanair jet, the cramped seats, the bag fees, the experience just overall kind of being bad, and it has done this consistently.

@ryanairenjoy the view 👍 #stitch w/ @RACH 🐬 #ryanair

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But man, these can go very bad. Self-deprecation only works if you're willing to make the joke the core of the brand rather than a costume you wear for one campaign, and if you keep the wrongness somewhat moderate. A brand that mocks itself once and then retreats back into polish reads as insincere, and a brand that pushes too weird just confuses people.

Which brings me back to the mango. The keh mukarni survived 700 years because it never abandoned its template. The audience knew a twist was coming, that was part of the fun. Khusrow understood that he was writing for people who had heard a hundred of these, he just had to keep coming up with new endings.

Xx, Caitlin

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

In 2013, Salomon released the XT-6 as a performance trail shoe for elite runners, people who were taking the shoe through 100-mile mountain passes. That was the Salomon customer, and they had reached them.

By 2023, Salomon’s sneaker sales crossed $1 billion. The XT-6 is on the shelves at Saks Fifth Avenue. The shoes are being traded on StockX (up by 202%) in a single year. But the shoe itself, that was mostly the same, still the same product, optimized for the ultra-runners.

In 2016, Salomon hired Jean-Philippe Lalonde from Arc’teryx, and gave him three employees and a simple brief. In essence: Start a Sportsyle division. They had some small successful projects with a small Parisian concept store and a partnership with a Barcelona designer, but it was time to get bigger. Lalonde’s big concept was not to redesign the shoes, but to introduce new colors. The base product remained exactly the same (the XT-6 in black and white), but Lalonde added vanilla ice and lunar rock colors.

This same strategy was followed on other shoes. The base shoe with its strong ultra-marathon features had to remain the same, but small color changes or artistic details could be added. Comme de Garçons bolted a chunky platform to the XT-6 Expanse for its Fall/Winter 2024 runway. Sandy Liang, Salomon’s first female collaborator, released a capsule collection in warm tones. Palace, JJJJound, Kith, and Atmos all worked on collabs (with that same rule, the base show had to remain untouched).

Over time, the different partnerships introduced Salomon to new audiences (streetwear, avant-garde fashion, outdoor lifestyle) that all found that the base shoe was actually just…a really good shoe.

Then things got even bigger when Rihanna wore a pair of Salomons to the Super Bowl.

Rihanna performed in her all-red outfit that included a pair of MM6 Maison Margiela x Salomon Cross Lows, a $360 collaborative hiking runner that had been released the previous fall. Google searches spiked for the shoe overnight, and Salomon was not aware she would be wearing the shoes.

Salomon now owns a strong position that’s really hard to build. It’s a sneaker that doesn’t really need to prove itself. The XT-6’s lacing system and sole compound aren't aesthetic choices, they are engineering choices made for a specific customer in a specific context, but the gap between intention and adoption seems to have created a moat for the brand between them and their competitors.

Anyone who wants to swoop in and truly compete with Salomon would need a decade making real shoes for ultra-runners that nobody in fashion knows about, then wait for fashion to organically find them, then wait for the cool kids to organically adopt them. It’s definitely a hard-to-duplicate strategy.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

@var.aunevikdon't mind the stain on my shirt while i talk about how happiness is kind of embarrasing

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“The prestige of being unhappy runs so deep that we protest when someone calls us happy,” she says. “Being a bit miserable is understood to mean that you have a certain depth, while being happy means you haven't really looked around.”

In 1979, two psychologists, Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson, published a study called “Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser? (Here’s the paper on PubMed if you’re really curious: LINK) They had participants press a button and observe how often a green light turned on. The actual control the button had over the light varied. What they found was that non-depressed people consistently overestimated their control. They believed they were making the light turn on, even when they weren’t. Depressed people gave estimates closer to reality.

This paper has been cited many, many times since its publication and helped coin the term “sadder but wiser.” It became this shorthand for the idea that if you seem too cheerful, you aren’t paying attention.

In 2012, a meta-analysis by Moore and Fresco looked at 75 studies over 7,000 participants and found that the depressive realism effect was negligible, that both groups actually showed a positive bias in the light test. In 2022, Amelia Dev and Don Moore attempted to recreate the light experiment at UC Berkeley and found no evidence that depressive symptoms relate to perceived control (not in any way). Sadder wasn’t wiser, it was just simply sadder.

But the original idea stuck and still hangs around today.

Creative departments run on a specific, odd, misery-is-one-of-your-credentials style system. The most respected person in the room is usually the most tired, the most overworked, the one who has seen it all. The person who sighs when someone pitches something ambitious because they know that concept will slowly be ground down into a shell of itself.

If you’ve worked for an agency, you know these rules. Don’t be the person who gets excited about the brief or says “I love this” in a review. Don’t care too visibly about a project that may or may not be killed. The only approved emotion is exhaustion, having a been-there-seen-it-all energy that signals your aloofness.

That sounds like a lot of performing for the sake of it, so let’s circle back to Vår: “Unhappiness ends up not only feeling safe, but also respectable. A simple joy feels risky, almost embarrassing.”

The person who gets visibly excited about an idea in a review is taking a risk the cynical person never has to take. If the excited person’s idea gets killed, they look naive. Cynicism is a free pass, but enthusiasm has a cost.

Alloy and Abramson’s “sadder but wiser” hypothesis confirmed a bias that existed long before they ran their experiment, that misery means depth, and happiness means you missed something.

Now, to clarify, nobody wants a creative director who claps at every concept like it’s a kindergarten recital, or praises every line of copy like gospel. But, I do think the industry has gotten comfortable with treating cynicism as intelligence, and that ends up hurting everyone.

Being excited about a concept or idea is not a sign that you don’t understand the business. I would argue that being too jaded actually means you don’t understand the creative business.

Xx, Caitlin

L B Alloy, L Y Abramson, Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: sadder but wiser?, 1979

Amelia S. Dev,Don A. Moore, Sheri L. Johnson, Karin T. Garrett, Sadder ≠ Wiser: Depressive Realism Is Not Robust to Replication, 2022

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Twix’s new campaign features two ventriloquist dummies lip-syncing to Nelly and Kelly Rowland’s hit song “Dilemma.” The whole spot was captured practically, and the puppets were controlled by one ventriloquist. The spot is directed by Dougal Wilson who just wrapped directing Paddington in Peru. More.

The Real Story: Wilson definitely has range. This spot definitely stands out, but is a little too close to the scariest episode of Goosebumps for my millennial mind to overlook.

Hinge “All We Need is Us”

Hinge just launched “All We Need is Us” a series of films showing real couples who met on the app. The premise is they’re all doing benign things (cleaning up after a party, weeding a garden, sitting in a park, that kinda thing). The series is part of their “Designed to be Deleted” brand platform that’s meant to address dating app fatigue and AI mistrust among GenZ specifically. More.

The Real Story: Not sure I would call this innovation. I pitched and executed the same idea for Tinder in 2020. A dating app showing real couples that met on their app…groundbreaking.

Here’s the Tinder spot from 2020:

Justworks

HR platform Justworks launched a new campaign with surreal visual metaphors. The work is from Quality Meats and follows a boba shop owner who clones herself so she can do every job in her business, and an architecture studio founder who literally puppets his employees (because he can’t let go). More.

The Real Story: The line “this baby isn’t my baby, my company is my baby” is quite clever. These spots are snappy and fun. Will this work for B2B marketing? Maybe if the LinkedIn ad spend is right…

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Means Workwear posed this trick question. “Should murderers go to jail?” It’s not a real question. It’s only posed as one, and it's what’s called discursive disclosure.

Discursive disclosure was coined by communication theroist Stanley Deetz to describe how institutions suppress conflict without people realizing they’re being suppressed. You’re not censored outright, instead you’re asked a question that contains the acceptable answer inside of it. Answer anything outside of what is deemed acceptable, and you’ll be seen as hostile or strange.

For example, if you ask someone: “Should murderers go to jail?”

The socially acceptable answer is: yes. But it’s deeper than that.

In Means Workwear’s words, baked into the question “should murderers go to jail” is a whole chain of assumptions. That punishment equals prison, that prison equals safety, that questioning any part of that chain means you don’t care about victims. That if you answer anything other than the expected yes, then before you can discuss anything about criminal justice reform, you’re first having to defend yourself against the implication that you’re pro-murder.

@means_workwearJon Favreau can suck cheeks @realpodsaveamerica

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What’s Your Biggest Weakness?

This dynamic probably sounds familiar to anyone who has sat in a conference room in a blazer that doesn’t fit quite right, answering questions about their personality and job history. In my view, a job interview runs on the exact same mechanics (it’s just aimed at your labor instead of your politics).

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” is not (even a little bit) asking about your five year plan. It’s asking about loyalty to a company. The honest answer for most people is something like “hopefully making more money, maybe somewhere else, who’s to say.” But you can’t say that. The right answer requires you to invent a future where this particular employer is the centerpiece of your life and ambitions.

“Why do you want to work here?” is the exact same thing. Everyone in the room knows the real answer is “because I need to pay rent.” Instead, you need to construct a narrative of specific enthusiasm for this company’s mission and goals.

And “what’s your biggest weakness” is the most open version of this trick. It’s compliance pretending to be vulnerability. You are asked to be self-aware while actually revealing nothing.

Now Back to Deetz

In Deetz’s original framing, discursive disclosure isn't an accident of bad communication, it’s a tool of organizational power. It lets an institution get compliance from people while those people believe they’re having a real conversation, making a real choice, or being genuinely evaluated.

A job interview markets itself as an assessment of your skills, but it’s more an assessment of your ability to understand the rules of engagement. Can you read the unstated rules fast enough to perform them convincingly? Can you package your actual, complicated relationship to work into the shape an interviewer is already looking for?

This isn’t (by the way) a call to blow up every interview by telling the truth about wanting a paycheck. Rent is due on the first, that’s just what it is. But, once you know the trap, you won't fall into it. A job interview is not a real assessment of your worth, and it never will be.

Walk into that conference room with the understanding of exactly what game is being played, and decide how much of your actual self you’re willing to trade for the job.

Xx, Caitlin.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

KFC x Johnny Knoxville.

KFC worked with Johnny Knoxville to create a PSA called “Finger Lickin’ Good.” The spot connects KFC’s slogan to data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that says one in three firework injuries affects fingers and hands.

Knoxville delivers the safety tips (while barely following his own advice) in a large, very flammable field of grass. The spot also promotes the new Jackass film, so there is a LOT of cross-promotion packed in here.

The Real Story: They hired the guy who’s made a career from injuring himself for their PSA on how not to injure yourself. Kinda dumb, but I love that KFC didn’t go all Americana with it (we would have hated that).

Side note: KFC recently reworked their logo. Looks like they’re really trying to move away from the idea that the Colonel’s bowtie is his teeny tiny body.

Columbia Sportswear "Expedition Impossible"

Columbia Sportswear took out a full page ad in the New York Times to highlight a letter from their CEO Tim Boyle. The letter dared flat-earthers to find the edge of the earth. The prize if they did would be full ownership of the company.

To back the dare legally, they registered an entity called “The Company, LLC” with the Oregon Secretary of State. The fine print of the competition ruled out “a clifftop in Seattle” and “your buddy Dave legally changing his name to ‘The Edge.’”

The campaign took home 10 Lions at Cannes.

The Real Story: This is super clever. I do hope they do a part 2 where Columbia sends a group of adventurers to the “edge of the earth.” Feels like a great opportunity to now get the Columbia products out in the cold to show the vastness of the wilderness.

KitKat "The Heist"

A truck carrying 400,000 KitKat bars was stolen in transit from Nestlé's factory in central Italy to Poland, a few weeks before Easter. The bars were part of KitKat's first season as F1's official chocolate partner. VML London helped Nestlé turn the theft into a campaign. They issued a statement confirming the theft, then launched a digital barcode tracker inviting consumers to check whether their bar was among the ones that were stolen.

The social post pulled 333,000 likes on X and 340,000 on Instagram. The campaign took the PR Grand Prix at Cannes, along with four Gold Lions and four Silver Lions.

The Real Story: I never believed the theft of these bars was real. I still don’t believe it was real. The whole thing feels like a PR stunt. Who knows, but it did help them win awards…

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

In the ‘80s, Dan Wieden was trying to come up with a tagline for Nike. They had a bunch of different options floating around, and nothing was really working. What they eventually landed on came from a memory he had of convicted double murderer Gary Gilmore. When Gilmore stood in front of a firing squad for his crimes, he said “Let’s Do It.” Wieden changed it to “Just Do It.”

An LLM can generate you a thousand taglines for Nike. Quite frankly, it could probably even generate “Just Do It,” but it would arrive at that string of words through pattern recognition and previous creative. It wouldn’t find inspiration from the last words of a convicted killer, it can’t sit in the room the night before a deadline pulling from a specific, strange inventory of a life well lived.

The film Aftersun is focused on a father and daughter on vacation at a Turkish resort. It’s a beautiful-looking film, and the whole thing feels like a home movie, almost like you’re watching a memory. The film was written and directed by Charlotte Wells, whose father died when she was 16. She wrote the film based on old summer vacation photos, and purposely had the cinematographer shoot the father character through glass panes or at an arm’s length to represent how a child’s memory retains a parent after losing them.

The film doesn’t tell you any of these details, but as you watch, you feel this sense of melancholy, and the whole trip feels like a memory. You have to go looking for the backstory, and the backstory adds depth to what you see on screen.

An LLM hasn't lived a life, it’s just pretending to. It hasn’t been in an argument at a bar, it hasn’t dealt with love or loss.

We can't out-idea these models. We can out-human them. They don’t have access to our weird, specific, over-researched, personally strange realities. The things we think about late at night, the things we can’t let go of.

Xx, Caitlin

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

The Real Story: Anti-AI is now mainstream, and I do think it’s smart for Polaroid to jump on this wave. Their brand positioning being solidly in the “go offline, put down your phone” space makes sense. The location of these placements is doing most of the work, but the point is that people take a photo and share it on social… wait a minute.

Lyft

Lyft launched “Save the Money,” a campaign built around the fact that only 16.1% of rideshare consumers compare fares before booking. The hero film follows a single dollar bill through the streets of a city, abandoned because no one bothered to check whether Lyft was cheaper. The dollar was animated using practical effects by puppeteer Oliver John Taylor and rig maker Andy Gent, directed by Jeff Low. More

The Real Story: The hero spot is fine, it’s just a bit of a drag. It’s not fun to watch. The OOH with the “cheaper, usually” tagline, now that’s clever!

Yahoo x Denny Hamlin

For the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, Yahoo put Denny Hamlin’s Yahoo Mail address on his race car, his firesuit, and bumper stickers that read: “Have a problem with my driving? Email me.” If you write in, you can win signed memorabilia, and a few will get replies from Hamlin. More

The Real Story: I think this is clever as a format, but I think there’s something deeper Yahoo could be doing with their email service. I see a Yahoo account and assume that person is older, maybe there’s a nostalgia campaign play, or looking at username regret from folks who set up their Yahoo accounts when they were really young. It reminds me of this clip from Jeremy Allen White talking about his old AOL address on Jimmy Kimmel:

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Work is also helpful in creating structure and purpose, and (quite frankly) something to talk about at dinner when the conversation gets stale. There’s nothing better than telling stories from work, especially when the stakes feel low. Work can be the thing that feels fulfilling, but it can also be the thing that keeps you from thinking about everything else. And that second piece is where we a wee bit dark.

Because (and this is gonna sound a bit cheesy, but stick with me) your life is happening whether you’re paying attention to it or not. The seasons outside your office window are changing, your friends are getting older, and so are your parents.

My Dad went to the DMV the other day to renew his license. He said the only change he had to make was his hair color - switching it from brown to gray. I guess time really is moving forward.

I’m definitely guilty of spending too much time working and ignoring other parts of my life. Big decisions I’ve needed to make have been put off because a big campaign is underway (but there’s always another big campaign or a big pitch).

Nothing actually pauses because you’re on a deadline. Everything just moves forward without you in it. The Fall will come, then Winter, even if you don't look up from your screens to see it. So, maybe it’s time to stop waiting.

Do the personal project you’ve been putting off. The one that you develop the idea for a little bit more every time you’re lying in bed at 2am.

Meet a friend for drinks even though it’s a Tuesday.

Get rejected in the pursuit of human connection. Ask someone out. Tell someone you miss them.

Cry in the shower to a sad song.

Or take a shower in the middle of the workday. (I consider this the single greatest perk of working from home).

Invite your grandma over for pasta. Or go to hers.

Take a walk around your neighborhood and wave to the old ladies watering their gardens. They will wave back.

Read a book aloud to yourself in a British accent.

Print out every photo you love and hang them on your walls with push pins. (I have a hack for covering the holes with soap when you move, just DM me).

Stay up all night watching reality TV even if you’re tired the next day.

Your work can be important. But your life should be important too. And the thing about life is that it doesn’t send you a calendar invite before it moves on without you.

It’s important because it ends.

Xx, Caitlin

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

The Croatia National Tourist Board released a short film called "I Hear It's Beautiful" starring John Malkovich.

Malkovich discovered his Croatian roots this year and was formally granted Croatian citizenship, and received his Croatian passport at the team's first public appearance at the World Cup.

The film, directed by 45-time Emmy winner Pete Radovich (who previously directed the Cannes Lions-winning "Teasing John Malkovich"), is a romcom where Malkovich is sent by his fictional agent on a trip to Croatia, visiting Dubrovnik, Zagreb, and the world's smallest town Hum. He spends a big chunk of the runtime refusing to admit he's enjoying himself. His final verdict: "It's not bad. Not bad at all." The film dropped hours before Croatia's World Cup opener against England.

The Real Story: These tourism board films can be very dull, but this is fun, engaging, and once you have some of the backstory about Malkovich discovering his Croatian roots, it makes a lot of sense. Letting him look annoyed the entire time was on brand, and being himself while showing how beautiful Croatia is - this really landed for me.

Nike x Knicks

Everybody and their brother has spoken about this spot at this point, but damn it was good. After the Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years on June 13, Nike released a film set to Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind." Directed by Josh Safdie (the Uncut Gems guy, and a lifelong Knicks fan), the Wieden+Kennedy spot follows a young fan in a Jalen Brunson jersey racing through the city before finding a sea of New Yorkers celebrating together. It closes with: "Never slept. Always dreamed."

The film was the culmination of a broader campaign called "Always Knicks" that started earlier in the playoffs, when Nike put up portraits by photographer Jonathan Mannion on the billboard at 34th and 7th, outside MSG. The portraits featured a cross-section of Knicks fans, from Spike Lee to a three-year-old.

The Real Story: Josh Safdie was a really cool choice for this, the spot has the energy and frantic-ness of his films. The tagline at the end is gonna bring a tear to any real Knicks fan’s eye.

Molson “Made by Canadians”

Molson is a Canadian beer brand (they merged with Coors back in 2005), known as one of the bigger players in the Canadian market. For this campaign, they hid, gave out, and made available online a bunch of disposable cameras. The idea was to have Canadians capture what it means to be Canadian.

The footage became the brand's Canada Day campaign: skateboarders in an abandoned Halifax pool, someone kissing a fish in Quebec, that sorta thing. The film connects to Molson's long-running "I AM CANADIAN" platform, but this time the definition comes from actual Canadians.

The Real Story: Real people, real images isn’t a new concept, but this execution is really nice and heartfelt. Something about the aesthetic look of a disposable camera’s image will always make me feel nostalgic for my youth, so this one worked for me.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Ten years ago she was a single mom. She was dating someone who wasn’t good for her or her son. She was living paycheck to paycheck and had no idea what her future looked like. She ended the post: “So I’m going to set my phone down, eat a few more pretzels and m&ms, and be grateful.”

The post went up on r/GirlDinnerDiaries, a subreddit where women share a photo of whatever they’re eating and share a confession or story along with it. The food is incidental, the point is the story.

I look at this Reddit almost nightly before I go to bed. I like reading the stories and seeing the bad food photos. It also makes me feel connected to these women, the way they’re sharing these stories and confessions is so vulnerable.

It’s funny, that word “vulnerable” has shown up so much in my professional work too. Every brand wants to be authentic and vulnerable with their audience. They want to feel human. Brands want the feeling of r/GirlDinnerDiaries. They want the rawness, the emotional connection, the comment thread where a thousand women say “I’ve been there.” They want the engagement rate of a woman eating pretzels alone in a hotel room and telling you the truth about the last decade of her life.

They just don’t want the actual conditions that produce it.

Because the conditions aren’t really brand safe (no production value, no narrative arc, no call to action, no trending audio, no good lighting, no face). It’s not really a good campaign, it doesn’t feel polished and pretty and real.

TikTok is not the ideal place to pull this kinda thing off, if you really want to create the performance of vulnerability that is going to drive engagement. But you do still have to think about getting good lighting on your cry face, and pairing your deep confession with a good trending audio. You gotta film the breakdown, then film the recovery, then (seamlessly) sell the skincare routine that cleared your stress acne. Nobody even sees the little #ad at the bottom. The algorithm will reward the appearance of honesty, which is different than honesty.

Every few months, some brand will try to reverse-engineer authenticity. They’ll launch a campaign about “real moments” or “unfiltered stories.” They’ll cast real people instead of models, but everything else will be carefully staged. Legal will approve all copy, on set, the moodboard will say “ vulnerable but also aspirational,” and we will end up adding a product shot just because there’s still time in the day.

Meanwhile, a woman in a subreddit will post a photo of cold leftovers and write three sentences about her divorce, and 900 people will be on board.

I don’t have a tidy takeaway here. I’m not going to tell you what brands should learn from this, because the lesson is one they can’t really use. The most honest place on the internet works because nobody is selling anything. The moment someone tries, it stops working. Maybe some places are just meant to be unbranded.

Maybe that’s the lesson. Maybe it’s okay for some parts of the internet to just be for people, for human connection.

Xx, Caitlin

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Apple’s new spot, "Clingers" (from TBWA\Media Arts Lab), very clearly takes a stab at Google Chrome’s privacy and data tracking. People in literal chrome suits follow around our hero characters and watch everything they do.

The Real Story: This ad doesn’t convince me that Apple’s Safari browsing platform isn’t doing the same thing. Also, Apple you don;t get to be in on this “ads track everything we do” joke with us. In the class/ai/corporate entity wars, you are automatically on the wrong side. Sorry.

Uber Eats “Who Could Cook at a Time Like This?”

For the FIFA World Cup, Uber Eats launched their “Who Could Cook at a Time Like This?” campaign starring Gordon Ramsey. The creative is from Mother and focuses on Gordon barging into kitchens with a green Uber Eats bag, telling people to stop cooking and order delivery instead so they don't miss a match.

The Real Story: This is fun, but I do think Gordon Ramsey is a (as he would say) wee bit saturated at this point. Also, nothing I’ve ever had delivered via Uber Eats has looked chef quality, more like sat on and nibbled on.

Nike “Rip the Script”

Nike’s “Rip the Script” comes from Wieden+Kennedy Portland and features Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland, and Vini Jr., with cameos from LeBron James, Kim Kardashian, Travis Scott, Lisa, Channing Tatum, Young Miko, and Ted Lasso. Nike is not a World Cup sponsor (Adidas is), but Nike is rolling out a TON of new products during the World Cup.

The Real Story: Nike’s spot was good, Adidas’ was better. They both spent a truckload of money.

I’ve already talked about the Adidas Backyard legends spot 15 times, so I’ll just leave this here…

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

So, eventually you go (I did). Thousands of people went, and with it came the trend of the “in-house agency” where a bunch of brands hired media buyers, copywriters, designers, producers, and strategists and built these in-house studios.

I was working at the kid’s clothing brand Hanna Andersson during part of this boom and saw them build out a full on internal studio, invest in brand content shoots, and spend real money on social to drive brand awareness. I got to do fun, creative work, and it made a ton of strategic sense.

PepsiCo built an entire internal creative studio, Keurig Dr. Pepper did the same, so did dozens of mid-size brands. They wanted to create content that told stories and sold products.

Then, there was reality. What actually happened after all the creative fun and games.

We thought the in-house, brand-side thing was safe. Agencies were unstable, if you lost the client, you could lose your job. Brand-side was a different, but also scary. It was these weird “strategic realignment” calls where a new CMO announced that they’d be evaluating the current team.

PepsiCo ended up pushing parts of its internal studio into VaynerMedia, and Keurig Dr. Pepper killed their creative studio concept entirely. Hanna Andersson (I had left by then) reduced spending on brand awareness-style content.

Building an in-house agency (turns out) is very expensive. It’s a very easy line item to cut. In-house creatives were promised they'd make the work they always wanted to make, with no middleman. What they ended up with was 10 internal stakeholders with opinions and a revolving door of CMOs that each had their own new way of solving business problems.

It’s all bad, but it’s all creative. So maybe that makes it worth it? Nobody went brand-side because they hated advertising. They went because they hated what advertising was doing to them. Whoops.

Xx, Caitlin

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

What Does a Looksmaxxer Smell Like?

Creed fragrances has been working to position itself as the scent of the looksmaxxing era. OOF. It’s “aspirational masculinity bottled and sold,” and it’s paired with a whole aesthetic. Abs from Equinox, designer loafers, poreless skin like a newborn baby. It’s also really about signaling income through their scent rather than taste (which becomes clear the more you smell and see it). MORE.

For the uninitiated, looksmaxxing started as a Reddit subculture. Pop a query into Google on mewing, bonesmashing, or canthal tilt analysis and you’ll get the gist. Creed Fragrance’s move into the space does show how the aspirational purchase has shifted from fashion to grooming to fragrance. Men aren’t just buying clothes to project status, they’re buying a scent.

The Brand Play: If your brand sells anything in the men’s grooming, fragrance, or personal care space, the looksmaxxing audience is your growth market. BUT, they don;t trust advertising and they don;t trust brands. They trust Reddit threads, people on YouTube doing reviews, and the guy who seems like he makes more money who works in the same office. The play here is seeding your product in the right places. Get the product into the hands of the micro-influencers in the self-improvement space.

Trevor Paglen Says Nothing is Real

Dazed talked to artist and researched Trevor Paglen about his new book “How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI.” The main argument is that generative AI has created an “indexical flip.” Basically, a shift in people from assuming the images they see are real to assuming they’re fake. The book also looks at how propaganda, UFOs, and military deception programs shaped the visual tools now deployed in your feed every day. Paglen argues that AI-generated images aren’t true or false. They’re “statistical renderings in a state of superposition, optimized to mess with human minds.” MORE.

For brands, this is not an abstract philosophical problem. Consumer trust in visual content is collapsing. Stock photography looks AI-generated (even if it isn’t). AI-generated content sometimes looks real (even when it isn’t). The audiences on social are now suspicious as their default, and assume every image they see might be fake. If you go ahead and execute a beautiful photo series, your ROI won't be great if everyone thinks it was prompted by AI. The biggest takeaway in Paglen’s book is that the most valuable visual asset a brand can produce right now is one that looks too imperfect to have been generated (we’ll see how long that holds).

The Brand Play: Audit your visual content pipeline. If your product photography, social content, or campaign imagery could be mistaken for AI-generated work, that’s a problem. The brands that will win trust in the next two years are the ones that look demonstrably, verifiably human-made. Show the set, show the photographer, show the imperfect lighting, make the realness of the image part of the image.

Love Island is All Brand Integration

Love Island Season 8 started on June 2. They’re partnering with CeraVe, Coffee Mate, Maybelline, Motorola, and poppi.

Poppi’s deal is actually the first transatlantic brand partnership brokered by ITV’s new global licensing team (Studio 55), meaning the brand will show up on both Love Island US and UK.

@juliagraefand ofc I had to buy a lot of them 🏝️ @drinkpoppi #poppi #lovelsland #punchpop

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Peacock has also introduced shoppable Pause Ads that will make products shoppable at certain points.

CeraVe is in the getting-ready scene.

Motorola delivers the “I’ve got a text!” moment that drives the plot.

@thecalabrosI yearn to have the flip phone back #loveislandusa #loveisland #greenscreen

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The show has eliminated the boundary between content and commercials. All the advertising is meant to be integrated and not break the flow. MORE.

The Brand Play: If your brand has a budget for a reality TV integration, this is a good format to steal. You have to find ways to make the product part of the brand’s mechanics.

Phoebe Bridgers Banned Phones at Her Tour

Phoebe announced her upcoming “Lost Tour” with the caveat that it would have a strict no phones policy. If you bring a phone, it will go in a Yondr pouch. Her warm up show at Madison Square Garden charged fans between $1 and $20 all based on a raffle, with proceeds going to the Community Justice Exchange’s Immigration Bond Freedom Fund. MORE.

I thought the whole point of going to a concert was to prove to your Instagram followers that you went (jk), but it looks like we’re splitting into two camps at this point. Attending to prove you were there or attending to be there. Maybe the lifecycle of the “curated for Instagram” event has finally reached the end.

The Brand Play: If your brand hosts events, activations, or pops-ups, this trend is worth considering. Test a phone-free activation this quarter. Looks like the data says you audience wants this, but might be embarassed to admit it. The goal would be driving organic word of mouth, with impact showing through on an NPS score.

READ THE ROOM:

The ceasefire between Iran and Israel collapsed this weekend and the US is striking across the Gulf

On June 7, after the IDF struck southern Beirut, Iran launched approximately 30 ballistic missiles at Israel, the first direct strike since the April ceasefire. Israel retaliated. The US intercepted Iranian missiles and drones near the Strait of Hormuz and struck Iranian coastal radar sites. On June 9, a US helicopter was downed near the Oman coast. Talks are reportedly continuing, but the ceasefire that held since early April is functionally over. MORE.

Brand Guidance: This is a live military conflict involving the United States. If you have scheduled social content that is lighthearted, celebratory, or attention-seeking, review it before it posts. The World Cup starts June 11 and the temptation will be to lean into that energy. Read the room before you do. A brand that posts a “let’s gooooo” soccer hype video while the country is watching missile footage will look exactly as tone-deaf as it is. That doesn’t mean go dark entirely. It just means lower the volume a bit.

Social Security just said your retirement fund runs out in 2032, a year earlier than they told you last time

The Social Security trustees released their annual report on June 9. The retirement trust fund is now projected to become insolvent by the end of 2032 (moved up from early 2033 in last year’s report). When it runs out, beneficiaries face an automatic 22% cut to monthly checks, roughly $500 per person on average. The report cites lower birth rates, reduced net immigration, and the 2025 tax cuts, which reduced income tax revenue on Social Security benefits, as the primary drivers. MORE.

Brand guidance: This story will land differently depending on your audience’s age. For brands targeting Millennials and Gen Z, this confirms what they already believe. They know the systems they were told to trust are not going to be there when they need them. For brands targeting older consumers, this is a source of real, immediate anxiety. Neither audience wants to hear from a brand about it. The recommendation is to leave it alone. If you sell financial products, your paid media and content calendar should already be addressing retirement anxiety year-round.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.