If you turned on the tv anytime between 2003 - 2018, there's no way you escaped Tyra Banks. I mean, between having models pose as murder victims, with live tarantulas, and as mermaids covered in fishing nets (and dead fish), how could you not pay attention? And now, a new Netflix doc is painting the whole show (and its problematic methods for “helping” the women become models) as a product of its time. But have we really gotten past those unhealthy beauty standards? Or, thanks to social media, is our culture just as bad as ever? [Read more]

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

Meanwhile other brands are going viral every week. Their secret? They're not working harder. They're using a system (and you need one, too).

At this workshop, Stanley Henry (1.4M followers, 1B+ views/year) teaches you that exact system live in just 90 minutes.

You'll learn:

✅The 1 thing you need to never run out of content ideas
✅How the biggest brands go viral on IG (plus what NOT to do)
✅How to create a repeatable content system (that doesn't take hours every day OR a creative team)

Thursday, 5 March | 11am NZDT | 9am AEDT | $79 NZD

Find out exactly how the biggest accounts are blowing up on IG (and how your brand can become one of them) 👇

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H&M just tapped Kareem Rahma, the guy behind Subway Takes, to host a new social series called Dirty Laundry. A smart move, even if the strategy feels a little… obvious. Rahma built his brand on being extremely online, having DMCs with celebs on the subway, and capturing a rare kind of genuine energy that only really comes through in his videos (or creators like him).

H&M clearly wants to tap into that authenticity, or at least the aesthetic of it, by having someone who feels grassroots and internet-native front their content instead of running polished ads no one watches. The series is supposedly about fashion confessions and style hot takes. Which could either be genuinely funny or just branded content dressed up as culture, depending on how much creative control Rahma actually has. But the bigger signal here is that brands have fully accepted they can't compete with creator-led content. So they're just hiring the creators and hoping some of that organic feel rubs off. It works until the audience clocks that their favourite internet person is now essentially a spokesperson. And then the whole thing collapses.

M.Cosmetics just launched a campaign activation that’s somehow a microdrama and an escape room in one. And tbh it's exhausting just typing that out. The Australian beauty brand has created an immersive experience where you solve puzzles themed around their products while a scripted narrative unfolds around you. Which is cool. But also makes me think that we’ve reached a point where marketing is so convoluted that brands have to build entire alternate realities just to get you to remember they exist. An escape room… for lipstick… with a whole ass plot…

It's clever, sure. And people will show up because it's designed to be Instagrammable. But it's also a symptom of how completely saturated everything has become.

And Amazon just dethroned Walmart as the world's biggest company by sales. Walmart held that spot for decades, built on physical infrastructure and being everywhere at once. Amazon did it by making shopping so frictionless you barely notice you're doing it. One-click purchases, same-day delivery, Prime memberships that lock you in, algorithms that know what you want before you do. They've turned consumption into a reflex instead of a decision. It's not just that they're the biggest. It's that they've embedded themselves so deeply into daily life that opting out feels like deprivation.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

The whole thing hinges on one premise: this was filmed in a darker time. Things are different now!!! We've learned, we've grown, the fashion industry has changed, we promise!!!

I call cap.

Don’t agree with me? I urge you to look around. Take a wee scroll through TikTok. Simply open Instagram. And tell me with a straight face that you genuinely believe body standards have gotten healthier, the pressure to be thin has eased, or that young women aren't drowning in diet culture and disordered eating content disguised as wellness.

I hate to break it to you, darling, but it hasn't gotten better. It's just better at hiding what it is.

Tyra telling contestants to lose weight on camera, shaving off an entire lifetime of growing their precious hair, only to eliminate them the next day, making them pose in literal garbage, or with like poisonous snakes or whatever. Full days with no food, in the heat, models passing out.

The cruelty was the point, and it was right there on screen.

It's wellness influencers selling "what I eat in a day" content that's clearly just disordered eating. Or fitness accounts promoting routines that are unsustainable and unhealthy. It's the massive fkn influx of diet culture rebranded as self-care and clean living.

The messaging has gotten softer, but the impact may have gotten worse. Regardless, the outcome is the same: being brought to the brink of tears in the mirror, a screaming voice in your head at the beach that refuses to let you feel comfortable even for a second, days of 900 calories because you feel "a little puffy today."

Somehow the whole thing gets more insidious than Ed and Lorraine Warren could even imagine.

Influencers are using Ozempic, Wegovy, and other GLP-1 drugs to lose massive amounts of weight, or even getting BBLs and surgeries, only to turn around and sell you some sh*tty f*cking guide that promises if you just follow their exact routine, you can look like them too.

Except you can't. Because they didn't get there through the workout plan they're selling. They got there through medical intervention they're not disclosing.

It's the perfect scam. You buy the program, follow it religiously, only you don't get the results. And you blame yourself - your lack of discipline, your genetics, your failure - instead of realising you were sold a lie from the start. And you buy the lie again.

This is ANTM-level manipulation, just with better PR and a Shopify link.

Their feeds are wall-to-wall body checks, transformation photos, "get ready with me" videos from people with bodies that are either genetically rare or medically achieved.

The result is mass hysteria and insecurity.

Body dysmorphia rates are climbing. Disordered eating is as normalised, if not more so, than the 90’s. And the pressure to look a certain way hasn't eased—it's intensified. Because now it's not just in magazines or on one TV show.

It's everywhere, all the time, algorithmically optimised to make you feel inadequate af.

At least with ANTM, you could turn off the TV. With social media, the pressure is constant and inescapable.

How do I know this? Because I sit right in this cohort, with all the stretch marks to show for it.

The Netflix documentary wants you to believe ANTM was a product of its time. A relic of when we didn't know better. But we did know better. We just didn't care.

Unfortunately, I still don’t think we do.

The system evolved, while the cruelty and exploitation got sneakier. Which meant the damage got deeper.

I genuinely can’t tell which is worse.

The modelling industry, the influencer economy and the wellness-industrial complex - have all learned to package the same toxicity in more palatable language.

Body positivity became body neutrality became wellness culture became whatever euphemism we're using now to avoid saying what it actually is: the systematic monetisation of women's insecurity.

So when Netflix asks you to reflect on how far we've come, maybe instead ask whether we've come anywhere at all?

Because from where I'm standing, scrolling through an endless feed of impossible bodies and false promises, to the point where I question my reflection daily, it looks an awful lot like we're still in the ANTM house.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Oh do I love this trend! Because it has small businesses using Usher's "Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home)" to shoot their shot at their customers. The format is simple: they ask "Does he ___?" while doing their service, then cut to a dramatic zoom-in with "WE DO!" - either full rizz or dead serious, no in-between. Salons, cafes, barbers, you name it - everyone's out here positioning themselves as the upgrade your life needs.

My fav examples include:

Use the Usher "Hey Daddy" audio. Film yourself providing your product/service with "Does he ___?" onscreen text. Then cut to the zoom moment with "WE DO!" 

A few ideas to get you started:

-abdel khalil, brand & marketing exec

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: He's a good boy for not bolting
❤How wholesome: Youtubers most wholesome moments
🎧Soooo tingly: World’s most expensive mic
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Lazy dinner

Hey Micah!

Social isn’t the right tool for every job. So I'd start by thinking about which of those is a larger sized audience. Then, focus your social content on that group. You want to use your socials to build as big a community as possible.

Then, you can use other channels for targeting smaller, more specific groups. If you've got key buyers you want to reach, you're better off doing so through things like events or email outreach. But a larger supplier community is the perfect audience to target through your socials. Plus, when those buyers see you have a huge engaged community, that becomes part of your brand appeal. They will want to be part of something that’s clearly working.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

We get it. Creating content that does numbers is harder than it looks. But doing those big numbers is the fastest way to grow your brand. So if you’re tired of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, you’re in luck. Because making our clients go viral is kinda what we do every single day.