If you’re in Auckland and haven't come to Lectures After Dark yet, it's a night out for marketers who want to meet cool people, learn about what's happening in the industry right now, and of course, have a wine or two. This Thursday, we're meeting in Ponsonby to hear a lecture from Dr. Shahper Richter, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Auckland Business School. This is our last one of 2025, so if you're in Auckland, come hang out!

I’m officially never touching a can of this again. Get this: Campbell’s just canned (see what I did there?) a top exec after leaked audio captured him claiming their chicken soup meat “came from a 3-D printer.” In the clip, Martin Bally, apparently a VP, went off in a profanity-laced rant, trashing his own company’s food, calling it “bioengineered” and “for poor people.” Public outrage wasn’t just about the obviously wild 3-D-meat claim; he also reportedly dropped racist slurs. So, you know, sounds like he's a swell guy.

Campbell’s fired him immediately. The brand then scrambled to reassure everyone that their soups use real, USDA-approved chicken, not lab-cooked tech meat. The scandal is a brutal reminder that when your corporate weirdo goes off-book, trust collapses fast. And sometimes, you need rapid damage control (and maybe a soup recipe rewrite).

But this year they’re not handing you a static card deck (yaaay). Instead, you get a full year-in-music story, topped off with a new AI chat feature called “Ask about your listening” (booooo). You can ask the AI anything - “Was my music more chill or hype?”, “How did my taste shift this year?”, or even “Describe my listening vibe as a weather report.” Then, you get a shareable graphic that sums up your audio life.

The recap still shows your top songs, total listening time, longest streaks, top artist (“your musical bestie”), and even a “musical passport” showing where your favourite artists come from. It’s part nostalgia, part flex, part slightly creepy data-deep dive, but what’s new lol.

Policymakers in Brussels are prepping a “digital simplification package” that would scale back parts of the GDPR and delay key pieces of the AI Act, until at least 2027. Translation: Europe is worried it over-corrected, strangled its own innovation pipeline, and let the US and China sprint ahead. Even Ursula von der Leyen is leaning deregulatory.

Lawmakers have admitted that Europe created a “jungle” of overlapping rules that companies can’t navigate. Critics fear this U-turn weakens one of the few strong checks on Big Tech. Meanwhile, supporters say Europe needs to chill if it wants to stay competitive. Either way, the vibe has shifted, and the EU’s trademark regulatory swagger is wobbling.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Wicked has officially crossed that line.

What was meant to be Hollywood’s glittery two-part musical revival has morphed into a never-ending cycle of viral crying clips, uncomfortable interviews, parasocial meltdowns, and fandom discourse that borders on forensic analysis.

It’s messy, chaotic, and, frankly, very hard to watch.

The disconnect is staggering.

While the cast appears emotionally threadbare, the campaign is only getting louder. This is the culture-marketing tension we need to talk about: when a franchise becomes so commercially inflated that the human beings carrying it start to look like collateral damage.

And if you've seen even a snippet of the tour on your social feed, you’ll know exactly what kind of collateral damage I’m talking about.

Wicked is serving as a real-time case study in what happens when talent becomes content. Not performers, not professionals, but highly visible, highly monetised, infinitely dissected branding assets.

The discourse didn’t sour because people suddenly decided to be mean.

It soured because audiences can sense when a media machine is running hotter than the people inside it. They can tell when a press tour has stopped being PR choreography and become a spectacle of psychological and physical stress. They can feel when the vibe shifts from whimsical musical magic to “hold on, is everyone actually okay?”

It’s business as usual. Teal-washed collabs. TikTok filters. Corporate tie-ins. Branded playlists. Cross-promotions with everything from makeup lines to stationery companies. It’s the marketing equivalent of throwing merchandise at a house that’s visibly on fire.

This is where the ethical dilemma kicks in.

At what point do brands acknowledge the emotional cost of the publicity ecosystem they’re actively fuelling? Where is the line between amplification and exploitation?

Right now, the answer appears to be: no.

Brands are operating under the outdated assumption that “all press is good press.” Even if the press tour is held together by tears, tension, and an internet that can smell burnout from 30 paces. But Gen Z doesn’t buy that. They see overexposure as a red flag, not a flex. They see emotional instability as a sign that the marketing strategy has crossed into uncomfortable territory.

They don’t want to participate in the commodification of distress. And right now, Wicked looks like distress wielding a Swarovski wand.

They’re promoting a movie, discourse about weight, about mental health, about friendships, about co-dependency, about who stood too close to whom, about why someone cried in an interview, about whether someone’s body language changed between press stops.

Every micro-expression becomes viral fodder. And every moment of perceived fragility becomes a marketing opportunity for someone else.

Brands get awareness. Studios get revenue. Social platforms get engagement. The cast gets emotional hazard pay in the form of public scrutiny.

When a press tour starts to look like a slow public unravelling, the question isn’t “what’s wrong with them?” The question is “why the f&%k are we still watching this?” And if we’re still watching, why are brands still cashing in?

There has to be a line.

A moment where you stop turning a chaotic cultural moment into monetisable content and start considering whether the conditions causing the chaos are worth interrogating. If brands want to build empires around talent, they can’t pretend they’re bystanders when the marketing starts to erode the people involved.

A reflection of a marketing industry that will happily ride a cultural phenomenon right up to the point of public breakdown, as long as the engagement numbers hold.

A reminder that visibility is not the same as vitality. And a warning that parasociality is not a substitute for care.

The Wicked lesson here isn’t about friendship or magic or defying gravity. It’s if a brand campaign is big enough, nobody knows when to stop. Not the fans. Not the studios. Not the sponsors. And certainly not the machine that keeps spinning, even when the people inside it look like they’re about to fall apart.

And that’s a scary place to be in, all in the name of capitalism.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Well, this trend is for the people who like to reminisce on that childlike wonder while simultaneously getting embarrassed by it. It perfectly describes that constant dance between the desire to be taken seriously and I used to eat glue for fun. 

This trend comes from an awkward interaction between the American Love Islanders Taylor and Clarke, where Taylor reminisces on the feeling of childhood nostalgia in adulthood. He then instantly gets clocked by his partner Clarke, who reminds him of his age. His brainless comment turned into the now viral sound - "You know when you get that kid feeling?"

My fav videos include:

Flip the camera and point it to yourself, then film a sped-up clip of yourself or another person. For a better effect, you can dramatise your body language (eg. arms crossed, head shake, or maybe a dramatic hand flick). Then have on-screen text saying, "how it feels...". Add the trending audio and you're done!

A few ideas to get you started:

-Raewyn Zhao, Intern

😂Yap’s funniest home videos Xmas gnome hard at work
❤How wholesome Sneakiest little treat acquisition
😊Soooo satisfying These scratch my brain right
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight For your post Thanksgiving stomach

Hey Sanet!

It makes sense why you've focused on FB and IG up until now. But, if you have the resources to post on LinkedIn, you definitely should! Why? Because LinkedIn is full of business owners like you. That means when you share stories about your business journey, other people are going to find your content relatable. This relatability is great for building your brand.

Second, there aren't tons of product-based brands on LinkedIn. This means you have the opportunity to stand out in a way that is a lot harder to do on Instagram or Facebook. Third, I can almost guarantee you that there are plenty of potential customers on LinkedIn. And if you aren't there, you're missing out on opportunities to build your brand!

- 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.