Your ATTN Please || Saturday, 17 May

Digital advertising sucks. Real bad.

And not in a “meh, it could be better” way. I mean in a soul-crushing, creativity-flattening, brain-melting way. For an industry with billions pumping through its greasy little pipes, how have we still not cracked the code of the digital ad? Honestly, you could argue digital killed creative—so is there any coming back from this?

-Sophie Randell, Writer

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

Airbnb can now book experiences, Martha X Knorr dupe collab & Bollywood embraces AI

Airbnb goes full experience mode.

You were just looking for a place to stay, really. But suddenly, you’ve got FOMO. Because what was meant to be a quiet getaway now isn’t complete without a range of exciting experiences that will make your getaway infinitely better. With Airbnb’s launch of Airbnb Services and Airbnb Experiences on its newly designed app this week, we’re reminded that experiential extras to add to cart are now almost mandatory in the travel industry.

Travel booking brands are no longer just competing on location, price, or even aesthetic. They’re offering limited-availability things to do and sights to see. Just a place to stay? Meh. The option to make pasta with a Tuscan nonna during your 12-hour stop-over in Italy? Well, when in Rome...

Knorr X Martha is the dupe you didn’t know you needed.

Knorr just entered its dupe era… and brought Martha Stewart along for the ride! The new “Unlimited Time Menu” campaign is a cheeky nod to fast food’s limited-time hits (hello, McRib), showing home cooks how to recreate cult favourites using Knorr’s kitchen staples.

But this isn’t your grandma’s recipe rollout. It’s social-first and proudly DIY-core. Martha and a crew of Stewart lookalikes are fronting a TikTok-primed, Instagram-ready play on dupe culture’s obsession with re-creating the iconic, for less. The lineup of fast food remixes with a Knorr twist include the K-Rib sandwich (the McRib dupe), the Knorr Double Up (a nod to the KFC Double Down), and the Mac ’n Chicken Bowl. And it’s all shoppable, clickable, and made for the scroll. Knorr’s not just following food trends. It’s plating them up with a side of sass and a sprinkle of nostalgia. Nicely done.

India’s all in on AI. Hollywood’s still reading the T’s & C’s.

While Hollywood circles the block debating AI ethics and creative ownership, India’s film industry is already deep into production, generating characters, building VFX worlds, and writing with machine help. They’re not asking “should we?”. Instead, they’re asking “how far can we take this?” The payoff? AI is helping Indian directors punch above budget, experiment wildly, and tell stories that might’ve been out of reach with traditional resources. It’s levelling the creative playing field and flipping the script on who gets to innovate.

So, why’s Hollywood holding back? Legal headaches, fan pushback, and a fear of losing the “human touch” brand. But if they’re not careful, they might lose something else: relevance. Because while they’re stuck in committee meetings, the future’s already in post-production elsewhere.

-Helena Masters, Copywriter

DEEP DIVE

Digital killed creative. So, where to from here?

In the last 25 years, we’ve watched TV become prestige. Our phones became smarter than us. Rockets can land backwards now. You can buy a flatscreen the size of a small car for under $400. Even British Airways - British Airways! - has managed to cobble together a semi-functional app on a good day.

Meanwhile, digital ads are still stalking us around the internet with that one tote bag we clicked on three weeks ago.

Still interrupting our feeds with janky animations, bad copy, and that haunted look of “made in five minutes by a chatbot with no soul” for no better than an adult website. It’s grim out here, y’all.

WE USED TO BE A REAL COUNTRY. WE USED TO BE AN INDUSTRY OF BIG IDEAS.

Lest we forget. Advertising used to be art. And still is, sometimes. Mad, beautiful, high-concept art with just enough ego and chaos to change culture. Whole teams agonised over headlines. Print ads made people cry. TV spots became Super Bowl events. Even banner ads once had a little spark in them.

Now? Now we get “Wanna improve your ROI?” in Arial Bold over a blue rectangle. I’m sick to my stomach.

Digital advertising was supposed to be the future. The data! The targeting! The interactivity! But somewhere along the way, we stopped creating ideas and started creating impressions. We traded storytelling for CPMs. Big swings for A/B tests. Emotion for click-through rates.

The result is a bland, bloated, joyless ecosystem of stuff no one asked for and no one remembers. How the hell did we get here?

Efficiency is the villain.

Somewhere, someone decided that if a machine can place the ad, write the copy, design the asset, and optimise it in real-time, then we might as well let it. Faster, cheaper, more scalable. I feel like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar screaming through the universe into the bookshelf at his past self. DON’T DO IT. GO BACK.

Because what we’ve scaled is mediocrity. We’re drowning in sameness. There’s no taste. No wit. No friction. Just endless beige rectangles asking us to “discover now” or “sign up today.” A sea of auto-generated landfill designed to do the job of advertising, without any of the point of advertising. You know, persuasion. Charm. Relevance. Delight. Craft.

But wait! There’s more (mediocrity)!

Let’s not ignore the irony here. No one even sees these freaking ads. Banner blindness is at an all-time high. Social feeds are so saturated, we scroll through them on autopilot. The average human brain has become a certified professional at ignoring digital advertising.

And yet brands keep spending. Because the dashboards look good. Because someone, somewhere, said the ROAS was technically “positive.”

If you actually listen to people (not just pixels), they’ll tell you digital ads are forgettable, annoying, and rarely worth their screen space. We don’t trust them. We actively avoid them. That’s not a channel problem. That’s a creative problem.

So then, what’s the fix?

It's not TECH. It's taste.

We need fewer lazy programmatic placements and more actual storytelling. Fewer ChatGPT scripts and more creative conviction. Fewer “That’ll do” assets and more “We actually believe in this” campaigns.

We’ve forgotten that attention is earned, not captured. That people don’t owe us their click. And that the best ads aren’t the ones that follow us - they’re the ones we talk about.

So MAYBE, just maybe – it’s time to stop optimising for conversion’s sake and creating for culture again.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

TREND PLUG

Don't tell me what to do 💅

Today's trend is a fun spin on Selena's hit, "Hands to Myself".

TikTokers have been using the lyrics "I mean I could but, why would I want to" to showcase their funky habits that, although unorthodox, they refuse to stop. These could be habits from childhood that they've never dropped, how they deal with stress, or what it's like hanging out with them.

How you can jump on this trend:

Use the sound, then, take a video of you waiting until the iconic line. Lip sync the line with utter confidence and showcase the funny habit you have at the same time. Your on screen text should be: "Stop [insert habit here]"

A few ideas to get you started:

• Stop waiting 1 hr before the deadline to start the work

• Stop ignoring your inbox. You have 586 unread emails.

• Stop saying "no stress if you can't" when you actually need immediate help

- Jony Lee, Creative

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ASK THE EDITOR

I've got a decent audience on TikTok for my pet content. I've just started a custom pet collar brand. How long it will take to start getting some sales from my audience? -Marwa

Hey Marwa!

Building your brand through organic content takes time. But the fact that you already have an audience means you’re miles ahead of brands who don’t have that yet. If your audience is pretty engaged, you might be surprised by how quickly you make some sales!

That said, if you have a bit of budget for paid ads, I'd suggest running some Meta ads alongside your organic content. You can then retarget people who've engaged with your content with those ads. This should help you get some sales quicker than organic posts alone.

But even if you decide not to run ads, keep building your brand by putting out content as much as you can! As long as your content is still interesting to your audience (not just centred around your products!) you should see sales increase over time.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

Not going viral yet?

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.

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