Hope you’re taking some time out to recharge this weekend before diving back into the world of marketing tomorrow morning. It’s time to catch up on everything you missed last week, so grab a drink, put your feet up, and read away!

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor

p.s. After running YAP for the last 2.5, I’m moving onto my next chapter & starting my own newsletter business. Thank you so much for being part of this community. Might even see you around LinkedIn xx

Something strange is happening to your feed. The clean lines and pastel aesthetics are disappearing, replaced by heavy textures, iron-forged typography, and a dark romanticism that looks nothing like the last decade of social media. It's not a vibe shift. It's a full cultural revolt against AI slop, and it might be the most interesting thing happening in brand design right now... read more

A few years ago, the cultural signs were everywhere: vinyl sales exploding, teens buying decade-old cameras, flip phones making a comeback. We were supposedly on the verge of a massive collective retreat from screens. Here's what actually happened instead... read more

The regulatory panic is real. The court battles are real. But here's what most of the coverage is missing: restricting one model doesn't slow anything down. The capabilities are already leaking into the wild, and the open-source developers catching up aren't subject to any of the guardrails. This is less of a debate, and more of a deadline... read more

The hyper-fast edit has had a long, successful run. But something is shifting. Audiences are burnt out on constant stimulation, and the creators who slow down, take their time, and actually teach something are starting to quietly outperform everyone else. Here's what's driving it, and what it means for your content strategy... read more

Australia, the UK, and a growing list of nations have locked under-16s out of major platforms. The foundational pipeline of youth marketing has been severed. But the author's argument might surprise you: this is a mercy killing, not a tragedy — and the brands that adapt right now are about to capture the most valuable attention in the world... read more

The perfectly curated feed used to signal professionalism. Now it kind of signals you're out of touch. Raw screenshots, plain Notes app captures and unedited voice memos are beating polish in the attention game, and the reason why says something pretty interesting about what trust actually looks like online... read more

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.