For nearly 90 years, Glamour has been a cultural heavyweight for the girlies and the gays. And no, they didn’t just write stuff like “10 ways to capture your youth (and his heart all at once!)” They literally won a National Magazine Award in 2023 for their groundbreaking journalism demanding federal paid family leave for American women. They also hosted the iconic Women of the Year gala, celebrating everyone from Hillary Clinton to Ms. Rachel. But that era is, and I hate to say it, dead.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

(btw - If you’re already using Claude Code or Cowork daily, scroll on by bc this isn’t for you)

But if you’ve just dabbled in using AI, maybe you’re using ChatGPT to help you look up recipes, write basic emails, or attempt to diagnose that insect bite you just got, stay with me for a sec.

When it comes to AI, there’s a lot of “bro you’re so behind” messaging out there. When, in reality, within just a couple hours, you can learn how to use AI better than 95% of people you know. And this why we put together the Beginner’s Guide to Claude AI course.

It’s a 4-week cohort where you learn how to go from using AI as a glorified Google to getting it to actually help you with the sh*tty admin (life or work) you hate doing every day.

We kick off our second cohort on 22 June, so if you want to go from feeling behind to using AI to make your life better, this is for you 👇

Well… since you asked…it certainly can’t woo K-Pop fans, who are already a force to be reckoned with online. But when people start making gross sexualised deepfakes of their K-Pop idols, they get fierce. As we’ve seen as of late.

Some of the more, uh, obsessive fans have been using generative AI to make some god-awful version of self-insert fanfiction; videos and images of themselves kissing, cuddling and getting various kinds of… intimate with their fave stars. This is like, Watt-Pad fan art to the extreme lol. And fans aren’t happy.

Instead of waiting around for tech platforms to do something (because we know they won't), the stans are taking matters into their own hands. They are tracking down the accounts making this non-consensual filth and executing massive, coordinated public shaming campaigns to completely destroy them. You should know by now. Do not mess with K-pop fans. They will find you, and they will ruin you. Love that for them.

Another thing AI cannot do, according to a federal judge in Mississippi, is stand up in a court of law. 404 Media just broke a story about a judge who literally cancelled an entire trial because lawyers on both sides used AI to write their filings.

The judge found out they were using bots, got so aggressively fed up, and just kicked everyone off the case, writing in a blistering sanctions order, that the lawyers wasted the court’s time, and “in an era of rampant unverified AI usage within the legal field, this case presents a prime example of the risk associated with serving as a rubber-stamp.”

Imagine paying thousands in legal fees just for your lawyer to copy-paste their way out of a job and get banned from the courtroom. Absolute clown show.

Lastly, AI cannot, or, should not, be your couple’s therapist. And yet, there are very real couples doing this, as told by Vox in a recent report.

Asking for advice, to draft an apology text, and inviting AI into the most intimate moments of their lives: fights with their significant others… which seems insane, because 1. Aint no damn bot telling me how to respond in a HUMAN situation with my HUMAN partner with some regurgitated self-help-couple-guru sh*t it found online and 2. You couldn’t waterboard me to give the tech overlords that kind of data. And by data, I mean us arguing over whether or not the days are actually shorter in winter (they are, I won). 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Because we are in dire need of those, right guys???

Instead of award-winning reporting, the future of the brand is programmatic, SEO-optimised listicles like “Granny Sandals Are the Secret to a Stylish Summer Look”.

The strategy is simple: fire the expensive humans, rank for low-stakes search terms, and collect a 4% commission when a reader clicks an Amazon link to buy sunscreen.

On a spreadsheet, I’m sure this looks like a genius cost-cutting play. But in reality, it’s a stark example of a dangerous corporate trend I call Harvesting the Ghost. And if you work in marketing, branding, or content, you need to understand exactly why this strategy is kind of a slow-motion suicide pact.

When a corporate parent cuts the editorial heart out of a legendary title like Glamour, they are making a cynical bet. They believe that the brand equity, ya know, things like the trust, the authority, the 90-year history built by human writers, etc, etc, can be detached from the actual writers and used to fuel an affiliate engine.

They are trying to live off the residual heat of a fire they just put out:

Phase 1: Human Magic ──> Writers build trust, voice, and a deep cultural legacy.

Phase 2: Corporate Cut──> Fire the humans. Replace voice with SEO affiliate links.

Phase 3: The Ghost Phase──> Brand bleeds authority until the logo means nothing.

And that is the trap, baby. Glamour lost its voice. It also lost its competitive moat. The moment a legacy magazine stops offering a sharp, knowing, editorial perspective, it stops being a cultural institution. Instead, it becomes just another faceless shopping portal competing against Pinterest, TikTok Shop, and AI chatbots.

When you strip away the human friction, you aren't optimising.

You’re turning your luxury asset into a basic freaking commodity.

Consumers haven't stopped craving a knowing, sharp editorial voice. Nor have they stopped wanting to be told what is cool, what matters, and what to think by a human being they trust. They are simply fleeing the corporate ruins to find it elsewhere.

The audience that used to buy Glamour at the newsstand is migrating to:

Condé Nast thinks they are saving money by cutting writers. What they are actually doing is transferring their most valuable asset (hellllooo!!! audience trust!!!) directly into the hands of independent creators who still care about the craft.

If you are a marketer, a founder, or a creative director, the Glamour pivot is your warning. If you want your brand to survive the next five years, you cannot treat your brand voice like a cost centre.

Here is how you protect your equity:

1. Don't compete with the portals.

If your content strategy can be entirely replicated by a basic Google search or an AI chatbot, you are already losing. Do not try to out-optimise the algorithm. Instead, double down on the things machines and affiliate bots cannot do: original reporting, deep point-of-view essays, and high-production storytelling.

2. Protect your tastemakers.

A brand is only as good as the humans who dictate its taste. If you treat your writers, designers, and editors like replaceable cogs, your audience will notice the exact moment the soul leaves the building. Invest in personalities, not just platforms.

3. Build a moat of sentiment, not scale.

It is better to be deeply loved by 50,000 obsessed readers than passively skimmed by 5 million accidental Google searchers. Scale is fragile. Affiliates are temporary. True, unshakeable brand loyalty only happens when a human reader feels seen, challenged, and entertained by another human being.

They want the traffic without the talent and the monetisation without the magic.

But Glamour’s regression proves that when you fire the poets to hire the bean-counters, you might win the next quarter's spreadsheet…but you lose the future. The internet doesn't need another generic shopping portal. It needs a voice.

Don't let your brand become a ghost.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

This audio comes from a Roblox video voiced from an interview with Lady Gaga. The interviewer keeps asking questions and, in the sound, Lady Gaga just repeatedly says "hi" over and over as her response (even over top of the interviewer's questions).

People are using this for times where they’ve had enough of friends in convos, so they just reflect the same annoying energy back. Think how you treat that one sibling who gets on your nerves a lot.

A few examples of this trend:

Record yourself lipsyncing to the “Hi’s” every time. Add a caption describing when you're the person who's being annoying (even if you're totally justified in doing so).

A few ideas to get you started:

-DJ Taivairanga, Intern

😂Yap’s funniest home videos - When my teacher calls my table by my name
❤How wholesome - Mr President
😊Soooo satisfying - Food stall
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight - Creamy coconut & Chicken curry

Hey Rach!

There are so many ways you can go about getting people onto your email list. First, you could consider creating some gated content. This should be something especially valuable that requires your audience to enter their email to get access. Then, you can use social media to get the word out about these resources. Another way to get email sign-ups is to do some free webinars for your target audience. You can promote these on LinkedIn and require an email to register.

Since you're just starting out, you should definitely be going to as many networking and industry events as you can, too. You may not collect emails from the people you meet (although you might), but connect with your new contacts on LinkedIn and stay in touch there. Building up a database will be a slow grind, but the more you get out and meet people, the faster your network will grow.

- 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.