Your ATTN Please | Thursday, 17 July

July 17, 2025

Marketing has a nepo baby problem.

Like the industry might actually be allergic to new ideas… I’m talking same minds, same circles, same strategies passed around like a blunt (not the good strain). You’d think with all the money and talent, the work would feel fresh. But it’s starting to feel a little… inbred. Where do we go from here?

- abdel, brand & marketing exec <4

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✅ How to set up your first (or next) campaign so it’s built to convert
✅ The one thing every successful campaign gets right
✅ How to track what’s working & tweak what’s not

PLUS The latest best practices for Meta ads in 2025.

Ask questions. Get answers. Leave ready to grow your sales and scale your business.

Wednesday, 30 July | 8:30–10:00am NZT | $59 NZD

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

Doctors warn against TikTok fad diets, Grok heils Hitler & Jeff Bezos plans one hell of a wedding gift

Doctors worry about fad diets hyped on social media.

And I’m freaking SICK OF THEM. No matter how hard I try, I cannot for the life of me escape this kind of content. High protein this, calorie deficit that, keto, low carb, pilates body, weight training booty, here’s the meal that helped me lose 40 pounds – holy f*ck can y’all stfu. Now I can’t eat a single piece of BREAD without thinking about my blood sugar and the potential weight gain that comes with it. No wonder healthcare professionals are worried about social media influencing unhealthy fad diets.

A recent Sermo survey reported that almost all 90% of the more than 1,000 global healthcare professionals involved expressed concern about popular diet trends on social media. Furthermore, only 5% would recommend high-protein diets that are so often pushed, 4% say they would endorse intermittent fasting, and another 4% agree with keto diets.

SO basically, as the saying goes: don’t believe everything you read on the internet, particularly when it comes to your health. These people are not professionals. They are influencers. Thank you for coming to Ted Talk.

Marketers might want to skip out on using Grok.

Hmmmmm. I wonder why marketers might skip Grok… Maybe it has something to do with Musk literally admitting to embedding his own inherent bias into its workings, which includes removing “political correctness“ from its responses… Which is just another way of his saying “I want it to be racist, sexist and homophobic.” Oh, and then once he implemented his own beliefs and bias, Grok literally started praising Hitler.

The repercussions were almost immediate. Turkey banned grok, EU regulators stepped up pressure to regulate AI, and CEO Linda Yaccarino departed the company amid the turmoil. Marketers???? Advertisers??? Not a chance, me thinks.

Jeff Bezos is allegedly planning to acquire Condé Nast as a wedding gift for Lauren Sanchez!???

There’s “babe I love you.” And then there’s this. Your husband LITERALLY JUST GOES AND BUYS VOGUE FOR YOU. Anyway. That’s all I have to say on the matter.

DEEP DIVE

Marketing has a nepo baby problem

I’m not talking kids of copywriters; I mean the unoriginal ideas we keep handing the keys to the kingdom.

You know a nepo baby when you see one. High cut cheekbones, household last name. They say things like “I worked hard for this” while vacationing in Capri.

Marketing has its own version. Except instead of riding coattails into a Chanel campaign, they’re getting greenlit into brand decks, year after year. The same dusty ideas, recycled formats, tired tropes, all dressed up in new fonts.

Okay so I’m not talking about literal nepotism. I’m talking about creative inbreeding.

A bloated portfolio of "TikTok-inspired" ads that feel like they were written by someone who still calls it The TikTok. Campaigns that look like a knockoff of a knockoff of that one Burger King rebrand one million years ago.  You’ve seen it. You’ve presented it. We’ve all been there. We listen and we don’t judge.

Okay you’re probably thinking: wtf Sophie. Another bizarre hot take? Bear with me.

In the hours and hours I spend scouring the internet for content to write about, I’ve identified the Marketing Nepo Baby as the campaign or concept that:

  • Gets picked because someone’s boss liked it once

  • Looks “cool” but makes no measurable impact

  • Coasts on vibes alone, with no real strategy underneath

  • Says it's edgy while doing the same thing 12 other brands just did last quarter (heavy on this one)

Basically, it’s a creative trust fund kid. All polish, no grit. And they’re kind of everywhere.

Well then, why do we keep casting them?

Because marketing is a little too obsessed with “best practices.” A.k.a. "stuff that worked before and won't get me fired." We cherish case studies like they're sacred scrolls. We treat Cannes winners like golden templates. And we say things like “Make it look like that Liquid Death thing” as if originality is something you can remix in Figma.

Also? The industry, like many others that exist mostly online, is one big echo chamber. Agencies follow agencies. Creators copy creators. Everyone’s trying to go viral with the exact same playbook: whether that’s ironic ads, purpose messaging or collabs with a fast-food chain and a fashion house that serve no purpose at all. It’s giving creative Groundhog Day. And I want out of the existential time loop.

How do we break the cycle?

Time to throw some metaphorical iced lattes in the faces of our creative complacency. Here’s how we inject new DNA into the gene pool:

Let the weirdos cook!!!

Bring in outsiders. Collaborate with creators who don’t care about your brand guidelines, or any guidelines at all. Let people with zero marketing background pitch. That’s where the unexpected happens, the art takes hold, and the whimsy knocks down the door like a pixie in a playpen.

Prototype, don’t perfect.

Not everything has to be a 360° integrated moment. Make micro-stuff. Test things in dark social. Kill your darlings if they flop. This is something my company is hellbent on. Why? Because it freaking works. Duh.

Hire for taste, not titles.

The best ideas aren’t coming from the loudest LinkedIn thought leaders. They’re coming from the unpaid meme pages, small time creators with the gift of the gab, Discord nerds, and DMs of people who actually know what’s happening in culture.

Reframe “risk.”

Doing the same thing again is the risk now. Being forgettable is a bigger danger than being weird.

In conclusion…

The industry doesn’t need another campaign that looks like a Mad Men reboot. It needs new POVs, new references, and maybe, just maybe, a little less brand incest. Because if we keep hiring from the same family tree of ideas, all we’ll get are more beige ads and performative TikToks with 20 likes.

TREND PLUG

Clearly you're here for an alternate agenda

There's something weirdly empowering - but also infuriating - about seeing through someone's so-called "motive" and calling them out on it.

Justin Bieber captured this vibe well during a recent argument with paparazzi, who asked the Canadian singer if he was afraid of being deported amid US immigration raids. During the spat, he stared the camera down and told a photog:

Just to be clear - totally on Biebs' side here. The man's entitled to his privacy and paparazzi LOVE stoking negative reactions for the sake of a juicy headline. That said, there's something uniquely funny about the words he chose for clapping back, and TikTokers were quick to latch on to them.

Because as it turns out, whether your mum's making a dish she knows you hate or your friend's sending you embarrassing pre-teen pics, we've all had to dig into people to find what their "alternate agenda" really is.

How you can jump on this trend:

Take this sound, put the camera on yourself and lip-sync with Bieber. Then, add some OST describing an interaction you had where someone clearly had an ulterior motive. If relevant, see if you can blend some visual elements into your story, like where this situation happened or what you were doing as it happened!

A few ideas to get you started:

  • When someone from work approaches you in public

  • When your work rival keeps trying to make small talk

  • When the supervisor who only talks to you about work wants to have lunch with you

- Devin Pike, Copywriter

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

😲WTF: War tactics at schools?!
😊Soooo satisfying: Sand slice!
🎧Soooo tingly: Tingly ASMR
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Stir fried Udon

ASK THE EDITOR

I work for a tourism experience. What kind of content can I use to encourage people to come take a tour without filming in-tour content (it doesn’t seem to perform as well)? – Tayla

Hey Tayla!

First of all, there's no reason in-tour content can't perform well. Whether a piece of content works or not doesn't come down to the style. It comes down to whether you have a relatable human truth and whether you're using the storytelling structure of set-up, conflict, and resolution.

But if you want to try other content styles, you could create videos about your team dynamics or behind the scenes of creating these experiences for your customers. Whatever time of content you create, I would focus on capturing a relatable, emotional story your audience can connect with.

- 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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