Marketers, we’ve done this to ourselves. It started by making brands feel more human. We tweeted self-aware-ly (nope, not a word) and meme’d relatably. And, for a long time, it worked. But when being “spontaneous” (big air quotes there) is every brand’s social strategy, it all starts feeling a little too… calculated. And the brands we once thought were refreshing and hilarious have become, well, unbearable.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

And it’s clear you haven’t just lost them. You’ve lost the deal.

Well, that doesn't have to be you anymore. Because in this 90-minute session taught by Nathan James, Executive Creative Director at The Attention Seeker, you’ll learn the real art of selling subjective ideas (from someone who’s worked with some of the world’s biggest brands).

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Thursday, 4 Dec | 8:30 - 10am NZT | $49

Country artist Breaking Rust topped the chart last week with a song called "Walk My Walk". Only, Breaking Rust is not a real band. In fact, there’s nothing to indicate there’s an actual human involved in any of the music made by the painfully obvious AI generated, chisel-jawed cowboy. That is, aside from song writing credits to an Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, who has no internet presence aside from association with Breaking Rust. So, I’m going to assume he’s not a real person either.

The song has been streamed on Spotify more than three million times. Another by the band Livin' on Borrowed Time, has logged more than 4.1 million streams. According to Spotify, Breaking Rust also boasts over 2 million monthly listeners. Many of which, if you read the comments, are blissfully unaware of what’s generating what they’re hearing:

"Are you guys out touring anywhere right now," a fan commented on the official “band” Instagram.

"Just discovered this guy," said another poster on the song "Time Don't Stop". "I've already downloaded everything I could find."

No more Netflix and Chill. It’s time for Netflix Capitalism Extravaganza. The media giant is going “experiential” as of this week, with a 100,000-square-foot space in the King of Prussia Mall, 20 miles outside Philadelphia. Dubbed The Netflix House, and lit up with a bright red entrance, it will include interactive game rooms and food and drink inspired by Netflix hits.

And they’re not stopping there. I mean, they’re taking over. A second location is scheduled to open at the Galleria Mall in Dallas on Dec. 11. Another is set for Las Vegas in 2027, with the idea that the company will be opening as many as 60 Netflix House locations globally. Apparently, it’s a push to “create a deeper connection with consumers,” and “not a revenue piece.” And hell is just a sauna x

No more nip tuck. Now it’s more “untuck me!” in Hollywood. Botox is having its flop era. Years of overfilled faces, swollen lips, and “why do I look like a Snapchat filter gone wrong?” Horror stories have caught up. And consumers are sprinting toward the clean-girl, age-gracefully aesthetic.

AbbVie’s once-untouchable injectables empire is now scrambling: sagging sales, annoyed loyalists, and cheaper, “more natural” competitors eating their lunch. Their big fix is baby Botox, a fast-acting, fast-fading toxin for the chronically unsure. Cute idea, but I don’t think anyone’s convinced. The vibe has shifted. People want subtle, not scary. And the ol’ Botox gloss just isn’t glimmering like it used to.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

We’re looking for marketing agencies who want to learn how to do big numbers on social—not just for themselves, but for their clients. It’s not unusual for brands we work with to go from 0 to 100,000 followers in a couple months. Right now, we’re taking expressions of interest for our Cohort Intensive Workshop for agencies. Just reply to this email and let us know you’re keen.

I read this take on The Trend Report and felt like it's exactly what my writing has been leading up to as of late. The posting ennui, the dead internet theory, the campaign creep, the “how to market when the market says no”, the flattening of everything under the sun thanks to AI – all roads lead to here. Well, this feels as natural as the progression of things can, anyway.

The timeline is tired, the brands are tired, and the audience, well, insert Rose McGowan’s infamous “imagine how tired we are".

I knew once a certain multilingual green bird posted about swimming in Dua Lipa’s piss while simultaneously telling employees it planned to go “AI first,” we were circling the drain.

They know the “out-of-pocket” tweet had five rounds of approvals and a 37-slide deck justifying it. Just like they know that the “we care about people” post dropped the same week as the news of a thousand layoffs. And they definitely know that the “relatable” meme was templated in Canva by an intern following strict tone-of-voice guidelines.

Basically, the jig is up. Social users have become hyper-literate.

The corporate wink-wink of brand personality has lost its charm. Because, at this point, we know exactly who’s behind the curtain, and it’s not your cool community manager; it’s a committee.

And the thing about committees is they don’t make culture. They maintain it. Which is why so much of brand social today feels like a museum of past trends: a flattened, delayed echo of the internet’s original pulse.

They became comedians, activists, therapists, even best friends. That worked in the chaos years when social media still felt like a living organism. But now, in a landscape ruled by algorithms and automation, that kind of “human” feels out of place, and more uncanny than authentic.

The feeds look alive, but much of what’s circulating is pre-scheduled, AI-generated, or recycled from somewhere else. It’s campaign creep meets posting ennui; the great flattening of everything.

It’s transactional, operational, even bureaucratic (eugh). The feeds that once created culture are now places to sell culture back to us. Increasingly, it’s not where we gather. It’s where we window-shop.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means the function of these platforms has changed. Social has become less of a stage and more of a mirror, a reflection of what people are doing elsewhere, rather than the birthplace of new ideas.

For brands, that means the strategy can’t just be “keep posting.” It has to be: why are we posting, for whom, and what purpose does this serve in the larger ecosystem?

This is the part where the smart brands quietly reinvent themselves. The ones that stop performing and start listening. The ones that understand that visibility without meaning is just noise.

The future of social isn’t louder—it’s sharper. It’s less about having a “voice” and more about having values. It’s not about being the funniest in the feed, but the most useful, credible, or interesting to the people who actually matter.

Brands that cling to the old playbook, the self-aware tone, the meme-as-content strategy, the relentless “posting to stay relevant” will end up looking like the last jesters in the castle. Dancing in an empty hall, for an audience that’s already pivoted elsewhere.

I’m not getting caught in the trap of saying that again (if you know you know lol.)

But the show is over, folks. The lights are up, the audience has left, and the brands still monologuing to the algorithm might want to take the hint (please, it’s getting awkward in here.)

The next era of social will reward discernment over noise, participation over performance, and real alignment over empty affirmation. It’s time to rethink what being “present” online actually means. Because it's not to be the loudest in the room, but the one saying something actually worth hearing.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Like you’re not gifted (s*rry). You just needed the exact right combination of silence, panic and setting.

The sound’s from that Shane Dawson x Jeffree Star doc era (remember THAT era?), where Shane’s acting like he just saw God descend because Jeffree’s rearranging eyeshadow colours. Someone slapped that emotional-cinematic “Bending Dreams” track behind it and boom; it became the anthem for accidentally going demon mode.

People are pairing it with random situations where their brain suddenly locks in and they start performing like it’s life or death over something that literally does not matter. Below are my fav examples:

Use the sound, throw up text like: “when ___ and I accidentally reach flow state.” Put this over footage that describes your flow-state situation.

A few ideas to get you started:

-abdel khalil, brand & marketing exec

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: time for a new hobby
❤How wholesome: supporting vendors with no customers
😊Soooo satisfying: marble racing
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Garlic Butter Spag

Hi Jenn!

There are so many ways you can create content around a service like this. One of the easiest content styles you can use is just answering FAQs you get. You can create a list of questions clients ask or have ChatGPT to help you come up with some. Or you can find others in your industry who already have a following and see what people ask them in the comments.

Once you have a list of questions you can answer, record your team answering them. At the end of each video, ask the audience to put more questions for you to answer in the comments. You can always branch out and try other content styles over time. But this is an easily repeatable, low production content style that allows you to show off your expertise.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡