xoxo Sophie

According to the head of IG, the iconic curated Instagram grid is officially over, and AI helped kill it (no surprises there). Mosseri says AI’s flood of synthetic images has made polished aesthetics cheap and boring. And, as a result, it's pushing the platform toward a more raw, unfiltered look that feels real.

This has nothing to do with nostalgia. Even Mosseri admits we’ve shifted from assuming visuals are real to starting with scepticism (we all know that to be true). The future of Instagram might be imperfection as authenticity. Because we now live in a world where blurry, candid content is proof of life and human creativity feels rare again.

Speaking of AI-gen content... Snapchat just made AI video creation much easier with Animate It. It's an AI-powered Lens that generates short animated videos from any text prompt you type into the camera. But unlike typical AR filters, this tool actually turns your ideas into video clips in seconds.

The feature is rolling out to Lens+ subscribers and builds on Snap’s ongoing AI push. It’s another signal that social platforms are embedding generative tools directly into the creative flow. And we’re only at the start of what this could mean for user-generated storytelling.

Over the last few years, brands have been going big on activations (think Rhode's viral Coachella booth, e.l.f.'s London Marathon run club, and Pinterest's "Manifest Station,"). And now, creators are no longer waiting for brands to put events on—they're hosting their own instead. Just look at Claire Kittle's HOSS Tailgate Tour and Tyler Bergantino's Tall Tour, to name a few.

And it seems creators aren't the only ones keen to get offline. Their audiences are showing up in droves. StubHub found that creators, podcasters, and authors sold 500% more event tickets in 2025, compared to the year before. And while these events are attracting the attention of brands, for many creators, that's a happy by-product, not the main point. According to Abe Santos, partner at Underscore Talent, creators are primarily using these events to *gasp* actually bring their communities into the real world.

-Sophie Randell, Writer & Charlotte Ellis, Editor

From sitting atop the Las Vegas Sphere screaming "Dream big!" to collabing with British rapper EsDeeKid, to every single one of his designer fits with "Marty Supreme" blasted across them, Timmy's been everywhere. Like literally everywhere.

He was even awarded "white boy of the year", which somehow feels both ironic and completely sincere.

But make no mistake: this isn't just another celebrity doing promo.

According to Deadline, Marty Supreme achieved the fastest-selling presale for an A24 movie. It also saw the biggest per-theatre average for a limited release in 2025, grossing $875,000 from just six theatres in one weekend.

The film went on to pull in $27 million over the four-day Christmas frame, with half of polled moviegoers admitting they bought a ticket specifically because of Chalamet (no surprises there).

Yes, I’ll say it, despite being cliché, this is a masterclass in cultural omnipresence.

Honestly y’all, traditional press tours have become freaking unbearable. Not sure about you, but I’m DONE with actors cycling through the same anecdotes on fifteen different talk shows.

I’m exhausted by the forced "we're like a family" soundbites (only for it to be revealed that they despise each other, ehem, It Ends With Us saga.) I’m sick of the manufactured relationship rumours between cast members, the hand squeezing, a little too close for comfort shots.

I’m ESPECIALLY over the crying-in-interviews (looking at you, Wicked). It all feels so... calculated. So tired. And it all soooo needs to be left in 2025.

Instead of going to media, Chalamet and A24 created moments so bold and visually striking that media and people naturally wanted to cover them.

The Las Vegas Sphere was transformed into a giant orange ping pong ball, with Chalamet as the first person to ever stand atop it. We’re moving out of press junket to actual performance art here.

Then was the collaboration with EsDeeKid which hit the net like a tornado. A genuine cross-pollination with internet culture, leaning into conspiracy theories that they might be the same person and turning it into content.

And an honourable mention to the limited-edition Nahmias windbreakers, which retailed at $250 and are now fetching over $3,000 on StockX.

Even the meta-awareness of the campaign, like that 18-minute spoof Zoom call where Chalamet pitches painting the Statue of Liberty orange, gives people permission to enjoy the spectacle without feeling manipulated.

The "white boy of the year" discourse is both celebration and somewhat of a public knighting of Chalamet, with a subtle tinge of irony. The duality is what makes it work.

We all know by now that attention is more fragmented than ever. You can't just buy TV spots and hope people show up anymore.

You need to be everywhere, but in ways that feel native to each platform. Audiences are media-literate enough to see through traditional PR tactics. So you have to give them something real, or at least, something that feels real.

Designer fashion, art installations, rap collabs, memes - it's all the same ecosystem now. And people no longer care to receive marketing; they want to participate in it.

As one industry executive put it, "Timothée Chalamet is a generational talent both in his skills as an actor and in his understanding of the attention economy and social media landscape." In other words, the dude gets it.

We're not going back to the old way. The press tour as we knew it is dead, and Marty Supreme just gave it the most stylish funeral imaginable.

Welcome to the era of cultural omnipresence and guerrilla tactics, where the marketing is the culture, and Timmy just set the standard.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Today's trend is for everyone who's ever been held hostage by someone else's unhinged need to keep you updated on things you absolutely did not ask about. You know the drill. You're minding your business, and all of a sudden you get hit with the most unhinged thoughts, TMI info, and every nitty-gritty detail of someone's day. And you're just standing there thinking - where is the unsubscribe button?

The audio comes from @isabelunhinged and features a soundbite from Paramore's "The only exception." Paired with someone deadpanning "nobody asked", it perfectly captures that internal monologue we're all too polite to say out loud. Some of the best examples:

Using the audio, film yourself lip-syncing to the line "nobody asked" with a blank expression. Throw on OST describing the scenario. The more relatable, the better.

A few ideas to get you started:

-Raewyn Zhao, Intern

😂Yap’s funniest home videos Cheese is life
✨Daily inspo Kindness is a superpower
😊Soooo satisfying Sprinkle wax
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight Clam chowder

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.