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- Your ATTN Please | Tuesday, 15 July
Your ATTN Please | Tuesday, 15 July
Katy Perry became an “astronaut”. Coachella hit new lows. And Lady Gaga saw a glorious comeback.
(I mean, 2.5 million concert-goers can’t be wrong). Gang, we’re over halfway through 2025 and it’s been an…interesting ride so far. Now we could have never seen some of those headlines coming (except maybe the Coachella thing). But there were a lot of predictions we made back in January we did get right. So now, the question is, what’s next?!
- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡
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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?
Birken bag sells for $10M, Nazi music trends on TikTok & Elon forms the America Party
The OG Birkin Bag just sold for $10.1M at auction.
When your brand power is so strong, the prototype is worth more than the average house. Crazy work. A regular Birkin is already worth around $10,000 – so it’s no surprise the one that started it all would have such a hefty price tag. So hefty, in fact, that it actually set a new record for a handbag sold at auction.
The tale goes, one fateful night, Jane Birkin was sat next to Hermès executive Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight from Paris to London circa 1980s. Needing a bag with more space than her usual, the two came up with the now iconic structured tote with two handles that is the pop-culture phenomenon we know and love today.
Far-right extremists are exploiting TikTok’s “use-this-sound” feature as a Trojan horse for hate speech, with most of the offending videos staying online for months, according to new research.
Marloes Geboers of the University of Amsterdam and Marcus Bösch at Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf examined thousands of clips across German, British, and Dutch TikTok feeds. Over THREE QUARTERS of videos using extremist audio were accessible for months after they were first found. The project began when Bösch came across a familiar synth-pop loop. “Friends had a Nazi song on an actual tape,” he says. “Thirty years later it was on TikTok, and kids were filming their walk to school to that soundtrack.”
Tracking the song through TikTok led them to a multitude of trends where seemingly harmless memes, like users guessing what comes next in a song, masked “brutal, racist, misogynist and death fantasy lyrics.” They then set up accounts trained to follow right-wing content in the three countries.
“There’s Nazi techno, Nazi pop, Nazi folk—something for everyone,” Bösch explains. Their research found extremist creators attaching hateful messages to club classics and AI-generated tracks alike. TikTok maintains that they’re steady working hard to moderate content on the app. But if that were true, why does this keep happening?
Elon Musk forms new party after split with Trump over tax and spending bill.
The breakup gets messier. I kind of thought we were done with all of this, but it would appear Elon is not. And I’m sorry but if Bernie couldn’t beat Trump, there’s no way in hell Musk has enough public favour to pull any significant support away from the Republican Party (or democratic, for that matter.)
Regardless, the billionaire spent Sunday on X taking feedback from users about the party, indicating he’d likely get involved in the 2026 midterm elections. "When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy," Musk said Saturday on X, the social media company he owns. "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."
Welp. Let’s see how this goes.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
DEEP DIVE
Alright so, what’s next? Predictions for the rest 2025 (part deux)
[this article is a follow-on from Friday's deep dive, How are my marketing predictions holding up, 6 months later?]
Now that the dust has settled from the chaos of Q1-Q2—and we’ve all accepted that AI is here, retail media is wild, and LinkedIn is a vibe (I guess), it’s time to look forward.
Here’s what’s really coming for us in the latter half of the year. Hold onto your ad budgets. This ride's about to get wild.
The return of the McBling internet aesthetic.
Otherwise known as Web 1.0, or Old Web. Expect a wave of lo-fi, chaotic, early internet-inspired campaigns. Think pixel fonts, neon palettes, janky pop-ups, a Myspace-esque nostalgia (but with budget).
Why? Because high-gloss now looks too AI-generated. Brands and consumers alike are craving a rough-around-the-edges, “yes a human made this,” feel.
Watch for: Zine-style email newsletters, 2000s style microsites with personality, brands hiring meme curators and creators over content strategists.
DIY marketing goes mainstream.
The creator playbook is being stolen, again, by brands. With tools like Sora and DALL·E getting easier to use, in-house teams are skipping agencies and building faster. Expect more rough cuts, selfie-style spokespeople, and reactive campaigns made in a day.
The implication? Agencies will either get faster or get ghosted.
Expect more “non-ads” that are ads.
Brands will blur the lines further between what’s content, what’s UGC, and what’s actually sponsored. Look for TikToks that don’t look like ads, fan accounts that feel too polished to be real, and campaigns launched via gossip. Performance will be judged by whispers, not CTR.
Case in point: We’ve all seen those “campaigns” no one actually clocked were real until the CMO owned it on Threads.
Performance and brand will finally hook up.
Just like that Love Island couple you were rooting for the whole time. They’re past the awkward flirting stage, and brands have realised their most efficient conversion drivers are upstream: brand salience, emotional memory, platform fit. Expect more brand storytelling in performance environments (yes, even in programmatic banners).
Watch for: Brand-coded DCO (dynamic creative optimisation), CTV ads optimised for recall and response, TikToks with actual narratives, not just hooks and CTAs
The (continued) rise of quiet marketing.
Consumers have been overwhelmed since 2020, let's be honest. Expect a wave of minimalist, slower, almost meditative content. No voiceovers, no jump cuts… just vibes and value. ASMR-like unboxings. Soft storytelling. Emails that read like journal entries.
Goodbye: Shouting to get attention. Hello: Whispering and still being heard.
AI ethics go mainstream.
Consumers are getting smart. They’re asking: Was this written by AI? Are you using my data fairly? Are you exploiting creators? Brands who aren’t transparent, or worse, who fake their humanity, will start bleeding trust at an exponential rate.
Prediction: By December, “100% Human-Made” becomes a bragging point, not a warning.
B2B gets kinda weird.
B2B marketing is entering its weird girl era. Expect more memes, fictional mascots, and campaigns that look like Adult Swim sketches. It’s no longer enough to say “we’re not boring”; you have to be memorable.
Watch for: Headlines like “Why Our SaaS Platform Is Just Like a Sourdough Starter”
We’ve been promised it before, but with TikTok Shop and Meta testing live commerce again, Q4 might actually be the moment people start buying while scrolling. Especially if platforms link up rewards, affiliate programs, and creators better.
Watch for: “Drop culture” applied to TikTok Shop Creators building storefronts inside platforms, Flash sales wrapped in memes.
Final forecast: The rest of 2025 is going to be weirder, faster, and more experimental. Audiences want novelty, not noise. Marketers who can adapt quickly—and aren’t afraid to look a little unhinged—are the ones who’ll win.
Want to track this with me until December? Let’s see what sticks, what flops, and what the algorithm gods throw at us next. Bookmark this. I’ll meet you back here in six months time.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
TREND PLUG
You want the good news or the bad news?
The good news is there’s no more plague! Huzzah! The bad news is, there’s no more London…
If you're like me, you ask for the bad news first, just to rip the Band-Aid off. And then you hope the good news is actually… good.
This trend flips the script with a dose of historical dark humour. Set to an audio clip from Horrible Histories (shoutout to 1666’s London fire for the drama), the sound sets up a classic good-news-bad-news combo where the “yay” is immediately overshadowed by the “oh no”.
People are using this trend to celebrate a win, immediately following it up with the downside of the situation. Which is usually pretty… bleak. Think breaking up with the toxic friend (but you lost the rest of the friend group too), or final exams are over (but now real life begins, and we all know how that goes…)
How you can jump on this trend:
Film yourself lip-syncing to the audio, appropriately timing your own good and bad news with OST. The more ironically pointless the "pro" becomes in light of the "con", the better.
A few ideas to get you started:
The good news is our post went viral! The bad news is it’s for all the wrong reasons.
The good news is we finally cracked the campaign hook! The bad news is the product team changed the offer.
The good news is you got budget approval! The bad news is it's 5% of what you asked for.
- Helena Masters, Copywriter
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ASK THE EDITOR
If we want to mix Reels and, carousel and static posts, what's the best way to think about this? – Jackeline
Hey Jackeline!
Whatever format you're using, whether it performs or not will come down to your storytelling. Even in carousels and static posts, a strong narrative structure—setup, conflict, resolution—should be there. Especially for carousels, you need to tell a story that makes people have to scroll all the way to the end. When your audience does this, it signals to the algo that people are engaged with that content.
For carousels and static posts, the images you use also play a big role in whether the content will be successful. These need to not only grab the audience's attention, but also tell an engaging story. Whether you use static posts or Reels will come down to your brand and what you're trying to achieve. But either way, story wins.
- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡
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