Your ATTN Please | Tuesday, 16 September

I don’t use lipstick (respect to the boys who do), but… fairly sure you’re not supposed to eat it.

That didn’t stop Doja Cat from chowing on cherry-coloured MACximal Silky Matte Lipstick at the VMAs, though. She mostly did it because she was “desperate for a snack”, but her new ambassador role for MAC Cosmetics probably has a bit to do with it too. It’s one of the stranger, more chaotic things we’ve seen celebrity ambassadors do with a brand partnership - and that’s exactly the point.

- Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

The VMAs were meh, creators are posting in the third person & your 2025 holiday retail guide is here

Are the VMAs chopped?

Remember Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’ performance?! The Madonna and Britney Kiss?! Taylor and Kanye? Where did the SIGNIFICANCE go??? The cultural pull?? The recent VMAs seem to lack that shock value that attracted so many people to watch them during their prime, this weeks show being no different.

Maybe it’s a biproduct of our summer of nothing. Maybe we’re in the era of blegh. I don’t know anymore. But I’m genuinely curious as to what y’all think? Let me know. 

Social media has gone full third-person

We are always reacting to something. And thus, so are the content creators, like Lacy, Jason, and Miniminter, who post their personal content with in-video titles – making it seem like a third person posted the video, banking on the idea that people are constantly trying to keep up with social media. This structure has given birth to reaction creators, which gave birth to clippers, who, to gain following, started posting as if each piece of content were broadcasting a cultural moment. The clippers are now working for media companies and startups using this tactic to make people pay attention to conversations that don’t really even exist.

Content creators and streamers understand that to generate attention, they need to present moments within a broader cultural context, otherwise, audiences won’t experience that sense of FOMO. That’s why they structure content to feel like it’s part of a bigger conversation rather than just a first-person post. Streamers and brands are investing in clippers and influencers who specialize in this approach, blending first-person storytelling with third-person framing. The takeaway here? In 2025, creators and brands can’t rely solely on personal perspective. Success comes from mixing personal content with contextualised, culturally aware framing to make audiences feel like every moment matters.

What retailers should be focusing on this 2025 holiday season

The latest eMarketer podcast just dropped the 2025 holiday retail cheat sheet. Apparently we've forgotten slashing prices, and use our brains and hearts this season.

3 things to actually focus on:

• Like I said, emotions sell, over discounts 
  Deals are table stakes. The brands that win are the ones making shoppers feel something: loyalty, joy, FOMO, whatever hooks them beyond Black Friday mayhem.

• Hyper-personalisation with AI
  Stop blasting generic emails. AI can tailor experiences, recommend gifts, and make your customer feel like you get them. Yes, even Aunt Karen.

• Adapt or die, apparently
  Okay it’s not that serious. But 2025 holiday growth is predicted to be slowest since 2009. Consumer expectations are shifting. Know the trends, read the signals, and pivot before the carts get abandoned.

Long story short: feelings, personalisation, flexibility - those are your guiding stars this season. Do with that what you will.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Hey, do you like YAP?

If so, why not share it with a friend? The more we grow this thing, the more resources we can put into making it awesome for you. Even if every subscriber invites just 1 person to YAP, we’ll meet our growth goal for 2025. So, you in?

DEEP DIVE

Why tf did Doja Cat just eat her lipstick at the VMAs?

Because she’s a genius. That’s why.

And, because she’s the new ambassador for MAC Cosmetics. But mostly because, in her words, she was “desperate for a snack”. This chaotic little stunt may just be the best celebrity endorsement of the year. Not because it sold the product, though I would absolutely love to see those sales numbers. But because it sold a moment, a cultural hit that no polished campaign could have bought no matter how many millions were pumped into it.

The stunt is ridiculous. Eating lipstick is ridiculous. That’s the point.

Traditional endorsements: smile, apply, look perfect, booooo. Boring. They are overcurated, filtered, approved by committees, aaaand mostly ignored. Doja Cat did what she does so well: flipping the script. The absurdity signals: this isn’t a corporate product push. This is me, chaotic, performative, and entertaining. And in a social media landscape addicted to authenticity theatre, ridiculousness reads as real.

The lipstick itself barely matters. It could have been chocolate, cake frosting, freaking Play-Doh, the viral effect would have been the same. Marketers obsess about product placement, visual aesthetics, and celebrity alignment. Doja Cat shows us that the spectacle, the story people talk about, is more powerful than the item being sold. It’s a shift that reflects the times: consumers are less swayed by polished perfection and more by spectacle, absurdity, and shareable content. When the internet responds with memes, TikToks, and Twitter commentary, the stunt achieves a kind of algorithmic immortality no paid campaign could buy.

We all know that memes are the new ROI.

The stunt, of course, generated thousands of posts within minutes. Clips, GIFs, tweets, TikToks: the content replicates itself, and the audience becomes a co-producer. Marketing has always sought “earned media", it's nothing new. But in the attention economy, moments like this are the holy grail: they’re free, viral, and culturally sticky. And it’s not just about virality for virality’s sake. It’s about cultural footprint.

Because Doja Cat isn’t selling lipstick. She’s asserting her persona as playful, irreverent, and untouchable, a brand narrative more valuable than any product endorsement. We’re entering an era where the performance around a product is often more important than the product itself. Influencer theatre thrives on absurdity, risk, and spectacle. From the “girl dinner” TikTok trend to viral stunts like this one, the pattern is clear: the story is the product.

This isn’t to say all brands should encourage eating cosmetics (please don’t).

The key takeaway is strategic absurdity: create moments that feel unscripted, culturally relevant, and perfectly aligned with the persona of whoever is endorsing the product. The internet is more likely to amplify the personality than the item.

Lessons for marketers:

• Risk = reward: culturally risky, bizarre, or irreverent stunts get attention—but only if they feel authentic.

• Story beats product: the story, meme, or moment is often far more valuable than what you’re technically selling.

• Amplify shareability: design for reaction, conversation, and meme potential, not just a glossy ad.

• Align with persona: if it doesn’t fit the celebrity’s persona or brand voice, the stunt feels forced, not viral.

Doja Cat’s stunt is a microcosm of the future of marketing.

Absurdity, performance, and virality outweigh traditional advertising. Consumers crave entertainment, chaos, and personality more than ever. In a feed clogged with polished perfection, the bold, the messy, the edible-on-stage becomes irresistible. Marketing used to be about placement, impressions, and repetition. Now, it’s about creating moments that refuse to be ignored. And if that moment involves literally eating a lipstick on live TV? Well, then we’ve truly entered the era of attention as the ultimate currency.

Doja Cat sold not only MAC, but the spectacle of the “cultural moment". For marketers, that’s worth more than any tube of rouge. 

-Sophie Randell, Writer

TREND PLUG

**Screaming**

Do you want the best entertainment TikTok has to offer? Just tap into an Ekane livestream.

Today's trending sound comes from a moment from her unhinged livestreams where she smells her armpits (?) and lets out an insane screeching scream that'll blow out your speakers.

But that exact scream resonated with the masses and now it's the anthem for when you're texting while driving and get reminded why it's illegal, how it feels when you're texting someone and they use your photo as a reaction pic mid convo, or for when you post a fire pic on your story and the wrong person likes it 

How you can jump on the trend:

To the sound, film yourself and add onscreen text talking about a scenario that would make you scream like this.

A few ideas to get you started:

• When you see the post you scheduled for tomorrow morning go live at 9:43pm

• When you send the client the wrong attachment

• When I open my laptop at work only to be greeted by the Canva tutorial I had open last night

- abdel khalil, brand & marketing executive

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: I get knocked down, but I get up again
❤How wholesome: Real heroes
😊Soooo satisfying: Swirly swirly
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Chili Con Carne

ASK THE EDITOR

I've been out of work for a while and am trying to get a job in marketing. Besides applying for jobs, what else can I do to speed up the process? -Zak

Hey Zak!

Other than applying for jobs, the best thing you can do right now is start growing your personal brand. My suggestion would be to start with LinkedIn, because recruiters and people who are hiring for marketing roles are on there. Follow people who work for brands you'd love to work for and engage with their content. Create content about projects you've worked on in the past, podcasts you’re listening to, or books you’re reading right now. Break down campaigns you think were effective (or not) to show you know what you're talking about.

Aside from building your personal brand online, I would do as much in-person networking as you can. Ask people you connect with on LinkedIn to meet for coffee. Go to events and get your face in front of people. Growing your network will get you much closer to landing a role than applying for jobs alone.

- 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.

WHAT DO YA THINK?

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