Sooo remember all those YAP dollars you've earned for reading this newsletter, clicking on links, and playing the daily games on our website? It's now YAP Rewards Week, which means it's time for you to spend them on real stuff! This time around, our sponsors include:

Head over to the YAP store and check it out!

_{p.s. YAP store is open 15 April - 21 April, or until all items are sold out. If you don’t have enough YAP dollars to spend this time, we’ll have another rewards week in 3 months, so keep opening YAP, clicking links, and playing the daily games to earn status points.}

Well. I thought we were miles away from there. Until Anthropic started talking about their most powerful new model not yet fit for the public. And then when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed chair Jerome Powell reportedly called an emergency meeting on Tuesday with Wall Street leaders on concerns about the model, and a greater cybersecurity risk.

The company released a report on Tuesday about Mythos and its cybersecurity capabilities. This included a preview of the model being able to find many 10- and even 20-year-old vulnerabilities. One of these was a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD, which is an operating system that has a reputation of being one of the most secure. This could literally reshape cybersecurity. The gulp I just gulped, y’all.

Side note: just days after Anthropic released news of Mythos, OpenAI goes “oh yeah, we literally just remembered we have one of those too, but we can’t show y’all because it’s too powerful.” Giggling.

Ok next: TikTok’s "biggest star" Khaby Lame allegedly had some big blockbuster plan to turn his fame into a $975 billion business. And then went silent.

Lame has more than 360 million followers across social media. In January, he announced he would merge his company, Step Distinctive Limited, with Hong-Kong based publicly traded Rich Sparkle Holdings, a financial printing firm. Day traders pounced, the stock surged like crazy, and then it fell… 90%...

Because there haven't been any formal filings indicating that the deal was done, or that Lame's company has received the 75 million shares it was promised. Now platforms have restricted trading, and Lame has no comment. Awkward.

Speaking of social media stars, top influencers like Druski and Clavicular are at risk of losing their "secret" engagement weapon to AI. These successful content creators heavily rely on clippers to cut and edit their videos into short viral pieces of content and post them to their various accounts all over the internet. It’s the most organic way to blow tf up on social media. And it means these creators don’t have to spend any time at all repurposing their work. Because their fans – consisting of extremely online hobbyists - will do it for them.

Now, AI is clipping out the clippers. Creators like Logan Paul and YouTuber Mark Rober have used OpusClip, an AI-powered tool. The service allows users to upload longform videos, then it will instantly produce shortform clips and post them automatically. Meanwhile, iHeartMedia has tapped Overlap, an AI video-clipping company, to take its library and blanket social media with clips from its hosts. Listen, if it gets rid of Clav. then idc.  

-Sophie Randell, Writer

Brushing up on brand stuff that had happened overnight and what not, I came across a post about Nickelback, Meg Thee Stallion and Cheetos collaborating for the Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle flavour.

My first thought “Why?”

My second “Who decided this? Does this even work? This is so random.”

My third: “Ohhh they got me.”

In the modern attention economy, our digital culture is saturated with “perfect” content. So brands have figured out how to intentionally engineer “crashes” between unrelated cultural icons to create somewhat of a glitch in the matrix that forces users to stop the scroll.

Which is exactly what happened to me this morning. And I haaate to admit that it was so damn easy to get me. Proving that, despite studying the craft of marketing and the intersection of pop and digital culture, I’m still a sucka from time to time.

So, let’s unpack it (begrudgingly.)

Behavioral research shows that the human brain decides whether to watch a video within one to two seconds (wild, I know.)

Obviously when I see a 2000s post-grunge band with a modern hip-hop powerhouse making an ad about anything, it creates a high conceptual tension. This triggers my curiosity and a literal need to "scratch the itch" of why tf they are together or whether I’ve just finally had that impending breakdown and am seeing things.

Even though I find such tactics a little cheap, and my initial reaction was "there’s no way this actually converts,” it seems the mere fact that I’m questioning it at all means it likely does.

It’s no secret that modern algorithms in 2026 prioritise behavioural signals and high-intensity engagement over simple reach. "Unhinged" content drives shares, stitches, and "what did I just watch?" comments.

The system interprets these as high-quality signals, further amplifying the post and sending it triple freaking platinum.

Idk if you remember the era of Nickelback being the laughingstock of the internet. To this day I’m still unsure why they received so much hate—they’re a pillar of the Divorced Dad Rock genre and mean us no harm.

But by god, did the internet harm them. So to see them next to Meg Thee Stallion in a modern campaign shows a major shift in what we label cool.

Perfect and polished ads feel fake to Gen Z and Millennials, whom are both the main target audience here. A brand willing to embrace the cringe of a weird pairing appears more relatable and real. Because, like, they’re so quirky for that :P

Nickelback even took over the writing duties for their own parody, acknowledging their polarising status for "a big stack of bills". This self-referential irony builds trust. Because the brand isn't pretending the collaboration makes sense. It's inviting the audience to laugh at the absurdity with them.

That absurdity, combined with the familiarity of Nickelback’s music, which literally everybody knows, is where the genius lies. The weird pairing actually feels nostalgic (maybe even comforting).

Campaigns like this have always seemed absolutely devoid of meaning and traditional product logic. But I stand here today, corrected, because like any campaign, the results are of course measurable.

And the results say that unexpected pairings consistently outperform predictable ones. Because the collaboration is the shareable moment, not the product. They’re also a sales success. The Flamin' Hot Dill Pickle flavour previously sold out on resale platforms for high prices; this "chaotic" marketing turns that niche hype into a global cultural moment.

We’ve moved past the age of the logical endorsement and into the era of the Cultural Collage. It’s odd, a little confusing, and deeply, deeply cringe.

But in a digital landscape that never sleeps, the only thing worse than being laughed at is being scrolled past.

(Now, who’s going to send me some of those Dill Cheetos because I know damn well they won’t have them here in NZ </3)

-Sophie Randell, Writer

You just know from the music that it's over. Think of it like the writing on the wall, except the wall has a speaker, and it's playing the saxophone(?).

The sound is Cambiar by 305willybeatz, but the reference goes deeper than that. It's rooted in one of the most iconic scenes in cinema from Boyz n the Hood, where character Ricky gets chased by rival gang members and the sax-heavy score swells right before everything goes wrong. That music became cultural shorthand for doom incoming. The second those horns rise, you already know how it ends.

The trend took off after a TikTok hit 800k views with the caption "POV: you in a 90s hood movie about to move out the trenches but you hear them saxophones going crazy." From there the internet ran with it, applying that same dark foreshadowing energy to everyday situations. Think your flight getting cancelled on the school trip, going through someone's phone and finding something, or just trying to have a good shift.

Using the sound, describe a situation that is turning out to be a disaster, and make sure to end your onscreen text with "and I hear the saxophone get louder."

A few ideas to get you started:

-abdel khalil, brand & marketing exec

😲WTF: WOW
✨Daily inspo: Achieve your dreams 
😊Soooo satisfying: So colourful 
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: SO YUMMY

Hey Doris!

Totally get where you're coming from. It can be hard to keep posting when you aren't getting much engagement. But the only way to improve your content is to keep posting (sorry!.

I'd encourage you to keep posting every day, paying attention to your analytics. Experiment by changing up your hook, images, and post style. Don’t be afraid to change up your format and see how it lands with your audience. The bottom line is, you'll figure out what works way faster by continuing to post than stopping!

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

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.