Your ATTN Please | Wednesday, 6 August

August 06, 2025

Close your eyes and let me take you back to a time of a VSCO edited, polaroid inspired, highly saturated, chronological feed - chaotic and uncurated.

Ahh, the 2010s. These were the golden days of early Instagram - and we spent them completely unaware they were significant. The state of the platform today is unarguably pale in comparison. And we long for the days where King Kylie’s pink hair was front of mind. But what if we could restore the essence of the OG Insta? some say, a renaissance has already begun.

-Sophie Randell, Writer ✿

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

OG Insta vibes return, Insta limits its livestreamers & Google’s healthcare AI makes up a body part

The Return of the OG Insta aesthetic?

Please God, please. If you could give anything back to us in these treacherous times, it would be the joys of the early internet. Before Instagram was flattened into a personal branding/ LinkedIn-esque/ virality-generating business machine, Instagram was a place of FUN and sepia hues, a place to connect with friends and family. It felt warm (probably due to the exposure and saturation on the filters we used), it felt spontaneous, and most of all it felt like free expression. There was no curation. Just chaos and vibes (and triangles, and tie-dye and moustaches drawn on fingers).

But what if we could bring that back? Well, Dazed & Confused Magazine believes a renaissance might be on the horizon. Addison Rae and her blurry, oversaturated aesthetic, Steve Lacy and his chronic random sh*tposting, even Justin Bieber and his schizo-posting are proof that we’re doing away with the polish and constraints of our current landscape. I don’t know if we’ll ever recreate the true essence of those golden days, but I’m down as fk to try.

Instagram Prohibits Creators with under 1,000 followers from going live

Yeowch, that’s a blow to small creators. Or people who just like, idk, want to go live with their friends. Way to kill the vibe, Meta. The company provided no specific reason for the change, however it seems to be inline with efforts to make features more TikTok-ish. It could also be a way for Meta to save money, since hosting livestreams is costly. But like, how much money would that really be saving the company?

Anyway, users who don’t have public accounts and have fewer than 1,000 followers will see a new notice when they try to go live: “we changed requirements to use this feature. Only public accounts with 1,000 followers or more will be able to create live videos”. Boooo. Lame.

Google’s healthcare AI literally made up a body part: experts say it demonstrates the risks of AI in medicine.

Imagine a radiologist looking at your brain, flagging an abnormality in the basal ganglia, the area of the brain that helps you with motor control, learning, and emotional processing. It sounds a little like the basilar artery, another part of your brain, which is responsible for very different things, and the doctor knows not to get them confused.

Now imagine your doctor is using an AI model to do the reading. The model says you have a problem with your “basilar ganglia”, combining the two names, creating area of the brain that doesn’t even exist. That’s what Google’s Medi-Gemini tool recent did, the tech giant dubbing it a typo. You’d pray the doctor would catch this mistake, but you also never know. Scary as hell. Read the full story here.

DEEP DIVE

Meta’s AI ad tools are here, but do you really want to hand over the keys to your brand?

Marketers are pacing. Creatives are bombastic side-eyeing.

And Meta is promising that you can hand over your entire paid media workflow to AI: targeting, copywriting, design, testing. All neatly wrapped in a nice little bow for you. Easy, right?

Hmmm… not quite.

Yes, Meta’s AI-powered Advantage+ tools offer a glimpse of what automated advertising could look like. But right now, these tools are less “fully-formed savior” and more “overly confident intern.”

Helpful in the right context, yes. But you wouldn’t put them in charge of your most important client pitch. So why hand them your brand?

What Meta’s actually offering

Meta has been rolling out a suite of AI-powered ad tools under its Advantage+ umbrella, aimed at taking the guesswork out of performance marketing. Here’s what’s on the menu:

  • Advantage+ shopping campaigns: feed Meta your catalog, a few creative assets, and it automatically tests combinations across audiences and placements to find what performs.

  • AI text suggestions: Meta writes your ad copy, headlines, and CTAs based on your product info and past performance.

  • Image & video variations: upload a few creative assets and the system crops, resizes, or embellishes them to fit different placements.

  • Automated targeting: audience targeting is handled through lookalikes and interest modelling. Just set your goals, and Meta handles the rest.

  • Budget optimization & reporting: AI distributes your spend toward what’s working and generates performance breakdowns.

On paper, this sounds freaking great. Less time fiddling with ad sets. More time scaling what works. But this “hands-off” approach comes with a cost.

Automation is not strategy

Meta’s pitch is seductive: more efficiency, less grunt work, better ROI. But here’s the catch, they’re selling you a black box. You plug in a few assets, let it rip, and pray for good results.

But what happens when:

  • The AI generates copy that sounds like it was written by a bored chatbot in 2018 (or worse, says something…untoward.)

  • The image variations turn your polished campaign into an uncanny valley mess?

  • You have no idea why something worked (or didn’t), because the system made 300 micro-decisions you can’t see?

You didn’t save time. You lost insight.

This isn’t automation. It’s abdication.

Let the bots do the grunt work, not the brand work

AI can absolutely make marketers’ lives easier. Use it to:

  • Test variations at scale

  • Optimize budgets

  • Refine targeting

  • Flag underperforming creative faster than you could manually

But the creative? The storytelling? The insight that makes a person stop scrolling and feel something? That’s still human territory.

AI can remix what’s already been done. It can’t create what’s next. It doesn’t understand cultural nuance, subtext, or humor that isn’t painfully on-the-nose. It doesn’t know when a joke’s going to backfire or a word choice is going to feel tone-deaf. And it definitely doesn’t understand your brand voice.

So, while Meta may offer AI-generated headlines like “Get it before it’s gone!” or “This deal won’t last!”—you already know they’re indistinguishable from spam. Your audience does too.

You’re a marketer, not a guineapig

This tech is still in its training phase. That means when you hand over your brand assets, audience data, and ad dollars, you’re not simply running a campaign, you’re helping Meta improve its system. And you’re paying them to do it.

Meanwhile, your ads go live with AI-generated creative you didn’t write, aimed at an audience you didn’t choose, attached to results you can’t explain.

Sound like a smart investment?

Creativity is still your competitive edge

There IS good news. As everyone else leans harder into automation, creativity becomes a bigger differentiator. Because when all ads start to feel the same, same layout, same tone, same AI-generated stock images, the ones with a clear point of view will pop.

Now is the time to double down on what makes your brand human:

  • Voice

  • Relevance

  • Emotional intelligence

  • Cultural fluency

  • Actual insight

Use Meta’s tools, but don’t let them use you. Treat AI as a sidekick… not the creative director.

AI might be able to run your ads, but it can’t build your brand.

Not yet. Maybe not ever. So, test the tools, sure. Take what’s useful. But don’t hand over the strategy, the story, or the soul of your marketing.

Let the bots do the math. Let the humans make the meaning.

TREND PLUG

Every time X shows up, Sexyback plays

Justin Timberlake is bringing sexy back - and your brand, too.

This trend uses the iconic opening of “Sexyback” as a tongue-in-cheek way to spotlight the moment your product, founder, or brand bestie enters the frame. The sound kicks in with intro of “Sexyback” and creators are using it to turn even the most mundane scenes into a full-blown hype moment.

It’s clean, cheeky, and stupidly effective for making whatever you’re selling feel like the main character.

How you can jump on this trend

See the trend here. Start with a bland or chaotic shot — a quiet office, messy shelf, or pre-makeover scene. Then, cut to your reveal right as the beat drops. Your product, packaging, or team member enters like they own the place.

Use the text format:
“[Event], but every time ___ enters frame Sexyback plays”

A few ideas to get you started:

  • “At our office, but every time our CEO is around Sexyback plays”

  • “Lunch break, but every time [product] shows up Sexyback plays”

  • “Every time you catch [founder/brand face] out of office, Sexyback plays”

- Amy Thomson, Social Media Manager

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

😂Yap’s funniest home videos: 8 lives left…
❤How wholesome: I NEED ONE OMG
😊Soooo satisfying: Cutting Bioluminescent Fruit!
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight: Chicken linguine!

TODAY ON THE YAP PODCAST

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ASK THE EDITOR

I'm starting a new business. What should I be focusing on in my social content? - Seth

Hey Seth!

I know you're probably wanting to find clients ASAP, so it's tempting to create content with a strong CTA. But, if you're just building your audience, you need to give people a reason to follow you.

Depending on your audience, you need to decide what kind of content to create. Of course, this will depend on the platform(s) you are trying to grow on. You will likely want to focus on educational or entertaining content that's shareable. The purpose is to get attention, build your audience, and get your brand out there.

Once you've got a solid audience, you can begin asking them to do stuff like sign up for your email list or attend a webinar. But if you try to do this too soon, people will very quickly tune you out!

- 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.

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