FATE V FUTURE

What you want to know in culture, tech, travel, luxury, media, marketing and more. We aim to curate the Internet’s best newsletter. Any feedback? Simply reply

FUTUREBOARD

🔼 Popular UK bakery chain Greggs. Sales jumped by 23% to £1.5b in 2022 and the firm announced plans to grow from 2300 to 3000 sites »»

🔽 Outdoor advertising in France. The city of Nantes banned electronic billboards, dismantling 110 overnight. (Several cities are against any street advertising, which they call ugly, anti-ecological and anti-social) »»

💬 “Let’s bring France to a halt.” Deliveries from oil refineries were blocked, trains canceled, and schools shut across France thanks to protests over planned pension reforms. Many citizens fiercely oppose raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 »»

🛩️ Paris’s first hotel opening of the year is one of the most exciting: Hôtel Dame Des Arts opened last month in the 6th »»

👗 5 things to know about Louis Vuitton’s AW23 show »»

💎 Inside Four Seasons’ luxe new private residences in Lake Austin »»

QUICKFATES

YouTube is killing one of its most annoying features »»

Citadel’s CEO personally took home US$4.1b in 2022. It’s the highest single year payout to a hedge fund manager ever »»

Is Zuck cutting his metaverse losses and moving on to AI? »»

A new app called Shortwave, created by ex-Googlers, uses AI to sum up your emails, spitting out a simple summary of your important comms to save you time »»

Iran says it’s discovered what could be the world’s second-largest lithium deposit »»

Google Docs has a new design to match Gmail »»

Michael B. Jordan’s directing debut, Creed III, had a US$100m opening weekend. Read his take on directing, shooting in IMAX, taking punches in the ring, and much, much more »»

Cult favorite New York Italian restaurant Via Carota is launching bottled cocktails »»

This home rental company wants to pay a TikTok creator US$10K a month to stay in its properties all over the world for free »»

“I was a VP at Google for 10 years. Here’s the No. 1 skill I looked for at job interviews—very few people had it” »»

9 US cities that will pay you to move there in 2023 »»

Man City/England forward Jack Grealish dropped Nike for Puma »»

Sonos speakers are getting better »»

TikTok will allow creators to share collections of longer videos (up to 20 min.), and charge their audience a premium for access to them »»

Time Out’s 50 best restaurants in London »»

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum shut down online ticket sales thanks to overwhelming demand for its Johannes Vermeer retrospective »»

Is regular HIIT making you sick? »»

DEEPFATE 🍦 VANILLA FLAVORED ADS

Talk to people in advertising and they'll tell you Adland is struggling. Why are ads so vanilla these days?

TALK TO PEOPLE in advertising and they'll tell you Adland is struggling.

• I had a chat with a well-known commercials director today.

• He told me what you also might be recognizing.

• Creative advertising seems super vanilla.

• When presenting ideas to agencies and brands, the “safe choice" seems to be the only choice.

THE SITUATION BEGS an interesting question, especially since advertising used to push creative limits.

• Why are ads so vanilla these days?

THE REASON’S SIMPLE.

• The world doesn't need ads to be weird anymore.

• Unlike the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s —ie., before YouTube— there are plenty of other avenues these days for unexpected creative output.

ZOOM OUT: MAINSTREAM ads used to share really weird thoughts in even weirder ways.

• Google "Where's the Beef" or "Quizno's We love the subs."

• It's hard to believe that Quizno’s one was a real, actual commercial campaign, that really, actually aired. A lot!

• But today, there's no need for ads to do stuff like this.

YOU KNOW WHY.

• You have the entirety of human creative ingenuity in the palm of your hand.

• It’s not just TikTok.

• YouTube is an infinite, unexplored goldmine of weird, across every genre imaginable.

• Even your Netflix has quirky stuff, buried far below the Top 10, that would never had made it to network television.

• And we haven't even touched on the comedic geniuses on Twitter, Reddit, Discord, and beyond.

• For most of advertising's history, none of these creative avenues existed.

BUT. IT'S NOT just that people don't "need" ads to be as quirky or funny as they once were because they have other sources for humour (a demand side shift).

• It is also a supply side shift.

• What that means is, if you're funny, and capable of generating quirky humor, you don't need an ad agency or a brand to help you bring it to the world.

SO, IS THIS the end of creative advertising?

• No.

• There is hope for Adland.

THE GOOD WAY of looking at this new landscape:

• Brands and agencies should realize that the higher creative bar set by millions of talented creators means that they can go higher too.

AND THE MARKET does have an appetite for this kind of creative.

• Liquid Death (Tagline: Murder Your Thirst; valuation: US$700m).

• Oatly (Feast your brain on the irreverent copy in this press release; valuation: US$1.3b. Reminder: This is an oat milk company).

• Duolingo (the language learning app has a compelling, popular, and funny TikTok presence that is largely the brainchild of SMM all star Zaria Parvez)

• Steak-umm (the US-based thin sliced frozen steaks company went viral over the pandemic thanks to its frank, existential Twitter presence, thanks to creative director Nathan Allebach)

• These are just four examples of brands pushing quirky, original creative expressions that really work in the creator economy era.

OK, SO WHAT'S the point here?

• Good advertising has a simple job: to make people happy.

• If unexpectedly weird creative makes your target happy, they will like it, and by extension you.

• But. If the rest of the media landscape is weird enough, and people actually just want the brands they like to reassure them, that's cool too.

ADVICE TO AD people:

• Read the room.

• And if it's not buying the kind of work you want to make, go on and make it yourself.

• There has never been a better time to have any sort of creative impulse.

• Guaranteed there is an audience out there for your taste and voice.

More:

Liquid Death Water Startup Valued at US$700m »» 🔐 

How Duolingo went viral on TikTok to millions of users »»

Polarizing Tweets Pay Off for Steak-umm »»

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Simply reply.