8 creative topics to start the week
Brand strategy, employee generated content & the shifting cultural narrative
Checking in from HYPER: Oren is making candid packaging videos live from the Warsaw airport, Clayton is vlogging 24 hour stints in Manchester, and we are both en route to or arrived at the French Rivera for Cannes.
Join us in person in France on Wednesday if you’re in town for our event with Darkroom here: https://lu.ma/bvx2kglj
This week, we're trying a new format--9 insights we feel everyone in brand or creative strategy should have their eyes on.
1 - Paying employees to make content
Ulta is putting a bounty on influencer content from their team members. Their Ulta Beauties program offers payment, training, pr packages and more for employees to make content. As Gen-Z enters the workforce en masse and begins to move up, a stunning 65% (according to a Youtube study) identify themselves as content creators. Expecting that content as part of the job isn’t a good solution for many, but having it as an incentive aligned with marketing budgets and their needs… savvy brands are going to run with this.
2 - Reaching the creative professional
Apple moves the narrative to new media and the creative professionals that are right for it. At this year’s WWDC, Oren was one of the invited creators along with our friends Rachel Karten from Link In Bio and Emily Sundberg from Feed Me—and while some speculated its part of the a shift to their focus on Gen-Z - the overlap of that group and a lot of the others to me covering the event is “creative professionals” - Apple power users in jobs at interesting companies across industries who are excited about design, content and the future. And that group (including a lot of you reading this) isn’t reached by much traditional media, they’ve stopped opening Morning Brew (but see their videos) or The Skimm, and are in a new hybrid media that’s still coming together. If you do want to reach it, Apple’s invitees mix was an interesting start.
3- Everyone is headed to Cannes, but can they make it matter?
We (Oren & Clayton) are both headed to Cannes, and as we watch it unfold, the biggest note so far, is none of the content about this show gets any views- besides influencers with entrenched followings TikTok itself is paying to attend. There is no conversation that isn’t forced by its creators, and from that convo there is almost no organic interest from fans. While the show itself and the operations around it is invaluable for professionals, is there enough cultural movement or insights in the stagnant ad industry to get anyone to listen outside of the riviera these days?
4- There is no such thing as a boring industry, only boring content.
This week on Youtube Oren breaks down an extremely tactical recipe for how “unexciting” businesses from financial planners to massage studios to teachers to wedding planners can make content that does numbers and drives real value for your business.
Oren is also workshopping brand content ideas in the comments if you want to hop in.
And if you want to do this along with the group, the next Cut30 30 day workshop starts June 24th.
5 - Veo3 is good enough, ads are being made with AI
AI ads are now just like UGC videos - a content type you can spend time on or pay for and have in your ad account to test. Great for some industries but not for others, requires expertise and good briefs, and an excellent toolkit for marketers. The future has arrived. That doesn’t mean you’ll find some massive value immediately by adopting it, but it does mean savvy brand teams should have the skillset in their toolkit.
6 - Shifts in comms strategy
Luxury brands are waking up to an influencer layer as the new PR play - paying those with audiencee overlap to say what brands can't or don’t want to directly. Loro Piana on dupes (hat tip @wwornwwell). I will admit I was not a fan of Off White’s forays into Gstaad Guy, but this from Loro places him an appropriate character space for the brand story. Savvily done.
7 - Instagram’s creative arc
Instagram is the focal point of creative expression in 2025, culture moves through it (while full pop culture is still TikTok) and Instagram knows it, and is using that to attract new users with a shock and awe campaign of creatives from Rosalia to Nadia Lee Cohen to Tyler the Creator. Will it be enough for younger Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha to adopt the platform further?
8- Trends don’t die, they go into a toolkit
Everything that was red-hot on social media and fell off… still performs again after a few months. We’re no longer tracking trends, we’re building toolkits of every trend or concept that resonates, both niche and large, and learning to find a gauge with our team of “is now a good time?”
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Thank you so much for reading, and if you see us at Cannes, don’t be afraid to say whats up!
Hyper Reports
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Thank you for this. I've been getting hip to the creator employees strategy and utilizing it in the indie rock industry. This gets me thinking
So true, email marketing companies can be very boring. Which is why we are trying to break that stigma with our branding. Tell us what you think!