The future of creative work is in flux
An interview with the CCO of Red Antler, the changing creator economy, and factories from Canton Fair.
Welcome back to another edition of HYPER.
This last week on our strange corner of the internet, Oren was investigating the Chinese car illuminati, while Clayton was showing out in Manchester.
In this week’s edition, we’re recapping manufacturers from Canton Fair, breaking down the vibe shift, and the latest in our interview series features the Chief Creative Officer of Red Antler.
If you’re looking for the creative references index from last week, you can find that here.
Let’s begin.
The State of Things
Kicking off, we want to talk about how the vibes are shifting…
First, you may have noticed Instagram feels… different. Tons of content from outside your followers on your main feed, and posted content results are feast or famine, it goes big or goes nowhere. For anyone living in brand strategy land, you can FEEL the shifts to the algorithms, you see it in your feed, your clients feeds, your burner discovery accounts, every change gets highlighted. The last month on Instagram carousels kept rising more and more, and now we have a tone change overall.
Our jobs in creative are now functions of short term timing as much as creative. It’s not just trends, it’s how the technology we consume from is shifting consumer consumption. Awareness is exhausting, and critical, and most campaigns and releases now need to be BUILT far out, then FINALIZED right before launch.
At the same time, Rhode was bought for $1b (including $200m in earnout). Less than 10 products, less than three years old, $212m in revenue. To borrow a parable from my friend Garrett, I’m distrustful of any brand built after Covid, because they haven’t yet been through a cycle… but Rhode is a good one, and shifts the timetable for expectations of modern brand building. A brand dedicated to aesthetics, to influence, to internet culture, to content, with a good product but not a life changing one, executed to perfection. Competing against brands that have innate distribution and attention will become exceedingly hard, and bigger companies will pay top dollar to future out how to integrate that into their portfolios.
Which brings me to the topic of influence. We’re inundated of calls to become a creator, of kids making $10k a month selling products on TikTok shop. How can there possibly be enough money to go around to sustain this economy? Shouldn’t we be done? How many influencers do we really need?
Then you start to do the math. How much money is spent on the $100b TV advertising industry… that when the ads are on consumers are just looking at their phones.
The $10s of billions on news and journalism websites that are zombie relics of a previous internet, banners ads popups and articles that will get more attention when someone recaps it on TikTok…. This is almost all better spent with less cost and higher value in the creator, influencer, TikTok shop affiliate, substack, plus meta/spark ad ecosystem.
The above shows WEEKLY revenue from top TikTok shop affiliate creators for Maybelline. This is a fraction of their affiliates, just one brand of many, and is just a suggestion at the size of the scale and money of the creator economy that people still do not remotely comprehend. For reference, shop creators will be taking home on average 15-35% depending on incentives and structures. And this is just on single videos…
Consumer habits are shifting to streaming, to consumption of news via a carousel, of a second screen more important than the first and the vast majority of those promotional dollars still haven’t shifted. Wherever you think we’re at in the transition scale, its still early.
Opportunities
We get lots and lots of requests for sourcing creatives, so looking at ways we can properly help facilitate that here, starting with some friendlies. Put some short details in the forms below and the brands will reach out directly!
A brand I work with in Cosmetics is looking for a social media manager in LA, well paid, good team, great opportunity for someone socially savvy with experience in the space.
Social Media Manager: Beauty (full time)
Another partner is looking for a freelance writer to help with their newsletter, needs experience in fashion production, understanding of fashion terminology, products and technology.
Newsletter Writer: Fashion production (freelance)
China Scene Report
Plus… factory pics from Canton Fair
Oren was in China in early May for Canton Fair, and just published a full Youtube video breaking down everything you want to know if you head to Guanghou (fabric), Foshan (interiors) and Daluo (jewelry).
Some standout suppliers from the show for starting your own brand in a few categories are below as well!
Below are a few of the Pietra manufacturers we got to meet in person, thanks to everyone who came to our floor walkthrough there, and to Pietra for providing a Chinese speaking team to help get people connected to factories and get questions thorough answered. If you aren’t familiar with Pietra they’re like Alibaba but with a more curated network of manufacturers, freight forwarding, US 3PL option and a wide range of software tools for e-commerce.
MANUFACTURER SELECTS
Cool Betty Cosmetics - Cosmetics and beauty tools
Aroma Du Monda - Fragrance
Beauty Eyewear Co - Sunglasses
Mudanjie - Ceramics
Haixing Headwear - Low MOQ headwear
What’s the Future of AI in Creative Work?
Chatting with Red Antler's Chief Creative Officer on creativity in a burning world, how to use as AI as a partner, digging past the noise to make something beautiful.
In a world that feels increasingly chaotic, what role do you think artists and creativity play in helping people make sense of it all?
The designer Aurélia de Azambuja recently posed a brilliant provocation: “How do you make the logo bigger when the world is burning?” I love that, because it captures this tension so many of us are feeling—how do we stay optimistic in a time that feels overwhelmingly dark?
At its best, design and creativity can be engines of optimism. Most people approach the future with one of two mindsets: fear or hope. Great artists, thinkers, and leaders guide us toward the latter.
For example, we’re working on a humanoid robotics AI brand right now—and there are two versions of that story.
One’s an apocalyptic dystopia where the robots win. The other is a radically hopeful future where robots become partners to humans, caretakers for the elderly, allies in dangerous jobs.
The role of creativity is to tell that second story with power and clarity, and design the future where that eventuality becomes our inevitable reality.
Personally, I’ve wrestled with this a lot.
That’s why outlets like Hyper matter—spaces encouraging community and shared optimism are more important than ever.
When optimism becomes counterculture, creativity is rebellion.
Red Antler’s always been known for building brands with depth. In an era of hyper-customization, how do you think about building brand worlds that still feel cohesive and deeply personal?
Brand worlds today look less like a polished style guide and more like a Basquiat painting—layered, expressive, full of energy.
Most people don’t step back and take in the whole brand; they zoom into the one platform, fragment, or detail that resonates, depending on where and how they interact with the company.
That means we need to build brands with depth and dimensionality—flexible systems where every layer serves a different context. A smart tone of voice for ads. A looser one for influencers.
Visuals that evolve from packaging to TikTok to out-of-home. We build tools, not templates.
The goal is to create worlds that can be both coherent and personal—so the brand means something different, but still something true, to every person who encounters it.
We’re seeing brands increasingly turn to AI for content and ads. What does it mean to build soul into AI-powered creative? How do you balance speed and scale with quality and resonance?
To me, soul is about experimentation—something that surprises both human intellect and spirit. Soul is Coltrane riffing. It’s an Mbappé goal. It’s Steve Jobs deciding your phone should also be an iPod.
AI, by contrast, tends to flatten things. It’s always trying to systematize and optimize. So the opportunity lies in using it against itself—as a tool for improvisation, not just replication.
One shift I’m really excited about is something called “vibe coding”—an emerging approach where developers describe what they want in natural language, and AI handles the technical build.
The implications for brand and creative work are massive. It means we’ll soon be able to design complex digital experiences—interactive tools, generative installations, personalized content ecosystems—by focusing on the feeling we want to create, not the syntax.
That opens the door for creatives to lead with intention and mood, while letting AI handle the mechanics.
The future of soulful AI isn’t in asking it to replicate what already exists. It's teaching it how to help us build what’s never been done—based on emotion, intuition, and a clear sense of purpose.
There’s so much noise in the market today, with AI and automation making it easy to produce endless content. How do you see taste playing a role as a true differentiator right now?
Taste has become the ultimate filter. As content cycles spin faster and faster, they almost always end in a sea of sameness—and that’s when real tastemakers zag. We’re already seeing a shift: people reaching for older tech like 2MP Sony cameras or early-internet aesthetics to stand out. It’s not nostalgia, it’s strategy.
Great taste comes from having a strong internal benchmark and a deep library of references.
Everyone knows the Picasso quote: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
But stealing has never just been about lifting a visual reference. It’s about layering ideas, evolving them, and adding your own creative sauce to make something that surprises people.
AI gives everyone access to the full archive of human creativity. That means the raw material is no longer the differentiator.
What matters now is how you combine it, push it, remix it, and create something that still feels unexpected and alive. That’s where taste shows up. And it’s what keeps the work from blending into the scroll.
A lot of brands feel the same. How do you actively guard against creative uniformity, and what’s the opportunity for having diverse perspectives as a competitive edge?
Avoiding sameness starts with having an extreme allergy to repetition and feeding your curiosity like it’s your job.
The best creative work doesn’t come from staying in your lane. It comes from cross-pollination. At Red Antler, our creative edge comes from being exposed to the most innovative startups on the planet, and getting to weave these life-changing ideas into the rest of the work we do every day.
In a single week, we’ll define creative worlds for a humanoid robot, a neuro-implant startup, a new fast-food chain from a top London chef, an AI fashion platform, and one of the biggest beverage companies on the planet. That kind of variety forces you to stretch, connect dots in new ways, and stay sharp.
I tell my team: be Da Vinci. Fall in love with floral design. Get obsessed with speculative architecture. Learn how to build AI agents. Because the richest creative ideas don’t just come from the brief, they come from how you move through the world.
Feed your curiosity, but also feed your humanity.
Go live a big, interesting, beautiful life—and bring all of that back to the work.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of brand building? Are there shifts you’re paying close attention to as you think about what comes next for Red Antler and your clients?
Brand building right now is the big picture mixed with the reactionary, and I love it. The old model of static brand guidelines is dead.
Today, your brand might be encountered for the first time via a TikTok collab with a 17-year-old creator who has their own distinct aesthetic and ethos. That’s not a threat—it’s the future.
What excites me most is the rise of adaptive brands: identities that learn and shift in real time. I think we’re heading toward a world where your brand shows up differently for every person.
A brand that feels one way to me and a completely different way to you. Think “audience of one,” powered by AI and data, but still deeply human in how it connects.
At Red Antler, we’re building the next generation of brand experiences to meet that moment. Personalized. Contextual. Totally unique. It’s going to get weird, and we’re here for it.
Hyper Reports
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“How do you make the logo bigger when the world is burning?” hits.
LOVE this issue and very appreciative of sharing opportunities for work as well 🥰