The Lynk & Co 08 can go very far. Far enough that you’ll run out of Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton back catalogue before it runs out of metaphorical steam. In a category obsessed with declaring stats across salt flats, we set out to talk about something more radical: how it feels.

Fresh off launching the 01 with WONDER.FULL, we were now introducing its older sibling. A little more refined. A little more exquisite. A little more “bring out the grown-up plates”. Same party, better wine.

In a category hooked on pairing range with escape, our research told us something different: people aren’t desperate to escape their everyday lives, in fact they quite like them. What they want is a car that keeps up, a vehicle that doesn’t interrupt the rhythm of life with low-battery panic. Less range anxiety. More range confidence.

The team landed on Limit Less - a car that can keep up limits you less. Nice. Two words. Big idea. Channel-agnostic. Digital to Dealership.

Visually, we wanted to ditch the typical highway to nowhere and instead, we created “The Flow,” a collage technique where life moves seamlessly. A continuous rhythm. The 08 doesn’t take you away from life; it helps paint the rich tapestry.

Director Pau Dalmases and the CANADA gang assembled a team that brought calm, finesse and rubber chickens. We shot over three days in and around Barcelona, blazing sun to biblical thunderstorms. Real life, basically. Editor Carlos Font then stitched it together like a jigsaw puzzle inside a jigsaw puzzle masquerading as a Russian Doll.

The result is the kind of effortless flow that only comes from heroic effort. After the dust had settled Cameron Fraser, Head of Brand Creative at Lynk & Co and I pretended to have a chat by a log fire:

Hi Cameron, come way from the hearth, I don’t want you to get chill blains. That’s better, maybe a little too close. Automotive marketing is obsessed with perfection. We deliberately fragmented the product. How difficult was it to get comfortable with breaking up the car?

Cameron: In any business when you start to mess with the final product you will obviously ruffle some feathers. Our brand has a heritage of looking at how to approach opportunities with a point of difference, so for me, I felt this was one of those opportunities. There is always fear when you take a risk. Especially in communications. But the first time we saw it all line up, we knew the risk was worth it. And that is testament to the partners we chose to work with.


When did you first think, “Okay, we might be onto something here”?
Cameron: When I first saw a reference on how what we called the “collage effect” could work. That’s when I saw the piece come to life in my mind.

If this had gone wrong, what would have gone wrong?
Cameron: Wow, interesting question. To be honest I believe that other than some terrible production nightmare or an act of nature, basically things that are out of your control, you stop what can go wrong early in the process. By having the hard conversations, pushing yourself and your creative and production partners, you iron out those challenges you might face and then turn them into opportunities. If it had gone wrong it would have gone wrong there, and then we would have fixed it. Together.

This project took a shedload of pre planning. What didn’t we plan for?
Cameron: A broken hydraulic ramp and some lightning.

Post Production was an intense editing process. What was the process like internally.
Cameron: It was actually really good. We set up expectations from the beginning that we are not doing post production by committee. There was a trust and belief that we had built up from the previous piece of work that allowed us as the core team to make decisions all the way up to the final product. We obviously made the necessary checks along the way. But It felt really smooth and enjoyable to me.

From your perspective, what makes a creative partnership not just function, but thrive?
Cam: Conversation, understanding, trust. That runs both ways. Trust that the partners you have chosen know what they are doing until they prove otherwise, they are the professionals in the space, so let them do what they do best. Your partners need to trust that you are making the best decision from the lens of the business. It’s what you do, you live and breathe it. If you can understand that and respect that then you create the space to have the conversations in the difficult moments when you both maybe feel you are not being heard. And then you find the best solution.

What took longer than expected on set.
Cameron: One of my toilet breaks.


In a category obsessed with range, we chose rhythm. The Lynk & Co 08 isn’t here to help you escape reality via a cinematic road to nowhere. It’s here to keep you moving through the reality of school runs and side quests without missing a beat.

Butterfly collections have always felt faintly absurd. The posture of conquest applied to something that weighs less than a paperclip. Trophy hunting, if Wallace and Gromit ran a safari.

So this is a version of that tradition, without the net. Origami butterflies, folded from butter wrappers.

Butter. Flies.

What began as wordplay became a wall of kaleidoscopic specimens, each formed from the foils of international butters. A celebration of packaging design and dairy in an attempt to elevate the ordinary and overlooked.

Wrappers were sourced: supermarkets, farm shops, corner stores. Holidays became an International Butter Smuggling Ring. Friends became supply chain accomplices sending local favourites from their own regions and neighbourhoods. Before long the fridge housed anonymous butter blocks stripped of identity. Less like a larder, more like a stash of chilled Semtex.

The online origami community provided technical rigour, guiding increasingly intricate folds until repetition turned process into practice. Production gathered pace: part art, part dairy, all cholesterol.

“Butter Flies” became the umbrella title. Individual works required something more specific. Metamorphosis suggested a lineage, which led, inevitably, to the patron saints of transformation: Boyz II Men. Each butter-fly collection carries the title of a track: Four Seasons of Loneliness. It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday and of course End of the Road. Abstract, aloof, technically a tribute.

They flutter. They rustle. They carry a faint note of toast. Not from the rainforest, but from aisle four.

Say no to big game. Say yes to big dairy and trophy hunting for the lactose tolerant.

Four Seasons of Loneliness

It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday

End of the Road

International Butter Smuggling

David Ogilvy’s much repeated quote “Give me the freedom of a tight brief” offers that strict constraints, not loose ones, frees creativity by forcing focus and clarity.

The same can be applied to the media plan. “Give me the freedom of a tight media plan’ focuses the thinking and leads to work that is tailor made to the medium.

The opposite, the loose media plan, is the killer of creativity. It usually arrives with the dreaded phrase “matching luggage,” which sounds coordinated but really means “creatively anaemic,” it’s the kind of plan that tries to please every channel and ends up pleasing none.

A tight media brief takes the medium seriously. It makes the channel part of the idea. It forces the creative team to use the format’s strengths and produces work that sings in its medium rather than gasps across ten.

Pair that focus with a strong brand platform - an umbrella idea sturdy enough to hold every channel together - and you’ve got a brand with real presence. The tone, message, and intent stay consistent, while the expression flexes effortlessly across cultures, contexts, and languages.

Take the latest work for Virgin Active. The brand platform “Where Wellness Gets Real” and subsequent brand campaign “Leave The Cult, Join The Club’ rallies against the toxic messaging rampant in the wellness industry. The tight media brief was ‘billboards.’ The result, ironically, freedom.

Instead of Frankensteining assets for every algorithm; the team wrote for the road, crafting lines that worked at 30 mph - short, sharp and self-aware. The umbrella thought stayed the same, but the expression evolved, refreshed, yet unmistakably Virgin Active.

Virgin Active : WE ARE Pi

Combining a strong brand platform with a tight media brief creates consistency for specialist teams to play. The platform gives the brand consistency and the tight media brief offers the the opportunity to refresh the message.

A loose media plan usually results in the same ‘key visual’ repeated ad nauseum, literally. A tight brief gives the brand confidence to reinterpret the platform and make the message work for the time, the place and the cultural moment.

Brand Platform ➡️ Tight Media Brief ➡️ Specialist Teams

Great ideas don’t suffocate in tight briefs, they start to breathe. So next time you’re in a briefing and hear the words ‘key visual’ or worse, ‘matching luggage,’ take a deep breath and say it proudly: tighter please.

In a not-so-distant marketing era “collabs” were the shiny new toy. Supreme x Oreo. Balenciaga x Crocs. 7-Eleven x Crocs, KFC x err, Crocs… again. Collabs are now as surprising as a Love Island breakup. We expect them. We scroll past them, even when a crisp packet costs $1500.

Balenciaga x Lays

What if the future lies, less in collaboration and more in crossover? Less of a joint press release, more a shared cinematic universe. Stealing from Marvel and, more importantly, when boyband 5ive turned up in an episode of Neighbours From Hell, what if brands lived inside each other’s worlds? Less logo mash-up, more narrative sprawl. Brands would no longer stand alone, they would cameo, fuel plot-twists and steal the show.

A 'storyweb' instead of a storyline. Integrated narratives to keep viewers engrossed across multiple channels.

The legendary 'Monkey & Al' have storywebbed (ITV Digital, then PG Tips) their way from tech into tea with more emotional chemistry than most rom-coms. Tide's hijacking of the Super Bowl in 2018 turned every commercial and parts of the broadcast into its own story and Visit Britain recently built a cinematic multiverse featuring Paddington, Bridget Jones and Spider-Man.

Monkeh - From Tech to Tea

But what if we went further and fully embraced the FMCU (Fast-Moving Consumer Universe)? In this multiverse Howard from the Halifax now works at Abbey National. The OXO family are absolutely rinsing the broadband in EE land. Barry Scott is moonlighting as a cleaner in The Rovers, the Queen Vic and The Woolpack. And we all watch it Start with a Swipe when a Scottish Widow joins Tinder, matches with Captain Birdseye, goes Insta official from a hot tub at Center Parcs, survives an Ikea flat pack meltdown to not just book the honeymoon, but Thomas Cook it.

Let's put brands back in charge of what they first started, the soap opera. Think timelines instead of taglines. Plot placement instead of product placement. Aleksandr and Sergei don't just sponsor Coronation Street, they move into Number 13 and wreak havoc on the cobblestones. Sergei takes a job at Underworld, Aleksandr starts dating Gail Platt and the meerpups appear as surprise twins in a paternity twist that even Ken Barlow didn’t see coming.

Guiding Light - 1937-2009, Proctor & Gamble.

Forget the collab. Embrace the crossover. Collabs were about commerce. Crossovers are about character and characters create stories that stick. In today’s Attention Economy, brands need to do more than simply show up; they need to show range. Brands that crash the party,spike the punchbowl and wake up in another brand world will win. In a world where ads are skipped one way forward is to storyweb. In this universe the stories are layered, chaotic and connected. Storylines are dead. Long live the StoryWeb.

First published in Creative Review

Advertising’s biggest crime is impatience. That and putting QR codes on billboards, but mostly impatience. We live in the age of instant everything. Instant noodles. Instant opinions. Instant success and instant disappointment. If a campaign doesn’t go viral by Wednesday, it’s already yesterday's news and everyone’s pivoting like they’re auditioning for Strictly.

It’s not only advertising. Entertainment is just as ruthless. One season wonders such as The Get Down, High Fidelity, and Kaos are all smart, stylish and apparently too slow to spark. We expect ideas to arrive fully formed and commercially bulletproof. But great, repeatable ideas don’t work like that. They need time to stretch, to settle and find their groove.

Only Fools and Horses, the now-legendary British sitcom was almost shot in the paddock after season one. Low ratings and a lukewarm audience response saw executives circling like it was a lame pony. But it was given time. It came back, got better and by season three it found its feet. By the time Del Boy fell through the bar, it was the most beloved sitcom in Britain. Not just a hit, but a multi-platform, international juggernaut spanning 20+ years: West End musicals, prequels, sequels, board games and cultural references that still get quoted today.

It didn’t do that by pivoting. It did it by persisting. It was given time to get good. Audiences were given time to catch up and because it was allowed to mature, it became beloved.

The John Lewis Christmas ad wasn’t born a blockbuster. The early outings were nice enough, polite piano covers and product shots with feelings. It took a few goes to find its emotional groove. By the time Monty the Penguin slid onto screens, it wasn’t just an ad, it was a national event. The audience caught up. And now it's stitched into the fabric of British culture.

The most interesting thing about 'The Most Interesting Man in The World' is that before he became a global icon he wasn't very interesting at all. The original version featured a younger actor delivering one-liners about adventure that actually caused a decline in sales during test campaigns. Rather than abandoning the concept, the team stuck with it and refined it. They recast the role with an older, more seasoned actor and reworked the writing. The campaign eventually achieved cult status, increasing sales by 22% and became a flag bearer for keeping the faith, creative patience and perseverance.

Dove’s Real Beauty campaign is now iconic, but early on it faced backlash. Critics called it patronizing and doubted the authenticity of its “real” imagery. Instead of folding, Unilever doubled down. They listened and shifted tone, introducing 'acts not ads' as a way to communicate authenticity and believability. Through campaigns such as Evolution and Real Beauty Sketches they were able to turn skepticism into support, creating a lasting movement that challenged beauty norms and redefined what advertising could do.

Most campaigns today are killed before they’ve had a chance to breathe. A faint whiff of negative feedback sees a campaign shelved and the business go to pitch in the hope that a shiny new team will create a shiny new idea that the public will immediately take a shine to. Even without the negativity, if an idea isn't a home run first time, fatigue sets in for the marketing team long before the public have even clocked what they’re trying to say. The team has seen the deck a thousand times but the audience has barely seen the pre-roll once. If you’ve got a campaign built on something solid, a strategy with teeth and execution with edge, don’t panic if it doesn’t explode on day one. Let it evolve. Give it time. Give it space. Give it to at least season three.

Luxury used to be simple. A Lamborghini. A Birkin. A wristwatch that cost more than a house. The formula was easy: if it sparkles, revs or takes 12 months to be hand stitched, preferably by someone in Tuscany, it’s luxury.

But that kind of luxury is dead, or at the very least, wheezing into its monogrammed silk pillow. Luxury is no longer a thing. It’s a feeling or more precisely, a biological metric. Luxury today is a resting heart rate of 47bpm and a telomere length that makes Death check his ruler twice.

The most coveted thing money can buy is no longer a yacht, it’s time. As one longevity bro put it: “My Rolex tells the time. My Altos Labs subscription buys it.”

And buy it they do.

Bryan Johnson is bio hacking his way back to puberty at a reported cost of $2million per year and Luke Lintz, 25, spends €40k per month on wellness because "you can’t put a price on living forever and being young and sexy."

Luxury tourism is now less ‘treat yourself’ and more ‘treat your cellular degradation’ with hotels catering for patients rather than guests. The Four Seasons in Maui (the setting of the OG White Lotus) offers sea views that oxygenate your mitochondria with packages that include IV infusions, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, ozone therapy and stem cell treatments. It seems the luxury of a swim up bar and all day cocktails is so very last season.

The Gucci x Oura ring allows users to 'track and own their potential.' What next? The Louis Vuitton “Forever Trunk" - a monogrammed personal, portable cryo-pod for the discerning jetsetter who prefers to be frozen in time? What about Moët & Chandon “Blood Brut" - a champagne that reverses aging until you're too young to buy it?

Moet & Chandon : Blood Brut - Ageing’s worst enemy, ID’s worst nightmare

Even luxury real estate is getting involved. Singapore is being redesigned to incorporate "Blue Zone" principles: walkable cities, green canopies, circadian lighting and buildings so healthy they make Gwyneth Paltrow look like a chimney sweep.

New Luxury doesn’t purr or sparkle. It lives quietly in your bone density, your microbiome and your VO2 max. The dream of eternal youth is replacing the aspirations once promised by brands. Supplements are the new it-bags and the flex that used to live on your wrist is now in your bloodwork. The luxury brands of the future won’t sell lifestyle, they’ll sell lifespan, because nothing says status like not being dead.

*first published in Creative Review

I was asked for my opinion on some of the best rebrands of the 20th Century. I submitted the following, I never heard back.

BEST REBRAND OF 1970’s

Arnold George Dorsey > Engelbert Humperdinck

Arnold George Dorsey was a struggling British nightclub singer. In 1969 he rebadged himself as Engelbert Humperdinck, a name borrowed from the 19th century German composer of Hansel & Gretel. This strategic rebranding and a couple of absolute bangers (Please Release Me, Let Me Go - anyone?) catapulted him to immediate stardom. With his new moniker and each of his hits selling over a million copies, he quickly amassed a passionate following known as the "Humperdinkers." This community extended beyond fandom becoming a global network of like-minded individuals united by their shared love for his music and support for one another.

'Humperdinkers' were the pioneers of the modern fan culture we see today. They laid the groundwork for contemporary artist fan communities and paved the way for the Beliebers, Directioners, Arianators, Swifties, Lady Gaga's Little Monsters, and those that reside in the Beyhive. Each of these groups owes its existence to the OG fan community, the Humperdinkers, and demonstrates how a simple rebranding effort can spark a vibrant and enduring global community.

BEST REBRAND OF 1980’s

Nothing Lasts Forever > Die Hard

Rebranded from Roderick Thorp’s pedestrian book title Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard wasn’t just a rebrand; it was a rebirth. The two-word reinterpretation became a billion-dollar, five-film juggernaut spanning a quarter century.

The rebrand encapsulates the essence of the franchise in only 7 letters: 'no matter how much the enemy tries, it’s impossible for the main character to die.'

The rebrand’s ambition stretched further than cinema. Die Hard ventured into video games, graphic novels, and appeared in pop culture hits like LEGO Movie, Family Guy, and Call of Duty. Kiefer Sutherland’s TV series 24 was originally pitched as Die Hard 24/7, envisioning John McClane in place of Jack Bauer.

Nothing lasts forever? Maybe, but a rebrand can be bulletproof.

BEST REBRAND OF 1990’s

Six of One > Across The Hall > Friends Like Us > Friends

Long before it became the reason we all think sarcasm counts as emotional depth, Friends went through a painful identity crisis. Friends wasn’t always Friends. NBC’s soon-to-be cultural behemoth cycled through a number of regrettable title options - Insomnia Café (quirky indie band), Across the Hall (estate agent listing energy), and Friends Like Us (Craigslist ad) - before finally settling on one word that conquered the globe.

Friends is clean. It's instant, it’s a title that requires no explanation and zero patience. It doesn’t try too hard, it’s an open invitation to sink into a couch and commit to a decade of terrible decisions and even worse haircuts.

This rebrand didn’t just name a show it cemented an era, defined a generation and birthed a billion-dollar syndication empire. Six of One might have been forgotten. Friends is the reason we all think we deserve a rent-controlled apartment and a lobster soulmate.

Bootlegs have been poking fun at companies and culture since forever. In the 1800's unauthorized copies of Charles Dickens’ novels saw the author asking "Please sir, I want some credit." In the 1980's Dapper Dan took fake Gucci and made it a Harlem institution, In the 90’s Aditoff were ripping off Adidas, Krappa took on Kappa, and Le Shark was nipping at the toes of Lacoste. Today, GalXBoy in South Africa is redefining streetwear by becoming the brands it emulates, all on its own terms. Brands used to hunt down these renegades. Not anymore

Aditof / Le Shark / Krappa - very big on Blackpool Promenade.

Dapper Dan | GalXBoy - very big in Harlem & Johannesburg

Brands have realized that kicking bootleggers out of the party isn’t just pointless, it’s counterproductive. Instead of slapping cease-and-desist orders on anyone with a flair for DIY branding, they’re being celebrated, authenticated and monetised. Yesterday's rebels are today's R&D teams. Knock-offs have been replaced by knock-ups, where brands invite the pirates on board. It’s a pivot from “we own this, go away,” to “we own this, come play.” Brands are waking up to the fact that these remixers, repurposers and reimaginers aren’t wrecking their image, they’re amplifying it.

McDonalds, after 30 years, finally embraced the 'WcDonalds' franchise that has featured in over 100 Manga films by creating 'WcDonalds' special menus, WcDonald's pop up restaurants and WaccyD's merchandise. The message? “We see you, and we’re in on the joke.” Coca-Cola acknowledged the homemade logos painted on storefronts across the world and turned them into a global campaign. Instead of treating street artists as vandals Coke treated them as collaborators, transforming these unsanctioned efforts into brand equity. Diesel's ‘Go With The Fake’ saw the flagship store sell purposefully mislabeled products to become the biggest fake of them all and, in the longest call back ever, Gucci collaborated with Dapper Dan himself to create a collection inspired by his own knock ups 50 years prior.

WcDonalds | Wieden + Kennedy

Coca Cola | Bootleg Billboards | VML

Gucci x Dapper Dan

Future focused brands aren’t locking their stories in corporate vaults; they’re throwing open the doors. Next Gen brands will lean into entirely fictional concepts, taking inspiration from campaigns like Clash of Clans’ “Clash From the Past,” which celebrated a 40-year history for a game that’s only been around for 10. Fans ate it up.

Clash of The Clans | Wieden + Kennedy

In this future, fake is the new real. Imaginary sports teams will sell so much apparel and merchandise they become real-life league contenders. (Hello AFC Richmond.) Fashion designers will create uniforms for non-existent restaurants which then have to open due to popular demand. Record labels will create back catalogs for bands that never existed, the hits proving so popular that the bands 'reunite' for a live tour.

Today’s bootleggers are shaping tomorrow’s brands. Culture is chaotic, unpredictable, and wildly creative. Brands that channel that energy, rather than suppress it, will find themselves riding high. Open the door, hand over the pen and let the world write the next chapter. Welcome to the future, where the knock-off is dead, and the knock-up reigns supreme.

First published in Creative Review

There's no such thing as a small brief. Only an opportunity for something bigger. Whether it's a B2B classified ad for industrial lubricants, a leaflet warning you about flu season, or a tweet for attention, the job remains the same: take what you’re given and turn it into something better than it deserves to be.

This is especially prevalent for juniors, those entering the industry wide eyed but wondering where all the 'big' juicy briefs are. The ones that will see them on the podium at Cannes.

Here's the thing about the 'big' briefs. The bigger the brief the bigger the expectation. That means more scrutiny, more layers of approval, which can mean the more blunt and boring a sharp idea becomes. Smaller briefs on the other hand have less scrutiny, less expectation, less layers to navigate.

Instead, make every brief count. Take the small brief, with the lower expectations and knock it out of the park. Make a small space press ad unignorable and you too will become unignorable, and when the big briefs do roll in, your name will be on the list.

Take the legendary "Pregnant Man' ad. A leaflet that inspired a pub. The brief was for an ad to be placed inside Family Planning Clinics, the equivalent of a D2C social post today. Bill Atherton saw opportunity and created a concept so compelling and, at the time so controversial that it won every gong in adland. The small brief became so famous it inspired the name of Saatchi's own pub and was the ad that launched the UK's first global hot shop.

Pregnant Man : Cramer Saatchi / Saatchi & Saatchi

As a placement creative, Mike Nicholson got saddled with a stinker: a brief demanding the dreaded multiple pack shots. No one else in the department wanted it. His creative director even apologised while handing it over. But Mike and art director Daryl Corps saw magic in the mandatory: pack shots as plunger. The poster cleaned up at the award shows, got them hired and made the rest of the department jealous.

Tunes : AMV BBDO : Mike Nicholson & Daryl Corps

A junior team at Leo Burnetts took a John West trade brief and turned it into a Grand Prix winning poster campaign. The team refused to 'knock something out and wait for the big brief' and instead saw an opportunity to show what they were capable of. The team sketched an idea that the Creative director's believed in so much they got a photographer to shoot and produce it before showing it to the client. The team at John West loved the 'trade ad' and ran it as a nationwide billboard campaign which went on to dazzle the juries at Cannes.

Trade Ad to Billboard Glory : John West : Leo Burnett : Julie Adams and Richard Connor

Another 'apologetic briefing' was transformed into Cannes Gold by copywriter Justin Moore. What was briefed as a 'little internal video for a sales conference' became Johnnie Walker's most famous ad ever. There was no budget and no reason to believe it would ever amount to anything. But Moore had a vision and the nerve to email Robert Carlyle’s agent to pitch him the idea. The rest is advertising history.

Johnnie Walker, The Man Who Walked Around The World : Justin Moore.

Even if you're making something that wont necessarily set the world alight, look at everything as an opportunity. You’re on a set with cameras, a crew, actors, directors and photographers who all have a general appetite for creativity and making fun stuff. Ask nicely and you might get to make some things on the side; the execution the client didn't buy or sometimes, if you’re lucky, a music video for a local band.

Ad Shoot to Music Video : Pigeon Horse Sex Tennis : Win Like An Eagle

Even if the brief in front of you feels like a dead end, treat it like an open door. The biggest opportunity is the one sitting on your desk right now. Go grab it.

Every brand wants to own a hue so distinct, so definitive, that even a glimpse could trigger Pavlovian devotion. Coca-Cola is red; Pepsi is blue - a carbonated battle of the primaries. Heineken’s green invites good times, while Budweiser’s red is less a colour and more a rallying cry that fuels post match autopsies. EasyJet, Hermes, Just Eat - all in on orange and Skittles, so greedy it made a grab for the entire rainbow.

Long before brands turned Pantones into profit, one artist cornered the market on a singular shade: Yves Klein, the OG colour monopolist. International Klein Blue (IKB), a hypnotic ultramarine, wasn’t just a colour, it was a lifestyle. Klein didn’t just paint with it, he bathed in it, rolled naked models in it and filled swimming pools with it. His monochromatic fever dream made him a global sensation. But what set Klein apart was his ability to combine colour, interactivity and sheer audacity into experiences that were equal parts art and elaborate prank.

In 1958 Klein staged an exhibition called The Void. On opening night guests were greeted by a theatrical blue curtain and once inside they found…nothing. Klein had stripped the gallery bare, leaving only the overwhelming emptiness of the guest's own expectations.

As they milled about in confusion, they were served gin. Lots of it. Enough to lubricate their disappointment. Only later, once they'd left did they realize they’d been part of the artwork all along. The gin had been laced with a pigment that turned their urine blue. For days, they unwittingly participated in Klein’s greatest interactive piece: a colourful prank on the human body.

If this were to happen today social media would have been flooded (literally) with influencers and creators streaming their streams. Collabs galore would have seen limited edition IKB x Evian bottles and Calvin x Yves Klein merch with messages such as “I went to the Yves Klein exhibition and all I got was a minor urinary tract infection and this perfectly adequate t-shirt."

Klein understood today's brief: Interactivity isn’t optional, It’s essential. And if you can make people laugh and maybe slightly traumatized, even better. Yves Klein didn’t just own a colour; he weaponized it, turning it into a playful, provocative force that still resonates today.

Colour isn’t just an identity, it’s an opportunity to provoke, surprise, and engage. When activation calls, think like Klein: see colour as more than a swatch, make it a moment worth remembering.

Social media is the new TV with shows catering to every niche under the sun. The brands that will thrive are the ones that become the shows we binge, offering irresistible episodic content that stays true to their brand.

Brands can succeed because they have an advantage that no TV writer could dream of: a preloaded plotline. Unlike screenwriters and creators sweating over blank pages, brands with a clear purpose have a storyline and a premise that is already familiar. Imagine a Survivor-style reality show for the visually impaired called 'Should I Stay or Should I Go to Specsavers', or 'Stars in Their Stomachs', a Snickers series featuring delusional celebrity impersonations. The brands that thrive in this new age will spin their DNA into irresistible formats and snag their place in the VIP lounge of Bingetopia.

To thrive in Bingetopia, brands need more than just a familiar plotline, they need a format audiences can come back to, time and again. Blendtec’s Will It Blend? cracked this code years ago. This “product demo as entertainment” was so repeatable that viewers knew both the setup and the punchline, and tuned in for over 15 years. Keeping the format consistent, allowed it to flex, mixing in cultural nods (Chuck Norris figurine: doesn’t blend) and trends (iPad: blends) to stay fresh and relevant. Millions watched, proving that repetition doesn’t have to mean stale. More recently, La La Kind Cafe's “Drive By Kindness” sees compliments handed out to strangers, a repeatable episodic series that aligns the brand’s mission of normalizing kindness with a repeatable formula that attracts eyeballs in the hundreds of millions.

Bingetopia's best bit? You don’t need a full cast, multiple cameras or a six-figure budget to kick things off. Dip your toe in and scale if something bites. BK Coffee Shop’s TikTok show takes a scrappy, authentic approach, starting as a low-key, in-house series before scaling with cameo appearances from local creators and niche internet personalities. The show balances humour and community storytelling, blending casual café banter with cultural commentary, coffee-centric bits, and the occasional absurdist skit. Its tone is effortlessly cool yet unpolished, leaning into Brooklyn’s indie charm while subtly reinforcing the shop’s brand as a creative hub, an approach that has paid off, racking up millions of views and turning a neighbourhood café into a viral social media phenomenon.

Brands can also look to editorial for tips on how to scale. The likes of GQ, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue adopt simple, repeatable formats and scale through celebrity. 'Go To Bed With Me' (Harper's Bazaar) sees everyone from Kesha to Jackson Wang share their night-time skincare routine. 'Objects of Affection' (Vogue) celebrates celebrities' most prized possessions and GQ's ‘Actually Me’ sees celebs go undercover on social media to answer weird questions about themselves. These shows have a combined audience totalling billions mainly because they bring big names closer to their fans in a refreshingly raw way. Brands can tap into this scalability by leveraging existing relationships and sponsorships, showcasing their ambassadors in a more genuine light. Instead of the usual glossy ads, we get to see the real, vulnerable sides of celebs - exactly what their audience craves. Imagine "Maybe She's Born With It?" with the proud parents of Shay Mitchell, Peggy Gou and the rest of the Maybelline crew flipping through family photo albums, proving it’s definitely Maybelline. Or 'Because I'm Worth It', featuring the L'Oréal all-stars - Cheryl, Viola, Eva et al - justify their most outrageous purchases.

When you think about it, this episodic approach is no different to what we traditionally call campaigns. Familiar, repeatable stories based on a brand's core story. 'Heineken Refreshes The Parts’ and ‘The Most Interesting Man in The World’ featured episodes that spanned years and reflected culture. The best billboard campaigns are episodic - from classic Economist ads to the British Airways series that we see today. The difference here is that people wait to be served these episodes whereas with today's binge friendly media landscape, get it right and people will be searching out episodes and devouring them.

Destination Binge: make it familiar, make it repeatable, make it scalable. Brands that embrace this episodic, binge-worthy approach will be tomorrow’s pop culture icons, instead of just sitting on shelves they'll be starring in our entertainment feeds. Forget chasing eyeballs, the future belongs to the brands we can’t help but binge.

Seven years in the making, Crois Pas Qu’on Dort (Don't Think We're Sleeping) isn’t just a film, it’s a testament to grit, independence, and identity, both behind and in front of the camera. Since 2017, we’ve collaborated with Nike to tell a coming-of-age story that transcends sports, following three standout athletes through five life-changing years.

We started the process with over 500 athletic profiles, whittled down to a few dozen, and eventually locked in on the final three protagonists: Charles-Antoine, a runner with an intellectual disability and Leyna & Maysane, French twin sisters and heirs to their Laotian-Algerian family’s very own taekwondo dynasty. 

These aren’t just athletes, they’re the underdogs of French society, pushing not only for gold medals but for identity, independence, and recognition. They’re fighting for a win in life, not just in sport. It’s about being seen, not just as athletes but as individuals claiming their place in the French narrative.

To support the narrative of visibility and recognition Pi Studios created the CPQD Pledge - a commitment to a safe, diverse, and inclusive environment that fosters learning. The commitment saw us recruit a film crew and creative squad who represent our athletes and their communities to help bring the story to life. From brainstorm to delivery, Parisian creatives consulted with the team at Pi Studios with the ambition to make all creative decisions as relevant as possible.

The poster was shot by Solene Gun, whose lens captures the grit and grace of immigrant Parisian youth. Her work reflects her own experience as a Turkish immigrant living in Paris and touches on the alienation and resilience that defines her community. We were instantly drawn to her cover for Dazed's ‘Togetherness’ issue and were thrilled when she agreed to shoot the images that would become the movie's posters.

Solene Gun : Dazed Magazine

The concept is a literal visualization of the film’s title Crois Pas Qu’on Dort (‘Don’t Think We’re Sleeping.’) We see the athletes laying down - dreaming not sleeping - with the image turned 180 degrees to demonstrate their determination to flip societal expectations on their head. Solene and the team distilled the essence of our three athletes into a striking visual nod to the French tricolor, encapsulating their spirit in every shot. The images, much like its subjects, refuse to be ignored.

For the titles, Ruder Plakat was chosen as the typeface due to its bold and impactful quality and is used at dramatic scale - a rallying cry of Parisian youth. The typeface was then modified by Anthony & Hugo from Parisian design studio Athenia  who employed varying letter widths to echo the movement and rhythm of sport as well as geometric forms as a homage to the Olympic Rings. Together with CC Studio we then developed a motion system where the letterforms open up, resembling the transformation of the ‘awakened’ state of the athletes in the film.

Crois Pas Qu’on Dort is more than a documentary; it’s a visual anthem for the underdogs, flipping the script on who gets to be seen and celebrated. This film captures a generation fighting for their place in the world. With a creative team that mirrors the very spirit of these athletes, this project is proof that you don't need to be part of the establishment to create something iconic.

The trailer for the movie can be seen below and the full movie is in cinemas now and will be streaming soon.

Dallenbach suggests we’re all blinder than a bat in a blackout when it comes to the future, that is until it smacks us right in the face and seems so obvious that you can't unsee it. A bit like the image above. It’s like staring at a grainy Rorschach blob until someone mentions that it's a cow. Suddenly, that is all you can see. We can’t predict the future until it arrives, awkwardly and obviously. Just as nobody saw Zoom replacing transatlantic travel for one hour meetings until a pandemic turned us all into pixelated squares, what else is on the horizon and which is more bat and which is more bat signal?

Ai Blocking Fashion: Wear Your Privacy on Your Sleeve.
Facial recognition is so last year. In 2025 Ai will ID you via your heartbeat and your breath. Transformative for health tech and things like early heart attack detection but slightly terrifying for everyone else. The next generation of connectivity, 6G, won't be about making your phone stream your Cash In the Attic boxset more smoothly, it will be about reading human biometrics at scale. To combat this intrusion will we see a rise in L'Oreal Surveillance Camera Creams - because your privacy is worth it - and other Ai blocking accessories? Think T-shirts with blocker-patches over your heart and other vital organs, keeping yourself to yourself and your identity a secret. The tin foil hat brigade has been around for decades and the launch of Ohmni in 2024 saw MIA go all in with stealth hoodies and silver shield trousers; will 2025 see it finally go mainstream with a Gucci x Perma Foil collab?

Genetic Paparazzi: Chewed Gum Today, Bioweapons Tomorrow.

Think hacking your Instagram is invasive? Wait until your DNA gets swiped. Thanks to the boom in genetic testing and ancestry platforms like 23andme, your genetic blueprint is as secure as an unattended Mars Bar at a dog's dinner. 23andMe got hit with a cyber heist in 2024, spilling 7 million identities onto the dark web’s sketchiest auction houses where even sketchier types bid for, usually celebrity, DNA for most probably nefarious purposes - let me know if you can think of any other purpose. The University of Maryland has dubbed this phenomenon "genetic paparazzi" predicting a future of celeb stalkers who don't just settle for blurry photos; these folk are collecting celeb DNA - in the form of hair strands off hotel pillows and discarded chewing gum - engineering viruses that target only them and demanding a crypto ransom for the antidote. World leaders and politicians refusing DNA collecting covid tests and Madonna's DNA clean up crew suddenly seem legit. Anyone for a Hunger Games x Jurassic Park x Black Mirror three way in 2025?


$weet Dream$ : Sleep Is For Sale
Welcome to 2025, where marketing tiptoes into your dreams. Cambridge University researchers have figured out that exposing people to certain sounds and stimuli can manipulate their nighttime visions. That earworm you heard all day becomes a full-blown cinematic experience during sleep. The good news - free dream content. The bad news, it's sponsored by Doritos.

The Smart House that pays the rent.
Your home will be your side hustle, full of smart appliances that will earn money while you sleep, are at work or on holiday. Instead of lying dormant while you’re otherwise engaged your appliances will rent out their computing power. On their own the processing power is tiny but when connected to thousands, if not millions of other appliances the collective power can execute more complex tasks. Your fridge? It works for NASA harvesting asteroids. Your microwave? A blockchain miner. Your dishwasher is out curing cancer. Big Brother may be watching, but at least he’s earning you passive income.

Three not so imaginary boys.

The future looks like a mashup of The Jetsons, Blade Runner and an elaborate April Fool’s joke. Here's to tinfoil fashion, sponsored dreams, DNA pirates and a fridge that earns more than you.

To celebrate the launch of its limited-edition Squid Game bottle and mark the return of the hit Korean drama we teamed up with Johnnie Walker to create The Drop, an adrenaline-fueled experience that turned an ordinary billboard into a live-action survival game.

Taking inspiration from the spiced cookies paired with whiskey and mixing it with the show’s nail-biting Cookie Challenge, The Drop challenged brave fans to grab a cookie tin from the billboard and remove the delicate Johnnie Walker bottle in one piece before time ran out.

Those who won were rewarded with tickets to the Squid Game premiere and those who failed dropped to their fate. Literally.

Super fans flocked from across Europe to chip and chisel their way through the cookies and for a moment, licking cookies in public was somehow both cool and terrifying.

A billboard, some whiskey cookies and a bottle of Johnnie Walker, all wrapped in Squid Game folklore. A mix of sugary tension and a splash of liquid courage making survival all the more thrilling.

According to Nobel Prize winner and author Daniel Kahneman “thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats. They can do it, but they’d prefer not to.”

Walking on the other hand is a different kettle of cats altogether.

While thinking might make us howl in protest, walking is the magical cure for all creative blocks. Walking gives your mind legs, so next time you're in a rut, get outside and reap the positive effects of putting one foot in front of the other.

Don't just take my word for it. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that “All great thoughts are conceived by walking." A study from Stanford found that 'walking opens up the free flow of ideas" and a Psychology Today report found a 60% increase in creative output when participants walked compared to sitting. This boost in creativity extends after the act of walking itself, with individuals maintaining heightened creativity even after sitting down to watch Cash in the Attic.

Wait, there's more.

According to Colombia University walking with someone else has the added benefit of 'motor synchrony.' A fancy term that suggests walking together aligns rhythms and gestures which enhances collaborative problem-solving abilities. In other words, when two people move together, their brains synchronise, improving communication and the free flow of ideas.

Next time you find yourself stuck in the creative mud, do what Tchaikovsky, Einstein and Steve Jobs did, lace up, grab a friend, a colleague or countryman and let the pavement do its magic.

After all, a good walk may not solve everything, but it sure beats staring at a screen hoping for some form of algorithmic intervention. Or even worse, another Zoom call.

Would the Pornstar Martini have become the world’s favourite cocktail if its creator, Douglas Ankrah, had stuck with its original name, the Maverick Martini?

If Google and Nike had kept their original incarnations, would we be “Backrub”-ing the internet for the latest “Blue Ribbon Sports” drop, or would these now-iconic brands have been lost to lacklustre monikers?

Recently, Hollywood’s tendency to play it safe with titles has sanded down any sharp edges to appeal to a wider audience. Zoe Kravitz’s Blink Twice, for instance, began life as the more eyebrow-raising Pussy Island, while Netflix’s A Family Affair flirted with the scandalous MotherF------r. Both would have arguably courted more niche attention had they stayed true to their original names.

A title isn’t merely a label; it’s a gravitational force, either pulling people in or sending them running for the hills. Be it a film, a product or a brand, the name you choose can be more pivotal to success than the content itself.

This principle applies across all creative projects. The title of a script, the name of a campaign platform, the front page of a pitch deck or the name of a brand experience is often the most critical element. A lacklustre title can condemn your script to the status of the greatest story never told; your brand activation, without a catchy appellation, may as well be an exercise in brand inactivation.

The title is the hook that gets repeated ad nauseam. It's a shorthand to success, the badge bandied between clients and agency echoing through corporate corridors on the way to commercial flight.  A catchy name that encapsulates the strategy and proposition will sail through every meeting, elevator pitch and boardroom like a knife-shaped duck through hot buttered waters.

Nike’s 2010 World Cup campaign was initially rejected when presented as "Make History" - deemed too backwards looking for a future focused brand. But the exact same campaign and exact same concept was rubber-stamped to success when reinterpreted as "Write The Future" and, ironically, made history on stages everywhere.

Renaming an existing product also helps communicate meaning and messaging. 'Volvo Albedo 100' packs a lesser emotional punch than 'Volvo Life Paint.' Renaming it made it more clearly understood by its audience reaping rewards, awards and more importantly saving lives.

Titles like The Next Rembrandt, The After Hours Athlete and Fearless Girl elevate concepts beyond the execution to become award-winning campaigns. Finding the right name is a power move that encapsulates the strategy, the idea and the execution. It's more influential than the detail you put in the script, the scale you add with celebrity or the freshness you bring through technology.

6 tips for naming:

Encapsulate or Evaporate A great title isn’t just a label; it’s a single punch that conveys the entire concept, aligning strategy with execution.

Clarity Over Confusion If your name needs a backstory, it’s time to rethink it. A title should tell the story, not require one.

Search or Sink If your name drowns in a sea of search results, you risk sinking into obscurity

Short or Shunned  If it can’t fit on a sticky note, it won’t stick at all.

Earworm or Else If your name doesn’t wiggle its way into your brain, it’s fish food. 

Purpose Over Punchline Clever names are fun, but don’t let the joke outshine the job. 

Whatever kind of campaign you're crafting, remember that the title is your ticket to success. Make it irresistibly sharp and strategic and watch it fly from rejected to revered. 

*first published in LBB

"Been done." 

Two words that strike more fear in a creative team than a budget spreadsheet. "Been Done" is the hardest thing for a creative team to hear when presenting ideas and the easiest thing for a creative director to say. If you're a CD, take a left off Easy Street and take a stroll down the Walk of What If.  If the idea is relevant, build on it, make it radical. Interrogate the proposal to help find a creative twist and most importantly, make it better.

Stanley Kubrik said it best: "Everything has already been done, every story has been told, every scene has been shot. It's our job to do it better." Alexander McQueen went further, "Everything's been done, everything is a remix." Fashion, art, cinema, music, literature, video games and yes, advertising; everything has been done, everything is a remix of what's come before. Nothing is immune. 

Even the world's most famous meme is recycled, century old content. The 'distracted boyfriend' meme is a remix of a concept that first hit our slightly larger screens in 1922. In "Pay Day" Charlie Chaplin plays the role of a somewhat 'distracted Charlie.' Imagine, when the modern version was created, someone leant over and muttered the 'been done' death knell. Distracted? Furious more like.

Distracted Charlie, 1922 & Distracted Boyfriend,  2017

"Been done" could have killed the greatest campaign of all time. 'The Best Things Come To Those Who Wait' was a Heinz Ketchup campaign from the 1980's featuring Matt Le Blanc patiently waiting for his ketchup to arrive. A decade later, when presented with a similar idea, a lazy CD could have thrown the baby out with the ketchup bottle, instead, minds remained open, the team ran with the opportunity and ended up with the best advertising campaign ever created.

Both beer and ketchup come to those who wait.

So why is it that advertising creatives in particular are obsessed with dismissing anything that even remotely resembles something someone else has done before? Ego, maybe. That desperate urge of a creative director to prove that their encyclopaedic knowledge of ads from 1982 makes them superior. We get it, you were there. But now it's someone else’s turn to build on the past.

The founder of Liquid Death, Mike Cessario saw metal-heads sipping water from Monster Energy cans to maintain their cool whilst staying hydrated. He didn’t throw a “been done” at the idea and walk away. Instead, he doubled down, remixed the concept and made water hardcore. Suddenly, H2O was irreverent, edgy, and every kid was downing it like it was the new blood of rock. The real game isn’t who did it first, as Kubrik said, it's who does it best.

As with most things in life we can learn a lot from Bananarama; "It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it." Next time you’re in a creative review, staring down an idea that feels eerily familiar, don’t kill it. Nurture it. Tickle it. Take it for a spin, see if you can shift it into a new gear. You might just stumble upon the next billion-dollar water brand or the greatest ad campaign of all time. At the very least, you’ll avoid being the CD griping that everything’s already been done, while someone younger and smarter just does it better.

*first published in Creative Review

The Big Idea, The Long Idea, The Creative Platform, The Unicorn Blueprint, The Infinite Idea Cannon, The Foundational Framework of Fantasmic Futures, The Glory Whole; the tagline, logline or slogan. Whatever form it takes, whatever name you give it, there needs to be more than space for it, there must be room for it to stretch its legs so it can kick out and colonize every corner with its brilliance. The reason? The three C's: Consistency, Consistency & Consistency.

Consistency is the key to people actually remembering what your brand stands for and why it is relevant to them. Kit Kat reminds us to have a break. Snickers satisfy those who aren't feeling themselves. Specsavers remind us where we need to go.

In today's social-first world, consistency is essential because every idea has the possibility to show up everywhere. A billboard in Timbuktu, if good enough, can be shared and seen in Tipperary. Good ideas know no boundaries and your brand needs to stay in sync, no matter who's playing in the band.

In our fragmented media landscape eyeballs ping-pong from 'bad' screens to 'good' screens, from retina embedded goggles to billboards all while being bombarded by 6,000+ brand messages a day. The brands that win are those who tell a consistent story across every platform. Snickers flexed its big idea from the SuperBowl to twitter and brought it to life on the wrapper itself, but its biggest flex was letting the idea play out in the hands of the consumer. The big idea is neat, but the sign of a gargantuan idea is when people take your brand idea and reinterpret it to fit their lives, in this case, in the form of meme madness.

The Big (Consistent) Idea is the branding equivalent of a musical earworm. Get it stuck in people’s heads so that every time they encounter your brand, it’s like hearing a beloved remix of a smash hit, not some forgotten B-side no one asked for. The brands with the hits keep playing the hits. You know what you’re getting, and you love them for it.

The big idea is an organizing principle that allows a brand to show up in culture consistently, while flexing enough to accommodate cultural and regional nuances. Resist the temptation to experiment with the avant-garde album. Stick to the bangers. Stick to the Big Idea.

*first published in LBB

When Richard Branson signed the Sex Pistols nearly half a century ago, he didn’t just shake up the music industry, he gave his Virgin brand an edge that would redefine rebellion. That same rebellious energy fuels our campaign for Virgin Active, the wellness club bearing Branson’s DNA.

For a brand to make noise it helps if it has a clear enemy to rally against. For Virgin Active we called out the elephant in the yoga room - that Wellness is sick. Endless amounts of contradictory dos and don'ts from self appointed experts make it hard for consumers to decipher what to believe. Add in the growing number of unrealistic expectations and picture-perfect portrayals and people are left feeling confused and discouraged. The Wellness industry has become a toxic cult. This toxicity is Virgin Active's enemy and the new brand positioning -  'Where Wellness Gets Real' - aims to establish it as the no-BS antidote to the toxic sludge of the wellness world.

The team applied the new positioning to refresh the brand identity and leaned into the origins of Virgin's OG punk spirit to land on a design direction called 'Wellness Vandalised' - magnifying the spray paint technique found in the logo designed by Ray Kyte in 1978 and turning it up to eleven. Supersized script coupled with black & white rock n roll photography reflects the energised attitude and sees the paint spray also being used as a visual device to call out toxic traits within the wellness industry.

For the debut campaign, Virgin Active didn't want to pull punches or skip leg day. It aims to plant a flag with an unapologetically bold point of view. 

"Leave The Cult, Join The Club" isn’t here to massage your chakras or sell you Himalayan crystal-infused cucumber water. It's here to slap the fake wellness industry in the face. No promises of a six-pack by Saturday or moonwater miracles - just real sweaty, human progress. 

Inspired by radical propaganda and fuelled by the idea of "de-brainwashing," the creative team developed a bold aesthetic that confronts the tactics used by the industry. We borrowed their tricks - confrontational, loud, and in-your-face - but flipped the narrative. 

The type treatment takes cues from the mind-bending aesthetic of Enter The Void, delivering a jarring yet hypnotic feel. The imagery is an irreverent homage to the worlds of Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari’s Toilet Paper magazine, full of surreal, absurdist humor that cuts through the polished nonsense of wellness ads and also takes inspiration from Adrián González-Cohen’s Buffalo zine, adding a layer of gritty, unapologetic wit. 

This isn’t your typical "look good, feel good" campaign. It’s a visual rebellion designed to grab you by the collar and make you question every fakefluencer, every detox tea, every miracle cure you’ve ever double-tapped.

Virgin has always been about pushing boundaries, making noise, and shaking up the status quo. The same energy that propelled the brand into cultural rebellion with the signing of the Sex Pistols is now driving Virgin Active’s mission to challenge the toxic norms of wellness.

Virgin Active is daring to stand out by addressing the uncomfortable truth no one else wants to talk about. And just like Branson’s original act of rebellion, this campaign is designed to disrupt, challenge and, inevitably, ruffle a few feathers. Virgin Active is taking on the wellness industry with the same fearless energy, flipping the script one uncomfortable truth at a time; a high-intensity enema for the fitness industry, flushing out the nonsense and leaving you with pure, unfiltered fitness reality.

Converse : King Tuff

The latest shopping trend is not shopping. Known as “underconsumption core” it promotes buying and using only what you need. According to Google Trends, searches for the term have exploded by 4,250% in the last year and it’s no longer just about making your money stretch; it's a consumer rebellion against the monsoon of marketing BS.

A recent PwC report shows that brand trust is at an all-time low, with only 3/10 consumers saying they trust companies. Brands have been over-promising and under-delivering for years and consumers are calling them out on it, loudly. It seems people aren't buying it anymore, literally and metaphorically.

Public roasting, 'dupe' culture, and the rise of de-influencers may sound like a brand's worst nightmare, but they can be a gift, offering a road to redemption and a blueprint to win back consumer trust. If brands look at social media as the world’s biggest, most brutally honest focus group and lean into the feedback rather than shy away from it, they’ll discover a treasure trove of insights, especially when it comes to engaging younger audiences.

When KFC were on the receiving end of a savage tweet - “Dear KFC, no one likes your fries. Yours sincerely, the entire world” - they didn’t bury it, they put it on billboards and rolled out a new recipe. 

KFC : Mother LDN

New York fashion brand Vaquera took a snide Instagram comment calling one of their dresses “obscene," plastered it on a design and made it a standout item in their collection.

Sunnei, another fashion disruptor, took it a step further by inviting their audience to rate their catwalk show and shared the ratings on Instagram - turning their worst scores into their most-engaged post ever.

Sunnei

If you lean into the hate, you’re the one in control. Brands that flip the script, own the uncomfortable and show that they're listening are the ones cutting through the noise. 

The uncomfortable truth about your brand, product or category could be your biggest asset. Virgin Active didn’t shy away from the fact that the wellness industry is toxic and full of fakery, they owned up to it and more importantly 'owned' it.  The campaign “Leave The Cult, Join The Club”  positions Virgin Active as the no-BS alternative to the miracle detoxes and magic potions clogging the crystal-infused category.

Virgin Active

Honesty can be disarming. It’s unexpected. When brands own their uncomfortable truth they create moments of authenticity that people crave. Owning your flaws doesn’t just build trust, it builds loyalty - and sales.

So how do you find these uncomfortable truths about your brand?

1. Start With Shade
Pay attention to the snarky tweets, Instagram rants and reddit meltdowns. These aren’t just angry outbursts, they’re free focus groups offering up free insights. People are literally telling you where you’re messing up. All you have to do is listen.

2. Embrace The Awkward
Radical honesty isn’t for the faint of heart. If your brand is too busy trying to look perfect, this won’t work. But if you can stomach the discomfort, you’ll stand out.

3. Turn Problems Into Punchlines 

Use criticism as creative fuel. Whether it’s a product fix or a marketing campaign, facing the issue head-on can flip a PR nightmare into your brand’s next iconic moment.

4. Solve It Loud
Fixing things behind the scenes won’t cut it. Solve the problem loudly. People want to see you acknowledge your mess and take action, publicly.

5. Know Your Lane
Not every brand can pull this off. If your vibe is too stiff or polished, it might backfire. But if you’ve got a rebellious streak - like Virgin or KFC - this strategy can be golden.

6. Get Comfortable With The Uncomfortable
Honesty, especially the raw, squirm-inducing kind, builds something that’s becoming increasingly rare: trust.

If consumers are tuning out, maybe marketers should start tuning into criticism. Find the uncomfortable truth about your brand, your product, or your category and then own it. Make it your superpower because, let’s face it, everyone’s a little tired of perfection.

*first published in Campaign