Ads worth applauding, Trump's Subway moment,🍦ice cream trucks and all the latest in brand news

Remember when people used to say, “Oh, I love that ad, it’s so clever”? Just regular people, unprompted, talking about advertising like it mattered. That kind of conversation feels quaint now.

And yet, this summer something curious is happening: marketing is getting love again.

Emily Sundberg clocked it last week. Under a new campaign for Dairy Boy clothing, the top comment read: “Marketinggg 👏.” Just beneath it: “Your creative director deserves a raise.” These kinds of comments, Sundberg noted, have become a thing. From Rhode’s latest spot starring Harris Dickinson, to Paltrow’s very temporary cameo for Astronomer, people are responding. Not just to the messages, but to the effort.

Now, as it turns out, Dairy Boy’s new brand film is nothing groundbreaking. The retro ice cream van trope isn’t new—Bill Nighy just did the same for Ffern. But still, it lands. In this spot, Dairy Boy swaps sailor plaid sleep sets and varsity shirts for 99 Flakes, leaning into its name with a wink.

Does it meet the veteran standards of creative advertising? Probably not. But it’s close. What’s interesting is that people are calling out the marketing itself—as a compliment. And that feels like a shift.

So what’s going on?

On one hand, it’s obvious. In a post-media world where everyone has as personal brand, we’re all fluent in the mechanics of marketing. To cite “marketing” is to show your savvy. You get it. You approve.

On the other, it’s oddly nostalgic. A throwback to when people actually liked a brand’s advertising and said so.

The deeper theory? A generation is coming of age that’s experiencing advertising as it once wasfor the very first time. They’ve never known the era when brands hired Ridley Scott or Michel Gondry. Ads, for them, have been the noise between swipes. So when a brand shows up with intention and a little flair, it feels new. Even meaningful.

That’s a welcome sign for marketers who have spent years contorting themselves to meet the demands of social media. As platforms focussed on engagement, the only metric that mattered was watch time. Not whatpeople were watching, just that they stayed watching.

TikTok took it further. Suddenly the gloss of your Instagram feed was a liability. Brands were dragged into bedrooms lit by ring-lights, paced in circles at the end of selfie sticks, or reduced to speaking in the tone of playground memes for ‘relatability’.

And of course, endless trend-jacking. Everywhere on Slack this week: "OK team—what's our Taylor Swift x Travis Kelce album angle?"

There's worse. This summer proved that brands will take a victory lap after stumbling into a hornet’s nest of—largely performative—outrage. Billions of views. A bump in market cap.

But that kind of famacomes with a deferred cost. People might be talking about you, but they’re not cheering you on. They don't want to hear about your product. They’re harvesting your chaos for their own reach. And to investors, you’re now a meme stock.

The real winners? Not the brands. Not the people.

The platforms. Every time.

But maybe, in the wake of algorithmic fixation and feed fatigue, something more genuine is emerging. A softer-touch creativity. One that a new generation appreciates much like the generations before them did.

And brands with a sense of themselves, who show up with care, craft and a little production budget, might just find something more valuable than virality: A small, sincere golf clap for marketinggg👏.

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I have a friend. His name is Ogden. We met when we were thirteen, grew up together and somehow never grew apart. He’s been the longest constant in my life by a meaningful distance.

It’s wild to think my son is just six months away from being the same age I was when I met Ogden. If he’s lucky enough to find a friend like that, someone to journey with across the decades...well, he's blessed.

There’s something sacred about knowing someone that long. You build your our own language. A private set of signals and shared stories that only you understand.

But mostly, when I think of Ogden, I think of laughter.

The uncontainable kind. Rib-aching, tear-rolling, collapse-on-the-floor kind. We’ve had hundreds of those moments. Enough that it doesn’t take much—a weird noise in a queue, someone pulling a dumb face at the wrong time, a piece of fruit escaping down a supermarket aisle—and we’re gone. One of us knows it’s funny. The other knows theyknow. And the laughter loop begins. You try to hold it in, but it’s no use. You crack. You giggle. You spit-laugh into the air like you’re thirteen again.

And I suppose you only really notice how much you laugh, when there’s been a little sadness too.

We knew each other’s mums, of course. Ogden was raised in London by Auntie Clariette—a churchgoing woman with kind eyes and a Honda Accord that always seemed on the brink of an engine fire. She was never on time. But she always showed up.

And Ogden became close with my mom, Sylvia, who was a kind of second mother to him, in her own way. So when she got sick, he was there.

If you’ve ever watched a parent deteriorate, you know the rhythm: up, down, false alarm, maybe this is it—no, stand down—maybe not yet. And then one day, it is.

It was the last day of October. Ogden had come to visit Mum’s house. Neither of us planned it. Our visits weren’t that regular. But that morning, she went into a sharp, peaceful decline. And so we were both there, by chance. Two childhood friends, two sons, with family nearby.

I don’t really know what you call that. Luck? Divine intervention? Something vibrational that science hasn’t found words for yet? I think when you’ve known someone that long, your lives are connected in ways you can’t see.

Since then, we’ve kept a little thing going. Whenever one of us travels and visits a church, we light a candle. One for Sylvia. One for Auntie Clariette. Then we snap a photo and send it. Just a WhatsApp ping. Two candles. No words needed.

It’s a little signal to the other. A way of saying: we’re still here. Still thinking about the people who shaped us. Still honouring the women who raised us—and the friendship that holds because of them.

It’s easy to get drowned in the chaos of the technology. As the internet made markets infinite, platforms learned that our attention is not. So a space that once promised freedom became something else. Performance. Everyone posting. Everyone watching. Each person a channel. Each post a claw for attention. Harvesting issues for likes and clout. We all became brands to be consumed.

But people are resisting. In billions of private threads, in coded pings, in tiny gestures shared through apps designed to hook and monetise us—we’re still finding ways to connect.

And one day, just like rediscovering the feeling of a thoughtful ad with ice cream in it, a generation will realise: all that personal branding doesn’t make them richer, or better, or more deeply connected.

They’ll hit the reset button.

And we’ll start building things to serve us—not the other way around.

Back in London, I’m about to get on the Tube when a photo flickers onto my phone—two candles glowing beside each other. I pause. Feel the sadness. And the love. It’s beautiful.

Except—there’s an illustration on the candles. A monk. In glasses. Looks like a real oddball. Who makes these candles? And why does he look like a supply teacher with a very suspicious side-hustle?

It’s so peaceful here. Ogden types.

And then, they’ve got that funny guy on the candles. Hard not to laugh.

That's was it. Laughing. Violently. Publicly. Privately. Two friends, thirty years on, trying to hold it together on opposite sides of the continent.

For a fleeting moment, I hear them—Auntie Clariette and Sylvia—laughing with us. Just there, then gone.

As the Tube pulls away into the city, I feel grateful. That somehow our special bond can turn pain into love—and love into laughter.

I’m not sure what more we’re here for.

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

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Market Moves

UK economic growth slows to 0.3% | BBC

US wholesale prices jump 3.3% as trade war hits economy | Financial Times

FTSE 100 hits record close | Reuters

Brand Beat

Subway sandwich becomes defining image of Trump’s reign of terror | Slate

How “Marketinggg 👏” became a compliment | Feed Me

Dairy Boy’s new film by filmmaker RJ Bruni | Instagram

Bill Nighy in campaign for Ffern | TikTok

How brands are tapping into vibe culture | The Drum

Ad agencies are down but not out | Financial Times

Taylor Swift is making Travis Kelce part of her empire | Business Insider

Shein's UK sales jump by 33% year-on-year | BBC

OpenAI and Perplexity are brands, not just tech companies | Digiday

Specsavers spotlights childhood eye test importance in colourful ad | Marketing Beat

Duolingo stock surges 14% on AI-driven growth | CNBC

Hamilton TikTok trend goes viral to mark 10th anniversary | Mashable

WeWork positions itself as a mature real estate firm | The Wall Street Journal

UK football season set to smash TV viewership and revenue records | The Guardian

YouGov finds YouTube usage outpaces social media rivals this year | Marketing Week

‘Cheapfake’ AI celeb videos are now YouTube ragebait | Wired

Kingsmill owner buys Hovis for £75m | Reuters

Trending: Supermoon clear protein drink | Thingtesting

“Made in the USA” is a struggling brand | Fast Company

P&G announce a new beauty CEO | Business of Fashion

Moët Hennessy sexual harassment case highlights company culture | Financial Times

Kodak faces struggles despite Gen Z film resurgence | CNBC

Starting Up

Why your startup brand should be active on Reddit | Startups Magazine

British startup reinvents energy storage with innovative approach | Sustainable Times

Elon Musk’s xAI co-founder leaves the company | TechCrunch

UK taps ex-OpenAI lead as chief AI advisor | Sifted

Tech bosses spend millions more on personal security  | Financial Times

GPT-5 becomes an AI nightmare for developers and users | Futurism

Nuclear-powered AI could elevate Rolls-Royce to UK’s biggest firm | BBC

Venture Vibes

Disrupt 2025 reveals first VCs judging Startup Battlefield 200 | TechCrunch

Perplexity makes $34.5B longshot bid for Chrome | The Wall Street Journal

16 VC firms funding creator economy startups like Substack | Business Insider

Global venture capital outlook | Bain & Co

Design Driven

How album campaigns now create entire visual universes | It’s Nice That

SpongeBob’s pop culture reign | Fast Company

The best new Scandinavian interior design arrivals | Vogue

Happiness

How we got the internet all wrong. | The Dispatch

Money as the dark matter of the universe | Big Think

A management anti-fad that will last forever | The Atlantic

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