the newsletter, every issue.
Nine hundred and fifty editions of yap, sat in one place. One long read every friday morning. Always free.
Nine hundred and fifty issues.
I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it (and it’s saving the mall)
Gen Z is reviving mall culture because they want instant gratification that online shopping can't deliver. Shoppers aged 18 to 24 bought 62% of merchandise in stores last year. They want to see it, touch it, and walk out with it immediately. Malls also provide third spaces for socialising after COVID lockdowns. Physical shopping encourages mindful purchasing and financial accountability that online buying with delayed payment options doesn't.
Taste is the new core skill (here’s how to develop it)
Taste has been a core economic skill since the Industrial Revolution when material abundance shifted consumption from necessity to identity. Now AI can generate infinite content at near-zero cost making curation and judgment the competitive advantage. Anyone can produce but knowing what to make requires taste. Taste develops through exposure to quality work, pattern recognition, restraint, and calibrating instinct against actual results.
Everybody wants to be "alt." Nobody wants to do the work.
Alternative aesthetics like Wednesday Addams and indie sleaze have gone mainstream but the culture gets stripped away. You can borrow visual references without participating in the subculture that created them. Subcultural capital used to require being there and earning insider status. Now you just need Pinterest and Depop. Everyone wants to look alternative without experiencing the alienation and social cost that came with actually being alternative.
The zeitgeist is the wind, your brand is the sail
The zeitgeist is the invisible force behind every cultural moment representing what people care about, feel, and crave right now. It's not trends but the deeper why behind them. Brands that understand this position themselves to ride cultural waves before they fully form. In 2026 the zeitgeist includes AI anxiety, nostalgia for pre-internet simplicity, exhaustion with optimisation culture, and craving genuine human connection.
Agencies are building websites in a matter of hours. Should you?
Agencies are using AI vibecoding to rebuild entire websites and tools in hours instead of weeks. Major agencies like Havas and Broadhead are building bespoke platforms using AI coding assistants with non-developers describing what they need in natural language. Speed and cost efficiency are real advantages but quality control, technical debt, and security vulnerabilities are legitimate concerns that require developer oversight.
Your personalisation strat is creeping people out (and you probably don’t even know it)
Personalisation crosses into surveillance when customers feel watched instead of helped. Brands optimise for metrics that don't capture creepiness like when retargeting ads follow you for months or emails reference offline conversations. Helpful personalisation is transparent about data use, respects boundaries, and gives control back to users. The gap between what brands think is valuable and what feels invasive is where trust dies.
Are we living in a post-culture era? And would you know if we were?
Ask five people under 30 what defined the last decade and you'll get five different answers. Ask someone over 60 about the 1960s and they'll all say The Beatles and JFK. This fragmentation signals a post-culture era where shared cultural reference points have dissolved into algorithmic bubbles and niche communities. Culture has become content and algorithms decide what matters instead of human critics.
You don’t need a million followers to make it as a creator (and the data proves it)
The creator middle class is now viable with 45.6% of creators earning between $10K and $100K annually. Success in 2026 means building community over chasing virality, focusing on niche content, and developing long-term brand partnerships. You don't need millions of followers to make real money as a creator anymore. Depth beats reach and thoughtful content for specific communities wins.
Marketing as social care: brought to you by Flavor Flav.
Flavor Flav invited the disrespected US Women's Olympic Hockey team to Vegas after Donald Trump shat on them. He called on brands to help and they flooded in with support for flights, hotels, entertainment, and beauty needs. This proves marketing doesn't need year-long campaigns to do good. Sometimes the most powerful response is seeing injustice and using your platform to fix it immediately.
Happy situation monitoring day to all who enjoy monitoring the situation
Monitoring the situation is 2026's defining meme about awareness without action. The phrase uses corporate speak to acknowledge crisis while doing nothing about it. We're living through polycrisis with multiple catastrophes happening simultaneously while being documented on the same devices we use to shop and socialise. The meme captures helplessness, dark humour as coping, and the shift from activism to observation.
How to make sure you get all the content you need from your next shoot
A Pinterest board is not creative direction. Real creative direction starts with strategy by answering what the shoot is for, what assets you need, and which platforms you're distributing on. Without pre-production work like detailed shot lists and mapping offers to platforms, you'll spend thousands on beautiful images that don't fit your actual marketing needs.
The Staples Baddie has a marketing lesson: just do the video
A Staples print specialist started posting TikToks about services customers don't know about like custom mugs and stamp making. One ASMR video got 765,000 likes and drove measurable store traffic increases. Her anti-strategy is not overthinking content and just talking authentically about things she's passionate about. No content calendars or approval workflows. She proves that corporate marketing can't manufacture the authentic enthusiasm employees naturally have.