Sunday Strategy: Learning by Brainrot, Trend Season, Rebrand Rage + More
In this issue of Sunday Strategy, we look at five stories to think about next week, including: Educational Brainrot, a 2025 Trend Report Collection, Niche Streaming Thrives, Modern Pawrenthood and Rebrand Rage.
In addition, we have ads from: Posten, 路易·威登 , Volvo Group , Beats by Dre and Shelter .
// Five Stories of the Week:
1.) ‘Brainrot’ for Educational Purposes.?
Despite its unappealing name, "brainrot" content—a phenomenon from Gen Alpha & TikTok culture - is revealing interesting possibilities for AI-assisted learning. "PDF to Brainrot" tools are proliferating, which transform study materials into a distinctive style: text overlaid on video game footage or ASMR content. While short-form learning isn't new (flashcards in old money), these tools reimagine the concept for a new generation. "StudyRot" takes this further by translating educational content into Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang. Though this might seem more gimmicky than groundbreaking, it represents part of a larger transformation in technology-assisted education.
This wider AI shift is already reshaping the educational technology landscape. Traditional education platform Chegg has seen its value plummet by 98%, partly due to competition from AI solutions. Meanwhile, Duolingo is embracing AI with innovative features like language learning through video calls with AI characters, demonstrating how content can be tailored to different learning preferences.
While "rotting our brains" might not be a realistic path to knowledge, these developments highlight AI's growing potential to enhance human learning and understanding in unexpected ways.
2.) Tis the Season for Trend Reports.?
With the end of the year comes a wave of trend reports looking ahead to 2025 and predicting consumer behaviour and category shifts. You can spend hours trying to track down reports on everything from the future of social media, to fashion or drinks - but a team including Amy Daroukakis , Iolanda Carvalho , 赐恩?? and Gonzalo Gregori are doing the work for you. Their Google Drive collates together reports as they launch, making it easier to read them or throw them into the AI tool of your choosing.??
3.) Niche Streaming Isn’t Just Surviving, It’s Thriving.?
While Amazon’s closure of its free streaming service, Freevee, may have seemed to be a signal of the struggles facing smaller streaming services - the opposite is actually true. Despite competition heating up between streaming giants, with Netflix making greater moves into live sport (including a Beyonce Halftime show) and Prime Video hosting US election coverage, smaller players are making tighter communities and smaller numbers work for them. From Shudder, to Nebula, Hallmark+ and Britbox, smaller streaming companies are fighting customer cancellation and competition with focused offerings that matter more to smaller, dedicated groups.??
4.) The Increasing Power of ‘Pawrenthood’.?
As The Harris Poll research finds 43% of Americans would rather have pets than kids - the increasing prominence of pet ownership is creating a growing pet economy and changing attitudes towards work, recreation and personal finances. 82% of pet owners see their pets as children and 1/3rd would trade $100k for more time with their pets. 80% want more pet friendly spaces, 58% want pets on plane rides and 46% want ‘pawternity’ from employers. With 34% of Gen Z say they’ve experienced ‘pet debt’, this shift looks to change daily budgets and wider financial planning (47% of pet owners want to leave pets an inheritance). A pet is for life (not just for Christmas), so wider shifts towards pet ownership are poised to play out over years, cementing the impact of ‘pawrenthood’.
5.) Rebranding is Easy. Avoiding Outrage is the Hard Part.??
Rebrands are never easy, just ask Paypal, Tottenham Hotspur and now, Jaguar. Jaguar’s rebrand this week took the advertising industry’s collective outrage away from Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas ad and put it squarely on the British heritage brand’s attempt to modernise. However, the industry may have missed an important point when it comes to branding and advertising in general - it isn’t pass or fail.
I had a strong personal reaction to the new Jaguar work, especially as someone who counts their old ‘Villains’ ads as some of my favourite auto advertising. However, I’m a resident of a string of cities that don’t require a car and who hasn’t driven since 2008. That isn’t to say I can’t comment on it, but it does show that my ‘liking’ of something isn’t the best metric.?
Instead, like all marketing, every decision is a game of probability. Does this increase or decrease a chance of success? Does it make the road ahead harder or easier? Jaguar has chosen a distinct path for their brand, and without knowing their ambition, I can only assume it makes a lot of the traditional goals found in the sector harder to achieve. However, I’m not fully aware of the trade off and observers are less primed for action than a marketer who monitors a brand daily.?
What I do know is that no one sets out to make bad ads or bad brands. A strategic misstep may have occurred, or we may not know the full brief, but what comes next is as important as what happened now. In an industry still without a strong shared and agreed knowledge base, despite laudable efforts from many to address this, what walks like ‘thought leadership’ is often actually ‘loud opinion’. Ironic to raise in a newsletter arguably full of it.?
Brands and advertisers deserve the benefit of acknowledging what we do, and don’t, know when we sit in judgement. More importantly, the people behind the work deserve the respect attributed to everyone who tries to create something. We can still talk about the industry and its output, otherwise how would many of us fill the days or the trips to the pub, but we’d be better off the less binary it becomes. ‘Why’ something has happened is as important a conversation as ‘what’ we think about it??
// Ads You Might Have Missed:?
1.) ‘The Reinfall’ - Posten:?
The Norwegian Postal Service, Posten, has focused on the rise and fall of Rudolph in their annual holiday ad. Posten has created some memorable holiday ads over the years - 2021’s ‘When Harry Met Santa’ celebrating the holidays and Norways’ 50th anniversary of marriage equality being a firm favourite. Reinfall, similarly to the ones before it, is notable for its aesthetic and style, as well as the ability to balance a role for the brand, a take on the holiday and still deliver something engaging. 2024’s ad focuses on the story of Rudolph in a VH1 ‘Behind the Music’ style rise and fall documentary, before resolving by saying no matter the drama at the North Pole, Posten can ensure your packages arrive during the holidays.??
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2.) ‘Meet the New Volvo EX90’ - Volvo:?
Safety has always been at the core of Volvo’s brand. I worked on comms and media for the brand back in the day and always found their relationship with safety intriguing. It is inherently something that influences everything they do (from giving away patents on safety measures, to how they investigate or test), but safety is a paradoxically hard thing to talk about. People care about it, but it matters less to many than you would think. It often seems boring or scary. Hitting a middle ground that addresses this is difficult, but Volvo’s new EX90 launch ad - shot beautifully with Openheimer cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema shows how it can be done. Following a growing family’s story and taking the time to push you into emotionally engaging fully, it evokes a sense of safety without ever showing a car crash. For a brand who’s vision isn’t just to eliminate injuries from car collisions, but to eliminate collisions at all - this shows what that can mean.?
3.) ‘Luxury Scaffolding” - Louis Vuitton:?
True luxury brands do, even unexpected things, in a luxury way and this hasn’t been truer than how Louis Vuitton has approached the scaffolding for their New York location. The building, under construction as a new US flagship has seen a 15 story stack of fake Louis Vuitton trunks go up around the building, creating a stir around its 57th street location. In an age of fake OOH and digital content, it's easy to look at this and assume it isn’t real. However, the details - from custom printed fabric scrim to 840 laser-cut-steel rivets and a 5,000-pound, 40-foot-long black handle all come from real products.?
4.) ‘Nothing Ordinary About Erling Haaland’ - Beats by Dre:?
There’s not much that’s normal about Erling Haaland - something that Manchester City fans to opposing defences would readily agree with. Beats by Dre leans into this in an amazing way with an ad that features Haaland training in a style reminiscent of Rocky fighting Ivan Drago. From chin ups on cliff edges to walking on coals, Beats highlights their product in a surreal training montage that differentiates from earnest athletic footage and avoids taking itself too seriously.?
5.) ‘World of Our Own’ - Shelter:?
With a record 150k children in the UK experiencing homelessness this year, UK charity Shelter has taken an impactful approach to raising the issue in their 2024 Christmas ad. The ad, “World of Our Own” features a make-believe landscape shown to be created as a way to hide the hard reality of temporary accommodation experienced by a child. The campaign disarms the overwhelming hopelessness of the issue by highlighting a loving relationship at its core, but rightfully points out that ‘Love alone can’t protect a child from homelessness’ - striking a balance in driving home the issue without alienating a potential donor.?
// Want More Holiday Ads? Check out our Sunday Strategy Holiday Ad list, with over 400 ads from around the world.?//
// Sunday Snippets
// Marketing & Advertising //
// Champion promotes its ‘Bare Essentials’ line by showing models wearing only the bare essentials
// Pop Tarts doubles down on mascots for its college football bowl game, increasing from one edible mascot to three?
// How do you build a brand people love?
// Pizza Hut has dropped a pizza flavoured tomato wine
// Audemars Piguet collaborates with KAWS on a special collection?
// Not to be outdone, Casio is launching ring sized versions of their calculator watches
// Delta adjusts to take advantage of a U-Shaped travel market and offers Shake Shack in flight
// McDonalds is selling half gallon jugs of McRib sauce in the US, and Dragon Ball Z merch in Japan
// Amazon has launched ‘haul’ to compete with TEMU, Shein and others
// The University of Greenwich temporarily changed its name to promote the new ‘Wicked’ film
// Decathlon Canada pulls as REI ‘Opt Outside’ and asks people to ‘make time for sport’ during Black Friday
// Toyota promotes its Hilux’s towing capacity with a 3.5 tonne towable OOH billboard
// Technology & Media //
// The APG has released its ‘AI for strategists’ research, highlighting how advertising strategists see AI
// Microsoft and Harper Collins reach a deal to train LLMs on non-fiction books
// Social Influencers are shifting towards MAGAhood
// Last week’s Tyson vs Paul fight reached 65m streams at its peak, while spawning numerous conspiracy theories and buffering issues
// Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts
// TikTok makes moves towards more customised virtual avatars - making an automated Sunday Strategy TikTok account more of a reality?
// Snapchat is sending all adult US users a sponsored “Wicked” snap
// How Meta rebuilt itself around AI
// Niantic has used Pokemon Go player data to train AI map models
// A laundry folding robot has gained investment from Jeff Bezos, OpenAI and others
// Instagram is testing a feature that lets users reset their algorithm
// Rebranding Generative AI into…Promptography?
// Life & Culture //
// The resurgent real world power of queueing
// Are you a chill guy? There’s a meme for you.?
// F1 will hold its season launch for all 10 teams at London’s O2
// Flexa’s new work index shows record levels of flexible job hunters and vacancies
// The increasing problem of business school research fraud
// An increasing number of American high schoolers are choosing to go to school in the American South, in part due to social media content from southern schools
// Kendrick Lamar surprised everyone with a new album, and there are already memes
// How do we measure success? New research says Americans need a $270k salary to feel successful, but staring down economic turmoil, Gen Z’s expectations increase to $588k a year.?
// Couples are increasingly putting mortgages before marriages?
// Until Next Next* Sunday
Sunday Strategy is off next week for Thanksgiving, but it will be back in December.
As always, let me know what you think by email ([email protected]),? website or on LinkedIn.