[012] Wednesday vibe check: LinkedIn releases a report on video storytelling, the viral manifestation trend & Bieber's new album

PLUS: butter is everywhere!

It’s Wednesday! Which means:

• I’m already ready for a social media hiatus (but can’t wait for my Saturday morning coffee and scroll)

• My iPhone battery is at 40% by 12pm

• At least three TikTok trends are in full swing

  Inside today’s newsletter:

• The vibe of the week - what everyone’s talking about, posting about and thinking about, both on social and in the zeitgeist

• Some stellar brand content to keep you going

• Trends to keep an eye on

Some brand content to keep you inspired (reminder: my big weekly scroll stopper is sent out on Monday’s! Here’s this week’s)

• Meshki had a smart way of calling out their IG Broadcast channel

• Laneige putting out sunscreen samples in London on a sunny day

• Cosrx hopping on the “perfect day” calendar trend

• 🦘 Aussie special 🦘: Up bank partnered with restaurant guide Secondz to tour Sydney neighborhood Newtown. This made sense to me, given Up is the millennial focused bank that promotes saving and smart spending.

• Clinique showing off the long term results of their 3 step system - honestly, show me a woman who hasn’t tried the three steps!

I’ve kept track so that you don’t have to :)

• Charms are still the trend of 2025 - Bubble just hopped on board with a collection in Target, and Glossier created a banana charm for their collab with Magnolia bakery. Not only are charms everywhere, they’re getting more absurd - these ridiculous (but adorable) mini versions of Beis’ luggage were when I knew charm culture wasn’t a flash in the pan.

• 🔥 Calendar showing “the perfect day” - flame emoji added to signify that this one is hot, and you’ve probably got a few days left at best to hop on this one

• Weighted Vests are really having a moment. Honestly, I’m tired of everything (including our walks) being optimised!

The social (and socially adjacent) news & vibes of the week so far.

• Justin Bieber released his seventh studio album Swag using a mix of OOH billboards and social posts. The “immediate announce and release model” has already been tried and tested by Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, but in the age of social media, one wonders whether huge artists really need months of pre-hype ahead of an album. I expect to see one (or many) of the songs from this album become trending TikTok audios within a matter of days.

• Everyone’s depressed about the state of social media

  Ezra Klein interviewed Kyla Scanlon about how the attention economy is devouring Gen Z, and how algorithms are creating a “frictionless” world (highly recommend listening or even reading the transcript here). In other news, Vox says social media is cooking our brain (yikes). The vibe is: we’re all worried about social media, but few of us are quitting!

• The girlies are Manifesting using their passwords and honestly, at this point, whatever works for you!

• Tanning is well and truly back (and I hate it!) - the launch of beauty brand Tanning Club had me taking notice this week, and their sunscreen with a pathetic SPF 6 rating had me wanting to give it all up and move to a cabin in the (shady) woods. Having grown up in Australia, I was inundated with “tanning is skin cells in trauma” messaging as a teen (and thank god for that), so it’s deeply shocking to see Gen Z not only embracing a tan but glorifying tan lines specifically.

• Every brand is in Europe (or at least so it seems)

  First Hailey Bieber’s Rhode Summer Club in Mallorca, then Venroy in Capri? The brands have seemingly headed to Europe for the summer, and the euro aesthetic is rife on the feed.

• Butter is everywhere!! And I don’t mean the colour…

  I’ve linked a few pieces of butter content lately, including this piece from Bread (and this ice-cream/butter adjacent piece from Brooklinen), but and this piece from Clinique solidified for me that brands have officially given in to butter mania. I suspect this is partly in response to Butter Yellow being “the colour of the season” in fashion circles, but also because it can’t be denied that a fat stick of butter just looks good on video.

TikTok refuted reports it is building another app for the US.

ICYMI: Trump announced that he’s close to finding a buyer for TikTok in the US, which led to a supposed “inside source at TikTok” leaking that a whole new app was being developed for the US app store. It’ll be interesting to see whether TikTok is getting hung up on semantics and really will be releasing a modified app, or if this really is just a rumour.

TikTok now allows post scheduling in the composer app.

Huge news for the Social Media team member who has been forced to keep videos in the drafts folder and post manually on a Saturday (we’ve all been there).

LinkedIn released a report on “The Art and Science of Video Storytelling”

LinkedIn analysed 13,000+ video ads and 550,000+ video frames using AI and machine learning, and distilled what makes B2B video actually work in the real world. The findings aren’t exactly revolutionary (they included tips like “lean into memes” *cue eyeroll*), but here’s what piqued my interest:

• Video viewership on LinkedIn grew +36% in 2024, hitting 154 billion views - everything really is LinkedIn now :’)

• 55% of marketers say short-form social video has the highest ROI, yet 40% still struggle to build an effective strategy for LinkedIn

I’m interested to see how many B2B companies continue to pivot into entertainment led, short form content (ClickUp is leading the charge here!).

That’s it for now!

If you liked this newsletter, I’d love it if you let me know, or even shared it with a friend. If you hated it, let me know too! Hatred fuels me :)

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