SUNDAY SCARIES: Surrender as Strategy
This week is about AI Abdication and Surrender as Strategy.
1. WPP's McKinsey Moment — Holding Company Hires Someone To Hold It Up
There's something almost poetic about the world's biggest brand builder hiring McKinsey to help it understand its own value proposition. You know you've hit an existential point when you've already merged, rebranded, consolidated, de-consolidated, created new acronyms, deleted old ones, and retired half the greatest agency names ever invented… and the answer is: “Call McKinsey.”
This isn't about cost-cutting or capability-building. This is the moment a holding company quietly admits the holding company model doesn't hold anything anymore.
McKinsey, by the way, is the same firm actively replacing junior consultants with their own AI assistant, while using AI internally for research, synthesis, advisory workflows, and client transformation. So now WPP is essentially hiring a consultancy partially run by software… to help fix a creative factory struggling with software. There's a Shakespearean loop somewhere in that or at least a healthy serving of Schadenfreude.
Our Takeaway: This wasn't a strategy move. It was an identity crisis said out loud. Whether or not it works is irrelevant at this point.
(Sources: Campaign Asia; McKinsey Insights; FT; Ad Age)
2. Welcome to The Dead-Internet Showroom
TikTok has AI actresses with fan clubs. Instagram is serving AI Reels like they're vitamins. Google's AI Overviews are killing click-throughs and rewriting the internet in the tone of a substitute teacher. YouTube feels like it's playing a remix of itself. And at Amazon unBoxed, the message was basically: “Stop thinking and give us your budget.”
We're wandering a digital mall where everything is shiny, everything talks, but nothing actually exists. Like if Madame Tussauds opened an e-com store and charged twice as much at the door. And the strangest part? Brands are nodding along like it's normal.
Our Takeaway: The internet didn't die. Maybe it just got tired of pretending it was made by people.
(Sources: NYT; TikTok Analytics; Google Search Console data; Amazon unBoxed keynote)
3. Have You Met the New AI Creative Intern?
Coke proudly announced that its new AI holiday ad took 100 people and 70,000 AI-generated clips. Not sure how to quantify it as successful though, since those numbers sound more like a hostage situation.
Meanwhile, Sergio Cilli accidentally created the most honest commentary on AI “talent” we've seen yet: an audition series where AI actors can't take direction, can't read emotion, sometimes morph into other people mid-scene, and at one point pull a gun. It's chaos. And it's delightful. Because it reminds everyone: AI doesn't threaten craft. AI threatens competence, and competence was never the reason to hire an artist.
Our Takeaway: Coke's ad tried to prove AI can act human. Cilli's videos prove we're safe for now.
(Sources: Ad Age; Caviar; Coke holiday press materials)
4. AI Is Nicer Than Your Doctor. Your Kid Has a Sheet Mask. Discuss.
The New York Times reported that people (particularly parents) now prefer asking ChatGPT medical questions because it's… kinder. The bot apologizes. It validates feelings. It reassures them the way actual doctors used to.
And even the doctors agree the entire medical system is being out-empathized by an autocomplete machine.
Meanwhile, Gen Alpha — still years away from algebra — is doing skincare hauls. We've got sheet masks for toddlers, eye cream for eight-year-olds, and kids streaming three hours of product reviews before they can stream a thought. We skipped childhood and went straight to consumerhood.
Our Takeaway: AI won't completely replace human care. But it shows us that people clearly aren't getting enough care elsewhere.
(Sources: The New York Times; Pew Research Center Digital Childhood Report; Dentsu Culture Dive)
This Week's Red Thread: Surrender as Strategy
This entire week felt like the industry quietly raising its hand and asking: “Hey… does anyone actually know what we're doing anymore?”
WPP hiring McKinsey to explain itself. Amazon telling brands to stop thinking and trust the machine. Platforms drowning in synthetic content. Coke using 100 humans to manufacture artificial humanity. Doctors losing bedside manner to chatbots. Toddlers becoming beauty influencers before becoming readers.
The through-line isn't innovation — it's abdication. Not because the future is clear, but because the present is exhausting.
And buried in all of this is the actual signal: The only things cutting through the noise are the things that still feel unmistakably human. Not polished, not optimized, not prompted — human.
Because if this week proved anything, it's this:
We're not living in a culture that's dying. We're living in a culture that forgot what it feels like to be alive.
— NB
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