Celebrity has long been a staple of B2C advertising, but in B2B, it's historically been treated as nothing more than a huge flex. Too often, an A-list name signals budget more than insight. When it's misaligned, the backlash can outweigh the buzz. Look no further than the ire Salesforce received in 2023 for paying Matthew McConaughey millions while simultaneously laying off thousands of employees.
You settle in for a quick scroll through your feed, maybe just to unwind for a minute or two. But somewhere between a cooking hack and a clip you've already forgotten, forty minutes vanished. It's all a blur. Welcome to the era of infinite content and finite attention, where our brains are working overtime just to keep up with the deluge.
On Thursday, SNK released a trailer for Fatal Fury: CotW 's upcoming second season, which launches on January 22. The trailer promises a pretty robust release schedule for the game's anniversary with monthly character drops over a six-month period. Returning characters Kim Jae Hoon, Nightmare Geese, Blue Mary, and Wolfgang Krauser are slated to join the game's roster, too. However, the excitement of fan-favorites returning has been almost entirely overshadowed by the game's latest trailer incorporating apparent AI-generated clips.
San Diego-based Vanna Jimenez became a beauty influencer by accident. A year ago, she began posting her morning routines on TikTok and Instagram out of her tiny antique bathroom. While she initially focused on her love of 1960s fashion, her skincare and makeup - tossed artfully across a silver tray piled with her coffee, jewellery, toothpaste, books and accessories - quickly gained followers and the attention of beauty brands.
Various groups are keeping their eyes peeled for hacking and information warfare efforts launched in response to an unprecedented U.S. operation conducted over the weekend that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to face criminal charges. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is continuing to monitor the cyber landscape in the raid's aftermath. In a written statement, CISA acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala did not acknowledge any disinformation tracking, but said that the recent events in Venezuela demand "heightened vigilance" across sectors.
He argues that the algorithms have grown too sophisticated at sorting viewers into their own individual silos. If a viewer seeks out automotive content, they receive more automotive content. If they like health and beauty, their feed is largely restricted to health and beauty. The days of a single creator punching through to hundreds of millions of viewers are effectively over. Donaldson's rise required a specific historical moment, one where recommendation engines still permitted the emergence of mass figures. That window has closed.
As reported by Deadline, the Google-owned video platform has terminated two massive YouTube channels that peddled fake, AI-generated movie trailers, in what is one of the most high profile actions it's taken against the AI spam polluting the platform. Combined, the channels - called Screen Culture, based in India, and KH Studio, based in the US - boasted over two million subscribers and more than one billion views.
A few months ago, I went to a birthday party at a bar in Neepsend, an old industrial neighbourhood by the River Don in Sheffield. The bar had been a steelworks once, but now it was another example of the international style you find everywhere, from Portland, Oregon, to all the other Portlands in Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand: exposed brick, steel beams, concrete floors, Edison bulbs. The steelworkers had been transformed into accountants and brand managers, the molten pig iron into £9 cocktails.