1. Brainstorms as binge TV.

NBC just launched On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, a reality competition where 10 marketers and creators compete in marketing challenges. Think Project Runway meets Mad Men, but with more awkward client pitches and fewer three-martini lunches. The show flips the traditional advertising model on its head: instead of just seeing the polished 30-second spot during the Super Bowl, viewers get front-row seats to the messy brainstorms, desperate pivots, and soul-crushing feedback sessions that birthed it.

It's a fascinating cultural moment we are in: the "making of" has become compelling than the thing being made. NBC is essentially betting that watching people go through the process of selling us stuff is more entertaining than the actual stuff they're trying to sell. And they might be right. On Brand signals something deeper about what consumers want. They don't want polish. They want raw and unfiltered. They want human. And after decades of being sold dreams with slick marketing and Hollywood glitz and glamour, it's no wonder why.

2. Recipe for sweet disaster.

Cookie dough brand Sweet Lauren's accidentally posted a misstep on social media. But instead of executing the classic panic delete and pray-nobody-screenshot maneuver, they did something unexpected. They owned it completely. The team pulled back the curtain on their mistake, walked followers through their scramble to fix it, and essentially turned their social media blunder into a live-streamed crisis management seminar. Rather than getting roasted in the comments, they found themselves with an army of cheerleaders who suddenly felt like they had insider access to the brand's war room.

Sweet Lauren's accidentally stumbled onto something marketers spend millions trying to manufacture: authentic connection. By showing their human side they transformed followers from passive observers into emotional stakeholders. In a world where consumers can smell manufactured authenticity from miles away, sometimes the best marketing strategy is simply admitting you're human enough to mess up. Who knew that showing your cookie dough wasn't perfectly shaped could make people love the brand even more?

3. Chaos as marketing strategy.

Twitch streamer Kai Cenat is conducting an ambitious social media experiment: a 30-day marathon livestream that's become a revolving door of celebrity chaos. Think late-night talk show meets reality TV meets whatever happens when you lock a camera in a room and let famous people wander in to hawk their latest projects. There's no script, no polish, no carefully choreographed segments. Just raw, unfiltered promotional mayhem where A-listers stumble through pitches like they're crashing a friend's birthday party.

The genius lies in the beautiful messiness of it all. While traditional media spends millions crafting perfect promotional moments, Cenat has discovered that audiences are starving for the exact opposite: the awkward pauses, the fumbled product placements, the genuine human moments that happen when celebrities can't rely on their usual publicity machinery. It's appointment television for the TikTok generation, where the glitches aren't bugs, they're features. This chaotic cultural laboratory proves that sometimes the best content comes from simply pressing record and seeing what happens when famous people have nowhere to hide.