AI takeovers, Saratoga's surge, P&G vs Unilever plus the UK startup backed by 20VC
Issue #49
Weekly Exhale
Until this week, I had never heard of Ashton Hall. Nor Studio Ghibli. Nothing is universal when we’re locked in our own algorithmic lanes. Even if you’re not chronically online, I’d be surprised if you hadn’t bumped into one or the other by now. As ever, what happened is beside the point. The way these moments ripple out, however, tells us a lot.
So. Hall and Ghibli.
Ashton Hall is an athlete with a remarkable physique and an unremarkable career. Now an influencer with 9 million followers, a video of his morning routine clocked 750+ million views on X in just three days.
Hall rises at 3:52 am, mouth taped shut and takes us through a hyper-disciplined routine, bathing his face in iced Saratoga mineral water, twerking out squats, journaling, and a baffling moment where he eats a banana and then rubs the inside of the peel on his face.
Astute viewers noticed a few cracks—the timeline is off, the dive into the pool somehow takes four minutes—but that’s not the point. You’re not meant to notice the details. You’re meant to marvel at the man.
Most of the internet is laughing at Hall’s over-staged bro routine. But the impact? No joke. Primo Brands, owners of Saratoga Spring Water, saw their share price spike 16%, pushing their market cap past $13 billion, despite having no official deal with Hall. Not bad for a creator who isn’t on the books and whose video wasn’t in the content calendar.
Meanwhile, in another corner of the internet, OpenAI launched a new image-generation feature inside ChatGPT. A former AWS engineer posted a photo of himself, his wife and his dog in the style of Studio Ghibli, captioned:
“tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime.”
Who doesn’t want tremendous alpha in their life? And all around, the spread had begun, and soon screens were awash with pastel Japanese animé posts.
Studio Ghibli is renowned for its hand-drawn detail. Ghibli’s Oscar-winning films take years to draw, frame by painstaking frame. Machines were now spitting out the style in seconds. Sam Altman, never one to miss a moment, Ghiblified his profile picture and declared:
“believe it or not, we put a lot of thought into the initial examples we show when we introduce new technology”
I don’t think Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli’s co-founder, would have agreed. Miyazaki had previously reacted to AI-generated art in a 2016 documentary. He was disgusted. He described it as an insult to life itself.
The funny thing is, this was supposed to be Google’s big week: Gemini 2.5 Pro launched, an important swipe at OpenAI.
And no one noticed.
Think about that. A guy rubbing the phloem of a banana on his face and a Ghibli photo filter got more traction than Google’s $75 billion AI launch.
Welcome to a meme-powered economy.
Hall’s routine is being laughed at, sure, but also copied and monetised. His net worth, somewhere between $1-5 million, stands a chance of ballooning if Saratoga signs him. Enough to keep a Hoshizaki ice machine humming for a mighty long time.
As for Miyazaki, if karma is with him, I hope his lawyers are drawing up usage invoices to send to Altman. Because if Altman is going to digitise everything we make and sell it back to us, the very least he can do is offer Miyazaki some respect—and a cut.
Adolescence, the box-set of the moment, also found its way into the algorithmic bloodstream this week. And it hit harder. The episodes follow a 13-year-old boy taken into custody after stabbing a female classmate to death.
Alongside the tragedy, we’re shown his ability to draw—just one of the many quiet clues pointing to the systems, families and people that might have failed him before he failed them.
Unsurprisingly, social media became filled with soul-searching influencers and cod-psychology (often AI-generated), all trying to cash in on a deeply sensitive and uncomfortable story.
Which is difficult. Because the film stayed with me.
It speaks to a world that is socially, economically and digitally off-kilter. Not least, as a British drama, it is yet another creative corner claimed by Silicon Valley. Netflix backed it. Not the BBC. The capital, the risk and the creative belief all came from California. And so the reward is once again theirs, even if the talent that created it isn’t.
Episode two includes a single-take journey through a school portrayed as a hostile environment. A comparison I couldn’t get out of my head as I stumbled up to my son’s (private) school careers fair this week.
There I was, behind a tiny table in a hall lined with magic circle consultants, big food brands, even some police reps and a few entrepreneurs like me. I spent time with two students, one interested in filmmaking and the other in design. I told them to follow what excited them most as much as possible. It felt good to say. But later, I wondered if it was naïve.
Not because of AI as such. We have to remember that the hype around AI primarily serves venture capital and big tech. Jeopardy makes for good headlines and even better valuations. But our kids won’t think of AI as magic or existential. They'll treat it like a wooden spoon. Useful. Unremarkable.
What I am worried about is extraction. The way digital systems and the ideologies behind them pull value from the many and concentrate it in the hands of the few. We used to tell people that Guinness made you strong. Doctors appeared in ads recommending fresh cigarettes. Today, we tell everyone to post more. Just do it. You’ll be rewarded for it.
In some ways, this week’s internet told us something new: The contempt is mutual. We can see that morning rituals are ridiculous. We’re glad we missed the Gemini launch. Who knows, we might check out Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away this weekend, a film about environmentalism, feminism and folklore.
We’ll always care about what’s real. And what’s made with love.
But when it comes to caring about our kids, it’s going to take more than a chat at a career fair or Netflix commissioning season 2 of Adolescence.
Maybe it starts with refusing to be amazed so quickly. With teaching kids the difference between a miracle and a gimmick. Between a follower count and a friend. Between something made fast and something made to last. Or by noticing when a silence means something. Or they’ve stopped drawing.
And choosing what we let our kids believe is worth their time.
We can’t outspend Silicon Valley. But there are still classrooms. There are still conversations. And there are still kids with dreams better than the ones that got us here.
That’s the work.
Let's rise together with every issue. ♡
Market Movements
Here is the UK Spring Statement speech | gov.uk
Investors warn Reeves she has little room for error | Financial Times
Young Americans losing confidence in the economy | CNBC
Brand Beat
Marketing needs a Ferris Bueller moment | Marketing Week
Tesco's marketing boss takes 'blank sheet of paper' | Marketing Week
Some B2B marketers want staff to make the ads | Digiday
New: How should Gen AI fit into your marketing strategy | Harvard Business Review
This beauty brand is selling...$3.37 eggs? | The Cut
A morning routine gets 750m views in three days | X
Saratoga water sees share price rise as a result | Market Watch
When we can create anything, we create the same | Carly Ayres
New McDonald's product photo-only breakfast menu ads | Marketing Beat
P&G takes the lead in 95-year Unilever rivalry | Wall Street Journal
Is marketing getting more comfortable with complexity? | MediaCat
TRESemmé ad saving 87% on global ads with AI | Phil.ai
H&M uses digital clones of models in social media | BBC
A love letter from SpaceNK | Tash Grossman
Lululemon shares drop amid economic concerns | CNBC
How Vinted found another gear in luxury fashion | Vogue Business
Influencer Alix Earle hits Gymshark with $1m lawsuit | Independent
Meta to stop targetting a single UK citizen after lawsuit settlement | The Guardian
Madwell's madness: A $1m launch party and Adderall | Ad Age
The cast of Severance show up in London for stunt | Apple TV
Netflix's Adolescence makes UK TV history | BBC
BBC drops podcast adverts after backlash | Financial Times
Controversial Solana ad highlights woke divide | Crypto News
Starting Up
UK's Fyxer AI raises $10m seed round led by Harry Stebbing's 20VC | Soapbox
Chinese AI start-ups overhaul business models after DeepSeek's success | Financial Times
Brass Monkey aims to bring cold therapy to the masses | Maddyness
Do founders need VC-backed wellness programmes? | Sifted
Tech Tidbits
Wiz acquired by Alphabet for $32bn | The Guardian
UK comic book makers join AI copycat battle | Financial Times
TechCrunch sold to private equity | TechCrunch
Napster, 25 years old, is sold for $207m | CNBC
Can Silicon Valley find Christianity? | The Atlantic
Archetype AI is ChatGPT for the physical world | Fast Company
Venture Vibes
Amazon's Alexa fund is now backing AI | TechCrunch
A simple explanation of the failure of venture capital | Tech Equity
IRR performance of 50+ venture funds in 2024 | Newcomer
Family Dollar business sold for $1bn | Wall Street Journal
23andMe files for bankruptcy | The Register
UK to invest £400m in defence tech | Sifted
Design Driven
Algae or underwear? Fast fashion waste visualised | It's Nice That
Why California Pizza Kitchen just faked an insane rebrand | Fast Company
Light Phone III brings minimalism to smartphones | The Verge
9 trends reshaping visual comms | Creative Boom
Happiness
The power of micro-adventures to transform your life | The Guardian
Taking in the good: A simple negativity offset | Big Think
Suffering low morale? Use this video | Lumon Industries
Stay gold 🙏🏻