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Newsletter number 20 is out on International Hov day. Two reasons to be celebrating.

We are heading towards Christmas, and there’s a big chance you’re sipping on some glögg at your office holiday party when this e-mail lands in your inbox. Hopefully, it’s not spiked with psychedelics, even if this week’s newsletter suggests maybe it should be.

One reader asked for more observations about music, so this newsletter contains two. You’re welcome.

INSIGHT DOWNLOAD

The most interesting things I’ve read, seen, thought about, or debated the last two weeks. High and low.

→ ARTIFICIAL HITMAKERS. AI music has been a thing for a while, but now it’s making major moves. The No. 1 country song and gospel song in the US right now is AI-generated. At least 10 AI-generated songs have ended up on the charts. Xania Monet made it to place 20 on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs, and its creator, Telisha Jones, got a seven-figure record deal. The music industry fell behind during the digitalization wave, but they’re not making the same mistake now. Instead, they are making deals. The three major labels (UMG, Sony, and Warner) have now struck a deal with Klay (a remix-focused AI-based streaming service). Warner Music once sued AI song generator Suno but has now entered into a licensing deal with them. Stim (the Swedish collecting society for songwriters, composers, and music publishers) has launched the world’s first collective AI licence for music.

→ MARKETING BASICS REVISITED. Hey, upper-funnel marketers, brand building might be back. At least according to McKinsey’s “The State of Marketing 2026 Europe” report. CMOs are focusing on brand building, shifting spend toward paid, upper-funnel media. Budget discipline, effectiveness, and profit growth are top priorities, so it makes complete sense to focus on brand building, which delivers exactly that. At the same time, brand building is evolving: rather than separating performance marketing and brand efforts, companies now run full-funnel campaigns. Paid media is primarily digital and social. Leading priorities include customer experience, brand engagement, and “interactive branding.” AI is increasingly used to optimize media, personalize content, and support market research. CMOs today focus on brand building, effectiveness, media optimization, and consumer insights, but in new ways enabled by tech development. Principles don’t change, practices do, and this McKinsey report is a testament to the fact that this holds true to CMOs in 2026. Mark Ritson has championed timeless frameworks like 4Ps for a long time, and apparently, CMOs are catching up.

→ WRITER RENAISSANCE. Is Substack fueling a renaissance for writing? This July, they became a unicorn. Everyone is joining: Charli XCX, Rosalia, Michael Burry, and legacy publications (FT, Economist, New Yorker, NY Mag, Bon Appétit), among others. This made me think that it’s not about Substack, which is just a replaceable platform. It’s the return of the written word. After years of image- and video-driven content, the pendulum is swinging again. The rise of poetry, book culture, and print may have inspired creators to write again, sparking a new wave of text-first content. This gives clarity to why every influencer suddenly has a book deal and why we’re all nostalgic for the old Condé Nast era.

→ SYNTHETIC DESIRE. Zero surprise that AI porn is flooding the internet right now. The Economist and Dazed look at it from different angles but land on the same point: it’s crushing the business for human performers, and it’s a consent nightmare. AI “sex workers” are now a thing – complete with online courses (where men are) teaching creators how to build them, often using other workers’ content as training data. Regulation is miles behind. Privacy is also a concern – Secret Desires (a service where people can AI-generate synthetic companions, and sexual content is not prohibited) had a breach where loads of images (uploaded to their now removed “faceswap” feature) leaked.

→ HOUSE PARTY. When Gen Z wants to get offline, brands are opening physical locations. Fashion brands have been acing this game for a while, but they are not alone. Meta is evolving its series of pop-up Meta Houses and recently opened a skateboarding-themed Meta House on 5th Avenue in NYC. Netflix is opening a Netflix house in Pennsylvania. A24 is also betting on physical spaces – they recently ran a Marty Supreme merch pop-up in NYC and are also starting a shop-in-shop partnership with Barnes & Noble. But it’s also going the other way. Two Stranger Things fans just bought the house from Stranger Things. At the same time, the US suffered a retail apocalypse earlier this year, and now H&M is closing 200 physical stores. The insight is clear – consumers want physical experiences and stores, but not necessarily physical stores where assortment and experience fail to align with their needs and values.

→ BALL 2.0. Air Mail, Elle, and The Times are all reporting that Le Bal des Débutantes in Paris is back, but in a new way. The event that was once prohibited from photography is now going viral on TikTok, becoming an integral part of young elite women’s lifestyle. Air Mail crowns it “the Met Gala for teenagers” (guests include Eulalia d’Orléans-Bourbon, Hollywood nepo baby Apple Martin, and BYD heir Alice Wang). Le Bal has changed with the times. It is no longer an event for matchmaking but instead achievement, couture, and self-branding. Even the most conservative institutions innovate to stay in touch with the zeitgeist and protect their future lineage.

→ SOUNDS CINEMATIC. Charli XCX announced her first movie (with A24) a while ago, and now Boy Harsher is making a movie (it features VTSS and FKA Twigs). Also, Sabrina Carpenter is starring in and producing an Alice in Wonderland-inspired musical movie. Music with cinematic vibes is almost always great, so this makes complete sense. But it might also go the other way – TikTok is convinced that UK rapper EsDeeKid is actually Timothée Chalamet.

→ GREEN BEAR. Did you like Industry Season 3? Then you’re in for a ride. The Northvolt collapse earlier this year ruined many dreams of a greener economy. Green steel producer Stegra is on life support thanks to Swedish government funding. Even if the government is doing what is morally right, it might be an unwise investment because everything green is bearish right now. The sustainable fabrics market has collapsed. Deep green funds are down. The carbon offset market is dead. Will the green economy make a comeback soon, or is it completely dead?

→ VEGAN COLLAPSE. The decline in green business also hurts the plant-based food market. Meat consumption is up in the US, and Dazed asks, “Where have all the vegans gone?” Oatly’s shares have lost 97% of their value, and the whole US plant-based milk market is down 5% in the US. In Sweden, sales of vegetarian food flattened out this summer. Vegan cheese company Stockeld recently filed for bankruptcy, and plant-based food vending machine company Veat now sadly follows them. I wrote about the return of the steak a while ago, and this is the financial consequences.

→ KIDULT LIFE. This year’s Christmas gift (according to the Swedish Trade Federation) is “adult toys,” but they aren’t that nasty. Instead, they mean things like puzzles. In the U.S, the toy market rose 7% in 2025, almost entirely driven by collectibles. In 2024, 28.5% of the European toy market was teens and adults, and in the first half of 2024, adults in the G12 countries spent $1.5 billion on toys, putting them ahead of toddlers as the most important target group for toymakers. Hot Wheels collector series aimed at adults has tripled in sales since 2017. Gen Z don’t only love Labubus but also Jellycat. GQ has written about the kidult restaurant boom (restaurants turning dinner into play time with crayons, Barbie dolls, and rubber ducks.) Apparently, part of it is that Stockholm’s most infamous restaurant for client dinners (Punk Royale) has now opened in the British capital. LEGO has 142 sets specifically made for adults and has run some incredible activations during F1. For example, two weeks ago in Vegas, the podium finishers rode a pink LEGO-built Cadillac across the track.

→ LIMITED SOCIALS. Many countries (Australia, Malaysia, etc.) are restricting teenagers' social media use. But the industry is also starting to self-regulate. TikTok will begin giving its users badges for controlling their usage of the app. They are also rolling out an affirmation journal and background sound generator to improve their users’ mental health. Pinterest launched a feature that filters out AI content and will hopefully keep your feed “slop-free”. Meta recently added a PG-13 safety filter to Instagram. The big question is whether they are launching these features because they want to, or just to avoid regulation.

→ PSYCHEDELICS 2.0. Psychedelics, once reserved for artists, weirdos, and festival bathrooms, are now as mainstream as they could ever be. Psychologists use it for depression treatment. Silicon Valley has been microdosing for years. A strong sign that something is gaining mainstream traction is that it ends up in the most diverse corners of culture. Last year, Harvard Film Club introduced a “psychedelic cinema” series. The New Yorker reported on priests taking mushrooms and becoming psychedelic evangelists. Bryan Johnson claims toad venom showed him an “expansive map” of consciousness. The conservative right folds psychedelics into wellness and performance culture. People are tripping to lift better at the gym and, in some cases, to find God. Wall Street, never one to miss a trend, started embracing the psychedelics industry last year, triggering awkward tension with its philanthropists.

→ THE NEW MEDIA ESTABLISHMENT. If you thought creators were still the scrappy underdogs of media, you might need to rethink. You’ve probably already read my takes on the creator era. You also probably already have heard about MrBeast’s brand Feastables, hiring senior executives from TikTok, Snapchat, and NBC Universal, opening a theme park in Saudi Arabia, being on the Time 100 Most Influential Companies list, seeing his employees leave to start their own ventures, as well as receiving loads of criticism. eMarketer claims, “If all US-based creators were to move their social media brand deals to a single, imaginary app, it would be the fourth-largest social platform in the US based on brand investments”. Scalable is a new media company dedicated to the content creator economy. The key takeaway is that content creators are no longer a complement to traditional media. They are the new media establishment and should be treated as such.