Who decides whether something is any good, and what happens when we stop asking? In this issue of Sunday Strategy, we look at six stories to think about next week, including:
– When ’Slop’ Moves from Description to Accusation
– Timetravelling Through Your Own Career on LinkedIn
– Can Fashion Retailers Own More of Resale?
– Is Waymo on Borrowed Time?
– Brands manufacturing what the machines read
– The AI companions making lonely people lonelier
// Stories of the Week:
1.) When ’Slop’ Moves from Description to Accusation
Are we at peak ’slop’? Or are we in the midst of a ’slop shift’ – moving from a useful word to describe thoughtless content to a broader accusation for any disliked content, AI or human? “Slop” arrived as a useful word, doing real work to push back on thoughtless content flooding out of AI systems into social media and culture. However, as AI content has refined and become less detectable vs. human generated content, it may have reached its ’second act’ – moving from a descriptor to an accusation. Slop is rapidly becoming a label for anything we don’t like.
LinkedIn shipped a “seems like AI slop” reporting button on July 30, handing every user a one-click accusation, but even its label isn’t certain what you’re looking at. While slop on the platform is a genuine threat, as a Pangram Labs study of roughly a million posts put over 41% of long-form content on the platform as ’fully machine-generated’, the reaction may not stop the tide. Putting aside the consideration that Pangram sells AI detection, is the answer to allow users to flag each other as ’bot enablers’ – justified or not?
The choice to involve users in AI ’slop detection’ is a sign of growing parity between the human and AI writing. While Anthropic has declared it will embed watermarks in AI text from its models in response to EU AI content labelling rules, applying them worldwide rather than only in Europe, the surefire signs for others to detect AI content are declining.
The Economist analysed 55,940 sentences and 1.2 million words this month, comparing its own writing against ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok, alongside the New York Times, the Washington Post and novels published between 1950 and 2022. The em dash, the most discussed ’AI tell’ has declined, as only Claude now uses them more than human writers, and ChatGPT uses markedly fewer than any human in the study. The markers that survived are harder to police, including skipped commas, monotonous sentence length, and a fondness for the “it’s not X, it’s Y” construction.
The Economist comes to an uncomfortable conclusion, that AI writing is getting closer to human output with every model version. In response, they claim that humans now need to get better at editing rather than better at detecting. As provenance becomes harder to discern, we switch back to the issue at the heart of writing – whether it’s any good.
The ’human good / AI bad’ binary is eroding, potentially to the benefit of focusing on the message vs. the author. The slop debate had always missed the point that AI assistance helps those who can’t easily write to communicate, be it because of dyslexia, anxiety or tackling complex topics. In the place of this binary, we have to sit with the uncomfortable truth – that humans made slop well before AI came along. As one set of AI guidelines I saw recently said well, “We don’t care how you wrote this, as long as you stand by it.”
This truth runs across the real issue with LinkedIn’s new button – that slop isn’t just confined to AI and allowing us to label anything we don’t like as ’slop’ has a bigger impact than fighting AI in our feed. Instead of focusing on protecting the floor of content on the platform, LinkedIn should be focusing on raising the quality ceiling. If an article is AI generated (either partially or fully – potentially with labelling) but worthwhile, do we lose something when it gets banned in a ’slop purge’ with each user holding a different definition of what ’seems like slop’? Is it time to stop thinking about ourselves as just authors, but also editors and to be judged as distributors of content vs. just judging the content itself?
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: The Authenticity Tax
*New Classic publishes a weekly trend report generated by our AI system Airgo, but reviewed by a human. As we outline above, we don’t care how the idea was formed, as long as we can support it and stand by it. Check out our weekly reports here.*
2.) A Fifth Of LinkedIn Is Editing Their Own Past
When our ’personal brands’ are being built on platforms like LinkedIn, how tempting is it to change the past? Researchers have put a number on something we all have known, finding that 19.7% of users retroactively change the title or description of a job they’ve already left. Using Revelio Labs data covering tens of millions of US LinkedIn profiles in monthly snapshots from 2020 to 2026, their paper highlights the temptation for a 1/5th of us to polish our professional history after a part of it has ended.
Retroactive edits were found to occur most frequently at 5 years after the position ended, showing this isn’t contained to those changing the recent past or their last jobs. ’Technology and Information’ (32%), ’Arts, Entertainment and Recreation’ (25%), ’Scientific and Technical Services’ (24%) and ’Manufacturing’ (22%) were fields most likely to ’time travel’ while ’Wholesale Trade’ (17%), ’Construction’ (16%), and Real Estate (14%) were most likely to leave their past as is. Under-30s (38.1%) were found to do it much more than older users (17.1% of 50s and 9.8% of 60+), as were those with higher degrees (29.3% of MBAs / 26% of Master’s) vs. non college graduates (18.6% of high school graduates).
The differences highlight the varying tensions that exist in the modern workforce, with those in fields disrupted by technology and contracting more likely to have shifting expectations for what makes a ’good candidate’. Those still making their way up the ladder and those most qualified have more impetus to try and match moving targets. More stable fields have less desire and evidence of time travelling. As the study’s author put it, ’dentists don’t time travel’.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Verification Anxiety
3.) Can Fashion Retailers Own More of Resale?
Mass Fashion has fully committed to resale and repair as a revenue stream, but is it paying off yet? According to ThredUp, the secondhand market is forecasted to reach $393 billion by 2030. Zara, H&M, Lululemon, Levi’s, and REI are launching their own resale platforms, selling secondhand versions of their products alongside new ones.
However, retailer owned platforms have a ways to go before they become a direct revenue stream. H&M’s Pre-loved initiative launched in 2021 and grew 31% last year to 1.844 billion Swedish krona, roughly $194 million, but still only accounts for 0.8% of overall revenue.
Instead, most resale transactions still happen on eBay, Vinted or Depop, leaving the revenue, data and customer relationship with the third party resale platform. Retailers understandably want to own more of the fashion ecosystem for reasons beyond sustainability. But the third party platforms that created the consumer opportunity aren’t going to go quietly and with a greater breadth than any one retailer – no one has a direct solution yet.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Durability as Rebellion
4.) Is Waymo on Borrowed Time?
Waymo’s driverless cars are expanding into new markets and with that, comes greater incidents of the cars finding themselves in ’unexpected situations’ or ’edge cases’ as the brand refers to them. From fireworks in the street to construction zones, passengers are sharing experiences where the cars have navigated novel situations to various success. With each comes an opportunity for public sentiment and regulators to find a reason to limit the expansion of the cars, but what’s an acceptable expectation?
Similar to new drivers, the novelty of road situations will inevitably lead to mistakes from Waymo – but unlike teenagers with a license, the lack of humanity and new technology is a wild west for public perception. Data from the IIHS has shown that Waymo’s driverless cars get in less crashes than human drivers, our perception of the technology as one ’monolithic block’ vs. individual drivers may mean that one incident can stain the entire fleet. Given the hive mind nature of the system behind these cars, it may be more than fair to judge the cars collectively. However, this may also set an impossibly high bar for public acceptance and Waymo may be on borrowed time as it expands – hoping public acceptance outstrips the risk of a ’vibe change’ towards driverless cars.
5.) The Tension Between Publisher and Platform Continues
As the value of content expands beyond just readership towards AI optimisation, the love / hate relationship between publishers, search and AI is changing with it. Once upon a time, AI answers were assembled from sources that were trustworthy largely because nobody was optimising them. That assumption is under attack from two fronts.
The first is the erosion of trusted data sources. Reddit has seen a renaissance recently due to ChatGPT and Gemini leaning on it for data, as most of what sits there isn’t marketing – which is exactly why marketers now want in. The Wall Street Journal reports that jewellery brand Brilliant Earth advertised for a “Reddit strategy manager” whose remit covered shaping conversations across “search engines, LLMs, and customer decision-making.” Moderators at r/jewelry noticed, and warned their community that a sudden wave of positive posts about the company “might not be coincidental.” Reddit itself is now warning brands off, while still trying to keep some of their newly found buzz.
The second is optimized content. Time has been inserting FAQ-formatted sponsored copy into the markdown version of its pages, putting the stripped-down text that AI crawlers read and human readers never see to the forefront. Ad tech firm Mobian generates copy from a brand brief and tracks how often AI engines surface it, with Ally Bank and the Project Management Institute among the early buyers. Their brand-approved messaging sits in the version an agent reads.
Perplexity has blocked those optimized ’ads’ outright and called the practice deceptive. Chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer warned that publishers running “deceptive advertising like markdown ads” risk a reputational downgrade in Perplexity’s index, including a hit to their trust score. It’s the first public fight over advertising aimed at machines rather than people. What was once a favourite tactic of ’SEO Experts’ jamming terms at the bottom of pages to game Google has found a nostalgic revival in a new form for AI.
Both issues show the changing nature of online influence and content. Trusted sources free of marketing become prime targets for marketers. Optimised content for AI becomes something AI platforms fight against. The fault lines may not be new, but the labels around them are.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Agent-Legible Branding
6.) The Companionship That Makes People Lonelier
While the pitch for AI has always been to fight loneliness and provide companionship, the reality is much more limited. New Stanford research suggests that AI socialization is the ’diet’ version of togetherness – providing empty calories vs. real people.
Researchers in Diyi Yang’s lab surveyed 1,131 Character.AI users and analysed 244 donated chat transcripts. Among people with smaller offline social networks, intense use correlated with lower wellbeing, and the association was strongest when companionship was the stated motive.
While many said they weren’t using AI for companionship, the reality was different. 12% named companionship as their primary reason for using the platform, but over half described the AI as ’a friend, companion or romantic partner’, and more than 80% of donated sessions involved seeking emotional or social support.
In general users were shown to be less likely to truthfully describe how they were using the AI and those most at risk for isolation ended up worse off because of the technology.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Real-Life Antidote
// Ads You Might Have Missed:
Kayak – “Bookboards”
Trips die in group chats, so travel aggregator Kayak found one way to save them from being ’muted’. Their recent campaign sees travellers submit their own WhatsApp threads, and Kayak puts the name of the friend holding everything up on a digital billboard near their home or office.
The focus on one blocker isn’t without merit, as their research shows 90% of travellers blame one person who will not commit, with plans sitting unresolved for one to three months. The OOH activations give the rest of the group chat a chance to turn travel plans into reality by putting the whole conversation out in public.
This ad is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Friendship Over Romance
Virgin Atlantic Holidays – “If Not Now, When?”
Taking a different approach to travel, Virgin Atlantic Holiday’s latest ad focuses on the moment of choice in holidays – tapping into the decision to indulge (from a glass of champagne on take off to a dive into the ocean or a horse ride). Set to the Libertines’ ’Don’t Look Back Into the Sun’, the ad features potential energy in a way that avoids showing the actual holiday indulgence for too long – allowing the viewer to understand the choice and fill in what it felt like to do it. That gap and viewer response looks to make it more likely to want to do it for yourself.
Apple x Brutalismus 3000 – “Kairo”
Mobile phone footage from concerts and gigs normally finds itself quickly ignored. However, Apple’s latest ’Shot on iPhone’ work attempts to change that – partnering with Berlin duo Brutalismus 3000 to assemble footage captured on iPhone 17 Pro Max’s across a live show – including a phone thrown into the crowd. The result is something different from their normal beautiful photo focus, combining frenetic energy with picture quality.
Contrasting Fred Again’s use of Dropbox, which gave concert goers the ability to get footage and photos from Fred’s ’phone free’ USB tour gigs – both approaches creatively try to add value to enjoying and capturing the moment in different ways.
This ad is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Gated Abundance
Tesco – “Know What You’re Sitting On”
Loyalty programs are only as valuable as what your points unlock. Tesco’s recent campaign aims to prompt users to think about how many points they may have, as research shows 500k Clubcard members are sitting on more than 100 pounds in unredeemed vouchers.
Dramatized as a stacked mountain of rewards, the ads do a dual role of prompting users to app to check balances and highlighting the rewards on offer to current and prospective members. It highlights how ’token economies’ only run when you engage with the tokens.
Always Discreet – “Protect the Moment”
Can a stigmatized category normalize through louder advertising and partnerships? Always Discreet thinks so, building its largest activation since 2014 around three NFL players’ mothers and tackling ’bladder leaks’ head on.
The sports partnership may not seem like a strategic fit, but research shows that the broad reach of the NFL hits nearly half of adult incontinence product users as viewers. It shows that any brand still assuming it has to secretly talk about the issue it addresses, leaves itself open to a bolder competitor.
This ad is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Lived-Experience Authority
// Sunday Snippets
// Marketing & Advertising //
– Jaffa Cakes marked the UK solar eclipse by reimagining its own 1999 “Full Moon, Half Moon” ad as a single Metro back cover, via MG OMD and adam&eve\TBWA. [Advertising]
– McDonald’s is pairing Sanrio with Toho for a “cute meets kaiju” Happy Meal landing August 18, with Kuromi as Mechagodzilla and My Melody as Mothra. [Food & Drink]
– Liquid Death has partnered with Goodwipes to offer a winner a ’buttler’. [Advertising]
– Samaritans Ireland has launched a new campaign asking people to ’donate their voicemail’ message to remind people that Samaritans are always available to talk. [Advertising]
– Scrub Daddy goes full ’Love Island’ with its latest ’Scrub Daddy Island’ ad. [Advertising]
– Crocs unveils its mascot and ’newest employee’, Niles the Croc. [Fashion]
– Lufthansa put the unwritten rules of flying – armrest politics, seat reclining, the rush to stand after landing – onto a Travel Etiquette Collection of hoodies and tees, via Serviceplan. [Advertising]
– Netflix put an actor inside a furnished, air-conditioned billboard above Sunset Boulevard for three days to promote The Last House. [Media]
– The Big Issue printed an oversized edition to bring its vendors’ sight loss into focus for sighted readers. [Media]
– Heinz added a lid with three love settings to its ketchup bottle. [Food & Drink]
// Technology & Media //
– JPMorgan has debanked prediction market Polymarket over regulatory concerns, moving the argument about what counts as gambling from the courts to the banking system. [Regulation]
– The New York Times is not immune to AI search either, with Q2 subscriber additions slowing to 280,000 from 310,000 and the answer being more owned video. [Media]
– Experian has retired the Audigent brand, folding it into Experian Marketing Services. [Media]
– S4’s margins are pleasing shareholders, but the open question is whether cost control survives its own AI token spend. [Media]
// Life & Culture //
– The Mets are hosting MLB’s first Singles Night at Citi Field on August 27, with relationship-status wristbands and ticket tiers running from “The Bare Minimum” to “Most Eligible”. [Culture]
– AB InBev posted its first sustained volume growth since 2023, with beer’s share of alcohol servings climbing past 50% from roughly 46% in 2019. [Food & Drink]
– lululemon’s $248 Big-Ass Bag stands 32.7 inches tall and holds 80 litres, or roughly 375 apples. It ships with a mini tote for storing the bag itself. [Retail]
– The ’Golden Age’ of Mexican food in the US is running headlong into nativism. [Food & Drink]
– Flawed research methodologies may be feeding the narrative that scientific progress is slowing. [Tech]
– Boomers are driving a global travel boom and changing travel as they do it. [Travel]
// Until Next Sunday
As always, let me know what you think by email (dubose@newclassic.agency), website or on LinkedIn. You can also listen to an audio summary and discussion of each week’s newsletter on Spotify. We’re also on TikTok!
