A new study published in Marketing Science has found that some of the most widely considered online advertising safety and fairness policies may actually boost ad platform revenues while improving fairness outcomes. The policies at the centre of the study are around ads that are designed to help ensure that women, minorities and other protected classes are not disproportionately excluded from job, education and financial opportunities.
The study, “Is Fair Advertising Good for Platforms?” by Di Yuan of Auburn University, Manmohan Aseri of the University of Maryland and Tridas Mukhopadhyay of Carnegie Mellon University, investigated whether policies intended to equalize exposure to economic-opportunity advertisements help or hurt ad platforms financially.
Contrary to industry assumptions, the researchers found that when platforms implement an Equal Exposure with Equal Treatment (EET) policy that requires equal per-capita ad exposure across demographic groups, competition among advertisers intensifies, increasing the total number of dollars spent on advertising.
Empirical reporting has shown that protected groups such as women and minorities are less likely to encounter job, housing or financial opportunity ads online.
Case in point is the female demographic. Because women are a highly sought-after consumer marketing demographic, it costs more online to target them with consumer advertising. But when trying to target women as a demographic for economic-opportunity advertising, it is more expensive to reach them with economic opportunity ads, so as a result they are less likely to be as exposed to those kinds of ads.
Economic-opportunity advertisers (like employers or universities), by contrast to consumer marketing brands, value all users equally but cannot simply outbid specialized retailers to ensure that women see their ads.
“This asymmetric valuation creates a systematic disparity,” said co-author Aseri. “Retailers unintentionally crowd out opportunity-focused advertisers for certain demographics, resulting in fewer job or education ads reaching those protected groups.”
The researchers modelled advertiser competition under three policies: No Restriction (NR)—Advertisers can fully target based on demographics; Equal Treatment (ET)—Economic-opportunity advertisers cannot target by demographic group; and Equal Exposure with Equal Treatment (EET)—Platforms ensure equal exposure while also prohibiting demographic targeting.
While Equal Treatment is widely implemented by platforms as a result of regulatory pressure, the study showed this approach often fails to solve the problems associated with ads simply not reaching their target. In fact, the researchers found that in some cases “equal treatment” ads performed worse than if there were no restrictions at all.
“Equal treatment alone doesn’t fix the competitive imbalance,” said co-author Yuan. “Our analysis shows that it can even reduce platform profits and fail to close the exposure gap between protected and regular users.”
Under the EET policy, however, platforms that commit to boosting the effective ad budgets of economic-opportunity advertisers only when necessary to equalize exposure tend to do better. The study authors found that the mere existence of this rule changes advertiser behaviour, reducing “market segmentation” that previously let advertisers avoid competing directly.
As a result, advertisers spend more aggressively, platforms earn more total advertising revenue, and protected class demographics increase exposure to economic-opportunity ads.
“This is a rare case where fairness and profit objectives are aligned,” said Mukhopadhyay. “By removing the incentive to differentiate across demographic groups, competition itself provides the solution.”
When your brand is built on being number one, finishing second isn’t just a problem, it’s a complete identity crisis.
Some products become so synonymous with their category that the brand name replaces the thing itself. You don’t use an internet search engine, you Google it. You don’t blow your nose on a tissue, you grab a Kleenex. And for years, Elon Musk‘s car company had a similar advantage. “Tesla” and “electric vehicle” were commonly used interchangeably, almost as if no other EV brand existed.
That was Tesla’s superpower. They didn’t just make EVs; they were EVs. Every other manufacturer was playing catch-up. But now? They’re in second place. And for a brand like Tesla, second place might as well mean “first loser”. Not even the Cybertruck design debacle was as bad for the brand as this.
Reality catches up
So what’s happened? In short, Chinese manufacturer BYD has overtaken Tesla as the world’s biggest electric vehicle maker. Tesla delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025; down 9% from the previous year. BYD sold 2.26 million. That’s not close; that’s getting beaten at your own game. And it’s not just about sales; Tesla’s brand value has plummeted 35% in Interbrand’s latest ranking.
But here’s what’s genuinely bonkers: Tesla’s stock finished 2025 up 11%. Meanwhile traditional manufacturers like Toyota, who actually make consistent profits from their EVs, continue to be valued at a fraction of Tesla’s worth.
How’s that possible? Basically, Elon Musk is the world’s most effective one-man marketing department. He doesn’t just promote Tesla; he is Tesla. Every tweet, every wild promise about robotaxis and humanoid robots convinces investors they’re not buying a car company; they’re buying a sci-fi future.
Tesla Cybertruck (Image credit: Tesla)
The problem is, this cuts both ways. Now Musk’s own brand is inseparable from Tesla’s, his erratic behaviour and divisive politics become Tesla’s problem too.
As Michael Jordan famously pointed out, “Republicans buy sneakers too”… and the same principle is playing out here in reverse. Turns out, not entirely surprisingly, that the people most motivated to buy an eco-friendly car don’t always share the same politics as Elon.
The maturing market
It’s worth noting that the market as a whole has matured. At the outset, Tesla made electric cars desirable, fast, luxurious, aspirational. They removed the “worthy” stigma and replaced it with swagger. That was revolutionary… but that was also 10 years ago.
Nowadays, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Porsche are making credible electric cars with decades of brand heritage behind them. Chinese manufacturers are offering quality EVs at prices that make Tesla look overpriced. The branding of EVs has shifted from “I’m saving the planet while being impossibly cool” to “This is just a good car that happens to be electric.”
All of which means that for Tesla, second place really does equal first loser. The brand’s whole identity is wrapped up in being the disruptor, the one everyone else is chasing. Coming second – especially to a Chinese manufacturer most people couldn’t pick out of a line-up – takes all the air out of this brand narrative.
Tesla Cybercab (Image credit: Tesla)
Elon knows this, which is why he’s pivoting to robotaxis and robots right now. “We’re not really a car company” is the subtext. It’s classic brand repositioning when your core business is wobbling. The question is, will anyone buy it?
After all, Tesla has spent a lot of time resting on its laurels. As a result, quality control has slipped, customer service has deteriorated and the CEO has become a liability. The brand promised – and is still promising – the future. But in practice, they’re delivering inconsistent build quality and broken promises, while continuing to talk about full self-driving being “just around the corner”… at it has been for over a decade now.
Key takeaway
Right now, Tesla faces a choice. Focus on being a premium EV brand; the Apple of electric cars. Or embrace the pivot to full tech company, betting everything on autonomous driving to AI.
What they can’t do is pretend nothing has changed. Because the results are in, and the brand that defined an entire category has been outmanoeuvred. For creatives in general, it’s a textbook case in how even the most powerful brand narratives eventually collide with reality.
The question now isn’t whether Tesla can recover. It’s whether they can accept that in the brand game they’ve built for themselves, second place really does equal first loser – and that might mean completely reimagining what winning looks like. Good luck with that, Elon.
Tom May is an award-winning journalist specialising in art, design, photography and technology. His latest book, The 50 Greatest Designers (Arcturus Publishing), was published this June. He’s also author of Great TED Talks: Creativity (Pavilion Books). Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine.
In an age of AI-generated shortcuts, one Dutch lottery campaign chose a style of animation where five seconds takes a day. Madness or genius?
Picture this: your creative director walks in and announces the next campaign will be produced at a rate of five seconds per day. In 2024, when AI can generate entire commercials before lunch, when deadlines compress, and budgets tighten, when “faster and cheaper” has become advertising’s unofficial mantra, TBWA\NEBOKO‘s latest work for Staatsloterij feels almost defiant in its use of stop motion. But it works brilliantly.
For this New Year’s ad for the Dutch State Lottery, every character, prop and miniature Dutch streetscape was built and animated entirely by hand, one millimetre at a time. In 2026, it’s the advertising equivalent of making bread from scratch when you could just buy a loaf. And that’s precisely the point.
For over a decade, Staatsloterij has carved out territory in the Netherlands’ cultural calendar with its end-of-year spots. Previous campaigns have featured a cast of animals (dogs, hedgehogs, cats, even a bird in a cuckoo-clock) delivering heart warming tales of connection. But this year’s ad, titled “Give each other some luck”, marks a creative pivot: fully handcrafted human characters in a tangible, imperfect world.
Small acts of kindness
The film follows a grumpy elderly man, literally trailed by a small dark cloud (beautifully, painfully animated frame by frame), who begrudgingly accepts parcels for his entire street. When a lottery ticket arrives for a neighbour, his reluctant delivery becomes a journey through small acts of kindness that gradually shift his outlook. It’s simple storytelling, but the medium transforms it.
TBWA\NEBOKO’s executive creative director Dennis Baars is candid about the strategy. “We created a nice little story about a grumpy neighbour,” he explains. “But we really wanted to tell it in a surprising way. We were convinced that the human craft of stop motion would elevate the storytelling.”
Note the word choice here: not “speed it up” or “make it cheaper,” but “elevate”. In partnering with London’s Blinkink, the studio behind John Lewis’s legendary The Bear & The Hare ad, TBWA\NEBOKO wasn’t just buying expertise. They were buying into a philosophy that handmade work carries emotional weight that CGI often cannot replicate.
Director Joseph Mann describes watching “characters and entire worlds come alive in front of your very eyes” as pure magic. And there’s something in that observation worth unpacking.
Importance of authenticity
Stop-motion’s appeal isn’t nostalgia: it’s authenticity. Every imperfection, every subtle texture, every slight wobble in movement signals human presence. In a media landscape increasingly saturated with algorithmic perfection, these “flaws” become features.
The technical commitment was serious, involving weeks of building miniature environments; puppets meticulously crafted and repositioned hundreds of times for a single scene; a floating cloud that needed animating alongside its despondent owner. As this behind-the-scenes video notes, each shooting day yielded just five seconds of footage.
But here’s where that gamble paid off. The campaign’s message (“Give each other some luck”) finds its perfect expression in the medium itself. Because stop-motion is inherently collaborative. Teams of makers, animators, set builders and puppet fabricators working together, each bringing their craft to create something none could achieve alone. The production process mirrors the story’s thesis.
This matters particularly for the Staatsloterij brand. Their New Year’s Eve draw is watched by millions of Dutch viewers on 31 December, making it an annual ritual with real meaning in people’s lives. The stop-motion approach signals respect for that cultural moment. It says: we invested time, care and human skill because you’re worth it. Try getting that message across with stock footage and AI upscaling.
Genuine distinction
There’s also commercial savvy here. In the Netherlands’ crowded end-of-year advertising landscape, standing out requires genuine distinction. While competitors chase trending styles and quick-turn production, TBWA\NEBOKO went the opposite direction, embracing limitation as liberation.
The result feels intimate, crafted, memorable. It’s advertising that acknowledges its audience’s intelligence rather than assaulting their attention.
Animation director Sam Gainsborough’s involvement underscores another crucial element: performance matters, even at a miniature scale. Character nuance, subtle emotional shifts, the physics of a drifting cloud; these details required as much dramatic consideration as any live-action casting.
Perhaps most telling is what this project suggests about creative confidence. Choosing stop-motion in 2024 requires belief in craft, patience with process, and faith that audiences will respond to work that clearly took effort. It’s a counterargument to the efficiency-above-all mentality that’s hollowing out so much creative work.
Junk food adverts are banned on television and online starting on Monday as part of a drive to tackle childhood obesity.
The UK-wide ban stops food and drinks high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) being advertised on TV before 21:00 and at any time online.
It applies to products considered to be the biggest drivers of childhood obesity, including soft drinks, chocolates and sweets, pizzas and ice creams.
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) said it is committed to helping people eat healthily and has been voluntarily abiding by the new restrictions since October.
As well as more obviously unhealthy foods, the ban also covers some breakfast cereals and porridges, sweetened bread products, and main meals and sandwiches.
Decisions over which products fall under the ban are based on a scoring tool, balancing their nutrient levels against whether they are high in saturated fat, salt, or sugar.
Plain oats and most porridge, muesli and granola are not banned under the crackdown, but some versions with added sugar, chocolate or syrup could be affected.
Firms can still promote healthier versions of banned products, which the government hopes will lead to food makers developing healthier recipes.
Josh Tilley, brand strategy director at marketing agency Initials CX, said companies will still be allowed to advertise their brand in general, but not specific products.
Adverts featuring “things like the PepsiCo logo or the McDonald’s arches” will not be banned he said, meaning that larger companies may be less affected by the new restrictions.
Smaller companies “can’t necessarily afford those bigger brand campaigns”, Tilley said. Their adverts are based on “educating people” about specific products, “and they’re no longer going to be able to do that”.
Previously, HFSS food and drink adverts were banned on any platform where more than a quarter of the audience was under 16.
Firms that do not comply with the new rules risk action by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
NHS data shows almost one in 10 (9.2%) reception-aged children are now living with obesity, while one in five children have tooth decay by the age of five.
It is estimated obesity costs the NHS more than £11bn every year.
Evidence shows children’s exposure to ads for unhealthy food can influence what they eat from a young age, in turn putting them at greater risk of becoming overweight or obese.
The government estimates the ad ban will prevent around 20,000 cases of childhood obesity.
Katherine Brown, professor of behaviour change in health at the University of Hertfordshire, said the ban was “long overdue and a move in the right direction”.
She said: “Children are highly susceptible to aggressive marketing of unhealthy foods and exposure to them puts them at greater risk of developing obesity and associated chronic diseases.”
Ms Brown called for the government to make nutritious options “more affordable, accessible and appealing”.
The FDF said manufacturers are “committed to working in partnership with the government and others to help people make healthier choices”.
It added: “Investing in developing healthier products has been a key priority for food and drink manufacturers for many years and as a result, our members’ products now have a third of the salt and sugar and a quarter of the calories than they did ten years ago.”
Design Director at Mother Design, Bentzion Goldman, feels identity design has become safe, sanitised and downright boring in the last 12 months. Let’s flip that in 2026, he argues, and make branding weird again.
his is the third year I’ve written about trends and predictions in branding. It usually goes like this: I review the year’s biggest identity design work, layer in my own observations, and provide a light roadmap for the year ahead.
But this year was different. Looking back at the biggest rebrands, what was most remarkable was how utterly unremarkable they were. What stood out was not how bad the brands were but rather their overwhelming okayness. A troubling trend became clear: the rise of safe, forgettable branding.
2025 was the year of Cracker Barrel, the year of HBO MAX / MAX / HBO MAX, and the year of MS NOW (née MSNBC). All branding efforts landed with, at best, a sigh and, at worst, public outrage. What’s more, some of the biggest changes were so subtle you may have barely noticed them: Amazon, Tripadvisor, Verizon, Walmart, Lyft, and OpenAI quietly tweaked their brand systems, even if some of those endeavours were billed as overhauls. Creative Boom even wrote a piece on how the quiet rebrand took over 2025.
Don’t get me wrong, on two accounts. I believe in the power of a masterful brand refresh that subtly tweaks its brand elements, artfully balancing heritage with progress. And there was beautiful, innovative branding released this year. But something deeper emerged when looking at brands with the highest visibility. You might recall the ‘blanding’ era of the 2010s. I think we’ve hit a similar wall at this moment, but for altogether different reasons.
Everything is just okay
Earlier this year, I read James Poniewozik’s piece for The New York Times, The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV, which has stayed with me ever since finishing it. Poniewozik argues that we’ve entered an era in TV where everything is just … okay. He writes that a decade ago, we experienced an era of a lot of bad TV, but the risks and imagination required to make those shows also led to many standout series.
Now, the advent of high-pressure, high-budget streaming platforms and an associated low appetite for risk have resulted in a slew of shows that are beautifully shot, incredibly expensive, and yet—just okay. True creative risk-taking is exceedingly rare to find. Instead, we have a lot of the perfectly acceptable yet often emotionless middle ground.
I believe something similar is happening in the world of branding.
The enemy of a good brand used to be a bad brand: badly kerned typography, poorly chosen colours, and digital illiteracy. Today, the enemy of a good brand is no longer a bad brand, but one that is just okay.
The proliferation and democratisation of design software, along with an increasing awareness of design among the general public, have created an environment where even the smallest teams can produce competent branding. And let me be clear: this is a good thing. Design should be for everyone, and the ability for clients, beginners, and non-designers to create design work elevates the field for everyone. Per a Michael Bierut anecdote, the fact that we now have online trolling of rebrands means people care about branding!
But this new reality has also resulted in a sea of work that’s simply okay. Scroll through this year’s branding projects, and you’ll see a multitude of brands using the same tricks. Many of these identities have no technical fault, and yet they lack a certain emotional depth; the kind of spiritual centre that makes a brand truly resonate with its audience.
Striking a nerve
I think this exact feeling is the reason why the Cracker Barrel rebrand struck such a nerve with the general public. The original identity may have had technical shortcomings, but what the new brand gained in optimisation, it lost in emotional resonance. And now the pushback has created a heightened environment of fear where brands are now even more risk-averse, wary of becoming the next big branding flop torn apart in the comments.
In this new era of mid-branding, we need a new playbook. One that empowers designers to expand their aperture and dare to dream again.
So what’s the way forward? Allow me to advocate for the value of being weird in design.
Weird gets normalised
The simple truth is, people don’t know what they like until they see it. And until they like it, they might hate it. History is full of examples of art so novel in its time that it provoked outrage and even violence. The sans serif style of typography, now completely commonplace, was once considered so radical compared to the serif and ornamental styles of its era that people called it monstrous, ugly, and grotesque—a name that stuck.
In 1913, a ballet by Igor Stravinsky called The Rite of Spring was so innovative for its time, with its use of syncopation, dissonance, and sharp dance movements, that people hurled objects at the stage, cried, and even started fistfights in the audience. The police were called to calm the riot. And you thought the comments on Brand New were bad. Experimentation and transgression are vital for discovering new ideas and finding novel ways forward.
What’s remarkable is that these examples, once shocking innovations, are now normalised. The lesson is profound: people hate change, but, given time, change softens until it becomes the new normal. It is up to us designers to be the tastemakers and the future tellers. This is radical permission: it is a licence to look beyond familiar references and to challenge what we consider ‘good design’.
Image by Bentzion Goldman
This idea is illustrated by industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s MAYA principle: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. This urges designers to push things as far as possible, up to the point where they remain within the tolerance of user comfort. In other words, design something unoriginal, and it will feel predictable, yet design something too radical, and you could incite a riot in a ballet theatre. Our charge, as designers, is to find that sweet spot right on the bleeding edge of innovation.
Here are three brands from the past year that do exactly that.
How to do it
Cotton Design’s identity for Eternal Research is a retro-futuristic system featuring an engraving-inspired wordmark, eleven Victorian-inspired headline typefaces, generative ornamental patterns made with code, and a triangular piece of hardware called the Demon Box. The system defies easy categorisation, balancing minimalism and maximalism in a way that feels immersive and genuinely new.
Mother Design, which I must confess I work for, released branding for Fhirst, a prebiotic soda line that burst onto the market this year. The packaging system draws on the joyful design of early 2000s soda branding, featuring a reverse-contrast script wordmark, an animal mascot for each flavour (the dolphin is my personal favourite), Papyrus as a supporting typeface, and gradients, bubbles, and starbursts galore. It’s a more-is-more system that could easily fall off the rails, but never does, thanks to careful selection and use of brand elements. Instead, the brand radiates pure joy; I have yet to see someone scroll through the project without smiling.
The final project is Clue Perfumery, with design and art directed by Caleb Vanden Boom. Its script logo is beautifully weird, with extreme contrast and bottom-heavy curves that feel both refined and expressive. The brand’s editorial tone is elevated by wildly imaginative art direction: perfume bottles photographed in fish tanks, large-scale butter sculptures, and, most recently, a limited-edition scented stone sculpture shaped like an apple. Clue is one of those brands where the connective tissue isn’t a single idea, but rather good taste and boundless creativity. The eclectic choices work in harmony, resulting in a brand that is lush, unexpected, and engaging.
A Victorian-inspired triangular musical instrument, soda mascots featuring dolphins and eagles, and a perfume bottle covered in butter: these are the kinds of daring choices that push boundaries and yield designs with emotional resonance. These brands are not weird for the sake of it; rather, the unexpected choices are deeply connected to who they are as a brand. The designers involved in their creation reject the safe route, opting instead to question, to research, and to play.
Feeling optimistic
I have every reason to be optimistic for the year ahead in design. We have more tools at our disposal than ever, which means bigger challenges and bigger rewards. I think we will see many brands that make us scroll quickly past without batting an eyelash. But through the sameness, the smartest, most creative, and weirdest brands will find a way to stand out and create inspiring, innovative work.
And for the designers among us, this framework gives us permission to step outside our peripheries and dig deeper for inspiration. In our age of automation and algorithms, designers have the privilege of interrupting the churn of predictable sameness with the uniquely human elements of taste and unexpectedness. Everything is possible, because what is bizarre, weird—even grotesque—today is merely normal tomorrow. So, my biggest hope for the year ahead is precisely this: let’s dream again.
It’s a new year, which makes it the perfect time to update your LinkedIn profile and communications strategy to make sure it is current, relevant to your goals, and compelling to the people who are checking you out. The world of work continues to evolve, and your LinkedIn profile and networking strategy must position you for success.
Align Your LinkedIn Strategy With Two Critical Forces
Two important areas to consider while evolving your LinkedIn strategy are humanity and AI. As tech gets integrated into every aspect of business, your humanity is what helps you stand out and build meaningful relationships. That means your profile must show that you are clear, human, generous, empathic, and grounded in real experience, all the things AI and technology are not.
At the same time, you need to showcase your skill and interest in AI. AI will impact virtually every role. Make it clear that you’re using AI thoughtfully and are committed to proactively developing AI skills to remain ahead of the curve. This can show up in how you describe your work, the content you share, and the tools or approaches you reference in your profile.
The goal is not to do more on LinkedIn, but to do the right things well. Follow this these three steps:
1. Update Your LinkedIn Profile
A lot happens in a year, so if you haven’t been updating your profile regularly, it’s time to make it current and compelling.
Your LinkedIn Headshot
Your headshot makes you real in the virtual world. It allows people to connect with you on a human level. It should convey the real you and be at least current enough for someone to be able to find you in a crowded coffee shop. If you changed your headshot recently, you probably won’t need to update it if it meets these criteria.
Your LinkedIn Headline
Your headline’s job is to make you relevant and confirm for viewers that you are the person they are looking for, or a person they should get to know. LinkedIn gives you 220 characters for your Headline. Use as many as needed to captivate viewers and encourage them to read on. Your LinkedIn headline has three important functions:
It makes you relevant. Your current title, role, and company make you relevant.
It helps you get found. Use your headline for search optimization. Include in it all the keywords you want to be associated with, and those people will use to search for you.
It allows you to showcase something interesting about you that makes the viewer want to learn more. Consider including why you do what you do, how you do what you do, or the results you achieve when you do it. You could also share your passion or life purpose.
Your LinkedIn About
Your About allows you to introduce yourself, tell your story, and make a branded first impression. Because of the power of LinkedIn and how search results are presented in Google, it will likely be your first impression. When you’re thoughtful in crafting your About, it helps you:
Differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace
Attract opportunities that align with your goals
Build trust and real human connection with others
Your About is also a natural place to convey your thoughts about AI and the role it plays in your work.
Your LinkedIn Featured Section
Because many people keep their Featured section blank, it is an opportunity for you to stand out and showcase your passions, purpose, and accomplishments. Your Featured section sits near the top of your profile, between your About and Activity sections. That means more people will see it. This section is designed to showcase multimedia. Include images and video to enhance your story and make your profile richer and more interesting. Consider including:
Your Brand introduction. Create a brief 60-second video, that highlights your interests, accomplishments and fun facts about you.
Your Success Stories. Share one or two pieces of content or stories that highlight your superpowers and differentiators.
Your Intellectual Property. Use it to convey your proprietary process, framework, or system, like your three-step formula for crafting click-worthy headlines for social media posts.
2. Define Your LinkedIn Networking Strategy
In 2026, effective networking is about relevance and relationships, not volume. With over 1.3 billion members, LinkedIn is a powerful place for networking. Your goal, though, is not to connect with all 1.3 billion professionals. It’s to identify your community and be visible to them. As the new year begins:
Get your network up-to-date. Look back through your calendar and emails and send connection requests to the people you have met in the past year.
Decide on your strategy for adding new connections as you meet people. Also, do searches to connect with other like-minded peers so you can build a community for mutual support.
Put plans in place to grow your network. Consider adding your LinkedIn profile to your email signature, and create a slide to include in presentations you deliver to encourage participants to reach out and connect.
3. Commit To A LinkedIn Visibility Plan
Once your profile and network are aligned, visibility is what brings your personal brand to life. Strong brands are visible and available to the people they seek to impact, influence, and impress. The best way to do that is to share value as your primary thought leadership priority. There’s a lot of noise in the world of social media, and LinkedIn is no exception. To stand out, commit to the three Cs of social media communications plans:
Consistent. Strong brands are known for something, not 100 things. Know your topic, message, and POV and stick with it.
Constant. Choose a cadence and commit to it. You may choose to post a couple of times a month, weekly, or even daily. Whatever you choose, treat it as you would any other important item on your to-do list.
Critical. Not critical in the sense of being judgmental. Critical meaning it is not content that is nice to have. It’s meaningful and valuable to your audience and essential for their success.
One way to achieve the three Cs of effective visibility is with a LinkedIn Newsletter. It’s a powerful way to stay engaged with the people who are interested in what you have to say, and the LinkedIn Newsletter platform makes it easy for you to create, share and promote your newsletter to followers and connections. It allows you to build familiarity and trust over time without having to start from scratch each time you post.
Make LinkedIn An Ongoing Habit Instead Of A One-Time Update
Your LinkedIn profile serves many roles in helping you build your personal brand and achieve your career goals. To maximize its impact, commit to keeping your profile up to date and staying engaged with your network. LinkedIn works when you work it, so adopt the habit of interacting on LinkedIn regularly and create more opportunities that are aligned with your goals.
MyIQ is changing how digital culture engages with intelligence. In 2025, cognitive testing has become part of personal branding.
In an internet culture saturated with curated personas, micro-trends, and influencer-led introspection, the return of something as structured as an IQ test might seem unlikely. Yet across celebrity media and personal platforms, tools like MyIQ are emerging as unexpected instruments for self-exploration – where intelligence is no longer a fixed metric, but a story users actively shape.
The rise of social diagnostics
The shift is visible in the way testing has entered mainstream conversation. Once hidden behind institutional gates, cognitive testing is now finding traction in interviews, livestreams, and online commentary. What was once private and formal now functions as a kind of open diary.
The trend reflects a desire for clarity without rigidity. Where traditional tests emphasized evaluation, MyIQ functions more like an exploratory tool. It’s an adaptive IQ test, along with related diagnostics on personality, emotional regulation, and behavioural patterns, that aims to offer users a general framework for understanding their thought patterns – and how that thinking shows up in daily life. It’s not just about cognitive scoring; it’s about understanding response patterns, emotional tendencies, and relationship behaviour in a format that’s data-driven but not prescriptive.
Part of MyIQ’s resonance lies in its broader ecosystem. Beyond the headline IQ score, users often explore the platform’s 90-question personality test, 120-question relationship quiz, and specialized modules covering procrastination, decision-making, attention focus, and burnout. These assessments aren’t positioned as diagnoses but as tools for behavioural insight. For a generation fluent in digital self-curation, this approach feels less like an evaluation and more like a vocabulary.
Among Gen Z and younger millennials, the appeal often links to autonomy. Unlike algorithmic content filters that box users into simplified categories, MyIQ creates space for interpretation. It highlights possible tendencies rather than fixed traits, giving users a sense of recurring patterns without collapsing identity into a single narrative. The emphasis on reviews, not labels, is key: feedback frames the insight, but the user makes meaning.
The social layer adds further depth. The value, it seems, lies not in the performance of intellect, but in the shared language of cognitive experience.
Cognitive testing as cultural content
This broader shift in the perception of intelligence is partly generational. For decades, IQ was framed as a private, academic, or institutional concern – rarely discussed outside of school reports or clinical contexts. Now, that paradigm is loosening. Platforms like MyIQ are turning cognitive self-assessment into something that feels public, narrative, and socially legible.
It also aligns with the changing nature of content. In the age of screenshot storytelling, diagnostic reports become conversation starters. Charts and visual feedback offer not just clarity but shareability. In this context, the idea of a ‘test’ takes on a new meaning – it no longer ends with a result, but begins with one. That result can be reinterpreted, re-shared, and re-narrated as the user’s context shifts.
According to user commentary and MyIQ reviews, this flexibility is central to the platform’s traction. It provides open-ended feedback in an observational rather than corrective tone – allowing users to revisit results over time without feeling pinned down. That makes the platform more companion than judge, especially in a digital culture wary of overstatement.
Whether the current visibility will last remains to be seen. But what’s clear in 2025 is this: millions are engaging with IQ tests not to prove intelligence, but to map it. For creators, audiences, and anyone navigating the blur between performance and authenticity, MyIQ offers something unusual – a moment of internal structure in an external world built on flux.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, please consult a medical professional or healthcare provider.
Beyond the score: from self-testing to self-branding
A new year presents an opportunity to adopt habits that enhance your personal brand and increase your success in 2026 and beyond. While goals often get most of the attention at the start of the year, habits are what shape outcomes. The habits outlined here focus on the human side of leadership. They’re based in neuroscience and have a positive impact on individuals, teams, and organizations. They’re not common to all leaders, but are core to those who understand the importance of being human in an age when technology is embedded in virtually every element of business.
Integrate These Essential Authentic Leadership Behaviours Into Your Work
As you read through the list below, identify the habits you want to add to your daily actions and the ones you’re already practicing that you want to strengthen or expand in 2026.
1. Acknowledging Others
91% of employees say that receiving recognition for their work motivates them to put in more effort. Authentic leaders know this, commit to expressing gratitude, and understand that thanking their people publicly is even more meaningful. Acknowledging others doesn’t have to be elaborate to be effective. Honest, thoughtful praise is among the most impactful actions leaders can take to motivate their staff.
2. Coaching
Authentic leaders understand that their people are talented and resilient. They know how to use coaching techniques like asking powerful questions (instead of providing answers), listening with the intent to understand, and driving toward progress. They are convinced that these techniques are much more powerful than providing answers and being directive.
3. Inspiring Fun to Work
Work is the play of adulthood. Adults find joy and meaning in activities that feel less like chores and more like engaging play, according to The New York Times. Authentic leaders believe that fun is not frivolous. They know that when work is entertaining and enjoyable, it increases engagement, retention, and progress. They integrate fun into team meetings and encourage activities that keep the positive vibe going, especially during challenging times.
4. Communicating Regularly
We’ve all experienced the delayed flight with no one from the airline telling us what’s going on. The lack of information is often more frustrating than the delay. A 2025 internal communications report found that 79% of employees say the quality of communication they get from leaders impacts how well they understand organizational goals, and 72% say this understanding affects their engagement at work. Authentic leaders commit to regular, honest communication to keep their people grounded and positive. Small check-ins, regular updates, and open-door policies are ways effective leaders encourage consistent, open, and honest communication.
5. Encouraging Development and Growth
Authentic leaders are lifelong learners, and they demonstrate it visibly. They’re also committed to the development of their people and make time to help them identify and pursue impactful learning opportunities to achieve their goals (even if those goals mean that someday they’ll lose them to a different role). They understand that the only way to stay ahead of change is to keep learning.
6. Celebrating Progress
Authentic leaders know that every small win deserves recognition. They understand that acknowledging progress is just as powerful as celebrating outcomes. They’re committed to mini moments of appreciation and see these celebratory moments as fuel for moving forward, enhancing team cohesion, and achieving big goals.
7. Asking For Feedback
Feedback is among the most valuable gifts you can give, and receive. In addition to providing thoughtful, constructive feedback to their people regularly (not just during performance reviews), authentic leaders see the value of seeking feedback from their manager, peers, and the members of their team. They integrate feedback opportunities into team activities like meetings, and they inspire those around them to do the same. By doing so, they create environments where learning and improvement are expected, supported, and safe.
Turn These Leadership Behaviours Into Habits And Watch Your Career Soar
Authentic leaders create human connections with their people by exhibiting skills, behaviours, and mindsets that increase engagement, inspire creativity, and create connection. Once you identify the behaviours that you’d like to focus on for 2026, document them and read them regularly so you’re reminded to turn them into habits. Turning these behaviours into daily habits will strengthen your leadership effectiveness and polish your personal brand in meaningful ways.
In an extract from his book Boost Your Creativity, Steve Brouwers argues why rest and relaxation are the creative’s best friend.
Today most people fill every spare moment with distractions.
Scroll. Swipe. Tap.
And this is killing our creativity.
Dr Nancy Andreasen, a neuroscientist and the author of The Creating Brain, studied the brains of highly creative people and identified a surprising and striking pattern in their lives.
They all took time to do nothing.
Einstein would stare out of the window for long stretches of time, letting his mind wander.
Mozart composed with astonishing speed, but that speed was likely made possible by long, quiet periods of internal processing – not visible ‘doing’.
It might feel like you’re doing nothing in these moments – but your brain is actually hard at work.
Doing nothing isn’t passive – it’s active recombination.
(Image credit: Boost Your Creativity, published by Luster)
Beneath the surface, a network of regions called the Default Mode Network (DMN) lights up. This is your brain’s backstage crew, quietly preparing the next act of inspiration while the spotlight is off. The DMN is activated when you’re not focused on a specific task.
It thrives in the in-between spaces when you’re daydreaming, reflecting, thinking about the past or future, or imagining someone else’s thoughts. It’s the engine of empathy, memory, and mental time travel. Most importantly, it’s where creativity begins to simmer.
When you’re solving a clear-cut problem, your brain switches to a different mode: focused, logical, linear. But when you loosen your grip and let your attention wander, the DMN kicks in. That’s why your best ideas often sneak up on you when you least expect them: mid-shampoo, on the toilet, while doodling, or as you’re drifting off to sleep.
You’re not trying – and that’s the point.
The DMN connects ideas, stirs memories, and forms new patterns in those quiet moments when you’re not looking directly at the problem.
This is why some of the most powerful creative tools are the simplest: rest, reflection, movement, play, and purposeful pauses.
When you stop pushing your brain and let your mind wander, you’re not wasting time – you’re opening the door to insight.
This isn’t just theory. Creatives across several disciplines have noticed it too.
It appears that I have my best ideas just as I wake up. When my mind is not thinking about daily stuff yet and I am still lingering in that twilight zone of wondering.
Paul McCartney wrote Yellow Submarine in that twilight zone, as he was drifting off to sleep.
Designer Massimo Vignelli explained that he gets his ideas while shaving, which he emphasises, is the reason why he doesn’t have a beard.
So remember: sometimes the best way to create is to stop creating – just for a moment – and let your backstage brain take over.
Isn’t it wonderful that some of your best works are created while you’re ‘not working’ at all?
Steve is a Belgian creative director, teacher, author and speaker with over 25 years experience in the media industry. In his inspiring talks, Steve shares his insights and experiences with audiences around the world. He is known for his candid stories about imposter syndrome and procrastination – topics that resonate deeply within the creative community. He is the author of Creatives on Creativity, published by Luster in 2021.
A couple of years ago I attended an excellent conference in Seattle by a well known firm that provides online search and marketing tools. They had a line up of top notch speakers who are experts in digital marketing from the largest corporations, brands and agencies in the country. The theme was Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to drive the most clicks to a website, ecommerce store or content page.
The conference was basically all about Google. Why? Because, even in 2025, Google controls 90 percent of search in the world. To get found you need to please the Google Gods. So what advice did the greatest and smartest people in the online marketing world have for conquering Google search? They all pretty much said the same thing: “beats me.”
No one knows. That’s because Google’s search algorithm is a secret more closely guarded than the recipe for Coke or U.S. nuclear launch codes. Everyone there was trying to figure out what Google was going to do next, where Google may change its algorithm and how these changes would affect traffic to their site.
AI is now changing that. AI is already starting to save small business owners like me from Google’s monopoly on search. And it’s doing so in three ways.
More Options
For starters it’s giving our potential customers more choices to find us. Yes, studies show that Google still dominates search. But already you can see ChatGPT and others like it begin to make headway.
So far, even if ChatGPT’s 1 billion messages per day were search-related, its total share of the search market would be less than 1 percent. Google saw approximately 373 times as many searches as ChatGPT in 2024 and Google searches actually grew in 2024 compared to 2023.
But things are changing. Gartner predicts that by 2026, traditional search volume will drop by about 25 percent, with AI chatbots and virtual agents capturing a growing share of user attention and behaviour Others project that AI-powered searches will grow annually by up to 35 percent starting in 2025, reaching an estimated 14 percent of search market share by 2028, with Google declining modestly to about an 86 percent share. I’m betting that decline will be more pronounced. But regardless it’s heading in the right direction.
I’ve tried Google AdWords and for a small business like mine it’s useless. My company sells customer relationship management software and the big players in this industry already have search results locked up. They spend more money than me. They buy up all the good keywords. People searching for products I sell won’t find me unless they click through to page 8 of their search results and no one does that. Of course, that doesn’t stop Google – the fox guarding the henhouse – from drawing down on my ad budget with their dubious claims of “impressions” and clicks. How can I even verify this? I can’t. They have the monopoly.
AI is solving this problem. As other chatbots take away search market share from Google I’ll be offered more ways for customers to find me. I predict that many small businesses – equally frustrated with the Google monopoly – will gravitate to these chatbots. ChatGPT and Perplexity have already announced their own browsers to compete with Chrome and collect data. Good for them. More competition means more choices and less costs for small businesses like mine.
Less Clicks, Better Clicks
Most have noticed that Google has introduced an “AI View” into their results where search answers are summarized. Some believe that this will result in fewer clicks on links to websites and they’re right. Smart marketing people, like Jason Rose – senior vice president of digital sales and marketing at HR firm Paychex believes that this will have greater benefits for small businesses like mine.
“People are reading the AI summary and kind of getting what they need and moving off,” he said. “But it’s not all doom and gloom because these visitors actually convert at a much higher rate.”
To date SEO has been all about getting visitors to your website. Websites are ranked based on their traffic. But how genuine is this traffic? In 2023, bots made up 49.60 percent of internet activity, almost catching up to human traffic, which was at 50.40 percent. Meanwhile we’re paying Google to send this nonsense to us. AI is fixing this too. It is changing the way people use the web for research, be it academia or shopping.
Rose is right. By reading an AI overview a visitor who clicks through to a website has given some thought to their action and is therefore a more qualified prospect, a better visitor. Google and others will likely charge more for this. I’ll pay. It’s worth it.
Content Creation Opportunities
To be included in an AI overview your content has to be relevant and useful. Unfortunately, a great deal of today’s content isn’t. At the Seattle conference I attended some of the sessions talked about SEO tricks and games you can play with content (keyword stuffing, hidden links, showing different content to search engines than what is shown to users) to get noticed by Google. AI will help to stop this. As it gets smarter it will be better able to root out this nonsense so that it’s displaying the best answers possible.
Which means that the best content will be included in AI overviews and the websites with the best answers will have a better chance of being found. No games. No tricks. Just good, valuable content. And not content generated by AI because AI will be able to figure that out too.
This will be an opportunity for quality content providers – writers, bloggers, creators, etc. – to step up their game and prove their value. The best ones will rise to the top, unburdened by the crawlers and spiders, that held them down. People worry that AI will replace content providers. It’s actually the opposite. It’s creating more opportunities for them.
“AI is reading the same content that the human would have and building summaries based off of that,” Rose said. “So again, you need great content. Content is still king.”
All of this is happening now. But we’re still early days. Google is still Google. ChatGPT and other chatbots are infants in the search world and still hallucinate too much. But you can easily see the future. And the future is a world where, thanks to AI, Google no longer monopolizes search. For a small business owner like me, that world can’t come soon enough.
Feature image credit: Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
