This was my brother visiting me in NYC, 78th and 2nd:

For the past ten-ish years, I’ve worked in advertising. I’ve worked in creative and content roles at agencies and in-house. I’ve worked with Meta, Nike, Tinder, Levi’s, Sonos, Merrell, and Hanna Andersson. I’ve won three Telly Awards and an American Advertising Award.

This is the rooftop at Spring Studios in NYC, Summer 2017:

This was on a shoot for Ralph Lauren with the Spring Studios team in NYC:

I also worked in Los Angeles for Adolescent Content on commercial and social content projects. For Tinder (during the pandemic), I worked on their “Put Yourself Out There” campaign, which featured Megan Thee Stallion and drove 800 million impressions. I launched Meta’s ‘We the Culture’ initiative on Instagram.

The Adolescent Content Team in Los Angeles/Zoom:

I worked with Levi’s and filmed a very drunk DJ on the highline for their Spring campaign. I led content and strategy for Hanna Andersson, Dose, and GoodPop.

This was a shoot for Goodpop’s new Fruit Sours, Pickleball Court in Austin:

I’m currently working on writing a satirical novel that has nothing to do with selling anything to anyone. It’s set in New York’s ad world and follows a burned-out creative director and his cynical team as they launch a viral campaign that accidentally creates QAnon.

Welcome. Or welcome back. Either way, thanks for reading :)

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

That might be right, but the conversation probably doesn’t need to be so breathlessly dumb or dire.

Grace Kao, the CMO at Snapchat (she’s in the middle), said something during a panel that I really liked. She was talking about CGI and how it’s evolved dramatically over the past couple of decades, with the tools getting better, cheaper, and faster. And then she said: “But without a good story, your movie is still bad.”

I think that’s really the entire argument here. (Totally fine to stop reading at this point.)

But she kept going, and it was worth hearing. AI can help you scale. It can help you brainstorm. It can help you mock up and generate. But at the center of everything, there has to be a strong concept. A strong story. People so appreciate craft. They also appreciate a really cool concept, and those two things are not the same as a really cool output.

Think about Moonlight. That was a film made for $1.5 million, with virtually no visual effects and no spectacle. Just light and quiet and the weight of a person trying to exist inside a life that keeps pressing in on them. Every frame of that film is handmade. The storytelling does all the work. The craft is in what gets left out, what gets held back, what never gets said out loud, which is why it won Best Picture over a $20 million musical.

Now think about Mad Max: Fury Road. That movie is wall-too-wall mayhem. Practical effects and CGI all woven together to create a spectacle, and it works because underneath all of it, there’s a simple story about freedom and who gets to have it. Strip away every explosion, and you’ve still got something that’s still compelling.

Both of those films work from a storytelling standpoint. One barely touches the CGI tools. One uses every tool at its disposal.

Here’s what I keep thinking about, though, and it has less to do with advertising and more to do with being a person on the internet in the year 2026:

People, on a primal level, want to connect with other people. They want to see other people. They want to emotionally understand other people. Why they think the way they do, why they feel what they feel. That’s what (I think) it means to be a person living in real life.

I know that when I read a piece of text now, I’m looking for AI. Are there too many em dashes? Is there that weird frictionless way of writing? The way a sentence can say a lot without saying a damn thing. I want to find the AI-generated text, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think we’ve all become amateur forensic linguists, hunting for anything that feels even a little bit off.

Part of what makes LLM-generated content feel weird is that it’s an aggregate. It’s trained on everything, so it sounds hollow; it sounds like a little bit of nothing. The sum of so many parts, smoothed into something that’s just slightly bland. It can sound beautiful, but there just aren’t any flaws. It hasn’t lived a real life, but it’s pretending like it has. It hasn’t lost anything, it hasn’t been embarrassed, it hasn’t sat in a parking lot at 2 am, making a decision that it’ll definitely regret.

I think we can see it. And I get why people want to hunt down the imposter and tell it to get the fuck out of here. People want something real. They want to read something that’s dripping with actual human stakes, with the mess and the nerve and the specific, irreplaceable weirdness of a person.

AI is coming for your throat. That part’s true. The tools are real, they’re fast, and they’re going to keep getting better. But the thing the tools can’t manufacture is the reason anyone should care. The story and the flaws that make it actually connect with other humans.

That part’s still yours. And I think, it always will be.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

If you opened the app around the time of the deal closing, you likely got the pop-up below: “We updated our Terms/Privacy Policy.”

So… who “owns” TikTok in the U.S. now?

Many people and many companies. Under the new structure, ByteDance is down to 19.9% ownership, and the other 80.1% is held by a US-based investor group with Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX as “managing investors,” each with 15% stakes.

TikTok has framed this as a data-security update with US user data housed on Oracle’s systems.

–-

Alongside the ownership change, TikTok pushed an updated privacy policy that adds precise location (at a GPS coordinates-level) if you allow the app to use your phone’s location services.

One Important nuance: TikTok is saying it can collect your coordinates when you give permission, and it can also infer less precise location through other means (like your IP address). TikTok’s own help page makes this explicit. You can turn off Location Services, but TikTok may still retain less specific location info previously inferred (like what city you live in).

So yes: the new language is a step toward more granular tracking, especially if you (or your phone) ever taps “Allow.”

–-

A lot of the collective panic this week has been fueled by one specific detail: the updated policy spells out categories of “sensitive information” TikTok could collect, including things like sexual orientation, transgender/nonbinary status, and citizenship/immigration status.

Some legal folks are saying the disclosure is, at least in part, compliance language (i.e., “we have to tell you what categories exist.”) But, even if it’s “just disclosure” it’s still disclosure of what the company is capable of tracking.

–-

But, who’s at risk when apps know exactly where you are?

Everyone. Precise location data can show where you live, where you work, who you spend time with, which clinics you visit, which protests you attend, which bar you went to last night, and whether you sleep at the same address every night.

Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been flagging for years that location data can be sold and repurposed in ways users never intended.

• To our immigrant community: Location data and data broker information has been used in ways that can support surveillance and enforcement, sometimes without warrants, sometimes through data purchases by agencies like ICE.

• To our trans community: This data can expose routines and sensitive healthcare patterns, especially in an era where gender affirming care is politicized and scrutinized.

• To our LGBTQ+ community: Geolocation can be weaponized; there are documented cases where location features have been used to entrap or target LGBTQ+ people.

• To anyone who simply wants companies out of their personal business: You deserve privacy.

–-

So what can you actually do?

If you don’t want TikTok (or any downstream partner, or any government agency with access through legal process or the data economy) to know your location, the best move is to delete TikTok and its data.

Because “precise location” is only one pipeline. Apps can still infer a lot from IP, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth signals, device identifiers, and cross-app tracking ecosystems.

That said, if you’re staying on TikTok (no judgment, we all have our vices), here are the most meaningful settings to lock down your information:

If you’re on iPhone:

1. Settings >> Privacy & Security >> Location Services >> TikTok

2. Set Allow Location Access to Never (or While Using the App)

3. Toggle Precise Location OFF

If you’re on Android:

Pick whichever menu your phone has (both are standard Android paths):

1. Settings >> Location >> App location permissions >> TikTok >> Don’t allow

Two quick things:

• Even with location permission off, TikTok can still infer approximate location (like city) from things like IP/network signals. TikTok notes this in their own explanation.

If you want zero location exposure from TikTok: delete the app and its data.

Want to know more about these updates:

• More about the Electronic Frontier Foundation

• More about the new owners

• More about TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC

• More about the new user guidelines

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

For the past few weeks I’d been working on a campaign for Tinder called ‘Put Yourself Out There.’ Very ironic for COVID, I know. The idea was that people would clean up their Tinder profiles, screenshot them, and we would blast them out into the world on billboards in New York, LA, and Vancouver.

Tinder bios are their own form of literature where everyone is wearing a mask. Where bios are pretending to be funny, or someone is pretending to be honest. Everyone is looking for connection to escape the deep loneliness of the real world, and that was particularly apparent during COVID.

The campaign went live while LA was under a shelter-in-place order, and everyone was staying inside. It was particularly odd on Sunset, where the normally busy street was quiet, and the billboard ad buy was playing to a mostly quiet road.

Regardless, that night I wanted to walk up to the top of the street and admire the work I’d put in, take in the Tinder campaign with my own eyes. I hiked to the top of the road, stood in front of the digital billboard for a few minutes, and finally saw the first profile flash in front of me.

Some guy dressed as a king, blown up to the size of a small building, his Tinder bio floating above the street on Sunset Boulevard. It hit me in a way I didn’t really expect. It wasn't pride or joy; it was a kind of quiet relief. Kinda like there was physical proof out in the real world that something I had made on my laptop had entered the world, even when nobody was really allowed to enter the real world.

Advertising is always kinda like that. You can spend weeks building something that is meant to exist in public, and when it goes live, it just kinda disappears into the scenery. It becomes wallpaper; it just dissolves as background noise.

But that night, alone at the top of Sunset Boulevard, I experienced it, fully alone. It was the perfect metaphor for the times, for my career, for the world that would keep moving (eventually).

Between you and me, this was a career-defining moment for me. Mostly because it was tangible, because I could see it with my own eyes and not just through an Instagram Reel. It didn't feel flattened out or muted; it existed in the real world, and even if I was the only one who saw it that night, it was real.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Photo Credit: Steven Pahel

Art Credit: Aarón Blanco Tejedor

There was a time when ‘Word of the Year’ was meant to be anthropological. Where a bunch of people studying culture and language in cardigans and sensible shoes would look at data and say: “Huh. People sure are saying selfie a lot. Let’s write that down.”

Now, word of the year is just another PR-able moment designed to drive discourse and conversation and get people arguing on the internet for a few days. It’s all quite transparent.

Step 1: Pick a word that already annoys people.

Step 2: Announce the word and put out your pretentious press release.

Step 3: Wait for the internet to flip out.

‘Rage-bait’ really is the perfect choice because it’s doing the exact thing it describes. I mean, I felt the need to write about it. I guess I was filled with rage.

You read “Oxford selected ‘rage bait’ as their word of the year” and you feel baited; it’s absolutely perfect irony. The institution that is supposedly reporting on language is now just…participating in the same engagement economy as everyone else. Way o get those comments Oxford, we’re so proud of you!

Anger is cheap, fast, and generally shareable. It’s easier to get people to say “I hate this,” than get someone in the comments saying “Wow, this is such a quiet, thoughtful observation about how language reflects culture.”

Brands figured this out a long time ago. Now, even the institutions that catalog words are in on the game. I guess that’s bound to happen in an economy where attention is the currency.

Personally, I would have gone with Oxford’s backup “aura farming” as my word of the year, but that’s because my charisma can’t be matched.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Guam is a US territory. Which means that it’s part of the United States, but also, most people that I mention this fun fact to have never heard of this obscure island in Micronesia.

Here’s the relevant part: I’m an American citizen. I was born on Guam, and under US law, people born there are US citizens.

And yet, no one has ever asked me (not even once) if I’m “really” American. It’s not because everyone’s well-versed in US territories. It’s because I’m a white woman.

^ That’s me (on the right) circa 1992.

If you’re wondering how the United States ended up with Guam, it’s one of those classic US war-game-type situations. Guam ended up in the hands of the US after the Spanish-American War. It was significant because it’s in the Pacific and you can use it as a strategic defense in that area.

During World War 2, Guam was invaded and occupied by Japan and later retaken by the US, but it’s since remained a strategic defense that the US keeps in it’s back pocket.

–

But the US is weird about their territories, what they let them do, and how they treat their citizens.

Puerto Rico became a US territory in 1898. Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship by federal law in 1917.

So: Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is also an American citizen.

And yet, every time Bad Bunny reaches a new tier of cultural relevance, some dipshit on the internet asks if he’s “even American.”

It’s not that people don’t know Puerto Rico is connected to the US. It’s that, emotionally, they don’t want it to be. Or they only want it to be when it’s convenient for some kind of strategic military bullshit.

–

American Samoa is also a US territory, but it sits in a different legal bucket, so people who are born there are generally US nationals, not automatically US citizens, at birth.

It’s all semantics that make you realize how hard the US works to maintain a system where “belongs to us” and “belongs with us” are different things.

Tusli Gabbard was born in American Samoa and is a US citizen, she’s currently our US Director of National Intelligence, and an American citizen.

–

The citizenship question among folks from US territories is an old game. It’s a little test, a little gate, a way to say you can be famous here, but you still have to prove you belong.

I’ve never been asked to prove I’m an American. I am the kind of US-territory-born American that’s accepted as the default.

But, just so we’re clear:

• I’m an American.

• Bad Bunny is an American.

• Tulsi Gabbard is an American.

• The fact that we keep having to say this out loud tells you exactly what kind of country we are.

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.