Online Marketing Rockstars 👀

I went to Hamburg ✨

Over the past few years, I noticed Kim Kardashian and Rick Rubin popping up at a marketing conference in Hamburg, and I thought, what the hell is going on there? Turns out it was OMR—Online Marketing Rockstars. The biggest online marketing festival in Europe. When I saw that my personal heroes from MSCHF were going to be there, the decision was easy: I had to go. And so it happened. 🦭

Mercedes lent me an AMG convertible to drive up there, and I spent three days at a hotel, right next to the Hamburg Messe. Great city, by the way.

What did I learn?

A lot, and also not much. Let me explain: At these kinds of festivals, the big players love to show up. TikTok, Pinterest, Netflix, ChatGPT, Meta, Snapchat, PayPal, Airbus—all giving talks that draw massive crowds, but I personally didn’t learn anything from them. Even the CEO of Liquid Death wanted to remind us that “authenticity” is important. No shit. 🫠

The talk I was there for—MSCHF’s—was super interesting. They've evolved from a creative agency into an art collective, but they’re still very much a company that needs to turn a profit. Which means they also have to make decisions like: how many Big Red Boots should we order? and how do we stay profitable? Highly recommend listening to their podcast where Gabriel Whaley explains all of this himself.

Along the way, I discovered a few secret gems in the two-day program spread across five stages. For example: PSG and Snipes talked about their partnership and “culture marketing.” They’ve built The Deck, a community zone in PSG’s Parc des Princes stadium. In the first year after partnering up, their sales in France quadrupled.

11 Things That Stuck With Me:

1. OMR is huge: 70,000 young people swarm the trade show and the city, creating an amazing vibe with tons of afterparties—even on the legendary Reeperbahn.

2. Going viral isn’t that special anymore. Cementing your place in culture is the real endgame. (Like what Average Rob did)

3. For everything you create, ask yourself: where will this work best? The place or culture you tap into often determines whether something has lasting impact.

4. Consolidation is everywhere. More and more, it’s just a few giant companies owning everything. (Check out Trends for 2025 by Scott Galloway.)

5. Little Moons blew up thanks to TikTok—but by doubling down on product quality, they turned the hype into long-term success. 🌚

6. Some venues were packed (7,000 people capacity at the biggest stage) so I had to miss people like Ryan Reynolds. Meanwhile, other talks were half-empty but super insightful. 🌏

7. Apparently handing out free cigarettes isn’t an issue in Germany—Lucky Strike was out there loud and proud as a sponsor.

8. “Democracy is no longer a love brand”—something I heard during a talk at the ZDF booth. 😳

9. One of the most interesting parts of the event is the expo floor—where every type of agency, media company, and tech firm (even Porsche) has a massive stand. Free stuff galore. People lining up for it.

10. It used to be Made in China, then it became Sold by China, and now it’s Promoted by China. Chinese manufacturers are skipping the middlemen and selling directly to consumers—via Amazon or their own platforms. Even Temu was there, scouting local sellers to get ahead of tariffs.

11. Doing 250 km/h on the Autobahn is intense 🚗

I managed to give Gabriel a copy of Ugly Belgian Houses 👀

Must reads 👀

A lot of clients come to Hurae because they want to stand out: “something different”. On Tiktok, Telegram, Snapchat, or just in the streets.

It's hard to explain how we at Hurae set out to fulfill that desire but a big part of it is absorbing a lot of knowledge. About artists, about life, about technology. About everything. So we read up a lot on trends and we are always happy to share that knowledge with you. By giving some examples you can understand how our brain works:

• They're funny, they're viral, and they're coming for late night shows

  Digital talk-show hosts are taking comedy to the streets — and reinventing classic TV formats for an extremely-online age. Gone are hosts sitting behind bulky desks; the stars of the future are mics on the move. 🥇

• human aesthetics after AI. Not how AI changes appreciation for human art, but: How do humans change their aesthetics in a world of AI? Humans are still narrating audio books… but they sound so much like machines. And we’re seeing the advent of “aliengelic”, machined- glass skin beauty 🤖

• How AI will change work. This video made me pay my Uber driver in Hamburg 5 extra euros. 🥲

• The art of deck making! 💙

• Smart: In April 2025, beer brand Harbin Beer asked small independent shop owners in China to place its products at the back of refrigerators to capitalise on the consumer insight that people prefer cold beverages (the back of the fridge is cooler by an average of 6.5°C, according to the brand).

• 28 slightly rude notes on writing
  This is one of them: "Lots of people worry that AI will replace human writers. But I know something the computer doesn’t know, which is what it feels like inside my head. There is no text, no .jpg, no .csv that contains this information, because it is ineffable. My job is to carve off a sliver of the ineffable, and to eff it. If I succeed, of course, the computer will come to know more and more of my secrets. It’s like I am slowly speaking my password aloud, and eventually the computer might be able to guess the characters that still remain, at which point it will breach all my systems and kill me. My only hope is that my password contains infinite characters, that the remaining dots keep changing their identities, so that no machine, no matter how powerful, can ever guess the rest."
  Highly recommend to read all notes!

• Should Your Newsletter Be a Podcast?

  Creators in the podcast-newsletter nexus weigh in on picking platforms for owning their audience and finding new fans as they bridge digital mediums.

• Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
  ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.

• reSTOREants are not a new phenomenon. Department stores, like malls, have long housed dining establishments to help attract customers. What feels different now, is the sheer number of brands getting into the food/beverage space and the intense rise in consumer demand. Brands are dying to get you into their stores, but everything inside is too expensive for anyone to buy. At the Louis Vuitton café, a monogrammed Louis Vuitton cake the size of your palm might set you back $24, but that’s a fraction of the price of a handbag. Plus, you’re obviously going to Instagram it and hopefully come back for more.

Hurae - Experiental Marketing 🧗🏼‍♂️

Most agencies think out of the box. We think out of the blue. Or out of this world. We think of anything that gets people talking about your brand. Offline & online. The best content is not necessarily created for social media, but content that gets talked about on social media. Eyes Eyes Baby!

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