In this week’s Our Take we look at Polaroid’s analogue protest, Zohran’s revolutionary design, the return of the aura, and how a cowboy outfitter is hunting for a new marketing suit.
Polaroid snaps back
While brands fall over themselves to slap “AI” on everything from ad copy to coffee, Polaroid’s latest campaign is snapping back.
From New York streets to the London Underground, their lo-fi, handwritten billboards read like therapy in a world of Helvetica: “AI can’t recreate the feeling of sand between your toes” and “Remember the night we spent on our phones? Me neither.” It’s bold, brilliant, and very relatable.
But this isn’t just nostalgia porn for millennials. It’s a pointed reminder that when memories can be machine-made, there’s still unmatched power in the physical. In the messy. In the moment. Where tech is chasing perfection, Polaroid is embracing imperfection.
At a time when Cannes is clapping for AI-fuelled ads and brands are racing to “optimise” everything, Polaroid is simply saying: slow down. Their pitch isn’t a camera, it’s a mindset. Fewer selfies, more self-awareness.
It’s giving anti-algorithm. It’s giving offline romance. It’s giving 8 prints you’ll actually revisit over 800 digital ones lost to the cloud.
Polaroid just proved the most human move is not the next tech breakthrough – it’s a flash from the past that still has soul.
The Poster child for a new Political voice
Zohran Mamdani just won the Democratic nomination for Mayor of NYC with a campaign that didn’t look like a traditional political campaign. It looked like New York.
Politics is usually very wary of design. It adopts the bare minimum of corporate aesthetics – a logo, a colour, maybe even a typeface – and a determination to avoid anything remotely resembling style. In contrast, Zohran’s campaign is a riot of taxi-cab yellow, Mets blue, and hand-painted lettering – visual cues drawn from the fabric of old, working-class New York. It nods to the immigrant-run bodegas, subway platforms, and hand-painted storefronts that defined the outer boroughs long before they were rebranded as creative hubs.
The hand-drawn logo also references protest placards – both the genuine kind and the manufactured kind handed out at rallies to simulate grassroots support. It’s a well-worn political trick: hand out signs that look handmade to simulate grassroots energy – a staged performance of ‘the voice of the people.’
Maybe this is a sign that everything’s swirling around the same populist drain. Maybe it shows the left finding its voice in a populist world.
Either way, its groundbreaking. And the posters are beautiful.
A new era of aura
TikTok tarot is on the rise. YouTube numerology is doing numbers. So no surprise that aura photography – those dreamy, colour-splashed portraits that supposedly map your energy field – is also making a comeback. But this isn’t your aunt’s crystal fair booth – this is algorithmic enlightenment: a perfectly Insta-lit, emotionally resonant trend where self-discovery comes with a flattering colour gradient.
Aura photos have slid back into the spiritual-chic zeitgeist. Take Magic Jewelry – a Chinatown feng-shui shop doing aura photography since the ’90s – where Lorde herself has her aura snapped before every album drop. Not just a ritual, but a retooled rollout strategy.
Belief is optional. What matters is that aura photos offer the soft-focus clarity we crave – a pause button in a hyperconnected blur of digital noise. They don’t predict the future, but they do make you pause, reflect, and post. Which, in 2025, is basically enlightenment.
Cowboys Seek Branding Pardner
At most brands, the path to CMO is a predictable boardroom shuffle. But at Texas-based outfitter Sendero, known for retro patches and a love for the American West, the hiring process is a little… wilder. They’ve deputised their creative ‘pardners’ – Bakery Agency and KEN Media – to help choose the next head of marketing.
Why the unconventional move? Because Sendero goes all-in on long-haul collaboration. Whether it’s with a musician, a retail partner, or a creative agency, everyone’s expected to pull weight, swap stories, and build the thing together.
Sendero are hoping their maverick approach will saddle them with a cultural match – someone who thrives in creative collaboration and who isn’t afraid to buck trends.
Turns out cowboys might actually know something about branding.