Marketers keep asking how to capture attention. The better question—the one dog shows have always answered—is whether you’re giving people something worth showing up for.
We are living through a golden age of faking it: the AI stunt that earns a news cycle and dissolves the moment you press on it, the activation that is shared for five minutes and forgotten, and the commercial that’s more about the celebrity starring in it than the brand. Merriam-Webster named slop the word of 2025. It’s the equivalent of an artificial sweetener; surface-level buzz at best, no substance beneath.
