TWIS: Have you ever noticed the irony behind “hyphenated” and “non-hyphenated”?

Hi Strat Pack,

So last week was the polar vortex but this week spring is here? The L train smells like diesel fuel. Whatever, I don't even care. It's my birthday today!

Guys. There was one thing that brought me joy this week, and I'm going to share it with you. Do not ever ask me to skip the intro to Law & Order: SVU

Alright, stop messing around on Twitter. Let's jump right in. Oh by the way, in case you didn't get it the first time, it's my birthday today.

The one thing to read this week
1) Super Bowl: If creativity is a muscle, shouldn't we be working it more than once a year? [Warc]
An opinion piece by Agathe Guerrier, BBH

Keeping creative excellence, big ideas and big budgets, for just one moment in the year has led to advertising not practicing those qualities more often. Here’s why every brief should be a World Cup final.

I have a theory. Let’s come back to the idea of practice: that creativity, original thought, isn’t a God-given miracle, instead it’s a craft that needs to be trained, developed and maintained. Like a muscle, that gets strengthened and lengthened over time. What’s happened to our industry is that, over the last few years, moments of creative excellence have become the exception, not the norm. And as a result we’re suffering from creative muscle atrophy.

2) Is It Time to Regulate Social Media Influencers? [New York Mag Intelligencer]
Spoiler alert: yes. This is a long article but 100% worth it.

As the influencer market grows, fraud is becoming more rampant, and it’s increasingly difficult to discern when influencers are engaging in above-board, ethical publishing, and when they’re taking questionable shortcuts that dupe both the brands that pay them and the social media followers they’re meant to influence.

“In 2016 an endorsement from a top-level influencer would generally cost about $5,000 to $10,000,” Wired’s Paris Martineau reported. “Now, brands are expected to pay well over $100,000 for the same placement.”

With so much money flooding into a largely unregulated, still-developing market, all sorts of ethical lapses are bound to ensue, and indeed they have.

And FTC enforcement has been mostly focused on brands that have failed to issue firm disclosure guidelines to paid influencers. Not the influencers themselves.

3) Johannes Leonardo buys big portion of itself back from WPP [Campaign US]

VML&Y&R. J Wunderman Thompson. Forsman & Bodefors ate KBS. Whatever the hell Publicis is doing to the Sapient name. Holding companies are feeling the pressure and killing not just iconic brands, but almost certainly the unique agency cultures that go along with it.

The buyback signals Johannes Leonardo’s confidence in doubling down on creativity and talent. With more control of its ownership, the agency can use more independent thinking - both operationally and creatively - while still having the option to tap into WPP’s network of resources.

BONUS ARTICLE: Small shops are starting to buy themselves back from holding companies [AdAge] At a time when holding companies are struggling to meet the financial demands of shareholders, indies seem to be having a moment.

Yet for all the buzz around indies, a recent joint survey by SoDa: The Digital Society and Forrester Research, finds them declining in popularity with marketers—at least in the digital arena

4) Meet the Creator of the Egg That Broke Instagram [New York Times]
He works in advertising, because of course.

There has been a lot of puzzlement about how a picture of an egg created an Instagram frenzy. Some speculated that the account’s creator had paid influencers to spread the word. Others even took credit for growing the egg’s audience.

Mr. Godfrey says that such claims are untrue and that the account’s growth was “completely organic.” No one person helped the egg’s rise in popularity and no single account or group of accounts helped it to explode.

The egg’s audience was also amplified by Mr. Godfrey’s decision to incorporate user-generated content into the account’s Instagram stories, where posts expire after 24 hours.

5) Platform Roundup
It wasn't all bad this week! Facebook still rocky, other platforms less so.

FuckJerry’s Success Is Instagram’s Failure [New York Mag Intelligencer] Hot take alert! @fuckjerry is an account that steals jokes and other content from other users and monetizes it. Instagram, the billion-dollar Facebook subsidiary, has been aware of the account for years and has done nothing to curb its theft of intellectual property.
Snap revenue up 36% as DAUs remain flat at 186 million [VentureBeat] It’s no longer losing daily active users, and it generated more revenue last quarter than Wall Street had expected
Twitter Still Can't Keep Up With Its Flood of Junk Accounts, Study Finds [Wired] Two researchers came up with an algorithm that detects junk Twitter accounts better than Twitter. Their findings: there's still a lot of shit out there.
Facebook's Updating it's 'Why Am I Seeing This?' Ad Info with More Specific Detail [TechCrunch] The drop-down menu will start to show when your contact info was uploaded, if it was by the brand or one of their agency/developer partners and when access was shared between partners.
Pinterest top trends for February 2019 [Pinterest] Nothing says “love” more than spending time with your favorite someone in close, cozy quarters. Searches for tiny cabins (+578% YoY) and tiny houses (+35% YoY) are heating up.
TikTok is quietly testing ads [Digiday] Less than six months into its launch, TikTok has quietly introduced an ad. The culprit: an app install ad from food delivery company GrubHub.
What Businesses Need to Know About Twitter's New Desktop Layout [Social Media Today]
Delete your account: leaving Facebook can make you happier, study finds [The Guardian] New study from Stanford and NYU finds logging off causes ‘small but significant improvements in wellbeing’

6) Department of Great Work

Guinness Launches Completely Colorless Beverage ‘Guinness Clear’ [DesignTaxi] Nice
The UK starts off really strong: High Five of February [Little Black Book]
Snickers preps #SmoothItOver campaign for after Valentine's Day [Mobile Marketer]
The 5 most creative Super Bowl commercials [Ad Age] Oh right. I guess that happened this week too.

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Have a great weekend!