Happy Thursday. Welcome to The Chaos Coordinator. We are Brain Candy's snarky little sister, delivering the top stories and latest creative trends in Business, AI and B2B Marketing right to your inbox, with a hefty dose of irreverence.
In this issue, we dive into:
PE Recruits
AI Avatars x Earnings
Low Key Branding
US Open Campaign
What's happening in.....
The Business of Business
PE Firms Are Recruiting in the Kiddie Pool
Goldman’s training them, PE’s taking them.
Private equity firms are pulling off the recruitment equivalent of calling dibs on prom dates during freshman year. Heavyweights like Apollo, KKR, and TPG are swooping in for junior banking talent just months into their analyst gigs, sometimes offering roles that don’t start for two or three years. And if that sounds a little unhinged, it gets better: some firms are skipping Wall Street altogether and hiring undergrads. Silver Lake’s already interviewing sophomores. Yes, kids who still have dining hall credits and fake IDs. The once-orderly “on-cycle” process has turned into a chaotic scramble. Firms are hosting coffee chats that are really undercover interviews. Vacationing students are getting hit with job offers mid-Mediterranean. And the banks? They are not loving this.
JPMorgan and Goldman are putting stricter policies in place to slow things down. Analysts now have to disclose PE offers, and Jamie Dimon himself called the trend unethical, which roughly translates to “stop poaching our future rainmakers.” JPM even warned its 2025 analyst class about potential consequences if they sneak off to PE behind closed doors. As Kristen Kelly of The Wall Street Skinny put it, the system is “broken.” Prestige is beating out purpose like it's rush week at a finance frat.
Klarna’s CEO just gave an earnings call via his AI twin. Two days later, Zoom’s CEO did the same, using the company’s own avatar tech to pitch... avatar tech. UBS is shipping out synthetic analysts. Nvidia’s been doing this since 2021. Corporate comms are starting to look less like Mad Men and more like Black Mirror: The Quarterly Earnings Special. But while executives are flexing their digital doppelgängers, regulators are still squinting at the user manual. The EU’s AI Act requires disclosure when using avatars. The U.S.? We've got a stew of FTC oversight, impersonation laws, and vibes. The SEC’s stance is: “Just tell us if you used AI... we guess?”
Beyond the legal shrug, experts are sounding alarms. These avatars don’t just glitch, they hallucinate. And when synthetic execs start sounding like real ones, bad actors take notes. As Reality Defender’s CEO puts it, this “neat parlor trick” trains people to trust deepfakes. Corporate avatars may save time, but if you’re not disclosing the clone, your next investor call might double as evidence.
Loud logos? So 2024. Welcome to the “low-key” era of branding, where restraint is the new flex and Gen Z has officially Marie Kondo’d your event signage. This trend isn’t about erasing brand presence, it’s about shifting how it's felt, not flaunted. Think Mastercard’s multisensory “Priceless” identity, which literally smells like optimism. Or Tinder’s ExCycle pop-up, where spring cleaning meets meet-cute: singles swapped exes’ clothes for fresh fits in a space designed to be chill, not cringe. “A low-stakes environment to mingle and do something cool,” said Tinder’s global brand director Devin Colleran. We call it quiet luxury with a side of catharsis.
Even B2B is getting the vibe memo. Salesforce’s Dreamforce branding leaned so hard into National Park aesthetics, you’d swear you stumbled into Yosemite with a CRM. And IBM? Still rocking its century-old eight-bar logo like a heritage streetwear drop, with strict rules that somehow feel cooler than chaos. This isn’t about going unnoticed, it’s about being unforgettable without shouting. If maximalism was the influencer era, low-key branding is the indie darling comeback. And it’s working. Quietly. Stylishly. Strategically.
The U.S. Open gets a remix, and it slaps harder than a Serena serve.
The U.S. Open has always been tennis’ most electric stage: night matches, roaring crowds, and that unmistakable New York buzz. So it only makes sense that the 2025 campaign brings the beat to match the baseline. Enter Mustard: Grammy-winning producer, self-declared tennis junkie, and now the voice of this year’s U.S. Open teaser. This isn’t some influencer one-off. Mustard has been on the USTA’s radar, thanks to his regular appearances at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and his love for the game. Fresh off a Grammy win and a Super Bowl stage cameo, he’s narrating the campaign and reworking the glam-rock classic “New York Groove” into a hip-hop anthem that pulses with city swagger.
This is what we call smart brand behavior: the campaign doesn’t try to change the US Open; it amplifies what already makes it iconic (the drama, the flair, the New Yorkness) and pairs it with a voice that’s actually been there. It’s not just cool-by-association—it’s credible, current, and culturally fluent. Game, set, remix.
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