No one cares if your email sequence was written by GPT-5 or an intern eating string cheese. They care that it sounds human and that it loads fast on mobile. All this AI “disruption”? It’s a new flavor of beige.
Cringe Is comfort. Lean into it. Anything that remotely distills carefree and sincere (denim, again) … but i digress. There was a time when brands swore off millennial cringe like it was gluten.
Chevron print? Blocked.
Mason jars? Canceled.
Saying “literally” every three words? A hate crime against language.
And yet… here we are.
In 2025, cringe is not only back, it’s working. The content that resonates? It’s emotionally cluttered, painfully sincere, and weirdly nostalgic. Think throwback fonts, corny metaphors, oversharing captions, and a deep, unironic love for Canva templates with pastel gradients.
It’s not strategy. It’s coping.
Nostalgia isn’t just an aesthetic anymore, it’s a defense mechanism. In a world melting from climate, AI chaos, and algorithmic fatigue, people don’t want sleek. They want familiar. They want honest. They want something that reminds them of a time when the internet was still fun, not a B2B funnel disguised as a meme page.
The Return of the Comfort Funnel
You know what’s still working in marketing right now?
- Paid ads: especially search and retargeting
- SEO blog posts with questionable metaphors
- Email funnels that ask “Hey, forgot this?” like a ghosted ex trying to sound casual
All the AI wizardry out there, the prompt engineers, the 19-slide funnel optimizers, the ChatGPT-pilled content bros., they’re all dressing up the same formula:
Show up where people search.
Offer something useful.
Don’t be a tool.
It’s not sexy. But it converts.
And honestly? Most of the brands winning in this space aren’t reinventing the wheel, they’re just making the wheel familiar enough to trust and clear enough to click.
AI Won’t Save You
(But It Will Write a Decent Instagram Caption)
Let’s be clear: I use AI tools. So do my clients at Mainsail. It’s helpful. It’s fast. It’s amazing at writing 27 product descriptions that sound vaguely like a startup founder trying not to oversell.
But let’s not confuse automation with actual taste.
If your brand voice sounds like it was pieced together by keyword clusters and tone sliders, people will smell it. And they’ll bounce straight to the brand that sounds a little messy, but weirdly human.
The brands that still win hearts? They’ve got quirks. Opinions. Maybe even a little emotional baggage. AKA, they’re interesting.
Marketing in 2025:
Still the Same, Just With More Tabs Open
Let’s stop pretending this is some radically new era of marketing. Here’s what actually changed:
- The platforms got worse
- The audiences got smarter
- The algorithms got thirstier
- And we all got more tired
What still works?
Relevance. Clarity. A decent hook. Ads with legs. Emails that sound like a person wrote them. Posts that aren’t scared to be a little weird.
That’s it.
Everything else is just noise pretending to be insight.
So What Now?
Maybe your next campaign doesn’t need a 12-step AI funnel and a custom GPT prompt pack. Maybe it just needs a little honesty. A little heart. And yeah — maybe even a little cringe.
Because while everyone else is trying to sound like the future, the brands people actually trust?
They sound like someone they already know.
Want Help Cutting Through the Noise?
I run Mainsail, a creative studio that works with small teams who are trying to look better, sound sharper, and market like they mean it — without hiring a full-time staff or selling their soul to a giant agency.
If that sounds like something you need, let’s talk:
📬 paul@mainsail.agency
🔗 linkedin.com/in/paulmwarner
You bring the brand.
I’ll bring the clarity (and maybe a little tastefully ironic chevron).