Sometimes the most impactful insights begin as a casual distraction. For creative director John Long, a viral social media thread comparing the highly crafted campaigns of the past with today's copycat digital ads struck a major nerve. The post generated massive online engagement, passing seven figures in reach, and the core observation simply would not leave him alone. That persistent thought eventually turned into his book, Zombie Brands. The book acts as part diagnosis, part manifesto, and a genuinely fun read for anyone who's ever watched a great brand slowly lose what made it interesting.
Long argues that modern advertising has not just declined in quality. He believes companies have been systematically trained to accept mediocrity. A decade of prioritizing safe metrics and algorithmic checkboxes has left many marketing teams without the creative strength to distinguish between a forgettable idea and a brilliant one. After finishing the book, I published my own thoughts on where this shift is taking the industry, but I wanted to discuss the concept directly with the source. So I caught up with John to talk about the early warning signs of brand "infection," why shiny objects keep winning, and what it actually takes to drag a brand back from the dead.
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Q: What led you to write Zombie Brands?
John: The inspiration for the book came from goofing off on Twitter.
A few years back, just for kicks, I started juxtaposing crappy banner ads for famous brands with classic ads for the same brand. The result was jarring, funny, and sort of depressing. Around that time, the “how it started/how it’s going” meme took off, so I started posting these using that structure. One day, a friend suggested I create a master thread of them, so I did—and the thing took off. It wound up with over 1M views, and a UK ad publication wrote an article about it.
At the top of that thread (which is still pinned to my profile) is a banner ad for Absolut next to the “Absolut LA” ad from the classic campaign from TBWA. I kept staring at those two images and thought that the story of how the advertising industry went from making seductive, highly-crafted communications like “Absolut LA” to the disposable junk we see too often was worth unpacking. And an article felt insufficient.
But I didn’t want the book to just to be a litany of complaints. I wanted to sketch out a positive way forward, and offer a roadmap for how brands can get their mojo back, especially now with the emergence of AI.
Q: In the zombie genre, there is always a moment of infection. In the corporate world, was there a moment in time that you think started this transformation into shuffling zombie brands?
John: To quote Hemingway, it happened gradually, then suddenly. In the book, I detail four technologies that ultimately created Zombie Brands: the Internet, digital media, social media—and the really big one, the smartphone, which supercharged the previous three. Facebook was publicly available in 2006, and Apple introduced the smartphone in 2007. And if you look at the award books shortly after that period, about 2010 on, you start to see a difference in the work.
By 2019, I started noticing that very senior clients were sitting in on banner and social ad presentations—which had never been the case just four years earlier. So all these trends were well on their way to being standard operating procedure when the global pandemic hit. And then COVID was the final nail in the coffin and locked them all in.
Q: If a brand is currently safe from infection today (not a zombie), what are the early warning signs of infection they should be watching for? Is there a specific point in the creative process where you see the "soul" of a brand start to turn, and how can a team catch it before it becomes terminal?
John: Brands start to become zombified when they over-invest in media that clicks, scrolls or swipes and neglect the work that gives ads in those media resonance. Digital ads are reminders that your brand exists—they’re akin to postcards or coupons—a tap on the shoulder. Those postcards don’t bring in new customers. So the first thing marketers should do to avoid zombification is to check their brand-to-performance spend. If you’re spending less than 30% on brand—and by that I mean, high-attention media that’s conducive to building emotional connections with an audience—that’s the danger zone. Put another way: if all you’re doing is pestering and you’ve given up on persuading, you’ve become a Zombie Brand.
The other questions marketers should ask themselves: how much are you relying on stock photography, stock footage, and stock music? Does your brand pass the logo test—that is, if you cover the logo on an ad, could the average person tell you what brand the ad is for? Does your brand have a unique voice that sounds like an actual person? Are your activations grounded in the brand’s core idea or offering, or are they just stunts that get brief spasms of attention?
Q: Marketers today are under immense pressure to drive immediate impact, yet you noted a trend of neglecting "tried and true" mediums like radio that still have significant reach in favor of the "new and shiny." Why do you think brands gamble on unproven innovations when the high-impact, established channels are sitting right there?
John: I do think the ad industry—like our business and culture broadly—has a tech and innovation fetish. There’s a shiny object syndrome impulse that leads to wasteful gambits like branded NFTs. And remember when every brand was investing in "real estate" on Second Life? Good times. But to be fair, there’s also a kind of desperation to find new ways to reach people since mass media and a broadly-shared culture have both been decimated, making it harder for brands to get famous. I really don’t know why out of home and radio are often overlooked. They still work!
Q: If a brand marketing team has been "trained" by a decade of rewarding safe, algorithmic-friendly decisions, how do they begin to rebuild the mental muscle required to identify and push for the "weird" or "risky" unique brand ideas that actually cut through and un-zombie their brand?
John: First, the only risky ads are the ones that are safe and therefore, ignored. But to escape the tyrannical smallness of dashboards and testing, you need strong leaders who understand that we’re in an attention economy and that you can’t earn people’s attention by boring them or bombarding them with the digital equivalent of windshield fliers.
Q: In the book you showcased examples of how AI can be a great tool for rapidly exhausting "B-minus" ideas to clear the deck for true creativity. However, in an industry obsessed with efficiency, do you worry that AI is actually acting as a "zombie factory"—making it so cheap and fast to produce mediocrity that brands simply stop looking for the "A-plus" idea altogether?
John: Oh, absolutely. If used incorrectly, and I assume most brands will unfortunately fall into this trap, AI has the potential to be a Zombie Brand-making machine because the fact is, AI cannot create breakthrough, original work. But don't take my word for it. The two leading AI companies—Anthropic and OpenAI—both hired ad agencies to create their advertising campaigns. That says it all.
Q: If you were to look at the advertising landscape three years from now, what would be the one specific sign that tells you the "zombie brands" are finally in retreat?
John:I don’t think it will be one thing. And I’m already seeing a few green shoots here and there. You see it with the success of brands like Liquid Death. You see it with brands investing in custom typefaces and investing in brand advertising. You see it with more and more people becoming disenchanted with the enshitification of social media and exhausted by the addictive qualities of smartphones. I think we’re reaching a tipping point. It’s a massive opportunity.
Q: If Zombie Brands achieves the impact you truly want, what is the one legacy you hope it leaves on the marketing world? If a reader changes just one thing about their professional life after finishing the final page, what do you hope that change is?
John: I want people to remember the fact that brands that consistently make people feel something—the ones that make you laugh, cry, or think—are the ones that win.
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Thanks John!
