Hello marketers ☕🧇

Hope you’ve had a good start to the week!

Let’s get into today’s hot news.

Top Story

U.S. FDA intensifies crackdown on pharmaceutical advertising. The FDA has begun sending ~100 cease-and-desist notices and thousands of warning letters to pharma/DTC advertisers for misleading claims or failure to properly disclose risks, especially via social media and influencer channels. Read all about it

What does this mean for me? Any health, wellness, or pharma-adjacent brand must immediately review all marketing content and influencer contracts for compliance, clear risk disclosure, and avoid ambiguous claims.

Platform Updates 🧑‍💻

• TikTok & Friends: Hashtag limit enforced (recently). TikTok is capping the number of hashtags per post (organic/paid) to reduce spam and improve relevance. Other platforms are trending similarly. Verkeer

• Instagram introduces Multi-Part Reel Linking – lets creators make episodic or multi-segment Reels which users can follow in sequence. Useful for tutorials, stories, or staggered content. Brandnation

• Shopify improves fulfilment: “Ship with Shopify” (Sep 2025 updates). Adds steamlining: merchants can manage shipping and fulfilment directly, papering in logistics with checkout. frizbit.com

Policy & Regulation ⚖️

• MAHA Food Strategy (U.S.) targets marketing of unhealthy foods to children & additives (9 Sept). The Make America Healthy Again Commission is pushing for guidelines / self-regulation around marketing of unhealthy foods to kids, and scrutiny of things like dyes, chemicals, and “GRAS” (Generally Recognized As Safe) compounds. Reuters

• New marketinglaw/ASA guidance in UK. Among updates: stricter rules for ‘before & after’ advertising, challenges to health claims, and unauthorised food health claims / HCP (health care professional) endorsements. Osborne Clarke

Brand / Category Moves 🏃‍➡️

• Tourism Australia global campaign 2025 (just launched). Featuring Nigella Lawson, Robert Irwin, etc., targeting big markets (US, UK, China, India, Japan). A push to increase visitor numbers by 2029. Creative is culturally tailored. The Australian

• AI reducing acquisition costs in hospitality sector. According to Cendyn’s Hotel Digital Marketing Performance Index (~16 Sept), use of AI has cut acquisition costs by ~19% even as media spend rises. cendyn.com

Data & Trends 📊

• GPT-5 officially released & accelerating content/automation evolution. Higher accuracy, better tone control, larger context windows; content strategy must adjust. Verkeer

• Global ad spend resiliency amid uncertainty. MAGNA and WPP analysts expect digital ad spending to grow, especially in social, retail media, short-form video, despite macro / trade / regulatory headwinds. MAGNA

Quick Hits 🥊

• Instagram confirms hashtags no longer drive reach like before; more weight on keywords, alt text, authentic engagement. Brandnation

• LinkedIn expands “Thought Leader Ads” so posts by selected voices can be sponsored to link directly to Event Pages. Opportunity for B2B brands to push event attendance via trusted voices. Two Octobers

• “Make America Healthy Again” wants restaurants to promote healthier choices to kids and limit advertising of unhealthy foods. Increasing pressure even on voluntary front. Reuters

TL;DR

1. Do a compliance sweep now — for any health/wellness or food-adjacent content (claims, ingredients, “healthy” messaging), especially if targeting social media and influencer channels; non-compliance risk is rising.

2. Adapt content strategy around storytelling formats — use episodic content (multi-part Reels etc.), reduce over-reliance on hashtags, focus more on engagement and conversation.

3. Leverage AI to reduce cost & increase efficiency — the hospitality-sector result shows there’s real ROI in applying AI tools for acquisition, content generation, and optimisation. Start small pilots.

4. Keep one eye on ad spend shifts — although ad budgets are resilient globally, channels like retail media, short-form video, social are where growth is happening. Consider reallocating from less responsive channels.