Welcome to Sh!t List
From Beautiful Disaster to Creative Cult
This is not your average agency newsletter.
This is Shitshow Creative — the first full-service creative agency proudly built to thrive in chaos — and this Substack is our newsroom, studio tour, open-mic night, therapy session, and glitter-slicked battleground for creative freedom.
We are a real agency.
We work with real clients.
We make real things.
And this is where we show the work, share the mess, and invite you in.
🚨 WTF Mate?
We started as a joke on Cinco de Mayo, 2025.
Now we have clients, collaborators, and a creative cult forming in the margins.
This Substack is:
A portfolio in real time: See our process, our pitch decks, our behind-the-scenes chaos, and the campaigns we’re proud to ship (and sometimes scared to pitch).
A culture magazine: Featuring weekly contributors across astrology, food, games, global politics, satire, weird internet phenomena, and experimental journalism.
A creative bulletin: Including Justin Kramm’s signature letter every week — part sermon, part takedown, part cosmic weather report.
A stage and callout board: Where we shout out causes, creators, clients, and community movements that are too bold to be ignored.
A hiring funnel and collab zone: Yes, we’re looking for clients. Yes, we’re looking for contributors. Yes, this could be how we find you.
If The New York Times and Adult Swim started an ad agency with a god complex and a group chat, this would be it.
🧠 About Justin Kramm (a.k.a. Chief Shit Stirrer)
Justin’s been in the industry since Napoleon Dynamite-era cinema. He’s a Cannes Grand Prix winner, a creative director for brands like Nike, Red Bull, Intel, and Microsoft, and the father of two future copywriters (they just don’t know it yet).
He’s also the guy who once wrote a cover letter declaring himself a soldier in the fight against mediocrity — and meant it.
Today, Justin leads Shitshow Creative: an agency born from creative frustration, delusional ambition, and the radical belief that bold work still matters.
Our Range of Magic 🌈
🐋 Jem Ember (a.k.a Head of Substack Shenanigans)
Writer, somatic strategist, and co-conspirator in organized creative chaos. Jem runs the newsletter experience like Ms. Frizzle at Jack Rabbit Slims where astrology, satire, systems critique, and storytelling tells you it’s time to hit the dance floor.
She writes over at How to Be a Whale, where the sea is deep, the wisdom’s ancient, and the vibes are full-sensory. Here at Sh!tshow, she steers the Substack ship, wrangles contributors, and helps build the editorial ecosystem we always wished existed.
Interested in contributing? Volley your pitch to her at jem@shitshowcreative.com
💩 Who Is This For?
Creative misfits who want to see how the sausage (or the brand platform) gets made
Clients and founders looking for agency partners who can actually break through
Writers, artists, designers, satirists, and strange geniuses who want a place to contribute wild ideas and get paid (or published)
Curious lurkers who wonder what happens when an agency lets the public into the war room
People tired of boring bullshit in business, branding, media, and the inbox
🔥 How It Works
Free subscribers get:
Weekly Letter from the Shitshow by Justin Kramm
Select contributor posts (culture, food, satire, etc.)
Portfolio sneak peeks + agency updates
Real news, fake news, and news you can’t tell is fake
Feel free to join the crazies on What’s App
Paid subscribers get:
Full access to all contributor content
Behind-the-scenes client work, strategy docs, rejected decks, and raw creative
Access to interactive games, creative experiments, comment threads, and polls
Opportunities to submit ideas, playtest campaigns, and shape what comes next in the Substack Chat
The joy of knowing you're helping fund creative work with teeth
Founding members get:
All the above, plus…
Secret physical gifts — available now without being a shit-stirring early adopter.
Eternal glory on our Founding Shitstarters wall
Influence over the future of the Substack (and maybe the agency)
🧨 Want to Collaborate?
Are you a brand ready to stop playing it safe?
Are you a contributor with something wild to say?
Are you a reader who wants more than passive scrolling?
Email us. Pitch us. Hire us. Or haunt the comments until we find you.
We’re looking for co-conspirators, not spectators.
🎪 Why Now?
Because the creative industry is burning and we brought marshmallows.
Because the internet got too safe, too boring, too programmatic.
Because creative chaos deserves a home that’s not just another dead portfolio site.
This is the Sh!tshow.
And you’re officially in it.
