Adidas has already won the Super Bowl
Plus: Lies are spreading about ChatGPT’s ad, and Pizza Hut’s gone bland.
Morning,
If you only read one thing in this letter I recco: SUPER ADI
As always, the lens of this letter is a best-of-the-best on culture, trends, marketing, etc. What I’m dropping to friends on Slack or finding useful in meetings with brands.
Let’s dive in!
CULTURE
I BETCHA // Kalshi, famous in this letter for its unhinged AI-fever-dream ad, famous everywhere else for predicting elections, is moving into sports. In June, Kalshi was valued at $2B. Today, it’s probably worth double. This chart showing Kalshi’s user spike during the elections compared to the surge after announcing you can now bet on football is both amazing and slightly unsettling. Sports betting isn’t new, but prediction markets let you bet on all the peripheral stuff, too. Not just who wins, but who will headline, who will get injured, who will become the new coach. The list goes on. When we said in the recent GOOD SIGNS that people are chasing intensity, this is what we mean.
F&B
BLAND PIZZA // Just when you thought the blanding moment was behind us, Pizza Hut serves a new logo. As Pizza Hut logo revamps go, it’s not the worst that they’ve done. Some were incredibly bad. But this one will just be forgotten.
DRUGS & BOOZE
LIGHT TRIPS // Mindstate Design Labs is reporting early success in its attempt to make “the least psychedelic psychedelic that’s psychoactive.” It’s made using AI models that analyzed more than 70k documented psychedelic trips. The goal is to create programmable states. And turn ancient yet unpredictable wisdom into a precision medicine for mental health.
SILVERS, ALPHAS & ZS
MAN IS EVOLVING // Barclays’ recent ‘10 Years of Spend’ report found that, in 2025, Gen Z male bankers might be using more Botox than your bestie. Men’s beauty is one of those forever ‘coming’ trends that has never materialized. But it finally has. 46% now use moisturizer. And 54% of them are finding it on Amazon. This is an opportunity.
FASHION & RETAIL
ROTTEN APPLE // It’s been hard to criticize Gap lately. They’ve been killing it. But this new Gwyneth and Apple commercial is the least buzzy moment they’ve had in a while. Frankly, people don’t follow Gwyneth for fashion, and while Apple is very ‘all-American beauty’, she’s no Katseye in terms of relevance. This feels like a campaign orchestrated by talent management rather than creative vision. In another move that feels not quite right: Banana Republic is beginning its efforts to orchestrate a comeback. They are pulling out the vintage—a move that’s been working lately. Alongside The Society Archive’s founder, Marcus Allen, they curated a pop-up stocked with an archival capsule and vintage pieces. All this feels right until you see the pop-up. Which has 0% of the lived-in realness that made J.Crew’s 190 Bowery shine on social (this trend also shows up at the Versace show, complete with unbed beds). When you try to right a ship, make sure you take it all the way. But in Dickson we trust.
TECH
UNDERGROUND RAGE // AI startup Friend woke up one day and said, ‘Let’s see if rage-bait works offline.’ The answer was: it does. The company paid over $1M to plaster the NYC subway with made-for-graffiti ads selling a $129 ‘AI companion’ that dangles around your neck. New Yorkers delivered. Every one of the ads is tagged with rage. There’s fun, there’s provocative, and then there’s slop. You know where this sits.
PROMPT: BLAND // ChatGPT launched a new campaign, all about the ordinary and everyday ways it can make your life more bland. The general reception to this ad has actually been positive. The LinkedIn water-cooler mostly praises the strategy as ‘smart to show humanity.’ People like that it was shot on 35mm and the incredibly good styling by Heidi Bivens. But if people paused for 2 minutes, they might realize that asking an AI to do the work of making you a generic playlist to win someone over is the very definition of misunderstanding humanity. Love a good ChatGPT search, and believe in humans + AI stories, but we need to think more critically.
OPEN MARKET // Operation ‘we love humans’ continued with the roll-out of OpenAI’s Stripe integration. You can now search for a product and buy it without leaving the platform (told you the website era is over as we know it). To make the announcement, OpenAI used the internet’s most human marketplace, Etsy, for the demonstration. In return for lending OpenAI its humanness, Etsy got its search issue and its stock price fixed in one fell swoop.
SPORT
SUPER ADI // Adidas is having a great year. First, they had the Oasis revival boom, which had half of London dressing in 3-stripe tracksuits. And now Bad Bunny is headlining the Super Bowl. According to
, not only are they about to get $7-8M of free advertising, they are doing so right before the launch of Bad Bunny’s debut signature shoe, the BadBo 1.0, “set to hit the market in spring 2026.” Adidas sneakers are already an it item with teens, according to ’s teen survey. Expect that to remain true in 2026.WELLNESS & BEAUTY
HONEST BEAUTY // We’ve officially broken the shame cycle of cosmetic surgery. Instagram’s fave esthetician, Sofie Pavitt, shared her neck lift with The Cut. Charlotte Groeneveld shared her new eyes. And Dr. Levine is now a household name. People still want the work to look undetectable, but they don’t care that you know they did it.
TRAVEL
DIGITAL ROMANS // Dallas startup Histoury is launching an immersive AR app, Portyl, that brings ancient tourist sites to life. It’s akin to Pokémon Go for history buffs. Open your phone and see a CGI overlay. The first location is the Colosseum in Rome, with the Acropolis, Pompeii, Normandy, Pearl Harbor, and the Alamo coming soon. Experiential travel is booming. Audrey Gelman’s new hotel, The Six Bells, is hosting murder mystery weekends. And you already know LARPING has gone luxe.
FUN FOR THE WEEK
That’s all, folx.
-Chris
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In Dickson We Trust!