Starbucks rebranded GenAlpha’s favorite treat and they aren’t impressed
Retailers are stealing Ikea’s playbook & ‘sports coffee’ is now a thing
Good morning all,
I saw this little request on
‘s Substack last week and it felt like the nicest way possible to ask so i stole it:“*HEY TEAM, IF YOU ENJOY [GOOD THINKING] IT’S SILLY TO SAY: BUT LIKES ON POSTS HELP US SPREAD THE GOSPEL. CONSIDER A 🤍”
Apologies in advance if there are more typos this week, I am yet again baking a cake for my daughter’s birthday (this time the party). It’s become clear I’m not a great baker. I’m on cake attempt 3 of the day so I’ll be quitting early for a gin and tonic. The notion that your kid’s birthday cakes are cuter homemade and awkward-looking is not serving me well.
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
CMOS ARE SEEING STARS Last week I mentioned brands are making films. Evidence: New Balance, Patagonia, Aime Leon Dore. 2 weeks back I shared thoughts on the Montblanc x Wes Anderson collab. Not a film but a major film director. Chanel has jumped in the water with a bit of both: an ad/film by Scorsese starring Timothée Chalamet. It’s interesting to see the return of these more long-format, high-production pieces. Do we have Tik-Tok fatigue or do CMOs love the idea of making films—likely the latter?
CMOS THINK IT’S SHOWTIME If it’s not films, then it’s shows.
had a fun deep dive into CPG brands making serialized, made-for-TikTok content. It’s not just CPG, a lot of brands have started making series. Either in an interview style or purely fictional. Brands are leaning into true entertainment (we’ve shared some of these before):Blackbird’s Take Me To Your Spot
PJ Monte’s Shakshouka Stretch
Alex Bittar’s Margaux Series which is just going from strength to strength (they’ve started having celebrities doing cameos)
The New Yorker jumping in on the action (with a short, not quite a series—yet)
MENOPAUSE IS PRUNING THE FLUFF-> Culture Study Menopause is a hot topic as it’s going through a big moment of un-shaming. This was the first time though that I’ve seen menopause discussed as a positive. Apparently, new research suggests that it’s not just all shitty hot flashes and sleep loss. Women’s brains in menopause are ‘pruning the fluff’ enabling a new type of being, focus, and ‘deep contentedness’ to form. I’m so ready for a campaign based on this insight.
NO BOYS, JUST SCOUTS -> Cultural Currents The Boy Scouts of America finally took the plunge and rebranded themselves to ‘Scouting America’. Unsurprisingly, it’s getting called ‘woke’ but that’s not very interesting. More interesting is the naming strategy. An adjective in the name is fun move. It’s not a rebrand on the level of the Girl Scouts’ (loved) but maybe it’s still coming?
THE SIDE HUSTLE IS JUST A SECOND JOB Mina Le recently made this post in response to the Washington Post article about how Gen-Zers have side hustles because ‘loyalty is dead’. Mina’s take felt much more in tune with the sentiment on my feed. Sharing as an insight as I think the WaPo take is shared way more often.
F&B
THE CELEBRITY COFFEE NO ONE IS ASKING FOR We’ve written about celebrity brand fatigue and I think this might be the nail in the coffin. Rudy Giuliani has launched a coffee brand. My favorite quote (because it makes you spit out your coffee) is from the co-founder, Rudy’s girlfriend, Dr. Maria Ryan: “I was looking for products that had non-GMO, really organic bean farms, and I couldn’t find any.” A marketing spin masterclass. The packaging is also a masterclass (the decaf one takes the cake). One can only assume the goal is to become a meme. Sadly, I’m not joking, this could well be the strategy, meme-reach is real.
Side note: ‘Better for you’ coffee seems to be a thing at the moment. NFL player, Patrick Mahones also launched a coffee brand, Thrones, this week. It’s a ‘sports coffee’.
WE’RE ENTERING OUR BREAD ERA -> Snaxshot Two ends of the carb-spectrum are hot right now. GPL-1(Ozempic)-friendly dishes and offerings are rising. And bakeries are offering Bread Omakazes. What a time to be alive! Bread was going to make a comeback at some point and usually, when there’s a pendulum shifts in one direction, you have the opposite also occurring. Will be fun to see which way brands choose to swing.
CHEEZ-IT PERFORMS IN WOODSTOCK For Memorial weekend Cheez-Its has created a pop-up diner. The location and the short duration are fascinating. Granted there will be a lot of New Yorkers in upstate for the holiday but this points more to the trend of creating events just for social. Cheez-its’ PR team seems to have invited every news outlet and a lot of influencers for a preview week and they’ve been sharing all the little details from crocheted Cheez-its to Cheez-it milkshakes on social.
ALPHAS & ZS
SEPHORA’S GOING TO START CARDING YOU California lawmakers are trying to pass a new bill that will ban the sale of over-the-counter skincare products to children under the age of 13 that contain vitamin A or its derivatives, aka retinol. All this is happening as North West filed a trademark to launch her skincare line.
KIDS LIKE TO EAT MUSH -> Snaxshot Mush, the overnight oats brand, came out with a line for kids called Mushkins. Basically pouches of oatmeal. The texture gives me the ick but as a mom of a picky eater, pouched food was popular in my house for a minute. I love the like characters. Though, and this is purely anecdotal, food with animals on the packaging out-perform most households I know.
ALPHAS ARE BOBA SNOBS -> AfterSchool For those not in the know, boba is more popular than pizza. But not just any boba. Tea Magic is THE place for alphas. Followed by Shiny Tea, Gong Cha Tea, Coco Tea, Mochi Dulci, and tStarbucks at the very the bottom. Not great for Starbucks who is also getting flack for “de-ethnicizing” boba because they are calling them ‘pearls’. As mentioned, I like Starbucks but this is not a smart move.
RETAIL
WAYFAIR ON MAINSTREET Online retailer, Wayfair opened a brick-and-mortar store (retail is back) in Chicago this week. It’s huge. And it’s a bit like Ikea. It’s organized by room and every item has a shoppable QR code. The Porch cafe carries all-day breakfast, light bites, local coffee, and wine and beer. The Dream Center allows shoppers to test ALL the mattresses and has its own lavender and rain scent. (Michael, whose LinkedIn is linked above, is a fun follow if you’re into retail. )
TECH
TIKTOK MUSIC IS ABOUT TO BE ALL AI GENERATED Suno, an AI music platform, raised $125M for a valuation of $500M this week. A lot more than the $10M Udio, another AI music generator, raised in April. It’s pretty clear who the big player will be. Obviously, we’re set for a lot of lawsuits about copyrights and likeness so hopefully they are setting aside a big chunk of the raise for a good lawyer.
CANVA CREATE GOES BIG IN 2024 Canva Create is the event where Canva announces all of its updates and this year they went big. Canva gets some eye-rolls from designers but most social teams I’ve worked with use it religiously. They’ve rolled out a lot of new features. AI features, automations, the ability to create ‘courses’ and more. They are coming after the whole org this year.
AI WILL SPY ON YOU AND YOU'LL LIKE IT Microsoft’s AI chatbot, Copilot can now “see” what’s happening on people’s screens. It will also have a feature called ‘Recall’, that will let people ask the chatbot about previous files or windows they had used in past weeks, which Copilot will be able to resurface. For instance, people will be able to describe an image they saw online or a conversation they had in Discord, and Copilot will theoretically be able to find the item in question and link back to it. The new ChatGPT app for Macs and the new Google AI can do the same. It’s both terrifying and exciting. I can’t recall (sorry, i couldn’t help myself!) how many times I’ve wished I could search for an image I can see in my head. Well, we’re here now.
SAM COPIED HER Everyone has heard that Scarlet Johansson is having to sue OpenAI after Sam Altman cloned her voice for their new “Sky” voice. A dumb move, though it did get everyone talking about the feature. But should we be more concerned that there’s yet another tech service that uses a female voice for us to give commands to? Waiting for a tech brand to figure this out.
BUMBLE BUYS GENEVA Right on the back of a few considerably bad weeks, Bumble announced that they acquired the community messaging service, Geneva. Most people/brands I know that used Geneva identity as females or are female-run. So maybe it’s a good move but terrible timing.
put it best: “Geneva was always a great product but never quite figured out how to monetize, so this is obviously great for them.“TRAVEL
WE’RE ALL LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT VIBE -> Cassandra Daily Reviews mentioning the word “vibe” are booming, with a 1,090% jump over last year. 90% of travelers identified ‘vibe’ a critical factor when deciding on a hotel. I relate to this fully and very few chain hotels do ‘vibe’ well yet. Lots of room for playing with this.
VENETA IN VENICE Bottega Veneta announced the opening of Palazzo Bottega Veneta, a new residence for the brand and its VICs (very important customers). The 15th-century palazzo will offer invite-only experiences including made-to-order garments, special consultations and limited-edition high jewelery. Brands going into hospitality has been a big trend this year.
TRAVEL LOUNGES ARE THE NEW MEMBER’S CLUBS -> As Seen On Airport lounges are taking cues from members clubs. The new, 38,000-square-foot Delta Club in JFK has a bistro and wellness areas. United’s Denver lounge has a full on brewery inside (I can vouch that this lounge is top notch). The trick now will be making them feel ‘exclusive’ while still filling them up.
FUN FOR THE WEEK
A fun take on brand ‘swag’. Also fun.
Bella Hadid is making Cannes paparazzi moments about her fragrance brand
Divorce announcements are thing. Here’s a deep dive on the repositioning of divorce I wrote recently.
From 2023 but came across this Dutch Cancer Society video that was so good
Samsung fires back at Apple with creativity can’t be crushed ad. A little petty but still funny.
Jenny holzer at the Guggenheim.
France issues scratch and sniff baguette-scented stamps — love this as a collateral concept
What is ‘Natural beauty’?
Loewe and On collab—lovely.
How I feel every time I have to make a Linkedin post
Love this behind the scene ‘making of the post’ video about the viral Burts Bees TTs (Found via
, obviously)Did you know the butter boards were a viral campaign orchestrated by ‘big dairy’. I mean seems obvious now but kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time. Reminds me of how Kale became big.
This shopping insight by the NYT is a gem.
Brand block parties are a big thing right now. Gotham NY also had one for 4/20.
Couldn’t tell you what for but these old dudes delivering pizzas on a boat feels like it’s a brand moment waiting to happen.
Will Victoria’s Secret make a comeback?
Cute new Old Navy commercial starring Tracee Ellis Ross and Yara Shahidi (the director is Alice Kong, who has a cute portfolio)
Liquid death’s abandoned cart email—so on brand.
Seed launched a vaginal microbiome supplement. Great timing following their Molly Baz Times Square moment.
That’s all, folx!
-Chris
*The newsletter is now as big as a top knot or a banana. 20 weeks and going strong*