Grading Last Week’s Buzziest Marketing
+ A sapphic vampire novel + A history of reality TV + A Gen Z Carrie Bradshaw satire + A vote against fascists
This Week In Cool Shiny Culture:
📺 Kaley’s Cool: I’m only about halfway through Cue the Sun! by Emily Nussbaum but am finding it to be a fascinating read. The nonfiction book charts the history of reality TV from the early days of Candid Camera, America’s Home Video, and Cops to today’s total dominance of unscripted programming across linear and streaming. I’m through the late 90’s, where Nussbaum discusses the cultural impact of MTV’s The Real World. She makes an interesting observation that as a reality series ages, it loses its authenticity as cast members go from naive to knowing. But at the same time, it becomes more ethical in at least one specific way: cast members gain more knowledge about what they signed up for. In other ways, the continually escalating stakes of successive seasons of shows (and the corresponding expectations of audiences) incentivize ethically questionable risk taking. Eventually just putting strangers into a house isn’t enough (Real World), then sending them around the country in a Winnebago isn’t enough (Road Rules) until contestants are pitted against each other reality competition style in feats of strength, endurance and daring (The Challenge). It reminded me of the premise of the incredible novel Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah where America has embraced “hard action sports” and audiences follow prisoners in a reality TV death match fight for freedom.
❤️ Megan’s Cool: Spring has sprung, meaning festival season is officially here. Already we have our first standout set of the 2025 season with Olivia Rodrigo’s absolutely electric headlining performance at Lollapalooza in Chile. Donning a risque body suit that reminded me of Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, the heavy emphasis on the color red has fans speculating that it may be an easter egg for her next album.
🩸Kaley’s Shiny: Binged the moody dark academia book An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson. The Sapphic vampire novel takes place in a fictional east coast university in the late 60’s and was a fun read, impeccable vibes alone. Regardless of your sexual orientation, read queer all year!
🪩 Megan’s Shiny: In addition to being festival season, it’s also aries season which marks the beginning of the astrological calendar. To celebrate the occasion, one of my favorite artists & friends, Sari Shryack has made her zodiac series into stickers and coasters! Sari is the mastermind behind the round canvas disco ball movement in contemporary art. Check out her astrology collection & her book Modern Still Life: From Fruit Bowls to Disco Balls!
Marketing we want to talk about: All of it.
Instead of spotlighting just one campaign we’re doing something a little different. We’re grading some of the buzziest marketing campaigns from last week (according to the Social Juice’s Instagram)
🌶️ Calvin Klein: Bad Bunny is Infinite – Hot people in underwear is a strategy. Not the most innovative, but the classics work when executed well. A-
🙄 Lipton April Fools: Rest in Peach – The only thing worse than a brand making an April Fools joke in 2025 is doing it in March. Plus, they cheated and completely copied DuoLingo’s fake death stunt. The tea is so cold it’s evaporated. F
🫄 Kylie Kelce x Liquid Death: Kegs For Pregs – fun. niche. It's in line with the brand’s sense of humor, has limited edition merch & taps a relevant social media personality. A
🏅 DICK’S Sporting Goods: Speed Shopping – Trail mix casting IShowSpeed, Tom Brady, Kevin Durant, Suni Lee, & Travis Hunter will definitely grab the attention of Gen Z & men but as a millennial woman, i’m bored. B-
🍏 Apple Airpods 4: Someday, by Spike Jonze starring Pedro Pascal — Some people we know love it but it just didn’t do it for us *hits play on Bad Bunny x Calvin again* (We still love you, Pedro!) C+
🧠 DuoLingo & Severance – When it comes to landing the culturally relevant joke, nobody does it like the owl. Gen Z’s favorite language app did their own (read: unofficial) spin on Apple TV+’s hit sensation Severance. How they got this past legal idk but bravo! A
🥱 Alo: Jimmy [Butler] the Intern Series – It’s cute! But like florals for spring, far from groundbreaking. However, bonus points unapologetically awarded for our Marquette favoritism. B
🤷 Beis Claw Machine - We first saw the human claw machine concept a few years ago at VidCon with Squishmallows. I would argue that it made more sense in the context of stuffed animals than it does luggage. If Beis wanted to take action on the trend of super sized marketing activations, they could have erected a single giant suitcase or riffed on the “play” theme and created a literal baggage carousel. B-
Must see YT: Every Episode of Sex and the City: Fornication and the Metropolitan Area
I discovered Sex and The City in 2004 when it started running on TBS. 20 years later, Gen Z discovered it when the series made its way to Netflix in 2024. Revisiting it without the lived context of the y2k era and its specific brand of third wave feminism, Gen Z has some critiques. Specifically, they think Carrie is a pick me (a woman who is annoying because she only cares about getting picked by a man), bad friend, and generally unlikeable. One of the more elegant roasts I’ve seen comes in the form of a short called “Fornication in the Metropolitan Area” by comedian Julia DiCesare. The five minute video will have you laughing as it both pays homage to and satirizes Carrie through a modern lens.
Everyday Activism: Kaley on voting in the first local election in the new hood! 🗳️
An unexpected side effect of buying a new home: getting really into political yard signs. I currently have 3 in my yard right now for the local board of library trustees. A trio of ladies going up against a well organized and funded Christian nationalist-aligned slate of candidates who support book bans and fiscal“ responsibility” (aka cutting library funding). Standing by a sticker Megan sent me years ago that lives proudly on my kindle:
What Cool Shiny is reading ✨
American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage – Rachel Wolfe for The Wall Street Journal
For young women especially, who tout their “boy sober” and off-the-market status on TikTok and other social media, the focus has shifted toward self-improvement, friendship and the ability to find happiness on their own. Surveys show a decline in teenage relationships, and Gen Z is having less sex than previous generations, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Vivian Jenna Wilson on Twitter, Astrology, Chappell Roan, and the End of the World – Teen Vogue
Wilson loves Threads and Bluesky, but thinks Facebook is exclusively the domain of older people, and — for obvious reasons — she is not a fan of Twitter (now X). “No one my age uses Facebook. Not a single soul on Earth, and I would rather eat a bowl of crickets and thumbtacks than join f**king Twitter,” she says.
“The ship, it's not only sinking," she adds, "it has sunk. It is on the level of a Titanic…. Whenever I see a screenshot from Twitter nowadays, I'm like, I forgot this was a thing.”
As the Left Looks to 2028, It Waits on Ocasio-Cortez’s Big Decision – Reid J. Epstein and Katie Glueck for The New York Times
Though there is little agreement about who will emerge to guide progressives into a post-Sanders era, virtually everyone interviewed said there was one clear leader for the job: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
And it just so happened that Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez spent three days last week on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour through Arizona, Nevada and Colorado. In Denver, they drew 34,000 people, what Sanders aides said was the largest crowd of his career.
“She is what’s next — if she wants it.”
Cheerio,
Megan & Kaley