#Ad Nauseum.

When will we let Brat Summer die? It’s almost December, for crying out loud. Have we entered some sort of Sisyphean doom loop condemned to repeat for all eternity? Just when you think it might be over, the boulder rolls back down the hill and Charli XCX secures yet another brand deal. 

In the last month alone she’s penned partnerships with Valentino, Converse, Revolut, and now Acne Studios. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised to see her fronting a Fray Bentos Christmas campaign. Drinking a load of sherry alone in your pants then eating a steak and kidney pie straight out the tin is actually quite brat, to be fair.  

Does the utter ubiquity of an ambassador saturate any individual brand’s cut-through? Maybe, but this one was personal – apparently. “I’ve been wearing Acne Studios forever in my personal life and the brand has become a really important part of this album, too”, the singer claimed. A cynic might say that comment has shades of Richarlison saying it was always his childhood dream to play for Everton. A cynic might. We of course wouldn’t dream of it.  

Milking It.

To quote a wise philosopher: “When you’re talking the hardest, Giggs better pop up in your thoughts as an artist”. But if there’s one thing that doesn’t typically spring to mind when you’re talking the hardest… it’s oat milk.  

Presumably in an attempt to combat connotations of iron deficiencies, environmental hypocrisy and holier-than-cow bores ruining dinner parties, Oatly have launched a new range of custard in partnership with the legendary grime MC. 

You might be wondering how this odd couple even came about. Like all solid relationships, it started with a DM. Giggs, who is lactose intolerant, reached out to Oatly expressing his love for the brand’s vanilla custard and lamenting its scarcity in supermarkets.

This was unexpected, but not unwelcome. Lactose intolerance doesn’t seem very grime, though. It can’t be easy feeling like a badman knowing you’d get floored by a glass of milk.  

No Zucks Given.

The rehabilitation of Mark Zuckerberg’s public image needs to be studied. The man went from soy boy to f*ck boy, Meta CEO to Alpha bro, technocrat to techno frat before anyone even realised what he was doing. Turns out if you want to convince people you’re not a creepy, censorious dork all you have to do is grow out your perm, whack on a gold chain and start doing jiu-jitsu. Let that be a lesson for any young people out there: if you’re uncertain in your identity, just fabricate an entirely new one. And then release a song with T-Pain. 

That’s precisely what Zuck did. Sorry, Z-Pain. Ergh. This week he dropped an acoustic cover of Lil Jon’s ‘Get Low’ as an anniversary gift for his wife. Because why buy someone an island when you could serenade them with a song about sweat dripping down your balls?  

Is this particularly cool? Of course not. But for those three-and-a-half minutes you’re probably not thinking about your data being harvested and sold to the highest bidder. Smart. Granted, it might have felt more personal if he’d come up with an original song, but bear in mind he didn’t even come up with the original Facebook. #Justice4Winkelvoss.  

No Kappa.

The worlds of football and fashion have been blurring for a while, and this season’s round of kit launches may have represented the Titanomachic apotheosis of that atomic collision course. No, you’re overstating things. 

As a general rule of thumb, if you see a particularly handsome footy shirt, there’s a good chance Kappa made it. This season they’d already stolen the show with some absolute belters for Athens Kallithea, Venezia, Versailles, and just when you thought they were done… *cue The Undertaker’s entrance theme*. 

In a meeting of the minds that makes Oatly and Giggs look predictably passe, the WWE legend joined forces with Serie A side Genoa to launch the club’s first-ever black kit. That’ll look double smart paired with The Undertaker’s MAGA hat. Rumour has it he’s about to be announced as the Secretary of Agriculture. 

The Great Reset.

If you’ve listened to that Get Low cover, you probably feel like you don’t need any more Zuck in your life for a little while – but you’re getting it anyway. You don’t know what you want. The algorithm does. Don’t believe your lying mind. Trust the algorithm.  

This week Instagram launched a new feature that will let you reset your recommendations. So, if you’re sick of your algorithm incessantly serving you videos of shirtless blokes eating rib-eyes off chopping boards while opining on the fundamentality of free speech – or whatever esoteric enclave of the internet you usually find yourself inhabiting – you’re in luck. Just think… a fresh start. Fields of alfalfa, Lenny. The future is unwritten, the possibilities are endless.  

Some are applauding the feature as a means of helping people break free from their echo chambers, but others are questioning why we can’t go one step further and just go back to a chronological timeline. Personally, I adopt the less-popular third view: I’m staunchly pro-algorithm. I built this shit brick-by-brick. Hands off my echo chamber. It sounds nice in here.

Cat’s Out the Bag.

Full disclosure: coolsh*t was already done and dusted, but we couldn’t not talk about this. Jaguar rebranded this week – and not just a bit. A simple logo update wouldn’t do. No no, for this particular rebrand, Jaguar decided they needed a cast of very stern, androgynous Teletubbies. Their tubby custard would definitely be dairy free – quick, someone tell Giggs we’ve found some customers for him.

The, err, bold new look has divided consumers. Some hate it, and some really f*cking hate it. The consensus opinion appears to be that it makes Jaguar look less like an luxury car maker and more like a 2010s high street mum’s clothing retailer. We’ve also seen a non-trivial amount of people comparing it to a vibrator brand. That’s probably not the buzz they wanted to create.

If this is a bait and switch, then fair play. Surely nobody can in all earnest claim that they “create exuberance”… right? Jaguar’s X admin (likely now soon to be ex admin if this is real) has been dropping some pseudo grandiloquence plucked straight out of an incel’s manifesto claiming things like “Soon you’ll see things our way” and that “This is a renaissance”. Apparently a big reveal is coming on December 2^nd. Is this all one big troll? Is it a bold but necessary step forwards? Are the reactionary bores calling this ‘woke’ over-reacting? Stay tuned…