Five Things to Know This Week:
GenZ is Trying to Reclaim the American Flag.
Americana is showing up in a lot of pop culture at the moment: Addison Rae’s Lucky Brand collab, Lana Del Rey is going country, and Willy Chavarria is sending red, white, and blue down the runway for immigrant workers. In 2025, a Pew study showed Americans are uniquely negative about national pride (no shit) compared to other countries. Now, GenZers on both sides of the political spectrum are trying to reclaim the flag as an aesthetic. More.
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The Brand Play: If your brand has any touchpoint with Americana, heritage workwear, or classic American design, right now is a window (but the entry isn’t waving an American flag). It’s casting the people who have been excluded from the imagery. An American-made campaign that centers immigrants, queer communities, or small-town kids who don’t fit the Norman Rockwell mold.
Vulture Explained Stealth Marketing
There are companies whose sole focus is to use clippers to manufacture conversations online. We knew that, but it’s on a much bigger scale and paid by the views. That means people are incentivized to create radical, polarizing content that makes people click. That’s the reason Justin Bieber’s Coachella set went viral - they paid to make it happen. More.
The Brand Play: You might be incentivized to make slop, content that makes people mad, makes people click. But is it worth losing all the heart at the core of your brand? (in the short term it might be, but in the long term I’m not so sure)
Drake Dropped Three Albums at Once. The Internet Says It’s His Temu Era.
On May 15, Drake surprise-released Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour at the same time. 4.8 on Pitchfork. OOF. More.
The Brand Play: This is a cautionary tale. If your brand has taken a hit, the instinct might be to flood every channel with new content, DON’T DO IT. One strong piece of work that changes the conversation will do more than three campaigns nobody remembers. Drake needed one good album. He made three forgettable ones instead.
Jonathan Anderson Dior Cruise Collection
Jonathan Anderson presented his first Dior Cruise collection at LACMA, in an early Hollywood theme. It was all a big spectacle, weirdly timed with a moment where LA’s entertainment industry is in crisis (with productions moving out of town, local politics talking about the state of Hollywood, and the mood in the city being overall bad).
It was a show that romanticized the best days of old Hollywood. Marlene Dietrich, Hitchcock, vintage car culture. Is that clever or is that tone deaf? More.
The Brand Play: This was a genuine, full commitment to the vision. That’s commendable. I would just ask yourself - has anyone outside our orbit commented on the work we’re doing? Have we lost touch with reality?
A Hate Crime Shooting Killed Three People at a San Diego Mosque
On May 18, two teenage gunmen opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three men: a security guard, a staff member, and a community member who lived across the street. The shooters died from self-inflicted wounds. Investigators found a racist manifesto, anti-Islamic writing in their vehicle, and hate speech written on one of the firearms. The attack was livestreamed.
Brand Guidance: Anything on social will feel obscene by proximity. Post with caution.
If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.
Every Wednesday, Open Woods tracks the cultural moments worth paying attention to. Curated weekly for brands that want to move first.
Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.
Every Sunday, Above the Fold breaks down what’s running in advertising, what’s landing, and what’s a total disaster.