Five Things to Know This Week:
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is Mostly Brand Partnerships
The sequel will be in theaters on May 1. Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt are back. Joining the party this time are L’Oreal, Starbucks, Samsung, Lancôme, TRESemme, Grey Goose, Tiffany, Dior, Diet Coke, Smartwater, Mercedes Benz, Google, Havaianas, and Valentino. Grey Goose temporarily rebranded as “Cerulean Goose.” Starbucks launched a secret menu with drinks named after characters. Walmart dropped a capsule collection. CNN ran a piece today titled “The devil wears Old Navy?” More.
The Brand Play: The Starbucks play stands out to me. A secret menu tied to fictional characters, orderable through the app, no production budget required. If your brand has any kind of customizable product, build a limited menu, a limited colorway, a limited anything tied to a cultural release your audience already cares about. Not a formal partnership. A fast, low-cost reference that rewards people for noticing it. The best brand tie-in to this movie isn’t one of the fifteen official ones.
Social execution: Film your team recreating the “cerulean sweater” monologue from the original but replace the fashion references with your product category. A coffee brand does it about pour-over methods. A skincare brand does it about retinol percentages. The template is the same: condescending expertise.
Beef Season 2 Lost Half Its Audience
All eight episodes of Beef Season 2 came to Netflix on April 16. It has an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. It also pulled 2.4 million opening-week views, down about half from Season 1.
Season 1 was a breakout because it kinda felt like a show about you. The rage was relatable (at least for me). Season 2 is a show about rich people at a country club. More.
The Brand Play: For me, this is a brief-level observation, not a social post. If your brand makes content about aspiration (luxury, lifestyle, travel), the Beef numbers are an interesting data point. Audiences will engage with wealth when it’s satirized or earned. They’re less interested when it’s just the setting. The next time your creative team pitches a concept set in a beautiful location with beautiful people, ask who in the audience sees themselves in it.
Gen Z Is Buying Polaroid Cameras
Axios reported that 47% of Americans under 30 say they’re actively trying to reduce screen time. The dumb phone market is up. Polaroid sales are up. The generation that grew up on Instagram is buying film cameras on purpose.
Recently, Dazed partnered with Polaroid to send three clubbers on a digital detox, documenting their lives with a Polaroid Flip camera instead of a phone. More.
The Brand Play: If your product has any analog component, or can be experienced without a screen, make that the content. Not a campaign about going offline. An actual offline product moment. A pop-up without wifi. A dinner series where phones go in a bag at the door. A limited product that doesn’t get announced digitally first. (you do have to promote it on social first - still gotta create some FOMO)
Social Execution: Film a product shot exclusively on a disposable camera or Polaroid. No color grading, no transitions, no text overlay. Post it with zero context. Caption: the date and location, nothing else. Just VIBEZ.
BTS Just Started Their North American Tour
The Arirang World Tour started on April 25, the first North American date of a 34 city, 85 show global run. Every date sold out within hours of going on sale. The economic impact projections for each city are in the hundreds of millions.
This is the biggest live music event of 2026 by every metric. Stadium capacity, merch revenue, local economic impact, and social media volume. More.
The Brand Play: If your brand has a physical presence in any BTS tour city you can probably get away with a post. The play isn’t a partnership with BTS. The play is being useful to the fans already in your city. A hotel brand offers a late checkout for concert nights. A restaurant does a pre-show prix fixe that amkes sure you get to the concert on time. A transit brand runs extra service to the stadium. Meet the demand that already exists instead of trying to create new demand that won’t.
Social Execution: If your brand is in a tour city, post a simple welcome. “Tampa tonight. Good luck getting there on time.” Or just repost the setlist with no commentary. Do not add your logo. Do not say “we’re ARMY too.” (total poser) The less your brand tries, the better it lands with this audience.
READ THE ROOM…
Someone Tried to Assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
On Saturday night, a gunman charged a security checkpoint during the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Brand guidance: Pull back. Review anything scheduled for this week and check the tone. An assassination attempt at an event full of journalists is not something the news cycle processes in 48 hours. The political fallout, the security conversation, the inevitable weaponization of the story by every side will dominate social feeds for days. Any brand content that reads as lighthearted, clever, or attention-seeking will land wrong. If you have a major campaign launch scheduled, delay it or run it quietly.
Georgia’s Worst Wildfires in State History Are Still Burning
Two wildfires in southern Georgia have burned nearly 39,000 acres and destroyed over 120 homes and buildings. Governor Kemp declared a state of emergency for 91 counties. More.
Brand Guidance: If your brand operates in the Southeast or has customers in Georgia, acknowledge it. A simple, unbranded statement of support or a donation link to Georgia emergency services is appropriate. Do not tie it to a product. Do not use wildfire imagery for engagement. If you’re a brand with no connection to the region, you don’t need to post about it, but you should be aware that a significant portion of the country is watching their neighbors evacuate. Adjust your tone accordingly.
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.