Five Things to Know This Week:
Pattie Gonia vs. Patagonia
Pattie Gonia is the drag persona of Wyn Wiley, who has built an online community around the mission of “connecting queer people, people of color, and lower-income communities with the outdoors.” It’s a great mission that has gained a huge following on social.
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Patagonia (the company) has filed a lawsuit against Pattie Gonia to stop the use of the “Pattie Gonia” name on designs that mimic Patagonia’s. Their statement: “We want to acknowledge any hurt it has caused, especially in the LGBTQ+ community,” the company wrote. “Importantly, we continue to want to resolve this.” More.
This feels like a lose/lose situation. Patagonia will likely win in court because this looks like a clear-cut infringement of their trademark. In the court of public opinion, it also looks like they are going after an activist during Pride Month.
The Brand Play: Even when you’ve done due diligenace with a partner, sometimes the internet will turn on you. Brands can learn from Patagonia in this moment. They are not getting defensive, they are not posting takedowns of Pattie. They are posting support for the activist and making it clear that they support her activities outside of infringing on their IP.
Everybody Wants to be a Death Doula.
The number of people training to be death doulas has spiked. In the UK, certified training programs report a 40 percent rise in learners since 2022. Death cafes, where strangers gather to talk about mortality, are pulling mostly 20- to 30-year-olds. The health system is underfunded. Social care systems are collapsing. And people feel the least they can do is make sure the person next to them doesn;t die alone.
The real takeaway here is that people are looking for deeper meaning int heir work. One death doula in Bristol said:"The dream capitalism tried to sell is more of a mirage now." The wellness industry has spent ten years monetizing “living well.” Maybe the next trend is dying well? More.
The Brand Play: If your brand operates in wellness, end-of-life care, insurance, or anything adjacent to mortality, this is a conversation happening with your audience right now. The wrong move is slapping "death positive" on a campaign. The right move is funding something. Sponsor a death cafe. Partner with an end-of-life doula training organization. If your brand has no proximity to this space, leave it alone.
Smells Like Teen Spirit on TikTok
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is seeing a surge on TikTok, but not as a nostalgia play. Creators are isolating the lyric "oh well, whatever, never mind" and laying it over single shots of themselves doing nothing (or something cool that they are aloof about). Lying on a black sand beach, working out at the gym, on a boat, hiking somewhere. That kinda thing.
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What makes this interesting for brands is that performative carelessness has become aspirational. The trending sounds on TikTok this week were Josh Fawaz's "Like a Prayer" remix, Saxboy Billy's "Puerto Rico Song,” and this Nirvana clip. The common thread is the low effort-ness. MORE.
The Brand Play: The instinct will be to use this audio. Don't. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on a brand account feels like a 45-year-old media buyer's idea of being relateable. What you should take from this trend is the structure: your audience wants content that doesn't ask anything of them. No call to action. A post that just exists, that shows the product in a quiet moment, that doesn't try to start a conversation.
Every Brand Wants World Cup Content, But Nobody Has ANything to Say
The FIFA World Cup kicks off June 11 across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Adidas created a five-minute film called "Backyard Legends" (it was really good). LEGO's "Everyone Wants a Piece" hit 314 million views within 24 hours of the players posting it. Nike launched Toma, a street soccer platform. Lay's is running "No Lay's, No Game."
It’s a big advertising moment in sports, and it’s going to last 39 days.
However! Most of these brand campaigns will be indistinguishable from each other by July. The Adidas film is legitimately good because it does something specific, a street football pickup game with a strong narrative. But the average brand is going to be very bland and very forgettable. The World Cup rewards brands that have a genuine relationship with soccer culture. The audience is going to punish brands that just started showing up two weeks ago.
The Brand Play: If your brand has been in soccer for years, this is your moment. If your brand started talking about soccer in Q1 2026, proceed with caution. The safest play for brands without soccer credibility is to focus on the watch party.
You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl so in Love.
Olivia Rodrigo's third album comes out June 12. The title is "you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love." She described it as her "most experimental" work, informed by a period living in London, and said the songs are "sad love songs" because her favorite romantic songs always have an undercurrent of fear or longing.
The title itself is very aligned with culture at the moment. Rodrigo is naming a feeling that her audience has been performing on social media for two years: the dissonance between being in a relationship and being miserable, and the particular way the internet watches young people navigate that gap. The title is already a content format. It's a caption, it's a Reel, it's a comment you can write under someone’s post. I think that will definitely help with longer-term traction.
The Brand Play: Rodrigo's audience is 18-28, predominantly female, and extremely online. If that's your demographic, the two weeks after June 12 are a great window of opportunity. The play is to understand that this album is going to give her audience a new emotional vocabulary. Listen to the album on release day. Build content around the feelings the songs are evoking. Tap into the high school girl deep within yourself.
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.