This is the most disgusting campaign we've covered all summer, and also one of the smartest, because it turned a genuine national anxiety into a punchline everyone wanted to share.
Jason Kelce Just Sang About Peeing on Computers. It's One of the Smartest Brand Moves of the Summer.
Liquid Death and Garage Beer, the light beer brand co-owned by Jason Kelce, launched "We Want Your Pee," a 90-second music-video-style spot where Kelce collects his own urine, then leads a growing crowd, joined by Liquid Death's Murder Man mascot, in a "We Are the World"-style song proposing human urine as a solution to how much water AI data centers consume cooling their servers. A limited-edition "data center coolant collector" mug launched alongside the video and sold out almost immediately at $18.
Liquid Death VP of Creative Andy Pearson said the concept started in the brand's writer's room, with comedian Sabrina Jalees pitching the data center idea, before being repurposed into a joint campaign with Garage Beer. "That's the one issue that's common across America," Pearson said of data center water use. "It is literally the one thing that unites all Americans right now, across the spectrum." Over 70% of Americans oppose new data center construction near their homes, according to recent polling cited in coverage of the campaign.
The video has drawn over 1.5 million views on Instagram alone with overwhelmingly positive reaction, and it will run with paid support across the brands' social channels and connected TV. The partnership itself started as a simple retail co-packaging deal before growing into this larger campaign, an example of two irreverent challenger brands finding real creative chemistry.
This is what happens when a brand finds a genuine cultural nerve and refuses to be tasteful about it. Data center water use is a real, widely felt anxiety right now, and every other brand touching this topic is doing so in a sustainability whitepaper nobody reads. Liquid Death and Garage Beer turned it into a song about pee and it worked because the underlying concern is completely real, the execution is just unhinged on purpose. If your brand voice can survive being properly gross, this is the playbook: find the issue everyone already feels something about, then say the quiet part as loudly and absurdly as your brand permission allows.
Strong case for the Brand Management Practicum on brand permission and shared cultural anxiety as creative fuel. Ask students to identify what made this land instead of feeling exploitative: the joke is aimed at the data center industry, not at the audience, and the brands picked a topic where irreverence reads as solidarity rather than dismissiveness. Compare against a brand that tried the same crude humor on a topic people feel differently about, and the calculation changes entirely.
A luxury fragrance house just went where its actual customers already spend their time, and it didn't have to build the map from scratch.
Jo Malone Just Opened a Fragrance Shack Inside Fortnite. It Only Has to Last Four Days.
Estée Lauder-owned Jo Malone London launched its first-ever gaming activation, a British coast-inspired world built inside Minigame Box PvP, an existing Fortnite Creative island with 3.6 million favorites and 7.6 billion minutes played, to introduce its new Sea Salt & Bergamot Cologne. Players can access the limited-time experience through August 24 using a simple in-game code, alongside a campaign featuring gaming creators, livestreams, and social content across Instagram, TikTok, and Fortnite itself.
Rather than building a standalone branded island from scratch, Jo Malone partnered with UGC games and media company Chartis to set up inside a map creators Birdo and Dagwummy already built and grew an audience around. That's a meaningfully different bet than past brand-in-game efforts: instead of hoping people discover a new destination, the fragrance shows up inside a place its target audience is already spending time.
The move fits a broader industry shift toward gaming as an untapped marketing channel, following moves by brands like E.l.f. Cosmetics on Roblox. It's not without friction: Roblox introduced a Brand Link directory in June specifically to formalize creator-brand deals after facing scrutiny, including a current Senate Judiciary Subcommittee investigation, over child safety on its platform. Estée Lauder Companies posted 5% net sales growth last quarter, with fragrance up 10%, giving the category real momentum to justify the experiment.
The smartest decision here isn't "we're in Fortnite," it's "we didn't build our own island." Renting space inside an already-popular creator map instead of hoping people discover a brand-built destination is the same logic as sponsoring an established podcast instead of launching your own, borrow an audience that already trusts the space. Worth remembering the next time a client wants to build a flashy standalone branded experience: sometimes showing up inside somewhere people already are beats building somewhere and hoping they come.
JCPenney found the emotional word nobody else was saying out loud about bargain shopping, and built an entire satirical retreat around it: regret.
JCPenney Sent Six Real Shoppers to a Fake Wellness Retreat. Their Diagnosis: Off-Price Regret.
JCPenney and longtime creative partner Mischief launched "Retail Rejuvenation Retreat," a four-minute satirical film following six real off-price shoppers as they "heal" from bad bargain habits at a mock wellness getaway, complete with mantras, trust falls, and primal screams. The retreat leader walks attendees through choices like a scratched off-price skillet versus a Martha Stewart cookware set at JCPenney, building toward the retailer's "Yes, JCPenney" tagline as the resolution.
The campaign pairs the film with a real retail mechanic: from August 28 to 30, shoppers can bring a "retail regret," an item that didn't fit, was stained, or otherwise disappointed, into stores for $15 off a $50 purchase, with the traded-in goods donated to Good360. It's JCPenney's second promotional trade-in this summer following its July "Fuel Up and Save" gas-receipt offer.
The timing tracks real consumer behavior: research cited by Marketing Dive from IBM and the National Retail Federation found 39% of U.S. consumers are trading down to cheaper alternatives amid ongoing economic pressure. JCPenney's chief customer and marketing officer Marisa Thalberg acknowledged the campaign "pokes a bear" in the category without naming specific off-price competitors like TJX, Ross, or Burlington directly.
Naming "retail regret" as the actual emotional cost of chasing a deal is the sharp insight here, most value-positioning campaigns just repeat "quality" or "trust" without identifying the specific bad feeling they're solving for. JCPenney found the feeling nobody else was naming and built comedy around it instead of a lecture. The trade-in mechanic is the part that actually converts a laugh into a store visit, worth remembering that a strong creative concept still needs a concrete reason to walk in the door attached to it.
Two brands went hunting for young audiences inside video games this week. The platform hosting a lot of that activity just had its worst trading day on record.
Roblox (RBLX): Stock Craters 70% From Its Peak After a Rough Earnings Call
Roblox reported mixed second-quarter results on July 30: revenue climbed 35.9% year over year to $1.47 billion but missed the $1.60 billion Wall Street expected, while loss per share of $0.26 actually beat analyst estimates. Bookings growth slowed sharply to 8%, and shares slipped 2.9% on the day of the release before plunging another 26.9% in the next session, the steepest single-day decline in the company's history as a public company.
CFO Naveen Chopra attributed the shortfall to a shortage of "vintage viral games" as players shift attention toward newer, evergreen experiences that monetize at a lower rate per hour. The stock has fallen 71% over the past 52 weeks and lost another 32% in the month following earnings alone, with Oppenheimer cutting its price target to $50 from $82 while maintaining an Outperform rating. Guidance for the current quarter calls for revenue growth of just 4-10%, a sharp deceleration from recent double-digit norms.
The pressure isn't purely financial. Georgia's Attorney General publicly called Roblox "a playground for predators" earlier this month, and the platform remains under Senate Judiciary Subcommittee investigation over child safety practices, the same backdrop that pushed Roblox to launch its Brand Link creator-compliance directory in June. Even so, the stock still trades at a premium 3.79 times sales versus industry peers, suggesting some investors still see long-term value in the platform's reach.
This lands the same week we're covering two brands, Jo Malone and, in spirit, every marketer eyeing Fortnite and Roblox as the next big youth channel. Roblox's earnings crash is the reminder that "young audience, huge engagement" doesn't automatically mean stable ad or brand inventory. A platform working through child-safety scrutiny and slowing monetization is a legitimately harder environment to plan a campaign around than the growth numbers alone suggest. Worth factoring into any client conversation about gaming as a channel: check the platform's own financial and regulatory weather before betting a campaign on it.
⚠️ Not investment advice. Verify independently before any decision.
The standing lineup, no changes today.
NBA Finals Recap
The Knicks won the championship. Still the standing sports pick until something replaces it.
ABC/ESPNClaude for Small Business
Anthropic's push into small business tooling. Worth tracking as a comp for our own AI-in-the-loop positioning.
AnthropicAnthropic IPO S-1
$965B valuation, $47B run rate. Watching how the media frames the filing as it moves through the process.
S-1 FilingSilicon Valley Girl
Still the sharpest lens on tech culture from the inside. Recommended for anyone building a personal brand in AI.
YouTube"The Art of the Brand" Podcast
Camille Moore and Phillip Millar keep delivering the best brand-strategy conversations in podcast form right now.
PodcastTed Lasso, Season 4
Premiered August 5. Ten episodes, weekly, through October 7. Early word is it earns the return.
Apple TV