if it’s true that Rhode can’t get into Sephora because of Rare Beauty...
then I do not know the things I thought I knew.
QUICK HITS
DOJ sues Live Nation and Ticketmaster: ‘It Is Time to Break It Up’
Elvis’ granddaughter fights Graceland foreclosure sale and alleges fraud
Farcaster, a crypto-based social network, raised $150M with just 80K daily users
Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden
Dazed Media just hired its first-ever CMO, which can only mean good things. Sophie McElligott joined Dazed in 2015; led their China expansion and founded Dazed Club, a networking platform for creatives around the world. (Do people use this?) Guys, Dazed is cool. Like, really cool. They consistently put out slightly off-center content about youth culture that you won't find anywhere else. I love their takes on fashion; I love their takes on beauty more. They also don't try to get me to buy stuff, which is great.
Vivek Ramaswamy wants to make BuzzFeed great again. Don't you just love how these digital media brands never really die? They just linger. They morph. They grudgingly persist! And now BuzzFeed is in the hands of an activist investor who ran a failed campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. But what could Ramaswamy want with an ailing digital media brand? Business Insider has some unverified but compelling theories. I know we keep saying ‘this is the end of BuzzFeed as we know it!’ But this might be the end of BuzzFeed as we know it. Side note, I love me some juicy activist investor drama. The Disney Nelson Peltz saga was fun. I’m also like 90% sure that Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman was an activist investor?! Someone tell me I’m right.
You guys need to stop canceling your WaPo subscriptions, lest Jeff Bezos does something drastic. And you know he would. The problem with The Washington Post is that it's like The New York Times (and Bloomberg and the WSJ), but worse. In a meeting with staff, CEO Will Lewis said the publication had lost $77 million last year and saw a 50% plus audience drop-off since 2020. “To be direct,” he said, “we are in a hole, and we have been for some time." No shit. Speaking to Puck’s Dylan Byers, Lewis said he still wants to make WaPo “the best place in the world to make journalism.” His plans for that include three additional subscription tiers and a pay-as-you-go model for ‘non-core’ audiences. I think the pay-per-post idea is smart, and I wish them all the best.
Our Place launched a cookbook. “It’s a blueprint for hosting in all our own unique ways. With over a hundred recipes, menus playlists, table settings, conversation prompts, and tips, this is your how-to guide to hosting more dinner parties.” Nom nom.
Kylie Jenner’s RTD beverage brand, Sprinter, raised over $12.5M in equity funding from undisclosed investors. They also sold 140,000 cases in their first month. I wrote the first ever as seen on newsletter the day after Kylie launched this brand. I shared it with like three people and you guys will never see it, but I remember noting how people love to say ‘X new Kardashian/Jenner thing won’t work’, but like they almost always do? In the short term, Sprinter will sell because it’s Kylie’s brand and people are curious. In the long term, Sprinter will sell if it’s good.
Ganni is (and has been) in their sustainability bag, and now they’ve created The Ganni Playbook to show us how. I know it’s the girls with no hopes or dreams of starting a fashion brand that will flock to the Ganni store, come back home, and gingerly place the book on their coffee tables. It's me. I am girls.
Did Zara read The Ganni Playbook? Because they just launched their own circular platform. With Zara Pre-Owned, you can Repair, Resell or Donate Zara clothes you already own. But only Zara clothes. This is of course a very costly PR move and I look forward to seeing how long it lasts. For now, it’s only available in some EU countries, including Germany. So let me know if you guys want me to give this a try and report back. I have an entire closet full of Zara and I heard Substack loves fashion content.
Bottega Veneta announced Jacob Elordi as brand ambassador. Love, love, love.
College sports are about to turn pro, and Private Equity wants in. I read this article, I slept. I woke up, and the NCAA had approved a settlement that allows college athletes to get paid directly by their schools. Back in 2021, college athletes won the right to profit off the use of their name, image, and likeness. But Colleges have long claimed that anything short of free labor would make operating sports programs financially unviable. Enter private equity. Collegiate Athletic Solutions (CAS), led by RedBird Capital founder Gerry Cardinale, plans to invest $50 million to $200 million apiece in a select group of universities. CAS isn't trying to buy equity in athletic departments; rather, they want to help universities and athletic departments grow their sports business. You guys know I think young people are more interested in sports culture than sports itself. PI investment is going to make way for colleges to further become their own brand universes, and I look forward to seeing how this impacts recruiting and retention as kids start to quite literally follow the money. Because in the words of CAS founder Gerry Cardinale, “capitalism is finding everybody.”
The Cut said more men are paying for penis-filler injections to get a 'girthier' look. But my parents read this newsletter, so I can’t talk about it.
I came across this Brat Pack trailer that sent me down an 80s nostalgia rabbit hole. If you care to find me, that’s where I’ll be.
Millennials are taking over TikTok, and they don't get the jokes. But why we are concerned about this when the app might literally get banned, I do not know. Also, the way people write about millennials is so wild to me. I need Gen Z to remember that karma is real, and Gen Alpha is coming for our ‘youthful relevance.’ I feel like we might even have it worse than millennials because while their biggest transgression is being cringe (and that’s a fate that befalls us all), I suspect that people genuinely dislike Gen Z as a concept. Once we enter our inevitable cringe era, the retribution will be swift and exacting.
Ten years from now, will kids think Starbucks invented Boba?
thinks they might. Your favorite fast coffee chain has a storied history of taking drinks from other cultures and “de-ethnicizing” them. They did it with Matcha Lattes and Hibiscus Tea. Is Boba next? Dr. James Richardson said it best: “Taking a foreign term, ‘boba,’ and simply anglicizing it will absolutely help mainstream the boba experience well beyond America's Boba shops. Then, slowly, what will happen? Perhaps nothing. If this line fails. Or...a new beverage category will emerge…’pearl soft drink’ or ‘pearled beverage’”. Y’all wouldn't dare.Bookstagrammers more serious than me have already gotten their hands on Sally Rooney’s new book. To make myself feel better, I broke my book buying ban and got Coco Mellor’s Blue Sisters yesterday. I hear it’s even better than Cleopatra and Frankenstein, so for now my jealousy is quite sated. I just finished reading Sorrow and Bliss and am currently making my way through Biography of X by Catherine Lacy. My dms are open for character analyses.
All the Mad Men are telling us to spend less time on our phones. Heineken says we should touch grass and grab a beer. Hinge (apparently) wants us to stop swiping and go on some dates. Even Snapchat claims to be the “antidote to social media'' (which is why the Market will never truly love them). All this because Gen Z keeps complaining about hating technology and wanting to get off their phones. Who’s going to tell these marketers that people lie!
An Austrailain man discovered hundreds of mammoth bones in his wine cellar. This the exact type of thing I hope happens to me one day.
Once in a while, Vulture will come out with a piece of truly genius content, and yesterday was one such day. "21 Ways to Hack Stardom" include "Eat Chicken On-Camera" (5), "Go on SNL for the Memes" (6), and "Keep Your Real Teeth" (9). It’s a fun piece, but I find the underlying message much more interesting: they don’t make them like they used to. Before I ruined that day trip by bringing up the biological clock, my friends and I waxed poetic about our love for 90s/2000s rom-coms and endless devotion to Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman. Yes, Zendaya and Sydney are great, but the impact wasn't ever going to be the same. How could it, when modern celebrities are in a lot less stuff, have a lot less mystery, and there’s influencers dividing our attention. Back then, an epic movie, a hot red carpet look, and a few bad breakups were enough to keep the audience rapt. These days, you’d need to create an entire cinematic universe around your life to get (and keep) the same attention. And people might still hate you for it.
Brands are in their Granny Era. A few weeks ago, Business of Fashion wrote about how gen X became beauty’s next big consumer. Then Ad Week called out brands for leaving trillions of dollars behind by ignoring women over 40. But since that Maggie Smith Loewe campaign, I’ve noticed more brands featuring older women in their campaigns.
clocked it too. And you know what? I love it. With all the ceaseless anti-aging conversations, I think it’s great for younger women and teens to see women over 40 favorably represented in the media. For brands, it makes sense too. Gen Z might be cool but they are also poor. Gen X is starting to get the hang of social media, and with nostalgia marketing being all the rage, there's a real opportunity for brands to engage a different demographic and grow that bottom line. Also, Gen Z loves a glam granny! Are you guys not on TikTok?Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men. I don’t speak on such issues anymore; but I thought you should know.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, but what happens when the village is busy, busy, busy! Another reason women are having fewer kids is because there are fewer people to help take care of said kids. Even in places like Germany, where new parents can get up to two years off, parenting solo can still be a slog. Startups providing services to new parents are springing up everywhere, but their crazy prices mean the only people who can afford them are people who can afford nannies anyway. This is of course (mostly) a first world problem, and I’ve already kindly informed my mom that for the gift of a grandchild, I would require three to six months of her time. I’m recruiting my aunt too. They say if my baby cries anywhere near as much as I did, I’m getting one month tops. So pray for me, guys!
I have the most perfectly curated secret Instagram page only my boyfriend knows about. Here are some fun fashion moments as seen on Ochuko’s Secret Timeline:
Princess of Nazareth or Princess of Cannes? Why not both? I knew I had to write about the great Bella Hadid comeback; and then I saw Vogue did as well! Great minds and all that. At Cannes, Bella is OUTSIDE- as I can only hope to be this summer. She’s shaking her perfume bottle, smoking a cigarette, and enjoying color-coordinated ice cream. She’s in Dsquared, she’s in Saint Laurent, she’s in Michael and Hushi. Her appearances at Cannes this year have already generated $8.5 million in earned media value for the brands she is wearing. This girl knows the perils of overexposure and respects the power of a comeback. I will fondly remember her horse girl era but will happily take what she gives us. Let’s see those Orebella sales now!
If it’s true that Rhode can’t get into Sephora because of Rare Beauty, then I do not know the things I thought I knew. Very petty of Selena. I said what I said. If Glossier taught us anything, it’s that for a beauty brand to scale, they’re going to need those retail shelves. Newer brands are going from DTC only to big retail much faster. Rhode can manage a longer timeline because of Hailey’s uncanny ability to create and predict trends, and make Rhode front and center of her personal brand. Plus, I don't believe they took any institutional investment, so no pressure there. But they still have to scale. And if when they do, it's not with Sephora, we’ll all know why. As Rachel Strugatz said, entering makeup with a blush product pits Rhode directly against Rare Beauty’s best selling cream blush. A tricky one, but still the right choice. Everyone is in love with blush right now, and most people have several different blush options, anyway. What’s one more? By now Hailey is known for her pink blush looks (intentional of course), so this launch just makes sense. Plus, summer is almost here, and like I said, we will be outside!
And that’s a wrap for my second week on Substack 🥳🎉. I got excited and made a lot of promises so here’s what I’m going to try to get done for y’all this next week:
sharing my Adidas t-toe collection
a book recommendation to close out each newsletter
Let me know how y’all are feeling about the newsletter so far. What do we like? What do we love? What do we despise? Ogheneochukoakpovbovbo@gmail.com is how you can tell me.
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I've just discovered your substack and I am Obsessed to say the least! I will eagerly await your future posts, this rocks <3
just found your substack and as someone who also works in the brand/marketing/social media world, i can immediately tell it’s going to be a favorite resource!! thanks for all the effort you put into your work! 🫶🏻