This Week in Marketing: Big Ad Energy

Welcome to this week in marketing, where the internet is giving BIG AD ENERGY; brand voices are louder than your group chats on a Sunday morning, and every scroll is a marketing masterclass (or mess). We’re rounding up our favorite campaigns, AI updates, social media app changes, and all the digital chaos in between.

🏕️ Columbia Gets Gritty

Forget snowcapped peaks and aesthetic golden hour hikes. Columbia’s new “Engineered for Whatever” campaign throws perfection off a cliff. Gritty, grimy, and darkly funny. We’re liking this unhinged side of Columbia. More of this, please!!

🔥 Lost in Marketing Translation?

Gatorade’s “Let Her Cook” campaign plays on popular online slang meaning “let her do her thing because she knows what she’s doing.” Some people missed the memo and took it literally. Marketing win or total miss?

🔁 IG’s Repost Era

Instagram just made sharing way easier — now you can repost public reels and feed posts straight to your profile. Your fav creators get full credit, so everyone wins. More shares, more love, and your feed just got way more interesting!

🍟 Back to the Fryture

Ronald McDonald and his iconic friends just got the nostalgia marketing treatment. First introduced in 1971, they’re back with a major campaign spanning digital, experiential, and brand collaborations. Childhood me is screaming.

✨ Realism Over Pinterest Perfection

The “Pinterest Perfect” era is fading as brands adopt a more realistic and relatable aesthetic that showcases products in use, rather than just as props. Merit Beauty’s recent post of visibly used makeup (smudges and all) speaks authentically to Gen Z, demonstrating that real life sometimes sells better than staged perfection.

🤖OpenAI Levels Up With GPT-5

Say hello to GPT-5 — the AI that goes beyond. It has stronger coding skills, handles a wider variety of tasks like navigating your calendar, and uses a real-time router to deliver the best answers. Plus, it’s now available to ALL users!

👃 What a RARE Billboard…

Rare Beauty launched three scratch and sniff billboards across NYC for their new perfume. Scratch. And. Sniff. You read that right — just like those iconic 2006 magazine perfume inserts. Would you give it a sniff?

🎶 Tomorrowland Broke the Internet

TikTok just shattered its livestream record, with Tomorrowland 2025 drawing over 74 million viewers across two weekends. The result was more than just a music event; it was a reminder that real-time cultural hosting keeps audiences tuned in and talking.

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