Girl, You're So Confusing Sometimes
Charli XCX's new remix, Nike's 'Samba Killer, An Incredible Beauty Website, and updates on my running journey.
GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!! ☀️
In Today’s Newsletter—
Chari XCX’s New Song with Lorde, and Her Marketing Genius
An Incredible Website I Found
Nike’s New Shoe Is Too Little Too Late
Pharrell’s New Louis Vuitton Scent
NEWS
Lorde remixed Charli XCX’s ‘Girl, So Confusing’ and It Hits. Two weeks after the release of ‘Brat’ and Charli is continuing to rule the Summer and show her marketing prowess. After fans picked up on the lyrics of ‘Girl, So Confusing’ and clocked it was a song about her ambivalent relationship with Lorde, Charli dropped a remix featuring a stellar verse from the ‘Royals’ artist, acting as a response to the original track.
Its a banger, but what I am more focused on in the context of this newsletter is how Charli continuing the Brat lifecycle with clever marketing. Yesterday afternoon, the iconic Brat wall in Brooklyn started to receive a makeover, and a livestream to Charli’s TikTok showed the process of the wall being painted over. Fans raced to see the new message, as if Charli was Moses coming down with the ten commandments.
The wall then revealed a new simple text, ‘Lorde’ and Charli announced the single on her Instagram. Through this multilayered strategy, Charli is able to continue her album hype cycle, actually adding to the music with substantiative additions as opposed to other artists like Taylor Swift, who bombard their fans with 1000 deluxe versions with demos of songs. The Brat wall itself is one of the best pop music marketing campaign’s in recent memory, its so simple yet so effective.
I love this beauty brand’s website. Unplain is a beauty brand aimed at Gen Z, with an excellent brand identity across all of its consumer touch points. The brand mixes together so many aesthetics: Y2K, early internet, Tumblr, e-girl. And they’ve pulled off a stellar website. I love how they use Windows 95 UI in their e-commerce content. This strong, ubiquitous brand identity positions them perfectly towards their target audience and its so thoughtful and considered compared to other brands that just lightly customize a Shopify template.
Their social content is so good too.
Nike Previewed New Shoes Releases Into 2025. The world’s dominant shoe brand has lost some of its edge in recent years, as the brands pivot to DTC has led to falling sales, a slumping stock price, and smaller competitors taking more market share. I’d also argue part of their recent decline is because their output is just so out of step with what people want to wear right now. Flat soled shoes are the move rn, and the Adidas Samba, Gazelle, and Spezial are catering to this demand. Even Nike’s recent Bode collab failed to move the needle. But I did notice one shoe that really caught me eye: the Nike Total 90.
This shoe is typically a soccer shoe, but Nike removed the cleats and is using a regular sole. This shoe, I believe, could go triple platinum with the girlies who have been rocking the Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66 and Sambas, especially if they drop in fun color ways. But the only issue, is that this shoe doesn’t drop until… NEXT YEAR!!! (Sigh.) But I am hype Nike is taking some swings at the fences and giving us some weird sh*t.
Pharrell is Launching a New Scent with Louis Vuitton. The men’s creative director of LV is making his mark on the brand’s fragrance line with a photosynthesis inspired cologne named ‘LV Lovers’
The scent was created in collaboration with Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud and Camille Cavallier-Belletrud and features bright, woody notes. It also comes in packaging reminiscent of his recent collections digital damier print. The global fragrance market is valued at over $50B with a 5.9% compound annual growth rate, and LVMH pulls in around $8B from its various fragrance lines each year, so I think it makes sense for Pharrell to release a scent to accompany his menswear collections. I want to smell it and give my opinion soon. BTW its $320.
RUN CLUB UPDATE
I am currently training to run the 31 mile perimeter on Manhattan in a few weeks. Any good training cycle begins with picking up a pair of new shoes. I opted for the new Nike Pegasus 41, in the slime green colorway. Watch this video to learn more about my thoughts—
and tomorrow I am continuing the Manhattan Project Run Club at 8am. Go sign up on Strava and I’ll post the route later today. I’d love to meet you guys and sweat. So let’s run!
OKAY GOTTA GO HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
Jake Bell is a content marketing, creative strategist, and designer based in NYC. He specializes in brand building, content creation, branding, art direction, creative strategy, and making things cool.
Want to chat? Email me: jake@jb.studio
That Lorde remix is 🔥🔥🔥
Unplain reminds of MUJI skincare but pricier