IF YOU'RE READING THIS IT'S TOO LATE 📈
Jacob Elordi's Bottega connection, legacy fashion's pivot to DTC, mfs stay smoking, and more.
HI GOOD MORNING EVERYONE ☀️
This morning I was featured in
’s ‘sent from my iphone with love series’ where I mused on my love of Minetta Tavern, Public Hotel, and DailyMail. Go give it a read please. I love the format of her series.
My friends at Potion sent over a lovely candle and oil diffuser from P.F. candle company so thanks to them.
and its the Friday before Memorial Day so who could be in a bad mood. If you need me tonight I’m going to be eating oysters and going to the pool opening at Le Bain.
Let’s do news—
Jacob Elordi is Bottega Veneta’s new brand ambassador. Once again fashion’s best brand, led by the genius creative direction of Matthieu Blazy, makes another savvy move by recruiting one of Hollywood’s biggest heartthrobs to rep their bags. Elordi has been known to love a Bottega Veneta bag for some time, and he sort of inspired a ‘man purse’ or ‘boy bag’ renaissance (if you had enough $$$ to drop on a BV bag). The brand has apparently been stoking this by sending him a ton of free product. I think this is smart and on brand. Is it reinventing the wheel? No. But when something is working, keep doing it (Bottega seems to be weathering the luxury retail apocalypse better than most, only down 2% YoY on a comparable basis)
More finance bros are being forced to come into the office 5 days a week. Citi and HSBC announced their new office policy beginning June 1. This comes in response to sunsetting FINRA regulations on workplace monitoring for brokerages. This sucks for them for sure… but perhaps the Hudson Yards Equinox pool won’t be as crowded during weekdays?
Levi’s, Calvin Klein, and other legacy brands want to go DTC. As department stores and online retailers have faced an economic bloodbath, more legacy brands are pivoting to direct to consumer sales. Levi’s has a target of 55% of their sales being from DTC by 2027, and their pivot seems to be off to a good start, with direct sales up 8%. But changing retail strategy means a major shift in marketing strategy as well. These legacy brands need to start behaving like DTC brands if they want to compete. For example, Calvin Klein have seen some success with their pivot, due in part to their buzzy Jeremy Allan White ad. (My video covering Away’s spoof of the ad is my most viewed piece of content ever at nearly 2M views) But going 100% DTC is off the table, we need to remember the average consumer who just walks into an outlet mall and buys a pair of Levi’s, and many brands who started out just selling DTC have now opted for a distribution mix that includes wholesaling (Glossier, Allbirds) Ultimately, new product is also going to be pivotal. If Levi’s, for example, can create a lower cost version of the muddy Acne jeans, and go crazy with influencer marketing (I can think of the hook: “Don’t buy Acne’s $600 jeans, get these instead for the same look”) and Meta ads, they may be able to find a lot of success. (yeah its shameless but that’s capitalism) Another issue is that most of these legacy brands have god-awful digital experiences, with bloated websites that need the fat cut immediately.
Clairo just dropped a new single. About f*cking time. The Romy Mars songs just are not doing it for me… and I feel weird about this because Sofia Coppola can do no wrong to me, and her husband Thomas Mars is the frontman of Phoenix, one of my favorite bands of all time. (Alphabetical is so slept on) So their daughter’s ‘indie’ pop debut should be hitting?
Are Jeremy Allan White and Ayo Edebiri dating? No… obviously they are co-stars and really like each other. But shout out to whatever agent or PR person who pitched this rumor to the NYT to drum up excitement for The Bear Season 3 (premieres late June)
Weed is now way more popular than alcohol. 17M Americans reported near daily weed usage compared to 14M Americans who reported drinking at the same frequency, according to a new data from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Let me just say… we gotta stop this trend fast or America is going to lose its economic dominance and our biggest industry is going to be DoorDashing to an apartment you’ll never own while watching a 30 year old sitcom.
OKAY HAVE A NICE WEEKEND! WILL I POST A LETTER ON MEMORIAL DAY? YEAH PROBABLY, I’M STILL WORKING THAT DAY BECAUSE I LOVE THE HUSTLE MORE THAN I LOVE MYSELF!!! BUT YOU DO YOU WHILE I UP THE SCORE.
Jake Bell is a content marketing and creative strategist based in NYC. He specializes in content creation, branding, art direction, creative strategy, and making things cool.
Want to work together or chat? Email me: jake@jb.studio
<3