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Vogue's New Political Correspondent, Japanese Luxury Boom, NYC's Trash Cans, and more.
In Today’s Newsletter—
Vogue has a new political correspondent
NYC finally has trash cans
Japan’s luxury market is booming
Sydney Sweeney’s awkward AI moment
David Protein’s excellent design
NEWS
Vogue has an unlikely new political correspondent for election season. Its Jack Schlossberg, the only grandson of John F. Kennedy, who went viral a few months back on TikTok for his off-the-cuff political, ‘silly goose’ political (and often non-political) videos.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserSchlossberg certainly falls into the oft-mocked camp of ‘nepo babies’ but he does boast a law degree from Harvard, and is the heir of America’s once great political dynasties, so he does know his stuff presumably despite his demeanor on social. I think this honestly a genius move from Vogue, as all eyes have been on him and now he’ll be doing what he does best for them. Plus, he got announced in perhaps the best new-hire editorial shoot of all time.
NYC is finally launching… trash cans. Any NYC hater will often look to the trash filled streets as a sign of how run down and gross this city can be. Yes, its gross, but our universally loved Mayor (JK!) unveiled a new trash can that ‘all properties with one to nine residential units will be required by law to use’ The can was wheeled out at a press conference scored by Empire State of Mind (obviously) The funniest part of this story, is that the city contracted McKinsey to consult on this issue, paying them a reported $1.2M to tell us we need… trash cans. If you have imposter syndrome, don’t.
Japan’s Luxury Market is Booming. LVMH reported a 31% Q1 sales surge in Japan, as well as major gains by Kering and Prada. This sales boost is being attributed to ‘destination shopping’ where tourists fly to a particular country to access shopping items or deals they can’t back home. In this case, its due to the extremely favorable conversion rate between the Japanese Yen and U.S./Chinese currencies. (1 Yen = $0.0062) Overall, the Japanese luxury market is now worth upwards of $31B. A direct flight to Tokyo from NYC is only $800…
Sydney Sweeney Gave the Face We All Make When We Look at AI Images. Sweeney is an ambassador for Samsung (odd) and so she is legally obligated to attend and promote Samsung events. At Samsung Unpacked, where the company unveils products no one you’ve ever met buys, one of their speakers touted a new phone’s generative AI features, demonstrating by showing Sweeney an AI generated image of herself, to which she responded with the most forced ‘Cool, I love It’ reaction of all time. I’ve made this forced reaction many times, mostly when people buy me gifts I don’t want.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserDavid Protein’s Art Direction Is Looking Great. The new protein bar, from Peter Rahal: founder of Rx Bar, is piquing my interest. I wrote about the packaging a few months ago, and I’ve started to see a slow trickle of additional photography that gives us a lens into the brand’s direction. I love this photo/graphic…
No word on launch date, but I am seeing more fitness/wellness drinks take a more refined approach to branding. For example, Cadence, a new sports hydration beverage recently launched in an incredibly minimal can, and boasts some amazing photographic direction and content. I’ll dive more into this trend soon…
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
David creative looks so cool! Kind of surprised they didn't lean more into the Statue of David/ Roman Empire vibes more from their landing page but I do like it. Clean, and excited to see more...
Kinda surprised yet another brand is launching with the name Cadence? Feels like we have a lot of confusing Cadences already?