OK, Fine. Let’s Talk About Sydney Sweeney’s Bathwater.

‍Pin to Win. Pinterest has forged its first sports deal with the WNBA’s New York Liberty—a move that shows women’s sports is continuing to have a major moment. Pinterest’s Global Head of Consumer Marketing noted that Pinterest users are increasingly using the platform to search for game-day outfits, sports-themed recipes, and inspiration for watch parties, which creates a unique opportunity to serve distinct sports fandoms.

Our Take: What made the WNBA and specifically the New York Liberty the optimal first partner? According to Pinterest data, it largely ladders back to Pinterest’s fashion curation roots: searches on the platform for “WNBA tunnel outfits” were up more than 2,000+, while searches for Liberty player Sabrina Ionescu’s pink shoes were up 1,706%.

The WNBA has developed major corporate sponsorships with Bumble, Glossier, and Opill, continuing a wave of investment that started with beauty brands. In Insiders #177, Alexa Lombardo and Candace Stewart wrote about how beauty’s big sports score started with Dove and quickly bloomed to include e.l.f. Cosmetics, Charlotte Tilbury, Milani, and many more. However, the partnership with Pinterest shows how “tunnel fashion” has become a cultural phenomenon and sporting events have become “the new red carpet,” making the opportunity even clearer for fashion and footwear brands.

The interest points to big revenue potential. Alexa and Candace wrote: “Women’s sports have experienced coverage growth annually across broadcast, streaming, social media, and digital publications to receive an average share of 15% of sports media coverage in 2022 (vs. 5% for the past 30 years prior, with women receiving less than 1% of total sponsorships). Assuming growth continues on this trajectory, women's share can reach closer to 20% by 2025.”

🔮Read more about how brands are winning big with women’s sports.

Serious Shredding. COVID lockdowns inspired a new class of musician to emerge, but Guitar Center admits that few have held onto their guitars for long. In fact, CEO Gabe Dalporto revealed that for every 10 people who start to play the guitar, only one sticks with it long term. The retailer is responding by making its stores more interactive. That means bringing its premium models front and center and expanding its lesson offerings. 

“It’s like, how do we connect with people early in their music career and really get them deeply embedded so they’re going to be in it for the long term,” Dalporto said.

‍The Meta-verse, IRL. After testing a store concept on its California campus, Meta plans to expand its physical footprint to boost device sales. The campus store is rooted in natural discovery, much like the Apple store model. Customers can test Meta smart glasses and Meta Quest, its virtual reality headset. The company also launched an LA pop-up last year called Meta Lab, which has opened the door for more short-term concepts that will help Meta test and learn for its permanent spaces. While Meta sold more than one million pairs of smart glasses last year, the plan is to scale that side of the business. This includes adding more AI-powered wearable devices to its assortment. With major competitor Google forming partnerships with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster on new smart glasses designs, undoubtedly a power play against Meta’s partnership with Ray-Ban, we’re curious to see what Meta actually has in store to make wearables more marketable.

‍The (Liquid) Death of Celebrity Dignity. Cue the No Doubt song everyone forgot, because silver-screen scream queen starlet Sydney Sweeney has partnered with Dr. Squatch on a limited-edition soap that is (supposedly) made with her own bathwater. Just 5,000 bars of “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss” will be available when the product drops on June 6. Dr. Squatch has launched several limited collections based on well-known entertainment properties and intellectual properties, including Harry Potter, Minecraft, and Star Wars.

But this is the first time, by our count, the brand has dipped into stunt marketing, undoubtedly taking a page from the Liquid Death playbook. The question is: will it work? So far, audiences are mixed.

Our Take: The divided reactions to Sweeney's bathwater soap echo a phenomenon we explored last year with Bella Hadid's Orebella fragrance launch: the fetishization of the “essence” of a celebrity as a consumable.

But where Hadid's fragrance "felt disconnected" from the star herself, Sweeney's bathwater stunt feels intentionally authentic to the moment: a knowing wink at fan thirst culture that transforms objectification into agency. When perfumer Marissa Zappas created her enfleurage art piece, extracting actress Bella Newman's sweat and oils (enfleurage) as commentary on the commercialization of the self, it was understood as artistic critique.

Sweeney's approach flips the script: she calls it "wrestling back power over her image" by literally commodifying what fans were already fantasizing about.

The timing is telling. Fresh off her breakup with fiancé Jonathan Davino, Sweeney is reclaiming her narrative through calculated provocation. This isn't desperate celebrity monetization: it's a masterclass in turning male-gaze consumption against itself. Her hope "that it just gets guys to think about taking care of themselves" (an actual quote) adds another layer of the double-entendre. 

In addition to the luxurification of ritual and the justification through commodification (this is the hi/lo playbook), this might be peak celebrity sexualization.

Dr. Squatch's willingness to treat the idea with enough seriousness to create a real product while maintaining the joke shows how stunt marketing has evolved. The extraction and commercialization of the self is no longer just artistic commentary; it has become a viable business model, where the star maintains creative and financial control over her own objectification.

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Copycat Snacks. Mondelēz International has filed a lawsuit against Aldi, claiming its private-label snacks are packaged and marketed to deliberately confuse consumers. The CPG company pointed to the grocer’s packaging for its Oreo and Chips Ahoy dupes specifically. Private-label copycats are nothing new; in fact, they’re a major draw for price-conscious consumers who venture to Aldi and Trader Joe’s for their groceries. But “standard practice” ventures into thievery when packaging, color usage, and even fonts look too similar to the source material. 

‍Living Cinema. Nightmare fuel or creative breakthrough? The final answer is TBD, but Odyssey is making waves by introducing AI video that users can now watch and interact with. The experience is powered by a real-time world model that takes “the current state of the world, an incoming action, and a history of states and actions” to predict the next state in the form of a video frame. The tool generates and streams new video frames every 40ms.

Soon, you’ll be able to use their keyboard, phone, controller, and eventually audio to prompt your way into film production. Odyssey plans to learn both pixels and actions from game worlds (like Minecraft), as well as real-life video actions, to unlock models that can learn lifelike visuals and expand the range of actions. 

If we’re able to simulate a world, what are the chances that this is base reality?