In this week’s Our Take, SPF gets air-dropped mid-Pacific, chest hair becomes cover for virtual bullets, culture gets unboxed, and a soap that sets a new bar in celebrity collabs.
SPF Me Up, Sailor
In a move that proves brands will go above and beyond (literally) for cultural clout, e.l.f. Cosmetics just air-dropped skincare to a man in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Oliver Widger quit his job, cashed out his savings, and set sail from Oregon to Hawaii, with only his cat for company. After three weeks at sea (and a few million followers), he’s become TikTok’s new poster boy for the soft life rebellion.
Sensing a moment, e.l.f. partnered with aviation charity Aloft to deliver a care package mid-ocean. We’re talking SPF, hydration cream, and cat treats for Phoenix. No hashtag. No call to action. Just a big, generous, cinematic gesture that made everyone stop scrolling.
And it worked. Widger called the drop a “reminder that people were watching, believing in me, and cheering me on.” It didn’t feel like a brand flex – it felt like throwing a man a lifeline.
This is what happens when a brand doesn’t hijack the story, it simply joins it. Widger’s voyage taps into a wider cultural mood: the burnout backlash, the solo escape fantasy, the rise of slow, off-grid living. He’s not an influencer. He’s a symbol. And e.l.f.? They just moisturised the moment.
Shave to Survive in BODY BATTLE Royale
Battle Royale, meet body hair.
Philips has just launched Body Royale, a custom Fortnite map where players dodge bullets behind giant tufts of chest hair and power up by shaving nostrils. Yes, you read that right. Welcome to the weird, wonderfully overgrown world of personal grooming, gamified.
Launched at TwitchCon by Philips OneBlade, this hairy odyssey is more than a one-off stunt. It’s a masterclass in irreverent brand storytelling – turning body hair into terrain, shaving into a survival strategy, and a new product into a cultural moment.
The Game Where Grooming Gets… Epic
Developed in collaboration with Fuse, Ketchum UK, and Philips’ creatively fearless team, Body Royale takes place on a custom Fortnite island featuring a towering, tastefully naked man at the centre. (Don’t worry-pixel modesty is in full force.) Stray hairs act as obstacles. Intimate areas are cleverly cloaked. And viewers? Losing it, in the best way.
It’s stupid. It’s strategic. It’s brilliantly on-brand. Where most grooming ads are stuck in marble-bathroom minimalism, Philips is targeting gamers with humour, chaos, and a heavy dose of follicular absurdity.
For a generation raised on meme culture and mod skins, Philips proves that you don’t need a serious message to make serious impact. Just a giant virtual nipple and some very creative hair physics.
Culture, Unboxed.
As we all know, most museums can be a bit ‘look, don’t touch’!
The new V&A East Storehouse in London has flipped that script. Inside what was formerly the Olympic broadcast centre, this GIGANTIC four-storey building is basically the V&A’s backstage area – and we are all invited inside to have a look.
The new space features over 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and a Picasso so big it used to be a theatre curtain – all from the V&A collection. They even have an ‘Order an Object’ service where you can actually order things to look at up close on your own.
There are no stuffy rooms or hushed whispers here. Instead we have mezzanines, gantries, and a front-row seat to conservation teams doing their thing. And it’s not just design icons on display, its London life, past and present, in all its brilliant weirdness.
So yeah, this isn’t your typical museum. It’s a museum where curiosity is encouraged, barriers are down, and culture is served raw.
Bathwater Blitz
Remember when selling bathwater was a meme? Sydney Sweeney just made it a business model.
This week, the Euphoria star and marketing muse took the internet by storm (again), launching Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss, a limited-edition soap infused with her actual bathwater, in collaboration with men’s grooming brand Dr. Squatch.
What started as a tongue-in-cheek ad campaign, with Sweeney in a candlelit tub purring, “Dirty little boys, are you interested in my body… wash?, has spiralled into full-blown brand chaos. Fans joked. Sweeney delivered. Her bath. Her soap. And apparently, your new shower routine.
This is influencer culture at its most distilled (or… filtered?). It signals a shift in celebrity marketing, from aspirational to absurdly intimate. Fans don’t just want to watch their faves; they want to own a piece of their reality, even if that piece comes in bar form and smells like sandalwood and satire.
In a market where every body wash promises “natural freshness” and “manly botanicals,” Sweeney and Dr. Squatch said screw subtlety and dove headfirst into the deep end of brand theatre. The stunt was tailor-made for headlines, memes, and TikToks, and it nailed all three.
It’s weird. But it’s also unforgettable.
More importantly, it’s self-aware. The campaign doesn’t pretend to be anything but ridiculous. That’s its genius.