In this week’s Our Take: AI turns relationship drama into gospel bangers, Rare Beauty proves offline experiences still drive conversation, The Ordinary mocks modern markups with a $175 banana, and L’Oréal brings skincare to the football stands.
TURNING TOXIC TEXTS INTO TUNES
AI is often framed as cold, calculated and creatively hollow. However, Gen Z is flipping that narrative, and it’s raking in millions of views on TikTok in the process. The trend is simple: users feed chaotic text conversations, usually from exes or relationship drama, into AI tools and turn them into full-blown gospel-style songs, resulting in dramatic, hilarious and instantly shareable content.
These songs tap into something deeply familiar: the group chat as emotional headquarters. For Gen Z, especially women, it’s not just a place to vent; it’s where situations are analysed, dissected and retold in real time. Every message gets a reaction, every detail gets meaning. It’s storytelling in its truest form, just fragmented.
This trend is a nice example of how AI can simply amplify behaviour, rather than replace it. At a time when there’s growing anxiety around AI replacing creativity, this trend shows the opposite. It elevates what’s already human: the drama, the humour, the overreaction. It also reflects a wider shift in content. What cuts through now isn’t polished or original; it’s relatable, remixable and rooted in real experience. Turning private texts into public content might feel extreme, but it speaks to how blurred the lines have become between personal life and entertainment. In an AI-driven world, the content that wins won’t feel artificial; it will feel relatable.
IS TALKABILITY THE NEW BRAND CURRENCY?
Hefty post-event coverage decks make way – talkability is becoming the new PR currency.
This week, Rare Beauty just launched an intimate community dinner series, ‘Rare Offline’, a no-phone event designed to create genuine connections and reinforce the importance of human connection.
The series taps into the idea that offline is a luxury in the modern day and prioritises IRL intentional experiences rather than oversaturated digital engagement.
The series contradicts everything brands are told about engagement and measuring success, and that’s why it works. It might not show up neatly as a backlink, a reach figure or a clean social coverage metric. The real value can also sit in comment sections, pub chats and “did you see that?” moments that attribution tools struggle to catch.
The strongest campaigns create a social afterlife beyond the original placement. Rare Beauty’s offline dinner tapped into a bigger conversation around digital fatigue.
Coverage gives a campaign visibility. Talkability gives it longevity.
And while it may make the measurement spreadsheet sweat, it’s increasingly where brand relevance is built.
BANANAS, BUT MAKE IT LUXURY
A banana for $175.90? Somewhere, Erewhon is probably taking notes.
The Ordinary has launched The Markup Marché, a series of fake grocery stores where everyday essentials are rebranded, repackaged and sold at prices that would make even Erewhon blush.
A banana becomes an All-Natural Magical Energy-Boosting Bar. A coconut transforms into an Exotic Thirst Defying Hydration Vessel. Toilet paper and avocados are similarly elevated into glossy wellness products, complete with self-serious branding, minimalist packaging and eye-watering price tags.
The stunt taps directly into the founding philosophy behind The Ordinary: transparency and pricing integrity. The brand was built to expose how commodity skincare ingredients are often disguised as groundbreaking innovation, then sold back to consumers with inflated markups, glossy packaging and pseudo-scientific language. The Markup Marché simply takes that same logic out of the beauty aisle and drops it into the supermarket.
What makes this campaign land is that it doesn’t feel preachy. Instead, it brilliantly exposes how easily perceived value can be manufactured through branding alone. Add sleek design, aspirational messaging and a sprinkle of science, and suddenly a banana becomes a status symbol.
It’s satire with substance, and proof that sometimes the sharpest cultural commentary comes wrapped up as an expensive banana.
90 MINUTES TO GLOW
A lot can happen in 90 minutes.
Dreams realised. Hope shattered… or radiant skin.
L’Oréal Paris UK, armed with its Arsenal partnership, decided that an Arsenal Women’s football match would be the perfect spot to give creators a taste of their products, with their very own box to watch the match, while receiving a glow-up at the same time.
Corporate invites are sometimes a sore subject for your normal match-going fan, but how can you not love this way of multi-tasking? L’Oréal Paris struck a smart balance here, bringing women to the match while gifting skincare products in a campaign that blended fandom and self-care without losing sight of either. Some say football can age you. We are pondering whether L’Oréal have found the answer.