In this week’s Silence, Brand! Live, the gang did what we do best … tried to have a normal pop culture conversation but then got jump-scared by politics, weird AI sludge, and brands doing the absolute most in the least charming way.

Between Super Bowl ad discourse, Bad Bunny Spanish TikTok, and two separate creator economy faceplants (hi Bauer, hi Fly By Jing)

So i guess the take away is “stop treating audiences like they’re dumb, stop giving people homework, and maybe DONT threaten your biggest fans with legalese”

In this live:

* Heritage Foundation Super Bowl interruption. The scroll got hijacked by a Heritage Foundation ad to remind us that yes, anyone with enough money can buy the moment, and that’s… not comforting

* Super Bowl ads, but make it gatekeepy. Do early ad teasers kill the magic? The answer was YUUUPPPP. Let’s keep some mystery alive. Lore and world-building are good (like the CeraVe x Michael Cera style slow drip). Weekly three-second teaser crumbs with a “big things coming” energy are not a social campaign.

* Chipotle’s AI commercial and the rise of homework marketing. Chipotle is teasing a deliberately synthetic AI-generated ad, then asking viewers to “spot it” for rewards, sparked a collective why-are-we-doing-this again. The bigger gripe: brands keep explaining the experience before it happens, stripping out surprise, and turning fun into instructions.

* Bad Bunny Sunday. We talked Bad Bunny, his hat (important), and the genuinely sweet pocket of TikTok where people are teaching each other Spanish lyrics so they can sing along. But don’t forget about the tension of a major halftime moment feeling politically loaded, and we hope he stays safe while the internet does what it does.

* Pavvy the Goalie vs Bauer Hockey aka how to speedrun a PR disaster. We broke down the saga of a hockey brand fumbling the easiest possible goodwill moment and alienating a true fan.

* Fly By Jing hot pot bomb backlash. We dug into the rollout where a product got framed as “the first of its kind,” and the comments immediately called out the obvious (people can buy versions of this at H Mart and its been around for A MINUTE.) The critique is on the optics, the creator choice, and the apology feeling like an afterthought tucked into captions or edits instead of a real moment of accountability. Someone compared it to the Momofuku “chili crisp” trademark mess, which is basically the internet’s bat signal for “you are about to learn a lesson the hard way.” This is a product with deep AAPI cultural roots, so why is it being rolled out by a white guy?

Hang tight crabby crew …We’ll be back on the other side of the Super Bowl to talk about what actually happened, not what brands told us was coming.

Thank you cleb (actually fun marketer), Cheyenne, and many others for tuning into our live video!

We hope you enjoyed this installment of Silence, Brand!—a tri-weekly, late-night potluck of internet absurdity 🦀

Ryan Benson • Dayna Castillo • Dejaih Smith • Benton Williams •

Our team of award-winning brand marketers and culture experts trawls the depths of the social internet, catching trends as they bubble up, so you’re prepared when they surface.In addition to our newsletter, we offer bespoke cultural intelligence services for agencies and in-house teams, providing brand-tailored reports and insights to equip partners with the tools (and taste) to stay culturally fluent in a world that never stops posting.

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