Silence, Brand! LIVE

In this week’s Silence, Brand! Live, the gang tried to do a normal post–Super Bowl debrief and immediately got dragged into the flaming group chat of reality: politics on main, an attention economy in crisis, and brands still acting shocked when the numbers dip during a literal news apocalypse.

We’re big on “snow day in hell” social reporting and Bad Bunny’s halftime show turning into a community spotlight. Whimsy is not optional right now.

In today’s live:

* Your graph did not “go down because of the algorithm.” Social teams got a gentle (and needed) pep talk: attention is fragmented across massive events and nonstop news cycles, so stop gaslighting yourself with platform blame.Sometimes the KPI killer is “everyone is reading the worst headline of their life rn”

* “Snow day in hell” etiquette. We’re all stuck online together, so be kind to your neighbors and don’t jam your brand down anyone’s throat while the world is actively on fire. Making your audience laugh a little will usually result in a W.

* Levi’s is ass. They earned real points for the “Levi’s is for everyone” message, delivered via an extremely democratic parade of butts (including Woody, construction worker workwear realism, and Doechii) in their Super Bowl ad.

* Good ad. Wrong brand. The Backstreet Boys sing-along premise worked so well people thought it was Target or T-Mobile, then the Coinbase logo hit and the room collectively booed. A masterclass in attention with a side of trust collapse.

* DoorDash choosing social over a TV spot. This was the “more of this, please” moment: a big player putting budget into second-screen behavior, building narrative across pre-game to post-game, and actually acting like a campaign is a campaign.

* Kraft Mac and Cheese war room energy. The take: it felt like brands talking to brands, chasing a reheated “dunk in the dark” fantasy with repetitive templates and unclear audience payoff. The numbers looked big, but the engagement told a different story, plus the platform choice did them zero favors.

* Bad Bunny’s halftime show as real community marketing. Dejaih clocked the smartest “ad space” as the field itself: local LA staples (tacos + nail techs), creatives getting real shine, and set constraints turning into iconic choices (hello, grass ppl in my phone).

* Meta’s “post from beyond the grave” patent. We ended in the existential pit (as you do) with the feeling that a new AI top layer is forming and humans are hiding in the back rooms of the remaining real places. Find this in tomorrows issue under the “hey so that’s bad” header.

🦀 Calling all Atlanta crabs! 🦀

We’re hosting a low-pressure hang with people who work in brand, culture, media, and the internet -- this time in Atlanta!BYOT [the T stands for trinkets]RSVP » https://www.handstamp.com/e/SB-IRL-ATL

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.

For all media pitches, service inquiries, story pitches and anything related to this here newsletter, hit us up at: [email protected] 🦀Follow our LinkedIn for updates and occasional shitposts.

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.

For all media pitches, service inquiries, story pitches and anything related to this here newsletter, hit us up at: [email protected] 🦀Follow our LinkedIn for updates and occasional shitposts.

In this week’s Silence, Brand! Live, the gang crawled into a very real conversation about culture and “community” look like when the internet is on fire and the apps are actively betraying us

Between Grammy tea, jazz renaissance theories, and existential dread over TikTok purgatory, the through line was clear: vibes matter, transparency matters more, and people can smell b******t from several floors up.Topics on the table:

* Pop spectacle at The Grammys. From Best New Artist showcases to Spotify’s baby-photo hometown billboards, we talked about how legacy moments work when they feel personal instead of corporate. Yearbook ads walked so Spotify could run.

* Hyperpop is tired. Jazz is flirting. We clocked a quiet jazz resurgence among Gen Z, tied to slower living, grandma hobbies, analog bags, and the desire to sit in a small room and feel something.

* Miss Shirley and what real community actually looks like. The loss of Miss Shirley hit hard, and the conversation shifted to what ethical, human-centered philanthropy looks like online. No spectacle. No savior content.

* TikTok purgatory. The data got handed off, our FYPs are fucked, and suddenly everyone is deciding whether to stay, leave, or haunt the app for professional reasons only.

* Don’t worry, you can assign Silence, Brand! as your designated TikTok user. Poll results revealed that a significant chunk of the audience doesn’t even have TikTok anymore, which means we are now scrolling on behalf of the people. (terrifying)

* Taking a stance without breaking your brand brain. We talked about how values-led content works best when it fits the creator’s existing language, not when it turns into an improptu TED Talk.

Thank you Morgan Vogel, Jonathan Jacobs, Meg, cleb (actually fun marketer), and everyone else who tuned in, voted in the polls, and trusted us to be your TikTok correspondents.

Silence, Brand! is a digital culture newsletter written by a cast of crabs unhinged brand marketing professionals and culture strategists

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

Got this from a friend?For tri-weekly internet roundups in your own inbox, subscribe to Silence, Brand! 🦀

🦀 Silence, Brand! also offers customized, cultural intelligence reporting tailored to companies and clients. Interested? Hit us up at [email protected] 🦀, and let’s make that happen! 🚀

In this week’s Silence, Brand! Live, the gang dug into the existential soup pot of brand community, from the delicate emotional labor of social media managers to the bizarre marketing fallout of executive outbursts.

Topics on the table:

* Can brands really build community? We talked crabs, hot tubs, and the paradox of brands playing human online. Spoiler: It’s hard to hold space when you’re pretending to be the party guest instead of paying for the snacks.

* The human behind the brand voice. If your SMM leaves and takes the lore with them, what’s left?

* The Campbell’s Soup faceplant. When the execs say the quiet part out loud (like admitting they don’t eat their own 3D-printed chicken soup) guess who has to clean up the mess online? Not the C-suite.

* Timothée Chalamet, cigarettes, and Partiful plants. From lookalike contests to Big Tobacco conspiracy theories, we examined the “low-stakes spectacle” model of IRL gatherings and asked: are these authentic community moments, or marketing ops in disguise?

* Perpetual stew and the yearning for third spaces. Turns out what people want isn’t to touch grass … it’s to hang out in a parking lot and feel something. (R.I.P. to the mall food court, we miss you.)

* Martha Stewart can’t save your brand. American Eagle tried to “trad wife” its way out of a backlash. Instead, it reminded us that no amount of Snoop collabs or influencer pivots can fix what bad leadership breaks.

Thank you cleb, Cheyenne, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Silence, Brand! is a digital culture newsletter written by a cast of crabs unhinged brand marketing professionals and culture strategists

Ryan Benson • Dayna Castillo • Dejaih Smith • Benton Williams

🦀 Silence, Brand! also offers customized, cultural intelligence reporting tailored to companies and clients. Interested? Hit us up at [email protected] 🦀, and let’s make that happen! 🚀

this week’s S,B! Live was pure internet anthropology around what them brands doing about the cost of living crisis <3we immediately spiraled into a full cultural audit of “do brands actually belong on the internet or are we all just six inches from the void”from there we dug into: - the viral TikTok “churches vs baby formula” saga- the rise of “our benevolence is for our members only”- why GoPuff’s $50 EBT “gift” sits firmly on the yucky line

we contrasted that with: - Keith Lee’s holiday food drive masterclass, where brands show up correctly by supporting a creator-led effort instead of trying to make themselves the hero- Trisha Paytas speaking on SNAP on the Wicked carpet- celebrity-led food access moments- OnlyFans philanthropy- and the escalating reality that creators are patching systemic failures in real time

we rounded out with:- parasocial word-of-the-year chaos- the police literally arresting people in line for community meals- the Marty Supreme blimp invasion- Billy McFarland trying to reboot Fyre Fest- Elon Musk’s AI calling him the world’s best piss-drinkerperfect stream10/10zero notes

Thank you Janet, cleb, Jonathan Jacobs, and many others for tuning into our live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Silence, Brand! is a digital culture newsletter written by a cast of crabs unhinged brand marketing professionals and culture strategists

Ryan Benson • Dayna Castillo • Dejaih Smith • Benton Williams • Apple Xenos • Janine Davis

🦀 Silence, Brand! also offers customized, cultural intelligence reporting tailored to companies and clients. Interested? Hit us up at [email protected] 🦀, and let’s make that happen! 🚀

in this s,b! live, the birds are on the arms and the brands are in hot water…

📯 RIP Ace Frehley, long live Porch Fest

🍗 Chip-dip mukbangs, but make it OnlyFans

the influencer marketing strategy?— hyper-specific CPG content— OnlyFans-style parasocial packaging— brand collabs via ranch drizzlevibe check: drip down the chin, capitalism in the comments

🐶 The petfluencer industrial complex goes full ‘pupper doggo’

a tale of two timelines: Gen Z demands intelligent animal POVs, while millennials still say pupper unironicallyplus: Chicken in a Biskit’s alt account lore, and the return of the quirk chungus

🚨 DoorDash posts apology on TikTok, forgets it exists on Instagram

a Dasher shares her assault story → gets deactivated → TikTok explodes → DoorDash issues oddly formatted Notes App apology... exclusively on TikTok

it mentions law enforcement twice, grammar zero times

calls to action: “we’re here to support” (by which we mean ban your account and center our apology text)

everyone agrees: this wasn’t it

🎄 Balsam Hill makes a Christmas king

one TikToker says he loves Christmas → gets tree of his dreams → becomes brand ambassador within 48 hrs

expect: Ralph Lauren-core, red + green maximalism, and more brands jumping under the tree

marketing strategy? pure joy + a banana for scale

👙 Victoria’s Secret returns from exile with a strong rebrand

new CEO, old angels, Missy Elliott finale

it’s giving: reheated nachos /positive, watch parties, and brand forgiveness (for now)

comments say: “might actually shop again”critics say: “this show had plot”

📌 Final Thought:There are three genders now: porch, petfluencer, and public apology.And all of them were trending this week.

🦀 Stay festive. Stay furious. Stay subscribed.

Silence, Brand! is a digital culture newsletter written by a cast of crabs unhinged brand marketing professionals and culture strategists

Ryan Benson • Dayna Castillo • Dejaih Smith • Benton Williams

🦀 Silence, Brand! also offers customized, cultural intelligence reporting tailored to companies and clients. Interested? Hit us up, and let’s make that happen! 🚀

in this s,b! live, blink and you might miss …

🥤 protein cold foam enters the discourse

* turns out “chunky chalk foam” is not what the people ordered

👹 SORA App = Hell Unleashed

* top outputs: Jake Paul makeup tutorials, MLK fakes, Mr. Rogers doing jackass stunts

* general vibe: Rule 34 + unlicensed Ring surveillance

* everyone agrees: the app is cursed and must be stopped

📺 Duo’s animation era??

* “learn or die” is a bold creative direction and also… on brand

🚬 Joe Camel, Camel Cash, and how cigarette marketing was kinda genius (but evil)

* box tops, catalogs, cast iron skillets (yes really), and the dark nostalgia of “smoking looks cool” messaging

* now? we’re marketing tiktok skincare routines to 9-year-olds

* different medium, same morally bankrupt targeting playbook

📉 Social media lawsuits + digital mental health spiral

* New York sues TikTok, Meta, and YouTube over youth mental health

* cue flashbacks to “blackout challenges,” subway surfing, and the eternal loop of teen risk amplified by algorithm

* TL;DR: Kids have always been chaotic, but now it’s viral (social media isn’t the source, it’s the speaker system)

🎨 Brand rebrands: Pizza Hut and Domino’s tap the nostalgia dial

* Pizza Hut goes full 90s-core

* Domino’s increases hue/saturation by 300%

* reminder: nostalgia marketing works because everything now feels bad :(

📌 Final Thought:Advertising in 1998: “Collect these points, win a deep fryer, look cool while dying.”Advertising in 2025: “Buy anime owl merch while AI reenacts historical trauma in 1080p.”We are simply living, laughing, and branding through the apocalypse.

🦀 Stay weird. Stay aware. Stay subscribed.

In this deeply unhinged Silence Brand Live, the gang:

* Unboxed Labubus from TikTok Shop (that’s a write off. weather you take financial advice from crabs is on you)

* reviewed Big Milk’s baffling protein push via Trisha Paytas

* dissected the cursed Maxwell House → Maxwell Apartment rebrand (yes, they made housing insecurity a punchline)

We also explored:

* the déjà vu of legacy TikTok trends reappearing in new niches

* discussed the “pudding with fork” Gen Z IRL meetups and praised the rise of sober-friendly third spaces

Plus: a best-selling Substack flex, a Wheel of Fortune win, and one very regrettable Jimmy Fallon show

🦀 crabs … we contain multitudes <3

thanks to Lisa Angulo Reid, Jonathan Jacobs, and many others for tuning into our live hang!

🪨 buy fruity pebbles with rocks👑 princess dianas time capsule💻 chat gpt getting parental controls🍗 kfc jelly beans🫐 big benny blanco blueberries👖 sydney sweeny and scooter braun are dating + the katseye connection💅 cardi b reaction memes🎥 the tiktokification of SNL✨ trisha paytas is on linkedin🦠 toxic avenger vs medical debt📦 labubus are in stock🎨 barkbox did a really yucky AI snoopy ad✂️ kai cenat + lebron jamesfeaturing Benton Williams 🐛 Dejaih Smith RYAN ✨ BENSON Dayna Castillo⚡️

thank you to everyone who showed up for this edition of Silence, Brand! LIVE

watch the replay to hear our takes on:🤠 CapCut TOS update🇺🇸 Trump’s 90-day TikTok extension⚾ Los Angeles Metro and Los Angeles Dodgers react publicly to ICE presence in LA on social🧧 RedNote USA is an official sponsor at Cannes🎨 Canva did a super cute OOH activation📍 Pinterest drops coffee collab with Emma Chamberlain💅 Fisherman aesthetic → coastal grandpa → fishing lure manicures🐠 Sardine Girl Summer is here🥪 MIKES WAY (screaming) Jersey Mike's Subs💄 Ulta Beauty tapping store associates for creators

Silence, Brand! is an internet culture and marketing newsletter compiled by unhinged brand marketing professionals—an elite army of internet idiots.Today’s esteemed panel of culture crabs: Ryan Benson, Benton Williams, Dayna Castillo, Lenny Leithauser, and Dejaih Smith