It’s Monday, so it’s time for my weekly advertising roundup. I wanna start by reminding you of something that Elon Musk said to advertisers back in November of last year. Don’t advertise. You don’t want them to advertise? No. What do you mean? If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. But go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. And now X is suing advertisers for not advertising on their platform. Specifically, X is suing Garm, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. Garm is a nonprofit company that created standards to help advertisers make sure their ads don’t get shown next to inappropriate or offensive content on digital platforms, and X has a whole lot of offensive and inappropriate content. But X says that Garm coerced their advertising members to boycott the platform, which caused them to lose money, and they think violates antitrust laws. And because of this lawsuit, Garm has decided to shut down. They are a nonprofit, they don’t have a ton of money, and being in this intense legal battle with a big company like X is just not an option for them. This is a tweet from Linda Iaccarino, the CEO of X, and she thinks that Garm shutting down is a step in the right direction. But I think all this litigious aggression is not gonna help them at all. All this is gonna do is push more advertisers and brands away from the platform for good. We’ve talked about how Google’s Gemini commercial in the Olympics was not a good use case of AI, but Microsoft had a commercial in the Olympics too for their AI platform, Copilot, and they did a much better job. They showed a busy father using AI to summarize his work calls so that he had time to train with his son. They showed an older athlete using AI to compile insights from her heart rate data. A surf club used AI to quickly make a presentation to help them get funding. This commercial is not creatively groundbreaking or anything, but it’s showing AI adding on to the human experience and supporting it rather than taking away from it. Auntie Anne’s, the pretzel company, is launching a fragrance. Usually when brands do silly stunts and launches like this, the execution also feels silly, but I thought Auntie Anne’s did a really nice job with this. The name Need is perfect. The design of the logo and the packaging feels really sophisticated, and they’re even opening up a pretzel perfumery in New York tomorrow. And Auntie Anne’s, if you’re watching this, I need some Need. There’s a new campaign from the Marine Conservation Society and a travel company called Thomas Cook that shows the dangers of throwing away inflatables. Some survey data showed that a lot of people who go on vacation buy inflatables specifically for that trip, but very few of them actually reuse or recycle that inflatable when they’re done. So those thrown out inflatables end up in the ocean, which just adds to the already pretty dire situation for marine life. It’s really hard to look at depressing PSA ads like this, but visual metaphors really help explain the impact to people. You all know I love a good brand collab, and this one was kinda out of left field for me, but I love it. Lush and Minecraft. They made some really cute block-shaped bath bombs. I’m not a Minecraft player, but I’m familiar enough with the visuals to appreciate what they did here. And of course, they did some in-game integrations. It looks like Lush is definitely going for a younger audience with these collabs because they did Minecraft, they did a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle collab, and SpongeBob recently too. But what’s great about these collabs that they’ve chosen is yes, they do appeal to a younger audience, but they also really appeal to millennials and that nostalgic factor. If the idea of networking gives you hives, you should check out the live stream that’s coming up soon in my community internal review. Kate, who is another wonderful advertising creator, is gonna be sharing do’s and don’ts to help creatives network and build relationships in the industry without all the awkwardness. So definitely go RSVP to that. Events are exclusive to paid members of the community. But if you just wanna check out all the stories from today’s roundup, I always post the links and things in the free space of internal review.