In this issue of Sunday Strategy, we look at six stories to think about next week, including: Hiring the Autodidact, Moderation vs. Money in Gen Z Drinking, Axe vs. Subtlety, Bunker Disillusionment, the Modern Dating Contradiction and What Winter Sport Won America’s Attention.
In addition, we have ads from: Grupo Pulsa, IKEA UK, Foster’s, Make a Wish and Kayak.
// Stories of the Week:
1.) The Hiring Manager’s Autodidact Dilemma.
In an uneven job market, can self taught skills give job seekers an advantage? With only a reported 45% of employees believing they could likely find a new job if they lost theirs, upskilling is broadening to address growing anxiety – going beyond a coding class or eMBA. A recent survey shows 74% of job seekers and 71% of hiring managers believe self taught skills learned through informal online platforms are credible. WIth nearly half of job seekers now listing these skills on their resume, hiring managers are left trying to evaluate a less standard set of credentials and experience. With the impact of many formal certification programs called into question, and a greater opportunity to learn online with the help of AI, hiring needs to catch up with the self-guided shift in learning.
2.) What If Gen Z’s Drinking Was About Money All Along?
The alcohol industry has spent years trying to reconcile contradictions about Gen Z, drinking, moderation and wellness. Drinking attitudes have shifted amongst younger drinkers, but the generation that created the BORG (Black Out Rage Gallon) hasn’t seemed to have gone tee-total – something the fastest growing Ready to Drink (RTD) brands also support. BuzzBallz, BeatBox and Cutwater – all priced around $5 and packing between 7-15% ABV combined for over $62m in sales growth across January 2026. With growth like this, is it more likely that Gen Z isn’t giving up drinking entirely, they’re just waiting for the right price point? For marketers crafting premium, wellness-forward positionings for younger drinkers, there’s an uncomfortable question about how many value moderation as a choice vs. being priced out of the alternative.
3.) The AXE Effect vs. Subtlety
What happens when a brand built on excess tells its customers to dial it back? Axe (or Lynx in other parts of the world) body spray and subtlety don’t often go together. The brand is equally famous for making angels fall from the sky in classic advertising and bystanders swooning from overuse in classrooms and close spaces.
However, a new campaign is asking users to use less – fighting the perception of the “Axe Cloud” with smaller packaging, a longer-lasting formulation, and new nozzle technology that claims to deliver more sprays per can. It’s a product redesign in service of a brand perception problem, though previous efforts to rebrand struggled to reconcile its heritage authentically. For a brand whose entire identity was built on being unignorable, with a product spray equalling attention, can it credibly ask users to show restraint? Or is excess, and the cloud that comes with it, an unchangeable part of the brand?
4.) Are We In An Age of Bunker Disillusionment?
From Fallout to Paradise and Silo, bunkers have been an increasing part of popular culture in an age of anxiety and post-pandemic recovery. Though billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and others are building the real thing for safety, are the fictional bunkers we’re watching telling a different story? The bunker may try to offer a safe harbour from global disaster, but in recent culture it often becomes a dystopian nightmare. Despite being a hot fictional property – viewers are in an age of ‘bunker disillusionment’, either recognizing that most of us would never gain access or that, in reality, we may not want to. When given the chance to shelter with the tech-bro elite, writers seem to be telling us to choose the wasteland.
5.) Does Anyone Know How to Date Anymore?
There’s a contradictory shift happening at the heart of modern dating. Research shows that Americans are simultaneously pragmatic about how they date (74% say financial stability has become one of the most attractive traits and 49% would choose financial success over finding love), but rejecting apps that feel like meat markets. 77% of Americans say dating feels more like a marketplace than a love story. With traditional apps being rejected, daters want realistic outcomes from fantasy style stories and ‘meet-cutes’. By wrapping pragmatic goals into magical thinking, younger daters are asking for sensible outcomes in extraordinary circumstances – but perhaps love has always been naturally irrational.
// Chart of the Week: What Sports Won US Attention at the Winter Olympics?
What Winter sport captured the most attention at the Olympics? Ice Hockey 🏒 & double US gold 🥇🥇.
Our Airgo US Share of Search tracking during the games shows increased interest across a variety of sports: from Curling and Skiing to Ice Skating and Snowboarding. However, the success of both the US Women’s and Men’s teams in Ice Hockey drove the sport to shift from January conversations around the NHL and “Heated Rivalry” to an Olympic-focused February. With NHL games resuming shortly, can the league capitalize on a post-Olympic effect?
// Ads You Might Have Missed:
1.) ‘Save the Day’ – Grupo Pulsa:
How do you get people to find a time to donate blood? Brazilian law guarantees formal workers a day off every twelve months for voluntary blood donation, without losing pay. Leveraging this, Grupo Pulsa, the largest blood therapy group across Latin America has tapped into the launch dates for major games. Often new titles leave gamers wanting to take a day off work to play the title at launch – something that a legal day off for blood donation can enable. ‘Save the Day’ focuses on pushing donations during major moments in the gaming calendar, turning release dates into moments to help save lives.
2.) ‘Love You Cans’ – Fosters:
Beer brands have frequently been tackling connection and loneliness in advertising, but many feel academically correct, but emotionally wrong. Connection can be too idealized and feel awkward, vs the reality of friendship and time together. Foster’s latest campaign takes a different tone, leveraging research that 61% of British men say reaching out to reconnect with friends can feel uncomfortable or awkward, but 48% say using crude nicknames or terms can help them break the ice and show how much they care.
“Love You Cans” is ‘Share a Coke’ after an evening at the pub, asking men to send their mates beer cans with ‘b*llend, d**khead, kn*bhead and w*nker’ written on the beer. The cans come alongside invites to go for a pint soon and showcase that affinity and connection doesn’t always have to be polite.
3.) ‘Wish Song’ – Make a Wish:
Make-A-Wish Canada has partnered with TikTok and Montreal-born singer-songwriter Stacey Ryan to release “Wish Song,” an original track whose streaming proceeds benefit the charity. The campaign encourages fans and creators to use the track through a branded karaoke effect on TikTok, turning user-generated content into a fundraising mechanism. It’s a smart structural idea as every video that uses the sound generates revenue and it sits in a long tradition of royalty-based charity music. ABBA donated the royalties from “Chiquitita” to UNICEF in 1979, while Wham! donated all royalties from ‘Last Christmas’ to Ethiopian Famine relief in 1984.
However, ‘Wish Song’ doesn’t leverage an existing hit, vs. a participatory mechanism that builds ground up. As music discovery changes through platforms like TikTok, the question of sustained streaming revenue is an open one. Either way, it’s a useful test case for whether platform-native, bottom up campaigns can provide a new way for charities to use royalties – or if the model still runs top down from popular hits.
4.) ‘Big Trip. Small Screen’ – Kayak:
‘Your insight is showing’ is normally a criticism reserved for creative reviews, but Kayak’s latest work promotes its app by tapping into a truth many of us will feel directly. ‘Big Trip. Small Screen’ tackles ‘big screen’ jobs, the feeling that for important things, you need something bigger than your phone. For a travel brand that wants to foster the spur of the moment, on phone search and purchase – ‘big screen jobs’ are a natural barrier. While the aim to make the ‘first millennial in history’ to book a trip on something other than their computer may be too big of a job for one ad – the insight behind it feels rich enough to take a few more attempts at trying.
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DU8xTdZDXZf
5.) ‘Iftar at Ours’ – IKEA:
With Muslims in the middle of observing Ramadan, many brands still struggle to go beyond a cursory acknowledgement of the event. In fact, WARC research shows that 63% of British Muslims feel that branded (retail) Ramadan activations are out of date and poorly executed. IKEA aims to paint a more realistic picture of Ramadan with its ‘Iftar at Ours’ events, creating branded pop-up locations to break fast in London and Manchester. The ad promoting them anchors the message in the daily experience of the holiday, showing how to treat Ramadan like a lived experience over a calendar moment.
// Sunday Snippets
// Marketing & Advertising //
– TK Maxx puts a cat and a shoe / hat forefront in their latest UK campaign [Fashion]
– Bosch doubles down on the innovation you can find in wiper blades [Tech]
– Frosted Flakes mascot ‘Tony the Tiger’ has created a new jingle with JID called ‘Hey Tony’ [Food]
– Cake.com leans hard enough into privacy its not even sure if its users are human [Privacy]
– PolyAI taps Gordon Ramsay to talk about human like AI [AI]
– Adidas celebrates its ‘Superstar’ shoe in a new celebrity heavy campaign fronted by Samuel L Jackson [Fashion]
– Dr. Seuss offers fantasy itineraries around his stories [Travel]
– Saucony creates a four minute love letter to running in its latest ad [Sports]
– Bandit Running’s latest ad is a minute long ode to the quiet miles [Sports]
– Amica tracks NBA player Jason Tatum’s return to the court [Finance]
– Liquid Death launches and sells out the world’s first music streaming urn in collaboration with Spotify [Collabs]
– Vacation Inc. goes full 90s nostalgia for their ‘Wild Cherry’ Pepsi collaboration [Collabs]
– Channel 4 creates ‘The Fountain of Filth’ on London’s Southbank to highlight their investigation into water pollution in Britain’s waterways [Environment]
– Doritos are launching protein chips in the US. The gym isn’t ready for when the Doritos Locos Taco ups its macros. [Food]
– Not to be outdone, cheese brand Babybel is expanding to the ‘Babybel Pro’ with 5g of protein per serving. I for one will be waiting for the ‘Pro Max’. [Food]
– ACG and Mental Athletic create the ‘world’s smallest backyard ultra racecourse’ [Sports]
// Technology & Media //
– Google relaunches Flow AI Creative Studio – Unifying Image, Video and Design [AI]
– Anthropic drops research into AI fluency [AI]
– Pew research breaks down how teens use and view AI [AI]
– 45% of US creators now earn between $10k-$100k annually, creating a ‘creator middle class’ [Social Media]
– Only 6% of marketers say they have ‘fully implemented’ AI in their work [AI]
– TikTok and Snapchat posts urge London pupils to join ‘school wars’ fights [Social Media]
– After Anthropic spurns the Pentagon, OpenAI reaches a new US defense deal [AI]
– In the aftermath of the OpenAI deal, Claude jumps to number one in the US app store [AI]
– Is a bipartisan resistance to AI looming in the US? [AI]
– Are prediction markets becoming an intelligence threat? [Gambling]
– Could Duolingo ever convince you it’s about more than the ‘streak’? [Language]
– Reservation services Tock and Resy are merging, doubling the AMEX owned platforms’ inventory [Tech]
– Filesharing network Soulseek has been flooded with AI Homer Simpson cover songs [Tech]
// Life & Culture //
– What is a ‘French Sunday’ and why should you have one? [Lifestyle]
– People are turning productivity into parties, with admin nights [Culture]
– Record numbers of Americans are leaving the US [Culture]
– EFL Club Crests get pokemon makeovers [Sports]
– All the ‘looksmaxxers’ are getting personality mogged. No word if the Mccarren park Looksmaxxing Mog-off is involved. [Fashion]
– Fruit of the Loom Japan offers a suit in a bag [Fashion]
// Until Next Sunday
As always, let me know what you think by email (dubose@newclassic.agency), website or on LinkedIn.
You can also listen to an audio summary and discussion of each week’s newsletter on Spotify. We’re also on TikTok!
