The Daily Carnage

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Space Jam Turns 30

Pizza Hut’s new collab with Space Jam is nothing but net.

It’s been 30 years since the movie premiered, and NCAA March Madness is the perfect time to celebrate the 1996 classic.

Pizza Hut is dropping a limited-time “Space Jam x Triple Treat Box,” which bundles two pizzas, breadsticks, and cinnamon sticks in deliciously Looney Tunes-themed packaging.

It’s a multi-channel effort that also integrates the Hut Rewards loyalty program with exclusive merchandise drops and interactive digital games where you can win prizes like free pizza for a year.

Don’t Sleep on Snooz

Sleep-friendly ice-cream brand Snooz noticed that, even though most people eat ice cream in the evening, the category is dominated by daytime imagery like bright colors, sunshine, and playful summer visuals.

So for a new “Burn the Bunting” campaign, designers intentionally rejected those tropes for a brand identity inspired in nighttime culture.

Darker color schemes, moon-inspired shapes, and relaxed visual cues better align the product, which contains calming ingredients associated with relaxation and sleep.

The result is any entirely new positioning that helps Snooz stand out in a sea of pastels and sunshine.

The Fan Is Out There

X-Files is making its streaming debut over on Pluto TV.

To build excitement, the platform launched an experiential marketing campaign called “The Fan Is Out There,” a search for the show’s ultimate superfan.

For the grand prize, one winner and a guest will be sent to an undisclosed, off-grid facility in the Joshua Tree Desert for nine days to binge-watch all 11 seasons of the series in a fully themed environment.

Inside the bunker, they’ll track storylines and conspiracies using a living “case board,” snack on sunflower seeds and black coffee (IYKYK), and record daily confessionals documenting their viewing experience.

That’s pretty dang immersive.

Tatted Like a Chipotle Bag

Chipotle’s Friday the 13th campaign is inspired by the Internet, which has decided that heavily tatted people look a lot like a Chipotle bag.

And because Friday the 13th is a hallowed holiday for tats, the “Ink for Entrees” is offering BOGO entrees from 3 to 4 p.m. for customers who flash their tattoos in-store.

Notably, this includes permanent, temporary, and drawn-on ink, too.

Chipotle also partnered with Swae Lee for a limited-edition flash sheet of temporary tattoos inspired by the doodle-style artwork on the bags.

Social listening pays off again.

Is That Rhine Reynolds?

We happen to love the find-a-guy-in-the-phone-book strategy for building a campaign.

And Consumer Cellular (with THE MAYOR agency) has called up a guy named Rhine Reynolds, a real store manager (and a homophone for competitor Mint Mobile’s Ryan Reynolds).

The campaign debuted with a Super Bowl commercial, “Dirt Road,” referencing the rivalry between major carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile that often advertise on dusty roads while competing over coverage claims.

In the follow-up spot, “Orange World,” Reynolds is back in a simple orange environment to reinforces the brand’s identity: authenticity over spectacle.

Good for Rhine.

Zoom In

Fotografiska’s photography museum in Stockholm is running a clever campaign to get folks in the door.

They’ve shrunken famous images by Elliot Erwitt to a nearly illegible (read: mobile) size across OOH spots, which is generating a lot of squinting.

The tagline is “Photography deserves more than your feed.”

It’s a great stunt to assert that art should be experienced at full scale, because a lot nuance is lost to thumbnails and grids.

How Curious

NPR’s new initiative, “For your right to be curious,” transforms the N‑P‑R logo into fundamental journalism vocab like “how,” “who,” and “why.” They’ve even changed the signage at headquarters.

The campaign appears across billboards in major cities, as well as social, and pairs these questions with real listener queries that NPR journalism aims to answer.

According to NPR, the effort is a public commitment to independent journalism that encourages inquiry at a time when the network has faced political and funding pressures.

SOMO Cancels Anti-Semitism Campaign

In NYC, an antisemitism awareness campaign by JewBelong was pulled mid-run after outdoor advertising partner SOMO cancelled the taxi rooftop ads, which had been scheduled to appear on about 4,000 Manhattan cabs through March 10.

The campaign featured the message, “Totally willing to hide my Jewish star for a free bus ride.”

According to JewBelong, SOMO was concerned that the creative was interpreted as taking aim at a free bus policy backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But JewBelong says there was no reference to him in the ads.

JewBelong declined to update the copy and the taxi ads were pulled without its consent. For now, static billboards with alternative messages are planned to continue in other boroughs.

Urn Up The Volume

Spotify has teamed up with Liquid Death to launch the Eternal Playlist Urn, a limited-edition Bluetooth speaker/cremation urn.

Only 150 units were released at $495 each, but beyond the collectible, Spotify launched an “Eternal Playlist” generator that creates a custom playlist based on your answers to morbid prompts.

Can’t beat a campaign with dark humor, scarcity, personalization, social sharing, and good old shock value.

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