The Daily Carnage

The savvy marketer's hub for industry news, insights, resources, and culture.

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Cardboard Box Pro

Whisker is selling an $899 “premium” box for your cat to fits-and-sits in.

It does come with the new Litter-Robot 5, but your cat won’t give AF about that.

The campaign comes with a 12-day social giveaway and partnerships with animal rescue organizations to help more cats get adopted.

Reuters Enters The Chat

Reuters’ first brand campaign in 175 years, “Pure News, Straight from the Source,” makes a timely case for why truth still matters.

Created with Gravity Road, the film uses cloudy water as its central metaphor to illustrate how misinformation muddies what we consume.

There’s an interesting and intentional choice to use AI here in order to showcase how easily imagery can be manipulated.

But of course, Reuters doesn’t use gen AI in its journalism, so the film pivots to unaltered footage captured by the organization’s 2,600 reporters across 200 locations.

Mall Date

Auntie Anne’s has launched Sparkleberry Lemonade for the holidays, along with matching “Smittens,” a tri-mitten set featuring one you can share with your boo while sipping lemonade together.

The campaign is peak Y2K mall-culture energy with infomercial-style ads, a throwback hotline (844-4-SMITTEN), and limited-edition merch, like a giant “Together Tether” scarf.

Ricola Couture

Riiiiicola has dropped some scented scarf merch.

The branded scarves are infused with the brand’s signature Swiss alpine herbs and made with premium Euro textiles. You can cop Lemon Balm + Mint or Peppermint for a limited time.

Delightfully, each scarf has a hidden cough-drop pocket. Forty bucks.

Ricola Couture

Riiiiicola has dropped some scented scarf merch.

The branded scarves are infused with the brand’s signature Swiss alpine herbs and made with premium Euro textiles. You can cop Lemon Balm + Mint or Peppermint for a limited time.

Delightfully, each scarf has a hidden cough-drop pocket. Forty bucks.

Til Death Do We Art

You know we had to cover this campaign from The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the home of Carney HQ.

To promote the debut of the museum’s latest exhibit, Vanitas, BarkleyOKRP crafted The Warhol Death Kit, a limited-edition, interactive art box that encourages visitors to reframe death as a personal act of self-expression.

Included items let participants write their own eulogy, customize “in lieu of flowers” requests, color tombstone designs, experiment with coffin poses, vote on their afterlife destination, and leave a recorded message for loved ones.

It also comes with the official Vanitas exhibition art book.

IRL, Chat?

Most of us live in our group chats (94%), but don’t see each other as much as we’d like (only 29% of Americans meet up monthly).

Heineken’s “Group Chat Bar” pop-up is inspired by NBA player Josh Hart’s own chat, Cold Water.

The effort supports Heineken’s #SocialOffSocials brand platform.

Facebook Status Update

After a four-year pause on brand campaigns, Meta has revived Facebook’s emotional appeal with “A Little Connection Goes a Long Way” from Droga5.

The 60-second spot follows a group of friends reuniting on Thanksgiving Eve through a Facebook message, all set to Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash’s “Girl from the North Country.”

It’s a pivot from Meta’s heavy AI push in an effort to attract Gen Z and millennials back to the platform.

Bot Breakup

Tinder is getting rid of bots. So, why not put out a breakup album?

In an effort to promote its new “Face Check” verification feature, Tinder released Bot Ballads, a six-song EP told entirely from the bots’ perspective.

Each track, from the country “Didn’t Know I Had a Heart… Until You Broke It” to the 80s-inspired “You Ctrl Alt Deleted Me,” laments the digital rejection.

Available on Spotify, Bot Ballads hides promo codes for a free week of Tinder Gold within its lyrics. Like Taylor Swift or something.

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