Brand Waves This Week
American Eagle spotlights Lamine Yamal’s rise, MARTINI redefines aperitivo culture with Jonathan Bailey, and Tropicana turns juice into an immersive tropical experience.
Welcome to The Brand Waves, your weekly snapshot of the most innovative marketing campaigns from around the world. In this edition, discover stories, strategies, and creative ideas that are redefining how brands connect with audiences.
This newsletter is sponsored by Tracksuit, the always-on brand tracker built for marketers and agencies to answer the question “Is my strategy working?”
Today’s newsletter includes: American Eagle launches its new campaign with Lamine Yamal; Nexxus presents Claim Your Space with Ciara Miller; Khloé Kardashian expands her beauty universe with XO BLUE; Jonathan Bailey steps into the role of MARTINI Man; Brussels Airlines turns support for the Red Devils into a collective moment of brand engagement; Oatly brings the future of beverages to New York; Tropicana translates juice energy into experience; Eight Sleep launches House of Sleep; Create Wellness unveils its campaign with Kendall Toole; Gap introduces the new limited-edition Get Blue collection; and OREO celebrates BTS with a limited-edition release.
American Eagle presents Ready for the World with Lamine Yamal
After announcing a five-year partnership with Lamine Yamal in January, American Eagle unveils its first campaign with the young football talent, titled Ready for the World.
The initiative arrives at a particularly significant moment in the athlete’s career, portraying him as he prepares to step onto the biggest stage in world football.
The campaign highlights not only Lamine Yamal’s sporting abilities, but also his growing influence in fashion and contemporary culture.
American Eagle therefore chooses to present a personality that goes beyond the football pitch, emphasizing values such as authenticity, confidence, and individuality.
NEXXUS launches Claim Your Space with Ciara Miller
Nexxus presents its new campaign Claim Your Space, featuring breakout star Ciara Miller, with the goal of celebrating the power of presence and a form of self-confidence that becomes an expression of identity.
In a new social-first spot, the campaign shows Ciara moving through the city in a visual narrative where volume becomes presence, hair turns into attitude, and personal confidence literally reshapes the perception of the surrounding space.
The narrative is built on a clear cultural insight: for years, women have been implicitly expected to be “less” - quieter, smaller, less visible. Nexxus flips this perspective through the metaphor of hair as an extension of individual freedom, rejecting any idea of flattening, whether aesthetic or social.
Translating The Brand Waves for the Boardroom
According to the recent The Awareness Advantage report by Tracksuit × TikTok, brands with 60% awareness convert almost 3x faster than brands with 20% awareness. Yet in most boardrooms, this evidence still struggles to translate into budget allocation.
Not because marketers don’t believe it, but because the real challenge is explaining brand as an economic system to CFOs.
The issue is that marketing speaks in terms of awareness, salience, and mental availability, while finance teams speak in CapEx, returns, and capital allocation. The result is that the same idea - building future demand - ends up sounding like two different things.
This is precisely the gap that led to the creation of Tracksuit University, the course developed with James Hurman. Its goal is to give marketers the language, evidence, and structure to bring brand into the rooms where investment decisions are made.
Use code THEBRANDWAVES to get 20% off the Tracksuit University course.
Khloé Kardashian launches XO BLUE in collaboration with Luxe Brands
Khloé Kardashian expands her beauty portfolio with the launch of XO BLUE, created in partnership with Luxe Brands. The move represents a strategic step in expanding her fragrance line, with an increasingly clear positioning in the evocative luxury segment.
XO BLUE is conceived as a vacation in a bottle, a sun-drenched, immersive experience that evokes the aesthetics of travel and escape from everyday life.
The fragrance composition follows this narrative logic, opening with bright notes of lychee and bergamot, evolving into a heart of magnolia and creamy coconut, and finishing with light, lingering woody undertones.
Jonathan Bailey takes on the role of MARTINI Man
MARTINI introduces Jonathan Bailey as the new MARTINI Man, an iconic figure that over time has helped define the brand’s style and cultural appeal through a series of collaborations with Hollywood talent.
The campaign shows Bailey arriving on the coast near Venice in an original 1970s MARTINI Racing car, a tribute to the brand’s legendary motorsport heritage.
The campaign follows Bailey through a series of contemporary Italian style rituals, from the art of the perfect aperitivo entrance to the definition of a timeless look inspired by iconic MARTINI artworks, all the way to the magnetic appeal of a direct gaze into the camera. The story culminates in the ultimate expression of aperitivo style: a MARTINI Bianco Spritz.
Brussels Airlines launches a campaign to support Belgium’s Red Devils
As Belgium’s Red Devils prepared to depart for America, Brussels Airlines launched a campaign in collaboration with TBWA\Belgium that directly engaged fans, inviting them to submit messages of encouragement for the national team ahead of its journey.
Among all the entries received, the most creative and meaningful message was selected and later displayed in giant letters on a field located next to the runway.
The team’s departure was thus transformed into a true communication event, allowing the brand to align itself with the values of national pride, participation, and collective support.
Oatly hosts AFTERTASTE in New York
Oatly hosted AFTERTASTE in New York City, a summit dedicated to the future of beverage culture.
Rather than simply discussing phenomena such as the rise of matcha, changing consumer habits, or the increasingly clear convergence between beverages and culture, the brand chose to turn these trends into experiential formats.
Participants were able to experience the core themes of the summit through immersive installations such as Matcha Park, featuring a real-life Matcha Fountain, an Oat-O-Mat serving creative shots like Everything Bagel and Big Apple Jell-OAT, and an Oat Propaganda Newsstand.
The experience reflects the central theme of AFTERTASTE: beverages are increasingly becoming a vehicle for culture, creativity, community, and personal expression.
Tropicana introduces Give Life Some Juice
Tropicana launches its new Give Life Some Juice campaign, rooted in the cultural idea that juice brings energy to everyday moments.
Developed with agency FIG, the campaign breaks away from traditional category codes to build a rich, immersive tropical world that makes the brand’s sense of vitality tangible. Every creative element is designed to translate an emotional benefit into a visual and experiential narrative.
The hero spot Up, set to UP! by Forrest Frank and Connor Price, opens with a sloth in the rainforest reaching for a bottle of 100% Tropicana orange juice. That simple moment triggers an immediate transformation: the environment comes alive, the character is revitalized, and the entire ecosystem reflects the brand’s promise of energy activated at the very moment of consumption.
Eight Sleep launches House of Sleep
Eight Sleep introduces House of Sleep, the first mobile showroom of its kind, bringing the brand’s signature smart mattress, the Pod, directly to consumers’ homes through private, free demonstrations.
Starting June 18, a 16-foot glass-walled bedroom will travel across the Bay Area, offering residents the opportunity to experience the Pod’s temperature-regulating technology firsthand.
Each 30-minute demonstration is designed as a highly immersive and personalized experience. Guests can feel the system in action, with one side of the bed cooling down to 55°F while the other warms up to 110°F, observe their body heat visualized through thermal imaging, and explore the product at their own pace.
Create Wellness launches Do More campaign with Kendall Toole
Create Wellness introduces Do More, its first national television campaign featuring entrepreneur, fitness professional, and mental health advocate Kendall Toole.
The campaign aims to position creatine as an integral part of the daily routine for anyone looking to maximize both physical and mental performance.
At the core of the narrative is a strongly science-driven approach. Create and Kendall Toole highlight the role of ATP, the body’s primary energy source, and how creatine helps support its regeneration.
This process is presented not only in relation to athletic performance, but also to creativity, mental focus, entrepreneurial drive, and everyday resilience.
GAP launches a new collection in support of Water.org’s Get Blue movement
Water.org announces the launch of Get Blue™, a collective initiative that turns everyday actions into a tangible contribution to Bring Water Home™ and to addressing the global water crisis.
Gap, alongside partners such as Starbucks, Amazon, and Ecolab, joins the movement by offering customers a simple way to take part in solving one of the world’s most urgent yet solvable challenges: access to safe drinking water.
Within this context, Gap introduces the new limited-edition Get Blue collection, which reimagines the brand’s icons - denim, T-shirts, and sweatshirts - turning them into a vehicle to support the cause and Water.org’s mission.
OREO launches limited-edition cookies with BTS
OREO has announced the launch of a new limited-edition product developed in collaboration with BTS, the group made up of RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook, one of the most influential phenomena in contemporary pop culture.
The cookie features a creme inspired by hotteok, the traditional brown sugar-filled pancake commonly found in South Korean street food markets, directly reflecting the band’s cultural roots.
In addition, to celebrate the group’s 13th anniversary, the OREO & BTS Cookies feature 13 exclusive embossments designed by the band.
If you’re looking for even more inspiration, check out last week’s edition of Brand Waves This Week for more standout campaigns and unmissable creative ideas!
Brand Waves This Week
Kith Women introduces the new Summer Escape; Nike turns football into a narrative universe with Rip the Script; McDonald’s brings the FIFA World Cup 2026 into a global brand experience.
The wave doesn’t stop here.
We’ll be back next week with more stories shaping the future of brands, tech and culture. Catch the next one with us.