It's Tuesday and OpenAI is celebrating its new mathlete status after beating high schoolers to snag a gold medal at the 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad.

Today’s News

MARKETING MAYHEM

Clorox is entering its Nutter Butter era

The marketing trend: Over the last year or so, Nutter Butter has successfully reached online consumers by turning its TikTok account into a Gen Z-inspired rabbit hole of lo-fi shrimp videos, obscure lore, and all things neon. The campaign scored millions of views and a couple of Cannes Lions. Now, other legacy brands are following suit.

Take Cloros: The cleaning brand told Ad Age that it first dipped its toes into this “unhinged” style of marketing by populating its Pine-Sol account with clips of dancing wizard frogs, meme-y cats, lo-fi graphics, and a new tagline designed to become a TikTok earworm: “oh em gee da Pine.”

The result: While older Pine-Sol videos generally collected under 5,000 views, the account’s meme-focused clips now regularly top one million and sometimes surpass 5 million. That success is especially striking when compared to the OG Clorox account, which primarily offers cleaning FAQ uploads with under 5,000 views.

The strategy: According to Clorox SVP and CMO Eric Schwartz, the company has capitalized on Pine-Sol’s success by uniting its various social media marketing divisions into one core hub. That team now works with Clorox’s in-house agency, Electro Creative Workshop, to produce 300-400 pieces of content per month for the company’s stable of cleaning brands. (To promote Brita, for instance, the company has targeted niche markets—such as married Gen Z couples who split chores—with quirky relationship questions like “Do they really love me if they don’t refill the Brita?”)

Producing that kind of meme-based content is a major departure for a company that has historically advertised through traditional paid media. And, as Schartz notes, it’s a sign that Clorox has uncovered—and embraced—the key to modern-day marketing: on algorithm-driven social platforms, brands “really need to activate differently.”

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Alejo Igoa once again beat out MrBeast for first place in our weekly ranking of Top 50 Most-Subscribed YouTube Channels. His seven-day haul: 3.7 million subscribers. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• A new playback feature allows YouTube Music users to “smoothly move between your mobile device, tablet, and computer to pick up where you left off.” (TechRadar)
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• OpenAI says ChatGPT now fields 2.5 billion prompts per day, with 330 million coming from U.S. users. (TechCrunch)
  
  

• X is reportedly refusing to cooperate with what it has described as a "politically-motivated criminal investigation" by the French government. (Engadget)

GOSPEL STATS 📈

Top Branded Videos: Dave Ramsey, pool robots, and…100,000 bees?

For the most part, it was newcomers who dominated Gospel Stats’ latest ranking of most-watched branded videos—but one repeat chart-topper managed to infiltrate the Top 5. Financial guru Dave Ramsey snagged spots at both #3 and #4 on this week’s chart, once again proving that YouTube viewers can’t resist a hefty dose of schadenfreude.

🥇 #1. Kaz Sawyer x Aiper: I let an AI Robot clean my pool…👀😳  (ruined) (10.5M views)
Buying an $1,800 robot to clean your pool might not seem like the most budget-friendly housekeeping choice, but it clearly worked out for Kaz Sawyer. The creator snagged his first spot in the Branded Top 5 with a video sponsored by Aiper, which was eager to promote its pool-cleaning products to viewers during Prime Week.

🥈 #2. Dr. Plants x Opera: Raising 10,000 Bees (in my home) (7M views)
Dr. Plants has only uploaded 11 long-form videos since launching his channel in 2022, but that’s apparently all the practice he needed to hit the branded charts. For his latest nature-fueled video, the Weekly Brand Report newcomer brought in browser Opera to support one of his biggest projects yet: a bee colony that spent 100 days living in his house.

🎰 #3. The Ramsey Show Highlights x Yrefy: We’re $1,000,000 In Debt and Only 20% Is The House (5.7M views)
Ramsey’s highlights-focused Shorts channel snagged spots at both #3 and #4 in this week’s Gospel ranking. By inviting viewers to delight in callers’ cringiest financial decisions, the host has consistently managed to capitalize on YouTube’s love of scandal while directing debt-focused fans to Yrefy’s student loan services.

Check out the full branded ranking here and head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights.

THE BIZ

Meta’s smart glasses are getting sportier with Oakley

The wearable tech: Meta ushered in a new generation of wearable tech when it first launched its Orion line of stylish smart devices—and consumers were quick to respond. By February 2025, just 16 months after Meta’s digitized Ray-Bans first hit the market, EssilorLuxotica SA (aka the parent company of brands like Ray-Bans and Oakley) reported that two million pairs had been sold.

Since then, physical pop-ups have given Meta a new point of sale for its wearable devices, and rival tech companies like ByteDance have devoted resources to developing their own fashionable smart glasses.

Now, nearly two years after its first Ray-Bans hit shelves, Meta is giving consumers an Oakley-branded upgrade.

The new product: That upcoming HSTN line expands the partnership between Meta and Paris-based EssilorLuxottica, with the main difference between their Oakley- and Ray-Ban-branded wearables being aesthetic rather than technical. Both lines, for instance, include photo and video capabilities, voice commands, a portable charging case, and built-in AI (although Bloomberg describes the HSTN charger as slightly bulkier than the corresponding Ray-Ban item).

The major change here—aside from HSTN’s increased camera resolution—is the Oakley-branded offering’s sportier design, which will serve users who wish to capture outdoorsy footage on-the-go.

Could these new shades spawn a GoPro-like wave of first-person, Meta glasses-shot content? Meta certainly hopes so. They also hope that this adventure-focused look will justify a higher price tag. While the company’s Ray-Bans retail for $299, the new HSTN glasses range from $399 to $500. Those Oakley-branded devices are currently available for pre-order here.

WATCH THIS

Is the Ryan Trahan effect back in action?

The cross-country trip: Three years after completing his iconic “penny challenge,” Ryan Trahan is once again trekking across the country. The creator is currently visiting every U.S. state over a 50-day period to raise money for St. Jude’s—a charitable endeavor that has already become one of the biggest blockbusters on YouTube.

The first installment of Trahan’s cross-country adventure is quickly approaching ten million views. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of subscribers are flooding in. That kind of impact is rarely contained to just one channel—so we won’t be surprised if other clean-cut travel creators get a boost in interest from Trahan’s latest success, too.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.