Aries Lattes and Young Literati
"embrace the cringe"
Alex Cooper has “multiple” scripts headed for film and TV; KATSEYE shared their new Charli XCX collab “Gabriela” (and the very good telenovela-inspired video starring Jessica Alba); PinkPantheress — the 24-year-old “figurehead of Gen Z pop” — announced a 2025 North American tour; and I talked to the New York Times about the “fridge cigarette.”
HOW DO YOU BUILD A $500 MILLION COFFEE CHAIN? BY SELLING MATCHA TO TEENS., wsj
Blank Street Coffee built a cult following by “leaning into sugary, colorful, caffeinated, TikTok-friendly green tea,” effectively turning novelty matcha into a lifestyle product. Many teens use their parents’ cards to buy $7 drinks multiple times a week, and an invite-only $22/month membership has spawned waitlists. “The influencers are all drinking it, like it’s just a part of their lives, so you feel like you got to try it,” said Madison Ginsberg, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida.
To help its marketing team think about customers it serves, global creative director Mohammad Rabaa says his team creates fake personas with character-building mood boards around each new matcha drink, to “market it in a hyper-specific way.” Blank Street’s strawberry-shortcake matcha persona is, for example, “an East London Girl who listens to Katseye,” Rabaa, 29, said. “The Aries latte is someone who hangs out in McCarren Park, is from Brooklyn and feels, to me, more Charli [XCX].”
TIKTOK HITS CANNES, WHERE A U.S. BAN SEEMS A DISTANT DREAM, nyt
What ban? At Cannes Lions, TikTok sidestepped U.S. political tension by spotlighting the platform’s cultural dominance. “Creators spoke on panels and mingled with enthusiastic fans, who lined up nightly for TikTok’s Frosé Soirées” at the Carlton Hotel, where rooms start at 1,000 euros ($1,150) per night. TikTok executives, meanwhile, “met with marketers, played pickleball with at least one creator and took a boat to a restaurant with employees from an influencer agency.” They also announced plans to invest seriously in expanding to TV screens, aiming to evolve from a social platform into a full video platform. “The living room is definitely a new frontier,” said David Kaufman, the global head of product operations and solutions at TikTok.
THE RISE OF THE BROADWAY ‘BRO SHOW’, washingtonpost
Broadway is experiencing a testosterone boost with the rise of so-called “bro shows,” like Glengarry Glen Ross, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Othello, which spotlight what a theatergoer called “the full extent of the male experience.” One producer noted that marketing has evolved from targeting suburban boomer women to reaching “hedge fund bros who live in the Financial District in a high-rise, rolling up in their Cadillac Escalade Uber.”
Sam Fremin, a 23-year-old journalist in Swoyersville, Pennsylvania, enjoys Broadway, but soaring ticket prices can keep him away. In May, Fremin splurged on a “Glengarry” date night with his girlfriend. He is a fan of its playwright, David Mamet, and the starry cast didn’t hurt. “It felt like there was a more diverse set of tones and themes in the shows that were being offered this year,” he said.
L.A.’S LITERATI TOAST ‘ON THE RAG’, A TABLOID FOR THE SOCIAL MEDIA AGE, hollywoodreporter
Some good scene reporting from the launch party of On The Rag, L.A.’s own Drunken Canal. (A few months ago, founder Sammy Loren described the project to
YOU MAY NOW VENMO THE BRIDE, thecut
Women are using Venmo and TikTok to fund their bachelorette weekends, with “buy the bride a drink” QR codes bringing in thousands of dollars from friends, family, and even strangers. “It’s like crowdsourcing for alcohol,” said one woman who’s posted Venmo links for eight different bachelorettes. Another recalled raising $2,300 in one weekend using Etsy-made QR bracelets. If you’re thinking this is all very cringey, well, they’re thinking it, too: “Why not? Embrace the cringe,” said one source. “If it means you’re not going broke to go on a bachelorette, you might as well.”
One last thought:
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This is so funny because I am in London for the day & the first thing I did was grab 2 matchas from Blank Street! Lmao
Running a fashion account for Gen Z and Gen Alpha girls and I only just learn about the Tween Row in NYC??