This Week On Social - Influencers head to Downing Street, Doritos Drops a Spicy Retro Ad, Rare Beauty Scratch 'n' Sniff!
Your weekly fix of what’s hot (and what’s not) in social, influencer, and marketing news. 💻
This week, Influencers head to Downing Street, Doritos drops a spicy retro ad, and Instagram serves up a content strategy cheat sheet. Rare Beauty makes billboards scratch 'n' sniff, and in our latest Media Diet column, we unpack the shift from clean girl to chaos-core...
Don't Miss This Week's Headlines!
(1/5) Influencers Take Over No. 10 🤳
No.10 just opened its doors to TikTokers, YouTubers, and IG creators and here's everything you need to know:
🎥 Influencers at Downing Street: Between 70 - 90 creators with a combined 250 million followers were invited to No.10’s first-ever influencer reception, including personal finance creators and politics explainers.
📣 From press packs to policy panels: Creators are now getting government briefings alongside traditional media, with panel discussions on how to work more closely with ministers and departments.
🌍 Beyond the BBC: Expect more ministers popping up in Grazia and on TikTok, like Keir Starmer’s chat with Max Klymenko, which pulled 1.3M views, and DEFRA's collab with YouTuber Cam Whitnall.
💼 The big picture: This signals a huge shift in political communication. Government is leaning into creators to reach younger, harder-to-reach audiences ahead of elections and the lowered voting age.
(2/5) Doritos gets spicy (but not too spicy) 🌶️
Doritos have released a retro parody ad for their newest flavour, Golden Siracha. It’s giving spicy, suggestive, and seriously subversive. Here's everything you need to know:
🪠 “A Spicy, but Not Too Spicy Plumber”: The campaign stars Walton Goggins as a hilariously oblivious plumber in a retro-style adult film parody, dripping with innuendo but never crossing the line - until he takes a bite of the new Golden Sriracha Dorito.
🍕360° rollout with edgy extras: Think Times Square billboards, digital spots, a VIP screening at NYC’s Slipper Room (the birthplace of neo-burlesque), and even a zesty Instagram broadcast channel for NSFW-ish content that wouldn’t fly on the feed.
📺 Cultural nostalgia & celebrity power: Between the retro aesthetic and Goggins’ streaming-era fame (thanks White Lotus), Doritos is nailing memeable, millennial-meets-Gen-Z cultural crossover.
(3/5) Instagram Content Hierarchy 📸
Your IG content isn’t just about what you post, it’s when and why. Instagram just dropped a cheat sheet on how to use each post type to guide your audience from curious scroller to brand bestie! Here's everything you need to know:
🔝 Reels & Carousels = Top of funnel: Use these to reach new audiences. Reels now account for over 50% of time spent on IG.
📸 Carousels, Stories, & Singles = Mid-funnel magic: These formats are ideal for engaging your existing followers. Think behind-the-scenes, product drops, and community moments.
💬 Lives & Broadcast Channels = Loyalty lock-in: These tools nurture your most loyal fans, offering exclusive content, real-time conversations, and a VIP vibe.
♟️ Strategy = everything: Knowing which content serves which stage of the buyer journey can help you build a more intentional, performance-led Instagram strategy.
(4/5) Rare Beauty Scratch 'n' Sniff 👃
Rare Beauty just dropped the OOH collab of the season, and it smells like creamy caramel, pistachio, and genius.
Rare Beauty has teamed up with Shopify’s Shop app to launch an interactive out-of-home (OOH) fragrance campaign that lets fans scratch and sniff the brand’s new scent from billboards in NYC. Here's everything you need to know:
👃 Scratch. Sniff. Scan. Sample: Fans can get a whiff of Rare Eau de Parfum directly from three IRL billboards in Manhattan, and then scan a QR code to receive a rollerball sample via Shopify’s geogated Shop app.
📬 From IRL to inbox: The QR journey only works if you're within range of the billboard — making this a hyperlocal, hype-worthy campaign with exclusive access as a reward.
💸 Smell = Sell: Fragrance is tough to market digitally, but Rare Beauty’s tapping into scent-driven sampling to drive conversions while they sleep. in the words of VP of Consumer Marketing, Ashley Murphy.
🫶🏻 Rare’s goal: Sensory storytelling, community interaction, and real-time trial, all designed to go viral on socials and move product before the official launch.
(5/5) Brat's First Birthday Has Come And Gone 💚
The clean girl had her moment, but her eyeliner's running, her playlist’s Brat-coded, and she’s making chaos look hot again. Are you ready for the party-girl marketing era?
In our monthly “The Media Diet” column, our Campaign Manager, Liv Molho, shares what she’s been consuming, digesting, watching, and scrolling, AND how it’s reflected in wider online creator culture.
It’s been over a year since the release of Charli XCX’s generation-defining Brat album, but throughout July, I’ve found myself going back to it again and again.
And even though Charli herself declared the end of the Brat era at Coachella, it seems like grungy party-girl culture isn’t going anywhere just yet.
In our latest column, Liv breaks down:
🖤 The shift from “clean girl” to chaos-core
💄 How Brat-core is influencing creator culture
📸 Glam chaos = the new content strategy
🎭 Relatable > Perfect
Read the full Substack here!
...
And that’s all for this week, but don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for real-time announcements of all our new blog content!