Eater laid off 15 employees today.
Last week, Jim Bankoff said he didn’t anticipate any layoffs at Vox.
Hello everyone. I know I said I was going to try to get the Superiority Burger this week for tomatoes, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I went to the Union Square Greenmarket yesterday and got Knead Love brownies and tomatoes from Lani’s Farm. Lani’s Farm also sells this moo radish jangajji kimchi that I crave viscerally.
I’m going to be on a panel tonight hosted by Dazed about taste and trust. Maybe I will see some of you there.
Today’s letter includes: Why you shouldn’t lie about your newsletter numbers, how two young designers collaborated with Gracie Abrams, Eater’s layoffs, Semafor’s fundraise, and questions about Hinge’s advertising strategy.
What the hell was Hinge’s Substack advertising budget? Arden worked with them. Tahirah worked with them. Jess worked with them. Tembe worked with them. Caitlyn worked with them. Valerie worked with them. Sarah worked with them. Viv worked with them. What’s peculiar to me is that most of the newsletters that are sponsored by Hinge for this particular late summer campaign aren’t actually about the app—a few touch on Hinge’s No Ordinary Love campaign, but most are personal essays waxing poetic about love. I’m curious if the goal for this campaign was awareness, because it sure wasn’t app downloads. I reached out to the Hinge team for comment, and this is what one spokesperson told me:
“No Ordinary Love celebrates writing and literature, so bringing the second chapter of the anthology to Substack was an intentional choice. Writers and readers are already having meaningful conversations about love on the platform, and we wanted to complement the vibrant community here. In addition to launching the stories on the platform, we saw an opportunity to support unique and emerging voices on Substack who speak honestly about their own dating experiences, including the messy, imperfect parts that make these stories so real.”
(Disclaimer, I worked with Hinge on an ad last year).
Chipotle collaborated with Carvel. At least that’s what influencer and West Village Girl Kit Keenan told her followers in a TikTok that she posted last night of an avocado milkshake and a sprinkle chip dip. Within hours, Chipotle responded with a confused meme, and Carvel commented, “i am so confused is this AI.” When I saw that both brands interacted with the video, I figured they were in on the joke. But then I reached out to Kit and she told me it’s a new series she’s developing where she imagines what it would be like if unlikely brands teamed up.
“I love cooking and coming up with unexpected recipe ideas just to see if I can make them real. This series is an extension of that—imagining food collabs that no one asked for and bringing them to life to see how consumers would react. It also plays with the moment we’re in, where AI is everywhere and people are constantly questioning what’s real. I think it encourages digital literacy and that questioning makes each video even more fun.
So many people told me not to post it because they thought brands would freak out and send me a cease and desist or something but for this first video they were both so chill and it makes people want to support them even more I think.”
Another day of not knowing what is real and what is fake on the internet—I appreciate playing into the ridiculousness of collab culture after yesterday’s breast milk ice cream news.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserGlossier launched a highlighter. The cap looks vaguely medical.
Last week, Vox’s CEO Jim Bankoff told Puck’s Dylan Byers that he didn’t anticipate any impending layoffs at the company. Today, Eater laid off 15 employees with no notice.
Last month, WeWork announced that they'd be opening a new 60k-square-foot office downtown. Today, they announced a second new office — 55k square feet in NoMad. Can’t wait to hear which Substack writers start coworking there.
Semafor is reportedly raising money again. They’ve raised $35mm over the last three years. Per Puck, they’re raising again “to further expand Semafor’s live events business, which is its primary revenue stream.” Speaking of expensive events, last night Oliver Darcy reported that Puck is charging $1500/ticket for a sports media conference later this year. I think I will buy one.
Earlier this summer, a brand called Oddli DMed me and asked if they could send me a few pieces. I usually say no because I am sick of cardboard boxes entering my apartment. But after reading about the two young woman founders – recent Stanford grads Eleanor Chen and Jensen Neff – and looking at their playful pieces, I said yes. I’ve been wearing their swimsuits all summer. In June, I wrote that Gracie Abrams is using a new hair accessory to signal the next chapter of her music—bandanas. Today, Oddli announced that they collaborated with Gracie Abrams for the bandanas she wore and sold on tour. I spoke to Jensen, co-founder of Oddli, about how the collab came to be:
“We were introduced to the world of artist merch last year via our collaboration with Role Model. Gracie wore bandanas when she headlined Glastonbury last month and we worked super quickly after that to get a run of bandanas finished in time for Lollapalooza.
Concerts have always, to a certain extent, had uniforms, but think right now in our digital age it’s pushed to an extreme. And it’s so fun to be a designer playing in that world because musicians are like these superchanged capsules of trend and culture and style. There’s a lot of buy in and excitement.
Upcoming we have one other exciting collaboration with another musician, and a cashmere knit collection for the fall.”
Why would you repeat a story that you didn’t like learning about the earth’s crust so many times that it becomes part of your founder story? I love talking about sedimentation. Every time I shake the bag of granola to get the big chunks at the top? That’s earth science. Summer has felt a little empty without a founder grifter story, and Business Insider has filled that gap today with a story about The Newsette, a newsletter I’ve never heard of. Danielle Pierson, The Newsette’s founder, said her $200mm newsletter empire had over a million subscribers. A spokesperson for Pierson confirmed to Business Insider that The Newsette's daily newsletter goes out to about 500,000 subscribers (less than half the 1.3mm subscribers claimed in a 2025 pitch deck to advertisers). Last year, the company's revenue goal was $5mm, according to internal documents. Per BI, the Pierson spokesperson said those numbers were not accurate, but declined to provide additional numbers or documentation.
The $8B merger of Paramount and the media company Skydance closed this morning.
Skims, Unwell, and Parke are all using sorority girls as billboards. If any of you are in a fun sorority and want to work on a fun project together… I’ll sponsor your parties.
This morning, Rachel Karten's newsletter spoke to the Bilt team's Roomiesroomiesroomies Tik Tok series which does little to nothing to talk about Bilt (an app for paying rent I guess?) and from their perspective it was "insert every talking point about customer connection and reaching people where they are" amazing. Hinge doing something similar with Substack fits that model. I'll be curious to touch base with these brands in 6 months to see if this strategy worked at actually selling the product.
Daughter of Michigan wedding DJ parents here. Can unfortunately confirm the cake face smash is nothing new. Was happening heavily in the 90s.