This week's biggest marketing moves

K18's giant hairball, Netflix's trapped man, and Heinz's love language

13 Aug 2026

This week's biggest marketing moves

K18's giant hairball, Netflix's trapped man, and Heinz's love language

Case Studied Brief
August 13, 2026

Case Studied Brief 💼

A hairball, a billboard stunt, and a ketchup upgrade

This week in marketing saw some head-turning OOH stunts, an AEO upgrade for marketers, and more shuffling in the agency world.

In today's edition:

K18 rolls a giant hairball through NYC 🎗️
Appeals court lets social media "addiction" suits proceed ⚖️
Google gears up to flip the switch on AI Max 🤖

Campaigns of the week 📺

Netflix moves a man into a billboard, then slowly evicts him.

Netflix installed a performer inside a fully furnished billboard 30 feet above the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Selma Avenue in Los Angeles. The stunt was made to promote the platform’s sci-fi thriller "The Last House." Over three days, the performer went about daily routines, including eating cereal and using binoculars, and communicating with people below via a dry-erase whiteboard. The stunt drew live coverage from CBS Los Angeles, NBC4 and KTLA. Meanwhile the film hit No. 1 in 89 countries despite a 27% critics' score. Source: Deadline

Heinz finally lets fans choose their own ketchup destiny.

Heinz and Wieden+Kennedy London designed the "Love Lid," a ketchup bottle cap with three squeeze settings: Like, Love and Crazy Love. This cap allows fans to control how much ketchup dispenses per portion. The idea grew out of years-long online debate over the "correct" amount of ketchup per serving. This bottle and cap is sold with a squeeze guide and is available exclusively through Walmart.com in the US via TheLoveLid.com, and through HeinzToHome.co.uk in the UK. Source: Famous Campaigns

Hinge trades swipes for short stories.

As the third installment of its "No Ordinary Love" platform, Hinge is turning real couples' early dating conversations into an audiobook. It pairs five couples who met on the app with five authors who wrote and narrated stories based on the couples’ moments of emotional risk. The free audiobook is available on Spotify and Libby. This latest installment of the brand’s platform follows a printed zine in 2024 and a limited-edition hardback distributed to book clubs in New York and London in 2025. Source: Inc.

K18 gives New York's hair loss its own parade float.

The haircare brand K18 rolled a 10-foot ball of real human hair through Midtown, the West Village, Chinatown and the Seaport. Dubbed the "Tumblehair," the stunt promotes the brand’s new FutureIQ hair longevity serum. The rolling installation, Created by Uncommon Creative Studio, is meant to represent the scale of everyday hair shedding among New Yorkers. LBBOnline reported the figure at 167 billion hairs. The stunt follows K18's history of turning offbeat activations into major earned-media wins. Source: LBBOnline

Industry news 🤝

⚖️ Appeals court lets thousands of social media "addiction" lawsuits proceed.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a bid by Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap to reverse a lower court ruling forcing them to face roughly 2,400 federal lawsuits alleging their platforms were designed to be addictive to young users, finding the appeal premature.

Source: Yahoo Finance

🎯 Dollar Tree taps Tombras as its first-ever creative agency of record.

Dollar Tree named Tombras as its first creative agency of record ahead of its first national brand campaign, expected to launch in September. The retailer has roughly 94% consumer awareness but is looking to convert infrequent shoppers into more frequent visits, a shift CMO Brian Messerschmitt says represents a $1 billion annual sales opportunity.

Source: Ad Age

📊 WPP's streamlined strategy secures new business as revenue declines narrow.

WPP's like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs declined 2.8% in Q2. It marks an improvement from a 6.7% drop in Q1, as CEO Cindy Rose's turnaround plan shows early signs of progress. Recent account wins include Estée Lauder, Jaguar Land Rover, Heineken and Wendy's.

Source: Marketing Dive

💊 Omnicom wins the U.S. media account for Ozempic and Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk.

Omnicom won Novo Nordisk's U.S. media planning and buying business, valued at $520 million domestically and $618 million globally according to COMvergence. It beat out the incumbent, WPP's Wavemaker, which had held the account since 2020.

Source: Adweek

MarTech moves 🤖

🔍 Google is about to turn AI Max on for more search campaigns automatically.

Starting September 2026, Google will automatically migrate eligible Search campaigns into its AI Max system without requiring advertisers to opt in first, expanding its control over query matching and ad creative.

Source: TechWyse

📡 Cloudflare adds an AEO Visibility Dashboard to its AEO Suite.

Cloudflare launched a dashboard showing brands whether AI assistants cite, mention or rank them. It network-layer crawl and referral data rather than just sampled test prompts.

Source: Cloudflare

🏷️ Spotify will label 'AI Persona' profiles and exclude their music from recommendations.

Starting in September, Spotify will badge AI-generated artist profiles and exclude them from algorithmic and editorial recommendations by default. The feature will be based on self-disclosure and internal review.

Source: TechCrunch

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