Welcome back. Today, a major marketer tells consumers they’ve been overusing its product for years. Parents and teachers rejoice.

Unilever has finally found the right way to tell guys they’re wearing too much of its Axe body spray: with an ad campaign promoting new packaging that it says provides a “lighter, more controlled application.”

The theme of the campaign, aimed at Axe’s core 11- to 25-year-old males, is “The History of Overdoing It.”

Marketers don’t often try to convince consumers that less is more, but the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Megan Graham delivers the key quote in her report on the shift:

While Axe’s estimated market share of deodorant sprays in the U.S. has steadily shrunk from 24% in 2020 to 16.3% in 2025, it still ranks second in the category, according to market researcher Euromonitor International.

Excess application might be part of the problem:

Is influencer marketing the new principal media?

Forty-three percent of marketers say they don’t have full visibility into the exact payments made to creators and influencers on their behalf, according to a new survey by the Association of National Advertisers.

That parallels the problem that the ANA has long had with principal media, in which agencies buy ad inventory with their own money and resell it to clients without disclosing their markup.

The knock in both cases is that marketers don’t get the information they need to decide whether agencies are charging them “fair” prices, while agencies might let their own profit potential influence their choice of media channels or creators.

I’m not convinced fairness ought to be the operating principle here, as if agencies are necessarily taking advantage of clients.

Clients know what they pay their agencies, and do their best to gauge the returns on their work. Staying put with a shop ought to mean that marketers think the price is worth it.

Yes, their calculations should improve with more granular information. It’s just on marketers to get it.

That power of the purse is probably a better frame—and solution.

Fifty-five percent of marketers are “very” or “somewhat” likely to change their compensation approach with agencies for creator and influencer marketing, the ANA survey found. Most open-ended survey responses referred to transparency.

In that case, more power to the brands.

“If knowing the exact amounts paid to creators is important,” the ANA writes, “that should be negotiated up front.”

Some investment firms are trying to grab a slice of the fees generated by exchange-traded funds by ditching their image of being cheap, boring and relatively safe.

Instead they’re getting attention and investors with new, exotic and riskier offerings, Jack Pitcher reports this morning for The Wall Street Journal:

Compare that with the industry’s roughly 0.2% asset-weighted average, or its usual focus on investments like mutual funds.

What’s driving the twist:

Low barriers to entry mean dozens of much smaller shops are trying their hand, increasingly looking to stand out through social media buzz, advertising and a pitch tailored for thrill-seeking investors.

What’s next?

Keep an eye on the market, where a sudden drop could affect the current allure of financial “thrills.”

After months of headlines about tariff-driven price increases, will consumers see any relief as a result of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling?

Uncertainty remains the watchword for business after the high court struck down the bulk of President Trump’s tariffs and the administration announced a new, temporary global tariff,  Chao Deng writes for The Journal. And the average effective tariff rate now looks just slightly lower than before the ruling, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

But U.S. companies and consumers shouldered more than 90% of the costs from Trump’s tariffs for most of 2025, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said this month. Higher prices were announced by brands from Nike to Ferrari.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see consumers hope that tariffs’ relationship to prices goes both ways—or for a scrappy brand to find a way to play the news.

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Nvidia chips for laptops by Dell, Lenovo and others are set to hit the market this year, a bid by the leader in AI chips for business customers to build its connection with consumers as well. [WSJ] 

The dot com boom had a much better image with the public than the AI boom. [NYT]

Liquid Death is the latest brand to use AI in advertising to satirize AI in advertising, depicting a figure skater morphing into a demon in an ad on Peacock’s Olympics coverage. [Ad Age] 

NBC kicked off its marketing campaign for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles with a two-minute commercial featuring Kate Hudson, Olympic athletes and “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas & The Papas. [THR]

President Trump demanded that Netflix kick former national security adviser Susan Rice off its board, adding another political headache to the streaming company’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery’s key entertainment assets. [WSJ]

Keurig Dr Pepper is rolling out a redesign and new marketing designed to make Snapple an icon again. [Fast Company]