Welcome back. Today, three friends build a multimillion-dollar brand by channeling the ’80s; late night isn’t looking great for broadcast TV; and e.l.f Beauty builds its following among teens and 20somethings with a staff that’s often not much older.

Vacation, a pandemic-born personal-care startup, has pursued a simple strategy to clear space in its core category, Katie Deighton writes: putting the fun back in sunscreen.

The founders thought sunscreen had become boring since people stopped using tanning mirrors and started worrying about cancer.

So Vacation’s branding looks like the love child of Margaritaville and Club Med. Discount pop-ups on its website evoke magazine coupons from 1986, down to the dotted lines. Its SPF 30 mousse comes in a whipped-cream can. And the handle on its new 20-ounce “jug” detaches to be worn as a bracelet.

The result has been serious business, enough to be a top suncare brand at Target, predict $80 million in revenue this year and declare itself profitable.

Vacation intends to maintain its brand personality as it grows, co-founder Lach Hall said, citing an ongoing brief for “wild” ideas. “No one,” he said, “was going to tell us that sunscreen mousse was the next big thing.”

Whether or not CBS axed “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” for “purely” financial reasons, it’s clear that business could be at least one.

“The Late Show” was profitable as recently as a few years ago, but now loses about $40 million a year, Joe Flint and John Jurgensen report.

Its budget includes a live band, a staff of around 200 and Colbert’s annual $20 million salary, according to a person familiar with the show.

Late-night shows have been one of the most enduring formats in television. Into the 2000s, high profit margins and cultural clout helped fuel the so-called late-night wars between David Letterman and Jay Leno.

Then the web changed everything. Younger viewers fled, pursued by brands.

E.l.f. Beauty has won many devoted fans in their teens and 20s partly because its CEO listens to his younger employees, Ray A. Smith writes.

“We’ve never had to do a focus group in the history of this company, because our team, they are our community,” said Tarang Amin, 60.

Three-quarters of the company’s 650 “e.l.f.z,” as it calls its staff, are in their 20s and 30s, and most are women.

Amin says it was a few Gen Z workers in Los Angeles who came up with the idea to connect with Oliver Widger, who had amassed a following of 1.3 million Tiktokers after quitting his corporate job to sail around the world. Widger wasn’t your typical makeup influencer, but that was the point.

During the first leg of his trip, e.l.f. airdropped a care package including cat treats, sunscreen and sandwiches to Widger, who quickly posted about it.

At first Amin, a former P&G marketing director, was worried the package didn’t have e.l.f. branding. “The Gen Z employees, they’re like, ‘No, no, Tarang. We don’t need to brand it. That’s what a big company would do,’” he said. “‘The word will get out there.’ ”

President Trump filed a lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, alleging the newspaper defamed him in an article about a birthday letter for Jeffrey Epstein. [WSJ] 

Brands including Ryanair, Tesla, Netflix and Paramount Pictures took the Coldplay couple’s national embarrassment as an opportunity to get a little brand buzz in social media. [PR Week] 

Executives and others close to software company Palantir are raising money for Founders Films, a new production company to make movies “about American exceptionalism” and that “name America’s enemies.” [Semafor]

Nike’s Jordan Brand released a two-and-a-half-minute musical ad starring NBA and WNBA players such as Jayson Tatum, Gabby Williams, Luka Doncic and Kiki Rice in a basketball-themed version of “It’s the Hard Knock Life.” [The Drum]

Nike, Coach, AT&T, Gatorade and other sponsors came to play at the WNBA’s All-Star Weekend. [Reuters]

The founder of “clothing-as-a-service” startup CaaStle was charged with defrauding investors out of $300 million by allegedly misrepresenting the company’s finances. Her lawyers called the indictment “incomplete and very distorted.” [ABC News] 

The new wave in spa treatments features light shows, sound waves, VR displays and other digital effects designed to soothe customers struggling with frayed attention spans. [WSJ] 

The pilot and sky diver Felix Baumgartner, who broke the sound barrier after jumping from more than 128,000 feet in a stunt sponsored by Red Bull, died in a paragliding accident in Italy. [NYT]