A brief overview of what is currently trending in news, culture, and/or trending hashtags and formats.
Shane Gillis: The comedian’s opening monologue at last night’s ESPY Awards is stirring controversy as he roasted everyone from the WNBA’s Caitlin Clark to Donald Trump.
Nicki Minaj: Fans are weighing in as Nicki Minaj and SZA continue exchanging disses on X.
Epstein: Maurene Comey, the federal prosecutor involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s case, was fired by the Justice Department on Wednesday.
A deeper dive into a subject that is impacting culture on a macro level, beyond just the social space.
How Gap Reclaims Cultural Relevance Through Music
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What It Is: Gap’s latest collaboration with Boiler Room — an online music broadcaster and promoter primarily known for live-streaming underground electronic music events — is bringing the brand back into cultural relevance. In the 80s and 90s, Gap was widely considered an iconic clothing brand, offering stylish, reliable, and affordable essentials that bridged generational gaps in fashion. In the 2000s, the brand fell out of cultural relevance, struggling to keep up with evolving fashion trends and other retailers offering more expressive styles. Over the last year, Gap has taken strides to reclaim its relevance, recruiting pop stars like Tyla and Troye Sivan to participate in music video-esque campaigns, bringing back memories of their dance-focused ads from the 90s for millennials while appealing to Gen Z’s current tastes. These campaigns saw great success online, with Tyla’s “Linen Moves” achieving record online engagement and Sivan’s “Get Loose” campaign receiving almost 30 million views and over 400,000 likes on TikTok shortly after launch. Now, Gap is continuing to embrace social-first approaches to bridging their brand identity with music and culture with Boiler Room by co-hosting Boiler Room sets across various cities like Tokyo and New York.
The Brand Takeaway: Gap’s resurgence showcases the value of brands embracing the core elements of their identities and reshaping them for new audiences to maintain relevance. Music and movement have always been deeply intertwined with Gap’s legacy: in addition to their 90s dance-driven ads, their curated in-store playlists (updated monthly) reflect the time period’s resurgence in culture. By reviving their approach to these ads with high-profile contemporary talent and trendsetters like Boiler Room, both older and younger consumers can feel emotionally connected to Gap’s brand. Even though the public response to the Gap x Boiler Room collaboration has been mixed, with some questioning its relevance and authenticity, the collab is bringing the brand back into conversation. Boiler Room represents the latest trends driving dance music and club culture today, empowering diverse artists with platforms for self-expression through music — which closely aligning with Gap’s legacy of driving culture at the intersection of music and fashion. It’s clear that Gap isn’t afraid to take risks and reinterpret their legacy to reach new audiences. At times, it’s necessary for brands to do so to shift public perception.
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