Blackbook Weekly: 006

The campaigns and moments in culture that you need to see.

Every week, we’re paying attention to how brands and creators are positioning themselves in the culture.

Here’s what caught our attention over the last few days.

SheerLuxe was acquired by Future

SheerLuxe's 40m acquisition by Future is proof that traditional media’s distribution model is fundamentally broken.

Founded by Georgie Coleridge Cole, SheerLuxe reaches 6 million people by meeting audiences where they actually are: on TikTok, Instagram, and in their feeds. Not behind paywalls or on websites that they have to remember to visit.

While legacy outlets still optimise for print and web traffic, millions of people, especially Gen Z and Millennials, are getting their news on TikTok. Some of us open the app first thing in the morning (not recommended), on the train to work, during lunch breaks, on the way home, and before bed. Not a newspaper. Not even a news website.

And it’s easier to share a TikTok than a newspaper article.

Just look at what traditional news is up against.

Social-first news creator Dylan Page (News Daddy) has 18.2M TikTok followers, the second biggest news account on the platform after the Daily Mail. His content is vastly more engaging, and he repurposes news from traditional outlets, live reporting from social media users, and discussions in comment sections.

SheerLuxe understood this concept. Georgie built trust through social-native storytelling and platform fluidity. When Future purchased the brand, they also bought a distribution model that actually works for today and the future.

Creators aren’t just making content anymore; they’re controlling distribution in ways that traditional media can’t compete with unless they fundamentally rethink how news and culture get delivered.

Khaby Lame sells company and IP rights for nearly $1 billion

We called it a few weeks ago, creators are becoming IP owners in 2026. Now we’re watching it happen in real time.

Khaby Lame just sold his company and IP rights for nearly $1 billion.

The creator who built a global following by pointing awkwardly at the obvious, without uttering a single word, has cashed out BIG while keeping a majority equity stake. He’s also created an AI digital twin that can appear in campaigns without him being physically present… which is terrifying.

This comes on the heels of Kevin Hart inking a licensing deal with Authentic Brands Group (the company behind David Beckham and Shaquille O’Neal). ABG gets rights to the “Kevin Hart” brand. Hart becomes a shareholder and co-manages his IP across consumer products, digital platforms and live experiences.

Here’s why you need to pay attention:

1. Both deals involve Black creators selling their IP to PE-backed conglomerates, a relatively new model for all creators and media personalities.

2. Creators are being recognised as owners of valuable intellectual property. The market is starting to price creator IP the way it prices any other asset.

Jacquemus names his grandmother as brand ambassador

Simon Porte Jacquemus just announced his very first brand ambassador: his 78 year old grandmother, Liline Jacquemus (and he roasts celebrity culture while doing it).

The announcement starts with, “Before anything, there was her. The original icon.”

Then the pivot. The “ambassador commitments” escalate from sincere to satire:

“The ambassador must not remove Jacquemus pieces at home, at night, or in dreams.”

“The ambassador must not pronounce the names of other fashion houses.”

“The ambassador must smile. Always.”

Ending with: “As we should all do ;)”

He’s speaking directly to an audience exhausted by influencer marketing’s lack of authenticity and transactional nature, while being extremely online and in on the joke.

And it’s brilliant.

Wingstop UK partners with sondr to launch corn in stores

Wingstop UK launched corn. To mark it, they gave aspiring director Danyul Wilson his first-ever brand ad.

3.4M+ views, 325K+ likes, nearly 62K organic shares later, it’s one of Wingstop’s best-performing social ads to date.

The sondr team said it best: “If you want work that genuinely resonates, involve talent who actually live inside the audience you’re trying to reach. Not as a PR move. Not as a box to tick. But because it leads to stronger ideas and more meaningful outcomes.”

It’s proof that when brands actually embed emerging talent into the creative process, not just as subjects or tokens, the work outperforms and the opportunity compounds for creators.

Brands spend billions trying to understand culture, only for it to be filtered back by people standing outside of it, and that is the entire problem with how most agencies approach cultural marketing. They treat culture like a research problem to decode rather than something to co-create with the people who shape it.

Sondr and Wingstop’s model flips that. And the numbers don’t lie.

Honest Greens cracks LinkedIn marketing

Honest Greens is using LinkedIn personalities in their marketing strategy for new London locations. Creators are partnering with them to go on lunch dates with their LinkedIn followers.

Food content on TikTok is so saturated that even great restaurants struggle to break through. LinkedIn, however, has quietly transformed from a job-search platform into a space where professionals build real communities around career development, a behaviour shift they identified and capitalised on.

LinkedIn personalities have different audience dynamics than TikTok creators. Their followers feel more invested because the relationship is tied to professional identity and advice, not just entertainment.

This could be blueprint-worthy for other brands targeting professionals or building around careers and business. We’ve never seen a restaurant use LinkedIn this way. Worth watching.

Taken together, these moments show something shifting. SheerLuxe and Khaby Lame prove that ownership of social-native platforms, creative formats and distribution are the new currency. Wingstop is proving that the way forward is by embedding its target customer into marketing. And Honest Greens is meeting audiences where community already exists.

The brands and creators cutting through are the ones that know who they’re talking to, where to find them, and why it matters. But more importantly, they’re the ones structuring deals that let them keep the money.

If you spotted a campaign we missed, let us know.

And if you’re not already part of the conversation, you know where to find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @The Branding BlackBook .