Category: Ads

Garage Beer: We Want Your Pee Stunt Becomes A System

Garage Beer co-owner Jason Kelce looks into the camera, holds up a jar of yellow liquid and sings the campaign’s line: “We want your pee.”

What follows is not just a crude song. Garage Beer Classic Light Beer and Liquid Death Sparkling Energy are part of the joke, a limited-edition resealable “Data Center Coolant Collector” makes it physical, and the campaign page gives people somewhere to go next.

The “We Want Your Pee” campaign is best read as a campaign system. A campaign system is a set of connected touchpoints that gives one creative idea a different job at every stage, from attention to action, consented data and commercial follow-through. The useful lesson is not to copy the provocation, but to build the route from attention to measurable action before launch.

The mechanism: Give every partner a job

The campaign starts with a brutally simple chain: drink Garage Beer or Liquid Death Sparkling Energy, create urine, collect it, and supposedly send it to cool an AI data centre. Kelce brings more than a recognisable face: the retired Philadelphia Eagles centre connects the campaign to the NFL, while his brother Travis’s marriage to Taylor Swift places Jason inside a much wider pop-culture context. But the products themselves drive the plot, making the collaboration causal rather than cosmetic.

The wider tension is real: Berkeley Lab estimated that US data centres directly consumed 66 billion litres of water in 2023, although consumption varies materially by cooling system, grid and location.

Because both products are positioned as inputs to the same ridiculous solution, neither brand feels pasted onto the idea. The issue gives the joke relevance, the product logic gives the partnership coherence, and the jingle makes the mechanism easy to retell.

The journey: Give attention somewhere to go

A standalone video could create reach but would leave no owned next step. Here, the collector carries the idea onto the campaign page and into a product interaction. The real question is whether the creative idea survives the handoff from video to owned experience.

The campaign page presents the collector as a limited-edition product. When it is unavailable, the page offers a “Notify Me” registration and an option to join the email list. That turns the punchline into a structured intent signal without forcing every visitor straight into a beverage purchase.

That handoff matters because social attention is rented and short-lived. An owned destination lets the team observe what people do next: watch, browse, register interest, opt into marketing or buy. It creates the possibility to measure them.

The control: Make the joke safe to execute

The same clarity that makes the campaign memorable creates risk. If someone interprets “send your pee” literally, the joke can spill into customer care, fulfillment, reputation and platform moderation.

The official product page explicitly tells people not to actually send their urine. That disclaimer is essential because the clearer the public action, the more precisely the campaign must define where the joke stops.

That handoff matters because the campaign no longer ends with a view. The owned destination creates concrete next actions: browse, register interest, opt into marketing or buy.

The lesson: Make the products carry the idea

The useful part of this campaign is that the drinks, collector and campaign page are not afterthoughts. The drinks create the fictional coolant, the collector makes it tangible, and the page turns the punchline into a product interaction.

Use a simple test before approving the work: if the products can be removed without changing the idea, the brands are sponsoring the entertainment rather than driving it.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the “We Want Your Pee” campaign?

“We Want Your Pee” is an August 2026 campaign from Liquid Death and Garage Beer featuring Jason Kelce. It uses a song and a fake proposal to cool AI data centres with urine to draw attention to water consumption and promote both beverage products.

Why do Garage Beer and Liquid Death fit together?

Garage Beer and Liquid Death fit because both products have a functional role inside the joke: consumers drink them, produce the supposed coolant and use the co-branded collector. The partnership is part of the mechanism, not just a shared logo treatment.

What makes this more than a video stunt?

The campaign connects the film to a physical collector, an owned product page, an availability notification, an email option and an explicit disclaimer. Those touchpoints give attention a route into action, consent and measurement.

Is the campaign really asking people to mail urine?

The creative idea says people should send urine to data centres, but the official product page explicitly tells consumers not to do it. The mailing instruction is satire, not a real fulfilment model.

What should another brand copy from this campaign?

Another brand should copy the connected design, not the crude joke. The useful pattern is a clear product role for every partner, an owned next step, governed risk and a measurement plan that follows the consumer across touchpoints.

How should a connected stunt be measured?

A connected stunt should be measured at each handoff: content engagement, visits to the owned destination, product interaction, purchase or registration, valid marketing consent and later product behaviour. The owners and baselines should be agreed before launch.

The Beauty Machine by Dove

At London’s Waterloo Station, Dove placed rows of different faces inside a vending machine. It invited passers-by to “choose your face” and “pay with your face”, yet every choice produced the same perfect face.

I have featured dozens of unique vending machines over the years. Most use convenience, novelty or personalisation to create a brand experience. Dove uses the format to expose the opposite: the illusion of choice.

That reversal makes The Beauty Machine useful beyond its creative novelty: it shows how to turn invisible system behavior into a physical experience, connect that experience to consumer participation, and quickly feed the response back into the idea.

The mechanism – false choice made physical

At Waterloo station, masks with different skin tones and features appeared to offer a variety of faces. The screen prompted people to select a face and pay with their own, but the machine kept delivering the same ideal face, mimicking a social feed that keeps showing the same beauty ideals now in the form of a vending machine.

This campaign is part of Dove’s long-running “Real Beauty” platform, which began in 2004. The idea started with a simple challenge to traditional beauty advertising: instead of showing only professional models and heavily edited images, Dove began featuring real women of different ages, body types and ethnicities to broaden what “beauty” looks like in media.

Over time, the platform has evolved alongside changes in how beauty is shaped and distributed. In the 2000s, that meant challenging magazine retouching and TV advertising standards. Today, it focuses on newer pressures like social media filters, AI-generated faces and algorithm-driven feeds that repeatedly promote narrow, idealised versions of beauty.

So when this campaign references the Real Beauty platform, it connects the same long-term idea of questioning unrealistic beauty standards to today’s digital systems that now influence what people see and compare themselves against every day.

Because people experience the false choice instead of hearing an explanation about how social media algorithms decide what we see, the campaign turns an invisible loop into something visible and uncomfortable within seconds.

Dove reports that almost one in two women and girls in the UK feels pressured to change their appearance even when they know an image is fake. The machine gives that statistic a behaviour people can see: apparent abundance at the front, narrowing selection behind it.

Why it lands – the format carries the argument

A vending machine is a familiar symbol of convenient choice. You see different options, press a button and receive the one you selected. Dove keeps that familiar interface but removes the expected result: many visible choices lead to one standardised output.

The instruction to “pay with your face” pulls the observer into the contradiction. The issue is no longer happening somewhere inside an inaccessible technology platform. It becomes a personal transaction.

Developed with Ogilvy UK and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield, the execution needs very little explanation because the object carries the argument.

The strongest experiential work does not decorate a message; it lets people enact the problem.

Participation at speed – the audience changes the output

The activation then became a participation loop. A participation loop is the process that takes a consumer submission, moves it through approval, and returns it into public distribution.

Through #DoveOpenCall, women were invited to submit unfiltered photographs representing their individual beauty. Dove says participant images began appearing on digital billboards across Waterloo within 48 hours, replacing the machine’s repeated face with real differences.

The strongest part of The Beauty Machine is therefore not the machine itself; it is the response system that allows the audience to change what appears next.

The real question is whether the organisation behind the idea can move consumer participation through consent, usage rights, moderation, brand approval, production and media deployment quickly enough to keep the response culturally live. That only works if there is a connected submission-to-publishing system in place i.e. from consent and usage-rights capture through moderation, DAM intake, legal and brand approval, templated production, digital-out-of-home deployment, social publishing and measurement. Without that end-to-end chain, an open call simply accumulates content instead of becoming a live campaign.

Brand platform – one conviction, a new opponent

The business value comes from keeping the same belief over time. Dove still stands for women defining beauty, but it continually updates what it challenges as beauty is now shaped by algorithms and social feeds.

The installation later appeared in Hamburg and Cannes. That turns one creative object into a repeatable activation format that can travel while retaining the same central argument.

This is a useful model for long-running brand platforms. Instead of inventing a new purpose for each campaign, keep the conviction stable, identify how the surrounding system has changed, and build the next activation around that change.

At enterprise scale, repeatability still needs central narrative control, local activation ownership, media coordination, content governance and a reusable response process. The creative platform and the operating model have to travel together.

The limit – what it does and doesn’t change

The Beauty Machine does not change how social media recommendation algorithms work.

Its impact sits in representation: what Dove chooses to surface publicly and how it invites women to contribute to that output.

It should therefore be measured through participation, published representation, speed of publication, audience response and brand perception, not as evidence of platform-level algorithm change.

From open call to billboard – design the path before launch

For marketing teams, the 48-hour billboard payoff is a design constraint, not a final media flourish. Creative, consumer experience, legal, content operations, data, technology and media teams need to align behind the scenes before a contribution is published.

The takeaway: if a campaign asks people to help change the story, design the complete response path before launch, including consent, moderation, asset handling, approvals, production, distribution and measurement; otherwise participation becomes a promise the operating model cannot keep.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Dove’s Beauty Machine?

Dove’s Beauty Machine is a vending-machine-style installation first shown at London’s Waterloo Station. Although the masks appeared different, they repeatedly produced the same composite face, dramatising how algorithmic repetition can narrow the range of beauty people see online.

Why does the vending-machine format work?

A vending machine normally promises visible choice and a predictable result. Dove reverses that familiar logic by making many apparent options produce the same face, turning the illusion of online variety into an immediately understandable physical experience.

What is #DoveOpenCall?

#DoveOpenCall is Dove’s open casting call inviting women to share unfiltered photographs of their individual beauty. Participant images were distributed through out-of-home and social media, with images beginning to appear on Waterloo billboards within 48 hours.

What makes the campaign operationally interesting?

The Beauty Machine connects a physical activation to consumer submissions and rapid public distribution. A repeatable version of that model requires consent, moderation, asset management, approvals, templated production, media publishing and measurement to operate as one response system.

Does The Beauty Machine change social media algorithms?

No. The Beauty Machine does not alter platform recommendation systems. It broadens representation through Dove’s campaign output, so its impact should be assessed through participation, distribution and brand measures rather than claims of algorithmic reform.

What should marketers learn from Dove’s approach?

Marketers should design the consumer experience and the response infrastructure as one system. If participation is central to the creative promise, ownership, governance, technology and publishing speed must be designed before launch.

The TVC Is Not Dead. Weak Systems Are.

Nike’s Rip the Script starts with a control problem.

A director wants order. The footballers keep breaking the plan.

That is the useful lesson for brand marketers: campaign systems matter, but they only scale when the creative idea has enough energy to make people participate.

A campaign system is the connected set of assets, channels, behaviours, commerce surfaces, data signals and governance choices that turn one idea into repeated consumer action.

The June pattern – fandom became the operating layer

A lot of the work around World Cup 2026 was not built as a simple sponsorship message.

It was built as a campaign system.

That is the right direction.

A tournament is not just a media moment. It is a sequence of consumer behaviours.

People plan where to watch. They buy food. They wear colours. They argue about players. They collect things. They scroll before the match. They message during the match. They look for highlights after the match. They repeat the ritual for weeks.

This is the mechanism brands are chasing: one tournament trigger becomes repeatable actions across product, retail, social, CRM, creator, commerce and media surfaces.

The context matters because World Cup 2026 marketing has already started before the tournament itself, with brands trying to enter fan rituals before match attention peaks.

McDonald’s is a useful contrast example because its FIFA World Cup 26 Meal and collectible cups turn fandom into a clear purchase and collecting behaviour.

As a June sports-marketing contrast, Uber Eats’ Ding Dong Deals points in a similar direction: make the offer feel like part of the sports reaction cycle, not just a discount sitting outside the moment.

Strategically, that all makes sense.

The real question is not whether the campaign has enough channels, but whether the idea gives those channels something people actually want to repeat.

The problem – participation mechanics are not the same as energy

This is where a lot of modern campaign thinking gets lazy. Teams build the mechanics of participation and then mistake those mechanics for desire. They create the collectible, the offer, the social format, the content calendar, the retail activation and the measurement layer, but the work still does not always feel alive.

The position here is clear: the TVC is not dead, but weak campaign systems are.

Here, TVC means the brand’s hero film asset: the emotionally loaded centrepiece that can still create memory, even when most distribution now happens across social, retail, commerce, CRM and creator surfaces.

The problem is not that brands are building systems. They should be. The problem is that campaign systems can make average ideas look more sophisticated than they are. They add surfaces, decks, journeys, assets, touchpoints and reporting structures, but they do not automatically add tension, humour, memory, emotion or cultural velocity.

That matters because consumers do not participate because the operating model is elegant. They participate because the thing has enough pull to earn the behaviour.

Nike’s advantage – the TVC has enough voltage to feed the system

Nike’s Rip the Script works because it does not feel like a brand politely entering football culture. It feels like football culture losing control in exactly the right way.

Creative voltage is the emotional force that makes an idea memorable enough to be clipped, argued with, reposted, remixed, bought into and carried across channels.

The TVC has that voltage because it turns the basic idea, players breaking away from a controlled script, into the form of the film itself. The director wants order. The players ignore him. The scripted goodbye gives way to instinct, chaos, cameos, jokes, pace and momentum.

That is why the campaign idea becomes legible without being over-explained. The work is not simply saying “ditch the playbook.” It behaves like a control system collapsing under the force of football instinct.

Because it generates distinctive moments that can be cut, debated, reposted and reused, the TVC gives the wider campaign system something worth distributing. That is what many campaign systems miss. They start with the architecture and hope the creative fills it. Nike starts with creative force strong enough to feed the architecture.

The operating lesson – do not build the system before the energy

For brand teams, this is not a nostalgia argument for big films. The answer is not to abandon systems and go back to hero-film thinking.

The answer is to stop treating systems as substitutes for ideas.

A modern campaign still needs the full operating stack: social fragments, commerce surfaces, retail or platform behaviour, creators, athletes, partners, media architecture, CRM logic where relevant, and measurement that separates attention, participation, conversion and repeat behaviour.

But the sequence matters. If the idea is weak, the system becomes an expensive distribution machine for something people did not care about in the first place. If the idea has energy, the system becomes a multiplier.

That is the business difference. One version creates operational complexity. The other creates commercial compounding.

What Nike gets right – the TVC behaves like an operating asset

The lazy conclusion is that Nike won because it made the best film. That is only half true.

Nike won because the TVC behaves like an operating asset.

An operating asset is creative work designed to create reusable value across channels, formats, markets, partners and consumer behaviours.

Rip the Script gives the brand multiple assets inside one idea. It gives scenes for social cuts, faces for fan debate, jokes for football pages, cameos for wider culture, and a Nike Football world that can stretch beyond one upload.

That is why the TVC matters. Not because it is long. Not because it is expensive. Not because it has famous people in it. It matters because it creates memory structures that the rest of the system can use.

The brand test – design for voltage before scale

Large brand organizations are good at building systems. They can build channel matrices, map consumer journeys, create modular content models, localise assets, and connect retail, ecommerce, CRM, social, media and measurement. But the June lesson is uncomfortable: operational maturity does not compensate for creative weakness.

The takeaway: treat campaign systems as distribution architecture, not idea substitutes. Build the emotional idea first, then design the fragments, commerce layers, creator surfaces, data signals, governance and measurement that let that idea travel without becoming operational theatre.

That is the useful operating test. Before asking how many channels the campaign can fill, ask whether the core idea creates enough feeling to deserve those channels.

The future is not TVCs versus systems.

The future is TVCs powerful enough to become systems.

A few fast answers before you act

Is this an argument against campaign systems?

No. Campaign systems are essential when brands need repeatable participation across media, commerce, retail, social and CRM. The argument is that systems should multiply strong ideas, not disguise weak ones.

What does TVC mean in this context?

TVC means the brand’s hero film asset. It does not mean the campaign only lives on television. It means the central piece of creative work that carries the emotional idea and gives the wider system something to distribute.

What did Nike do better than most June campaigns?

Nike created a TVC with enough cultural energy to become a wider operating platform. Rip the Script gives social, retail, creators, football media and fans reusable material instead of forcing channels to carry a thin idea.

Why are participation mechanics not enough?

Participation mechanics only define what people can do. They do not explain why people would care enough to do it, repeat it, share it or attach meaning to it.

Where do McDonald’s and Uber Eats fit in the argument?

They are useful contrast examples because both show the modern move toward behaviour-led campaign design. McDonald’s connects World Cup attention to meals and collectibles, while Uber Eats connects offer value to sports-reaction formats.

What should brand marketing teams change?

They should separate system readiness from idea strength. A campaign can be well-integrated, measurable and operationally mature while still lacking the emotional force needed to travel.