A middle finger can mean I love you. Plus, a ruling on the world’s best-smelling sunscreen. 🧴
Issue 93 — Sunday, August 2, 2026
I’m afraid of death but I watched André Is an Idiot anyway.
The documentary lasts 87 minutes, and 58 of them had me heaving with laughter.
Inner Sunset, San Francisco.
A 50-year-old ex-creative, André, does everything with his best friend Lee, but laughs off Lee’s idea of getting a colonoscopy together and 18 months later is handed a terminal colon cancer diagnosis instead.
He could have grabbed a phone and poured it all out on TikTok. But it’s a plot twist worthy of a movie, so André sets about making one.
They’re gonna love it because I die at the end.
The final act is decided. But a lot of the film is spent making you wonder: a stand-up routine you catch yourself believing might just end well.
André brings in stop-motions of random ideas he’s having: a frontier clinic in Italy that will transplant his head onto a new body, a televised gameshow ‘Who Wants to Kill Me?’, where people come up with alternate ways for André to die.
Otherwise, it’s video diaries of road trips, self-mocking monologues, and 7 a.m. bong hits.
The other 29 minutes are a harder watch.
His family.
Janice, his wife. Tallula, their 19-year-old daughter. Delilah, four years behind her sister.
Tallula leaves for college during filming.
At the car out front, she and her dad reject the hug goodbye. She pulls the passenger door shut, and from behind the windscreen, flips him the bird.
I love you.
Tenderness protected by irony. Not just because what’s underneath is exposing and painful, but because André is familiar with a world that strip-mines sincerity for commerce.
“I sold diabetes to kids,” André sums up his career.
Something I recognise. I know André.
Not the person, the persona. We’ve been in the same rooms, have people in common. A training that tells you to level with the audience, and to pay for their attention: a laugh or a line they’ll repeat at work.
His kind of truth-telling died with algorithms and authenticity. A model that removed the handshake between sender and receiver. Extracting attention, it turns out, is worth just as much as rewarding it.
(It’s worth more. But also, isn’t.)
Fact is, it takes a malignant carcinoma to give André an actual brief worthy of his time, however much he has left.
Which is perfect, because with himself as the only client, he gets to approve all the ideas. He gets 87 minutes to choose all the beats and frames that make the final cut, without debate.
Nobody makes a campaign entirely alone.
Throughout, he spends time with Lee, the best friend from advertising, his platonic soul mate situation.
Close to home.
My advertising platonic soul mate situation is Patrick.
Patrick never came to the door that day, on Christmas Eve, as he fought his last days of bowel cancer, and I waited more than two hours, hovering with black coffee in McDonald’s, so I’d be near if he did.
So so sorry Trimbo, I had a bad night.
The bad nights are not something this documentary can hide.
The camera sees everything. So must we.
André’s body fills with fluid, his abdomen swells out like a space hopper, eyelashes grow really long. Everything else retracts, skin, muscles, his hair falls out, cheeks collapse until his teeth protrude.
I want to make people feel good when things are bad.
He opens a pack of Skittles and puts a red one in the crater of his hand, a new dent of bones between his thumb and wrist.
The red one is the last time he’s able to make Tallula laugh.
Her face scrunches then softens as her dad looks her straight in the eye and thanks her for easing off college to come back.
Nothing left to do, they hug.
Outstretched on the sofa, white sheets wrapped around him, a borosilicate glass bong in the foreground, André makes a deathbed call to his therapist.
The camera lowers. Then leaves.
Black for a beat.
Survived by panoramic skies at sunrise.
André climbing a hill to a vista high, high above San Francisco.
Gone, his final journal entry read by AI in his own voice.
I sat with fear today. I didn’t run from it. Or try to defeat it. Instead I greeted it like a friend. And I let it wash over me. Again. And again. Terrifying me.
But it was okay.
My fear is insignificant compared to the love all around me. I wept for the first time in years, it was remarkable. I thought I needed suffering, but instead I got bliss.
So.
GET YOUR F*CKING COLONOSCOPY.
And.
Never, ever, stop flipping the bird.
And.
It’s me who’s so, so sorry, brother Pat. For the fury, strung out on coffee that day.
I get it now.
Let’s rise together with every issue. ♡
From the shelf
What if the answer to the world’s problems is fewer people? | Issue 85, April 2026
OpenAI cuts back on side quests — is Jony Ive building a $6.5 billion pen? | Issue 84, March 2026
Markets
Stock market chaos exposes the hidden costs of the AI economy | The Guardian
Andy Burnham emerges as the Mondeo Man 2.0 | Telegraph
Bank of England keeps rates steady at 3.75% amid rising inflation concerns | The Guardian
Brands
Why marketing’s obsession with tech language is devaluing the craft | Time
YouTube star AboFlah built his career on streaming, now wants his kids offline | Wired
ClickUp offers $1 million for one-person CMO to run entire marketing department | The State of Brand
How Unilever manages 300,000 creators: the operational reality behind the scale | Digiday
Amazon’s advertising business reaches $76 billion in annual revenue | Adweek
Time monetises AI bot traffic by selling ads directly to agents | Digiday
Vacation wins ‘world’s best-smelling sunscreen’ claim in advertising dispute | Mondaq
Gen Z’s love of vinyl, books, and concerts is reviving the analog economy | Fortune
Waitrose launches £1bn suburban expansion to challenge M&S | The Times
Best Buy’s new CEO plans smaller stores to fuel future growth | CNBC
Steve Ells on Chipotle’s counter service evolution and future | Wall Street Journal
Back-to-school denim campaigns start earlier as shopping season stretches longer | Modern Retail
Skims promotes Tracy Nguyen to chief communications officer | WWD
How luxury brands can optimise content strategy for AI misunderstandings | Harvard Business Review
The hidden dress tax eating into media workers’ salaries | La Fronde
New Balance reveals the slow path to becoming a fast footballer | Creative Review
Startups
London hacker house rejects Silicon Valley burnout culture | TechCrunch
Billionaire nets $360 million selling psychedelic company to Eli Lilly | Forbes
Rejected by every VC, she built a £36m beauty empire | Evening Standard
Are Grüns and Rhode outliers or a new blueprint for billion-dollar brands? | Beauty Independent
AI startup Corgi opens 24/7 cafe in London | Sifted
Tech
Why workers are nostalgic for life before AI | Financial Times
Can smart glasses be designed without sacrificing user privacy | Wired
Why singles are using spreadsheets to optimise their dating lives | Wall Street Journal
Money
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens to $355 million, second-biggest weekend ever | The Hollywood Reporter
Spider-Man film sets record with $309 million in brand deals | Forbes
Zuckerberg writes: Why AI must be accessible to everyone | Wall Street Journal
Meta shares fall as Zuckerberg pitches AI agents to sceptical investors | Financial Times
Gymshark founder Ben Francis takes stake in US private equity firm | The Guardian
Europe needs €20 billion public investment to build competitive AI models | Maddyness
Align Ventures closes oversubscribed $125 million fund for consumer brands | Business Wire
Design
How AI-generated design aesthetics are reshaping internet culture | The New Yorker
Heinz explores mayo vending machine to beat AI slop | It’s Nice That
Ikea brings portable, stackable furniture to renters | Wallpaper
Happiness
How looksmaxxing became a form of grief and self-care | The New York Times
We’re too scared for sex, according to Esther Perel | The Atlantic
Why your life outside work matters more than you think | Fast Company
20 things to watch, read and stream this August | Wall Street Journal
If someone came to mind while you were reading, send it to them. That’s my whole marketing plan.
Stay gold 🙏🏻