Portland emptied out on Sunday. My neighbors left at four in the morning for a field outside Salem with a cooler and a full tank. The cart I get lunch from taped a note to the window that said back Tuesday, eclipse.
I stayed and watched it from my roof at ninety nine percent, which is not the same thing, and everyone who drove to Madras will tell you so for the rest of their lives.
Then yesterday morning I opened Twitter. There it was, four hundred times. The sun. The moon. A logo sliding across the sun in the brand color, with a caption about how some things are worth looking up for.
Almost every one of those posts was a brand shouting its own name at the sky.
A cultural moment is not a permission slip, and the fact that everyone is looking up does not mean anyone agreed to look at you.
We have been chasing this since Oreo dunked in the dark four years ago, and we learned the wrong lesson from it. What made that work was not speed. It was that a cookie in a blackout is a real thought about a real product. Speed is what the case study measured, so speed is what every social calendar has optimized for since.
Three brands had an actual reason to be in the eclipse. Warby Parker gave away certified viewing glasses in its stores, which is not a post, it is the company doing the exact thing it exists to do. Krispy Kreme made a chocolate glazed doughnut, changing the product rather than the profile picture. Chiquita hung a giant banana in the sky and called it the Chiquita Banana Sun, which is absurd, expensive, and completely committed, and absurd plus committed has always been a defensible position.
Notice what those three share. Each one did something. The other three hundred and ninety seven said something, and saying something during a moment everybody is already inside is the definition of noise.
The test I use before any of these is short. Would the moment be worse without us. Do we have a product, a service, or a physical thing to offer here. Can we still say this on Thursday when the moment is over. If the answers are no, no, and no, then you do not have a campaign, you have an urge.
Each one did something. The other three hundred and ninety seven said something, and saying something during a moment everybody is already inside is the definition of noise.
Karaoke was last night in Southeast, sticky floor, the host who calls everyone baby. He dedicated my song to the eclipse and then admitted he slept straight through it. That got a bigger reaction than anything I saw on a feed Monday, and he did not need a graphic to get it.