Haaland's Ponytail Lawsuit & a $60 Loaf

Welcome to The Uncertain Times. This edition is really about ownership. Who owns the checkout, the AI answer, the audience, the hairstyle, the daily ritual, the launch calendar and the conversation about price? Some brands are steadily building credibility, some are borrowing someone else’s and one is being sued over it.

Here’s what’s worth knowing:

Haaland takes Norwegian Air to court over a ponytail
A $60 loaf of rye causes controversy
A lot can happen over coffee (and a coffee stain can leave a mark)
No clicks, no site visit: Meta’s Muse buys straight from Shopify
John Lewis launches a vodcast to win in AI search
Threads is catching X
Apple staggers the iPhone launch

Haaland takes Norwegian Air to court over a ponytail

During the World Cup, we reported on Norwegian Air’s logo bet with British Airways and the wave of brands riding Erling Haaland’s ponytail for free. Now, the airline’s ponytail post has ended up in court.

Haaland and his company York Promotions Ltd have sued Norwegian Air Shuttle in the Oslo District Court. The case centres on a World Cup post showing one of its planes with Haaland’s blond ponytail added, captioned “We’ve never looked more Norwegian”. His lawyer says it’s about the unlawful use of his distinctive characteristics to sell flight tickets, and reports say it also cites his registered trademarks.

Image: Norwegian Air

The post has since been deleted. Norwegian says it received a lawsuit that it does not understand and describes its summer posts as spontaneous cheering for the national team. A pre-trial meeting is due on 9 October. Haaland has since cut his hair, but it remains a signature part of his identity.

The StrategiQ takeaway: Reactive marketing has a line, and it sits somewhere between joining a cultural moment and using a real person’s face or features to sell your product. This is a Norwegian case, but it’s a good prompt to add a likeness check to your campaign approval flows. Athletes and their agents might police this kind of thing harder come the next big tournament.

A $60 loaf, a viral queue and a Lidl truck

Rye by Martin Auer, the first US outpost of an Austrian bakery chain, opened in SoHo in early September selling one type of bread: a 3.3lb loaf of 100% rye sourdough for $60, with half and quarter loaves at $30 and $15. Co-owner Tim Auer defends the price as craft: imported organic flour, 24 hours of fermentation. The same loaf costs about €13 in Graz. The price went viral anyway, with millions of views, long queues and plenty of outrage. The Guardian’s read is that the frenzy is as much about novelty and social currency as bread.

Then Lidl joined in. It parked a digital billboard truck outside the bakery reading “$60 for bread? Way cheaper: $3.99”. It added a QR code and a map to its nearest store, and a second message pointing out that $60 buys 122 of its croissants at 49 cents each. Passers-by were sharing it before Lidl posted it itself.

Image: Lidl

The StrategiQ takeaway: A price can be a campaign. Rye’s number did the media buying, and Lidl’s take came from speed, place and a number: it showed up where the conversation was happening, within days, with a value message.

‘A lot can happen over coffee’ (and a coffee stain can leave a mark)

Two Indian coffee brands marked International Coffee Day on 1 October, the first since the UN General Assembly formally designated the date in March. The International Coffee Organization’s own theme was ‘Coffee is Part of the Solution’.

Café Coffee Day leaned into nostalgia. It framed the day as its own ‘Red Letter Day’ and wrote handwritten-style notes addressed to the coffee itself. The carousel traced everyday moments, from first sips and awkward first dates to quiet pauses and career decisions, as a reminder that a whole lot happened over coffee long before café culture went viral. A throwback to its 1996 tagline.

Third Wave Coffee, founded two decades later, took a visual route. Titled ‘The love for coffee leaves a mark’, its campaign turned the circular stains cups leave behind into graphic art: the groove of a vinyl record, the outline of a clock. Warm earthy tones and dry humour cast coffee as a life partner that is, frankly, overqualified for the job.

Image: Third Way Coffee

The StrategiQ takeaway: The incumbent and the challenger found the same blend from opposite directions. Coffee’s job isn’t the drink, it’s the moments around it. CCD could say “a lot can happen” because it has been there for thirty years, while Third Wave found a visual idea in the product’s own by-product. With the UN now behind the date, expect International Coffee Day to get more crowded next year, so build your idea early and make sure it’s one only you could tell.

The customer journey no longer has to touch your website

On 21 September, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke announced that Meta’s personal AI assistant, Muse, can now complete purchases across Shopify stores using Shop Pay, promising “an easy and delightful way to shop and check out with Muse”. Users give Muse a goal, it handles the research and product selection, and checkout happens inside the assistant once the user approves the purchase.

Image: Meta/Muse

The platforms are also picking sides. Amazon has blocked Muse, for example, and Shopify merchants can turn off if they wish to (it’s on by default for eligible stores). As Forbes put it, businesses still decide whether an AI agent gets through the door and reaches their customers.

The StrategiQ takeaway: If the purchase happens inside an assistant, there may be no site visit for your analytics to count, so measurement gets harder before it gets easier. Your product data now matters as much as your marketing, because the agent can only recommend what it can read. We’d expect other assistants to follow Muse, and agent-ready product feeds to become a standard line in ecommerce briefs within a year. For now, leaving direct checkout on or off is a deliberate choice between access and control of the final step.

John Lewis is making a show for AI as well as people

On 3 September, John Lewis launched ‘Gift List’, a social-first vodcast hosted by Angela Scanlon, with Louis Theroux as its first guest. It’s recorded in The Box Studio, a new content space in the Oxford Street flagship. It runs for six episodes released every three weeks, on YouTube, johnlewis.com, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, with social cut-downs alongside.

Image: John Lewis/Gift List

On the surface it’s a gifting chat show. Underneath, it’s a bet on where customers will look next. Outgoing managing director Peter Ruis says the share of customers searching for products through AI tools has risen from 0.3% to 2.5% in a year.

Video is a smart way in. YouTube is one of the sources AI answers lean on most, ranking second only to Reddit in Peec AI’s analysis of 30 million citations, helped by its transcripts and descriptions. That’s driving a new metric marketers are starting to ask about: Share of Model, or how often, how prominently and how favourably a brand appears in AI-generated answers.

John Lewis also has proof of concept in the family. Its sister business Waitrose says its Dish podcast has passed one billion combined downloads, views and listens including short-form clips since 2022, and its May 2026 research found 78% of listeners said it encouraged them to shop at Waitrose more often.

The StrategiQ takeaway: Content isn’t only written for people any more. A show that answers customer questions can double as fuel for AI search, but only if machines can read it. Think searchable titles, full transcripts, product links and supporting pages. We’d expect Share of Model to start appearing in reporting packs within the next year. Start now by tracking a fixed set of category prompts, alongside AI referral traffic and branded search.

Threads is catching X

In September, on Alex Heath’s Sources podcast, Mark Zuckerberg said Threads is “either bigger than X at this point” or very soon about to be. The numbers are close but contested. Meta announced 500 million monthly active users for Threads on 16 June, while a SpaceX prospectus put X at around 550 million in May. X doesn’t publish audited figures, so any comparison is shaky. Zuckerberg himself still posts on X to reach tech and AI communities.

Instagram has helped Threads along, with the app signposted to existing users across Instagram and Facebook.

Meanwhile, the UK is posting less. Ofcom found that 49% of adult social media users now post, share or comment, down from 61% in 2024, as use becomes more passive and cautious.

The StrategiQ takeaway: As Social Media Today notes, the specific audience on each app matters more than its overall size. Our prediction is that Threads passes X on self-reported users within the year, while X holds its grip on breaking news and tech talk. So don’t switch, split: test Threads with content you already make, and see how your audience engages.

Apple staggers the iPhone launch

On 9 September, in its first keynote under new CEO John Ternus, Apple launched the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max alongside its first foldable, the iPhone Duo.

Image: Apple/iPhone Duo

There was no standard iPhone 18, which is expected in spring 2027. The launch itself was staggered. The Pro and Pro Max went on sale on 18 September from £1,199 and £1,299, a price rise linked to a global component shortage, especially memory. The Duo follows later, with pre-orders at 1pm on 16 October and sale from 23 October, starting at £1,999, or £700 above the Pro Max.

The StrategiQ takeaway: Apple has turned one launch into three news cycles, September, October and spring, each with its own hero. The halo product takes the attention while the Pro carries the volume. For anyone planning around the iPhone, whether accessories, networks, trade-in or retail, Q4 now has staggered windows, and with no standard iPhone 18 this Christmas, the entry-level story is last year’s models.

The StrategiQ takeaway

Every story in this edition is a fight over who owns something: a checkout, an answer, an audience, a hairstyle, a ritual… Some brands earned their claim over decades, like CCD and John Lewis. Some are building one, like Shopify and Apple. And one stands accused of borrowing one that wasn’t theirs to use. Strategy is knowing which you’re doing before the moment arrives.

IT’S ALWAYS STRATEGY.

Sources

Image of Rye: Rye by Martin Auer, a rye bread bakery in lower Manhattan. Photograph: Robert K Chin/Alamy

Norwegian Air vs. Haaland, a $60 Loaf & a Foldable iPhone