Brand Marketing

How To Draw 20M+ Visitors With a Branded Metaverse Experience

No need to wait for Meta’s metaverse! Peek inside the process Kimb Luisi and Dan Young used to build Alo Yoga’s virtual mindfulness retreat in Roblox.

Mae Rice

The Do’s and Don’ts of Marketing Pet Cloning

How would you market a pet cloning company? That’s the question ViaGen Pets had to answer when it pivoted to the domestic market. Spoiler alert: think influencers, not vets!

Kelsey Donk

Applebee’s Worst Media Buy

A festive Applebee’s ad appeared picture-in-picture in live news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and the jarring placement went viral. Here’s how Applebee’s and CNN responded.

Mae Rice

3 Non-Garbage Ways To Use NFTs in Marketing

NFTs might feel like the latest scam, but they can help marketers build customer loyalty, find new audiences, and partner with like-minded businesses. Seriously!

Kelsey Donk

The 10 Most-Downloaded Apps of 2021

Which mobile apps did people download the most in 2021? Spoiler alert: not Zoom. People were more interested in streaming and watching on mobile than meeting.

Kelsey Donk

Disney Plans To “Build Community”… Literally

This week, Disney unveiled plans for Storyliving, a Disney-branded Palm Springs town. It’s pretty! But Twitter also found it pretty creepy. Here’s why.

Mae Rice

Inside Tushy's Super Bowel Monday Success

Not every brand can (or should) post eyebrow-raising poop jokes on social media. But bidet brand Tushy is an exception. We asked them about their recent Super Bowel contest.

Kelsey Donk

The Pros and Cons of the Adidas Sports Bra Tweet

When Adidas tweeted an image of 25 people’s bare breasts to promote its new sports bra range, they turned heads. But was the tweet really a good idea?

Kelsey Donk

The New Mainstream, According to Super Bowl Ads

Super Bowl ads cost so much and reach so many people that they’re usually “basic.” In 2022, turns out cryptocurrencies and electric vehicles are basic!

Mae Rice

Social Media Marketing

What the Heck Is Taylordle?!

Wordle is having a moment — and as of last week, we have a Taylor Swift-themed version. Does that make branded word games the future of marketing? Not exactly.

Mae Rice

3 Perks of Working With Pete Davidson, According to Rowing Blazers

Davidson isn’t just a comedian and honorary Kardashian — he’s a model who can make a fashion campaign pop, says Rowing Blazers art director Georgia Gray.

Kelsey Donk

3 Ways West Elm Caleb Boosted West Elm’s Brand

This week, the villain of TikTok is a (self-described) West Elm furniture designer. Could his internet infamy possibly be a good thing for West Elm’s brand?

Mae Rice

How Shein Broke Away from the Competition

Fast fashion retailer Shein outpaces top competitors like Zara, H&M and ASOS — in terms of search traffic, at least. Here are three ways Shein wins at search.

Mae Rice

3 Things Amanda Natividad Learned From SparkToroing Her Own Twitter

Natividad is VP of Marketing at SparkToro — but this was her first time using her company’s audience research tool on her audience of 58K. Here are her top takeaways.

Mae Rice

How Jordans Transcended Ads

Nike could run paid campaigns for its Air Jordans, but we haven't seen a paid Jordans ad in years (or ever). MarketerHire asked sneakerheads why that might be.

Mae Rice

5 Notes on Hiring and Retaining Marketers from Kat Cole, President of Athletic Greens

Kat Cole has hired marketers at an enterprise — Focus Brands, Cinnabon's and ~6,800 other brands' parent company — and she’s about to do the same at a nutrition startup. Here’s what she’s learned.

Mike Thomas

What’s More Popular: McDonald’s or Taco Bell?

Do people go to Google more often looking for Big Macs or for a Cheesy Gordita Crunch? We dug into the Google Trends data — and it was more complicated than we expected!

Mae Rice

Are 48-Hour Ads the New Normal?

Ryan Reynolds’ agency turned around Peloton’s viral (and now vanished) Mr. Big ad in two days. Can other creatives follow this playbook — and should they?

Mae Rice

E-commerce

Are Marketers Behind the Cigarette Boom of 2020?

Cigarette sales have been declining steadily since the early aughts, but they perked up in 2020. Maybe that’s because cigarette marketers tried some new techniques.

Kelsey Donk

Content Marketing

Spotify Wrapped — But Turned Up to 11

The copywriting on Spotify users’ end of year playlists inspired some fanfiction this week. It was so highkey fire that we had to lightly censor it! 😳

Mae Rice

How Ocean Spray Does Thanksgiving

Cranberry sauce and Ocean Spray are basically synonyms — and both gets a surge of attention every Thanksgiving. But Ocean Spray takes a laid back approach to the holiday, and lets fans' tweets do the talking.

Mae Rice

Why Is Klarna Growing So Fast?

The whole buy-now-pay-later sector is growing, but Klarna’s on another level. Since January 2020, monthly spend on the platform more than 14Xed. Why?

Mae Rice

Why Isn’t Peloton’s Cult Brand Enough?

Peloton had a stellar 2020 — but 2021 hasn’t been as kind to the exercise bike company. Even a culty brand with a devoted fan base has to answer to larger market forces.

Kelsey Donk

Growth Marketing

3 Ways Augmented Reality Can Transform Print Marketing

If you want to launch a print marketing campaign and you also want to make engagement easy, scannable codes are a good solution. But QR codes aren’t for every brand. AR print marketing could be the answer.

Kelsey Donk

From Google to Facebook: Lessons From the Tech Giant’s Rebrand

Facebook’s expected rebrand won’t be the first time a major tech company has changed name and structure to appease investors and protect its properties. But will what worked for Google work for Facebook?

Kelsey Donk

3 Ways Popeyes Got “Hottie Sauce” Right

Megan Thee Stallion just launched a new “Hottie Sauce” with Popeyes. Why is it so perfect? We asked our in-house expert on celebrity-branded fast food.

Mae Rice

How the CMO of Skillshare Built a High-Performing Brand-First Marketing Team

Forbes recently named Liana Douillet Guzmán one of the 50 most innovative CMOs working. One reason she deserves the title? She invested in brand — and freelancers — before it was cool.

Tracey Wallace

Content Marketing

Is Mayo the New Oatmilk?

The suggestion of drinking mayonnaise or adding it to coffee gives people an almost immediate gag-reflex. That might be why it works as an engagement-driving strategy.

Mae Rice

Can Promoted Tweets Boost Your Personal Brand?

Liron Shapira, co-founder and CEO of Relationship Hero, has been running paid Twitter tests to find out. He let us peek inside his experiment. (Current cost per follower? $50.)

Mae Rice

How REI, Allbirds and Bearaby Do Black Friday

Black Friday doesn’t have to be about slashing prices — and this year, supply chain slowdowns mean it kind of can’t be. Luckily, there’s an alternative playbook you can try.

Mae Rice

YouTube vs. the Super Bowl

If YouTubers get more views than the Super Bowl, is there any point in advertising during live events anymore? We dug into the pros and cons of each channel.

Kelsey Donk

How Bearaby Markets Its Cozy Weighted Blankets Year-Round

Bearaby's weighted blankets are most popular in winter — when paid ad prices are at their highest. That's a challenge the company's marketing team tackles with SEO, earned media, CRO, and... hedgehogs?!

Mae Rice

Chip and Joanna Gaines' Small-Town Turnaround Playbook

What comes to mind first when we say, "Waco, TX?" If it's Chip and Joanna Gaines, or the HGTV show "Fixer Upper," that's their expert rebrand at work.

Mae Rice

9 Skills Expert Brand Marketing Managers Must Have

Brand marketers can help your company connect with its target audience — and avoid ad campaigns that flop. But it takes a knack for competitive analysis, brand strategy and more.

Kelsey Donk

6 Signs It’s Time to Hire a Brand Marketing Manager

Should you hire a brand marketer before or after a product launch? Should they pave the way for a growth marketer — or vice versa? We asked a panel of experts when (and how!) to hire this key role.

Steve Relyea

Move Over, Regular Fish!

Tinned fish has suddenly become the official food of "hot girls" everywhere — and marketing has to be involved. But who's the marketing push coming from? We did some research.

Mae Rice

How Magic Spoon Competes with Big Cereal

Cereal has been a sleepy category for years. Enter: Magic Spoon, a DTC brand that disrupted cereal as we know it, and grew 100%+ last year. Here's how they did it.

Mae Rice

How One Clorox Leader Uses Freelancers to Keep Marketing Teams Agile

Jackson Jeyanayagam took The Clorox Company's DTC organization from 0 to 60, literally— he scaled it 60 people over two years. How? Hint: Mixing freelancers and full-time hires.

Tracey Wallace

Inside Oat Milk's Ascent

Search interest in oat milk hit a major peak in March this year, according to Google Trends. What happened? Well, turns out Starbucks is more powerful than the Super Bowl.

Mae Rice

How Proud Is Your Brand?

When we asked if your brand’s logo “goes rainbow” in June, only 33% of you said yes — 67% said you skip it. Here's why you said you go rainbow, or don't. Some good, and some very, very bad reasons included.

Mae Rice

Social Media Marketing

Should Shopify Merchants Care About the Latest Integrations?

Shopify has been making headlines for recent partnerships. Investors are excited. But what do these updated integrations actually mean for Shopify merchants’ marketing?

Mae Rice

TikTok's Superpower Might Be Marketing Beauty Products

How did The Ordinary achieve its sky-high valuation? Well, it helps that the brand's products have gone viral on TikTok (where it's also verified, natch). We got Doe Lashes founder Jason Wong's take on why TikTok's so powerful in the beauty space.

Mae Rice

How to Rediscover Product-Market Fit Again (and Again) (and Again)

Pre-pandemic, Ministry of Supply was building a modern workwear brand full of crisp-yet-travel-ready clothing — a brand that COVID could’ve crushed. How did they live to tell the tale? It all starts with spotting the four horsemen of a market shift.

Mae Rice

Patio Furniture Is Hot This Winter?!

Most outdoor furniture retailers don’t increase marketing spend in winter months. So why did Outer, a DTC outdoor furniture company, double down on holiday marketing last winter? Founder Jiake Liu explains his strategy that led to millions in sales.

Mae Rice

Inside John Deere's UGC Machine

On Instagram and TikTok, everyone wants to show off their John Deere tractor. Why? And what does that mean for the in-house marketing team? We asked John Deere's director of PR and social, Jen Hartmann.

Mae Rice

Amanda Goetz on Pivoting from Marketer to Founder, Studying MLMs and Building a Community

Goetz has hopped from VP of marketing at The Knot to the founder’s seat at CBD startup House of Wise. We chatted about her career, microdosing and more.

Mae Rice

Inside the Rebrand That Got Everyone to Move to Miami

As remote work goes mainstream, cities need competitive brands more than ever. Miami’s Republican mayor, Francis Suarez, is seizing the moment and using a multi-channel strategy to reinvent his city.

Mae Rice

Brandon Rhoten on Building Wendy’s Award-Winning Social Team and Transforming Fast Food Marketing

We interviewed the Potbelly CMO and Wendy’s alum about Potbelly's pandemic advertising, the rise of Twitter and the role of brand positioning in social media marketing.

Mae Rice

The Essential 7-Step Brand Development Playbook, According to Brand Marketing Experts

Too many entrepreneurs — and established brands — skip brand development, thinking they can coast on product-market fit. But brand development is key for expanding your audience and building loyalty. Here's how the pros do it.

Kelsey Donk