September Recap: Best ad campaigns, Important updates and strategic insights
This Week: A list of marketing updates, OOH ad of the month, brand insights and Influencer drama. 🧦
October is here, the best month of the year. Why? 🎂 and Diwali.
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Art Direction: Best OOH Ad of the month
This ad campaign was voted as best OOH campaign of the month by System1. The brand executed this campaign really well but it’s possibly part of an ongoing art direction trend: pattern building using camera angles + multitudes and engaging background. Below are ad campaigns that could have been used as a references for the Cornetto ad campaign. They could be also be future references for your ad campaign.
In partnership with Dash Hudson
What the Best Brands Are Doing on Social Media
Dash Hudson’s research shares A.P.C., GANNI and UGG are three brands that experiment with different formats, trends, and creator collaborations and see high Entertainment Scores on TikTok.
A.P.C. does product-focused content that matches the aesthetic.
GANNI uses camera angles and TikTok Text-on-video/POV format very frequently.
UGG’s content features many fashion and TikTok icons. Their recent social campaign for #UGG season uses a remix of Low by Flo Rida and T-Pain. It’s quite engaging.
e.l.f. Cosmetics outperforms average video views on Youtube for beauty brands by 145%.
Their campaigns are simply better. The recent campaigns “Divine Skintervention” and “Hairpin” music collaboration with Charlotte Rose Benjamin are good for long-term success on Youtube.
Stüssy, Oh Polly, Helmut Lang and Percival Menswear are top fashion performers on Instagram. Thanks to strong visual game, Stussy outperforms the average Engagement Rate for fashion brands by 133%.
Brands are starting to focus more on Instagram stories.
Dash Hudson shares, “Instagram Stories continue to be a powerful tool for engagement, as demonstrated by impressive reach (14.1K) and completion rates (92%) that are high regardless of follower count.”
* it’s free.
Is brand nostalgia degrading legacy work and emotions?
J.Crew brought back their iconic catalogues.
It seems like a good move until you read news like Elite college students who can’t read books. If we consider the shift in reading patterns and role of social media, It would be hard for J.Crew to replicate the same effects and emotions for a brand. (more)
Fashion Brands like JACQUEMUS and Loewe have turned IG and other social platforms into editorial magazines. Is there even a void to fill? Or the brand gave into a small and short-term demand.
I’m happy about this comeback but it might be another case of super consumers ruining the brand image/emotions for a bigger share of buyers.
Wrangler and Pepsi taking a nostalgic approach with help of Ridley Scott.
Pepsi recreating Gladiator ad campaign with Gen-Z sports and music stars.
Wrangler paying homage to their Western Heritage in their first global advertising campaign since 2021.
Both campaigns aren’t bad or special but the nostalgia play isn’t really working. The campaigns that performed better on social media for Pepsi was ‘Chase Cars’ and Wrangler’s Beer washed jeans collaboration with Coors Banquet is possibly the insight-driven campaign.
Life cereal also brought back Little Mikey to ride wave of nostalgia.
It would have worked better without the corporate soundtrack. As the popular and nostalgic Mikey ad campaign felt like a TV show moment, more emphasis on people using ‘Hey Mikey’.
A simple look at the Youtube comments section of this commercial will share how the focus should have been on people using ‘Hey Mikey’ in an everyday casual conversation.
Ocean Spray and Mean Girls movie anniversary collaboration for social media was perfectly nostalgic and cringe. They made the right decision to invite Kevin G.
Nostalgia campaigns needs a % of cringe to highlight the change of time.
Maybelline NY bringing back its iconic 90’s Jingle “Maybe it’s Maybelline” with campaign starring Gigi Hadid, Storm Reid, Peggy Got and Shay Mitchell.
No comment. It’s simply an insight-driven campaign and brand fix. An Opinion Matters research, funded by Maybelline in UK shares, “52% of UK consumers find it hard to get a catchy ad jingle out of their head, while four in ten say some ad tunes can have them singing along all day (41%).”
Nostalgia is everywhere. It’s about time we call it out when it is ruining brand for existing buyers and fans.
The Influencer turned musician: KSI vs Addison Rae vs Yung Filly
Two songs that were, and still are all over FYP on TikTok and Instagram: Addison Rae’s Diet Pepsi and KSI’s Thick of It.
It’s important to look at how two different creators have tried to build their music careers. KSI’s core audience has always been supportive and clear about his music (MEH to OK). When he started publishing music (post-Paul brothers beef), the fans weren’t proud of the work but it wasn’t bad enough to make him go mute. The opposite was the case for Addison Rae, Obsessed was trending on TikTok for a minute but overall feedback from the audience resulted in her being inactive as a musician (100%) and creator (50%).
Fast forward to 2024, KSI is on the way to become most trolled creator and musician of the year. Meanwhile Addison Rae’s Diet Pepsi is getting love and her new network of creator and celeb friends is benefitting her presence and brand.
What changed? The Time and Persona
Addison allowed herself to lose the mainstream audience that was only watching for the drama or due to FOMO. Meanwhile KSI with his friends became more and more mainstream. (Brands should try this during niched product launch, creating new mini pages)
On videos trolling KSI’s song, you will find this comment, “Honestly, if it had a different beat, different melody, different lyrics, different sound effects, different artist, different theme, different message, and a different genre, it could've gone hard.” People doing different versions of the songs are getting comments like ‘It was just KSI’ or ‘You own the song now’.
It’s KSI’s identity affecting his product to a huge extent. He is not accepting the criticism or jokes. By acting like Michael Scott from The Office in ‘Koi Pond’ episode, he is stretching the joke.
KSI is also part of Lunchly controversy and he is not taking it well. In response to criticism against their brand, KSI tried to be cheezy and witty about Tom Holland, An Actor and Recovering Alcoholic launching Bero, a non-alcoholic beer brand.
The creative direction and music production differences are evident: Addison's approach to music style has become more mainstream and present, while KSI's music and video style seems stuck in 2017-19.
The roads have separated. It's rare to find creators with female vs. male audiences discussed together, while the media continuously discusses the alpha-male and trad wife creators and their audiences. It's important to address how typical creators and their interests are alienating and widening the gap between future audiences.
What do we have when it comes to creators and discussing their influence? A list of articles like this 50 Influential Creators, filled with simply nothing, it says influence everywhere but where are the details about influence?
This explains the creator-side reason for the different responses to KSI and Addison Rae's music, even though the output is pretty much the same: mid. This isn't my personal view; there's an ongoing conversation about music quality and the decline of pop music, with new Gen-Z music stars not meeting the standards of other musicians. Also, Gen-Z seems to prefer old music to current offerings.
To end, the main concern for marketers is to track creators' journeys and their impact on audiences to play it safe. Or, you can ignore all the details about who is or isn't the audience and end up like all the brands that recently collaborated with Yung Filly.
Mark Twain said “education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”
Influencer vetting and partnerships are all about unlearning what you have learned from the mainstream and existing audiences of a creator.
The personalities and actions of most creators aren't similar to Yung Filly, an influencer-turned-musician with recent sexual assault allegations. However, there aren't infinite people on social media; there's always overlap. Brands should track this and the behavior of those audiences.
The Death of Online Criticism
Criticism of Art, Media, and People exists by default. It's an evergreen phenomenon.You can say there is too much criticism in the world. But very few are accepting it or using it to be self-aware or better.
Who's to blame? People who scream, "There is an audience for everything," and more… That's partially the reason why Megalopolis, J. Cole, and KSI's new track exists.
1. Megalopolis: Francis Ford Coppola says “I Have Nothing Left to Lose”
This video really opens you up to the messy process behind the making of Megalopolis. Even though the film looks like a weird dream you have after a hangover, the criticism of the movie will never grasp the real impact it had on the artist: Coppola. Sometimes artists are in too deep to consider what critics think, because it doesn't matter.
2. J.Cole: Addressing the criticism too much.
As an artist, you should consume and address criticism carefully. Never let it overtake your creative process. We have J. Cole as the strongest example of 2024. A big yet humble mistake he made twice was to address the cultural criticism too clearly and late + early.
When he shared that his heart and soul weren't into beefing with Kendrick Lamar, the culture was mostly nice to him for being honest and learning from criticism. But J. Cole came back this week with another track, and the response hasn't been nice. Why is that?
J. Cole's not wrong for addressing his feelings, but he is reviving dead criticism by addressing it. And he is giving the critics more power. A critic doesn't win when their message resonates with others. They win when the artist addresses their criticism. It's probably why Fantano is the biggest music critic of our generation.
Artists continue to seek validation from critics and culture. You don't need validation; you need feedback. That's what you need to learn from J. Cole's story: stop seeking validation from critics (linkedIn marketing gurus) or people around you. You need feedback, not validation. If you are looking for a deeper dive into J. Cole’s Port Antonio drama, check The Company Man, F.D. Signifier, and Professor Sky. (Fantano was being a J. Cole hater, no insights.)
3. Pitchfork & Genius: The Death of Criticism vs Work.
After Condé Nast acquired Pitchfork, an article titled "Pitchfork & The Death of Criticism" caused a little bit of drama.
The vague point of the article was that everyone is a critic, thanks to algorithms. Here's a quote from the article: "The decline of the critic mirrors the decline of the mediums they cover. Music and film are industries whose relative cultural value has dipped, thus their critics' cultural influence has plummeted."
Forget the death of critics. Why is the cultural value of music and film dropping? Aren't we in an era of creators leading the world? Music and films should have a stronger hold on culture. Well…
The creator economy has been a VC project to a huge extent, Substack Co-founder
shared his thoughts on Creators’ Economy. It's filled with people who think they can do a better job than real musicians or screenwriters. The popular critics aren't losing influence; they are losing platform at the same time as artists. This brings me to Genius, the music lyrics platform. While we are struggling to platform new artists and they aren't reaching a stage of influence, Genius and the overall lyrics breakdown culture are changing how people think about music and artists.Open Mike Eagle did a great video about why lyrics breakdowns aren't healthy and why people need to find peace with their own interpretations. I suggest watching it to get a deeper dive into the "Genius" problem.
4. The Death of Literary Criticism: Social Media Version
Explaining the decline in literary criticism in an Instagram post is impossible. I suggest reading the works of Terry Eagleton or watching his lecture on "The Death of Criticism" available on YouTube. Skipping the in-depth discourse.
What has caused a decline in literary criticism on the Internet is the growing trend of people defining themselves through literature and aesthetics. More and more people are either in an affair with literature or they oppose it completely.
You have fast fashion-coded literature readers (#BookTok) and productivity-coded readers (Haley Pham) vs. people that read nothing last year: WaPo shares 46% of Americans finished zero books last year and 5% read just one. These 3 groups dominate online literature discourse, meanwhile people who are learning or doing literary criticism are losing platform.
First, they don't have the platforms to voice their criticism concisely as they grow as literature students. (Goodreads isn't built for that)
Second, accessing criticism from the past or present isn't easy. Half of it is behind paywalls, and very often you have to scroll past 100s of reviews to reach something good on websites like JSTOR. Or you end up using Sci-Hub.
When you learn how hard it is to access and platform criticism, you find it surprising that literary influencers and intellectuals on the Internet are pushing out reviews and criticism like it's nothing. Maybe they have a team. But literary criticism needs a different platform and deeper attention from the audiences.
The Obvious: Most people on Internet don’t have time to give constructive criticism. Or they believe it’s not worth their free time.
“Literature, like mathematics, is a language, and a language in itself represents no truth, though it may provide the means for expressing any number of them. But poets and critics alike have always believed in some kind of imaginative truth, and perhaps the justification for the belief is in the containment by the language of what it can express. The mathematical and the verbal universes are doubtless different ways of conceiving the same universe. The objective world affords a provisional means of unifying experience, and it is natural to infer a higher unity, a sort of beatification of common sense. But it is not easy to find any language capable of expressing the unity of this higher intellectual universe. Metaphys-ics, theology, history, law, have all been used, but all are verbal constructs, and the further we take them, the more clearly their metaphorical and mythical outlines show through.” - Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye.
The Best Ad Campaigns from September
Burger King’s campaign ‘Bundles of joy’, part of Foodfillment brand platform. The campaign was one of the best and niched. But lack of context caused some linkedIn marketers to post weird takes about the ad campaign.
Wear Wool, Not Waste: Woolmark’s campaign depicting zombie invasion of synthetic clothes. It was able to escape the criticism regarding wool production’s negative impact on sustainability.
Someone in my IG comments shared, “The wool one is some insane greenwashing if you actually understand the environmental footprint wool leaves compared to hemp, cotton, etc. Plastic is bad but holy fuck is it really not much worse than wide scale wool production like they are doing.”
KITH and giorgio armani’s archetype collection was a breath of fresh air in a jungle filled with unwanted brand-on-brand collaborations. It was perfection in terms of brand getting everything right + Old People Effect playing a role.
We are moving into October because I have to mention this ALD x Davide Baroncini collaboration. Storytelling wise, it’s a strong competitor for a brand collaboration fight against KITH x Armani.
Pizza Hut with MischiefUS entered their interactive marketing arc: Adding customer resumes on pizza boxes to help with Job applications + introduced new boxes that turns into a miniature table, based on data that shares 87% of Americans have ordered pizza during a move and 79% ate that pizza on the floor.
Mischief US, the agency consistently shares insights and thinking behind these campaigns on TikTok, watch here.
Choosing the perfect brand name
Picking a brand name is tricky. Most founders enter three different modes:
Audience-mode: Thinking too much about how others will perceive the name.
Messaging-mode: The name should mean convey a message.
Creative-mode: Going with their creative drive and nonword brand name ideas.
Most founders and marketers run away from creative ideas. Simply look at Instagram clothing brands and online marketing agencies. These businesses rarely have one-word brand names and often have audience-informing name structures. "X word + agency, studio, hustler, club, drinks, and more".
When these brands grow, they drop the audience-informing keyword. Recently, Monk.Media changed their name to Monk. Dunkin' dropping the "Donuts".
As a small or new brand, the two-word brand name structure works well. But it’s not the best. Message word + audience word = brand name. Later, you can drop the audience word. You need to be creative with your brand name. Be subjective and research for at least few weeks. Select 4-5 or more potential brand names and go through these 3 objective steps:
1. Make sure your brand follows at least one or two of these rules:
2. Evaluate where and how you are going to market your product/brand.
Your marketing messages and channels are going to determine the true meaning of your brand name. More importantly, your marketing needs to protect the brand name you have picked. Brand names, especially the nonword names, don't survive without great positioning and control.
3. Look into consumer and branding research for the final decision.
Here are few researches on my radar:
I. A recent branding research examined the effects of nickname branding on brand performance. NB is when brands adopt street/internet names in their marketing like BMW using Beemer in their brand marketing.
The author shares using a nickname in place of a formal name serves as an act of power redistribution, effectively signalling submission to consumers, thereby reducing the perception of a brand's power and weakening its performance They found purchase intentions declined when brands used nickname branding.
So, think twice before going for a concept like “formal + informal” branding names. Or just keep it formal, the informal version originates naturally from consumer perceptions.
II. The result of six studies across product categories and many other factors shares feminine brand names increase perceived warmth, which is associated with more favorable attitudes and increased choice for both real and fictitious brands.
III. The results of an older study measuring co-relation between brand names and ad recalls indicate that a suggestive brand name compared with a brand name that contains no product meaning-can acilitate recall of initially advertised benefit claims consistent in meaning with the brand name but inhibit recall of subsequently advertised benefit claims unrelated in meaning to the brand name.
IV. Results of another study indicate that products with brand names using sound symbolism to convey product-related information are liked better by consumers and positioned more strongly in their minds.
What we have overlooked in this post: Looking up trademarks, domain names and cultural usage of specific words is as important as other tasks mentioned here.
The Final Cut:
Identify your personal Intent; Audience vs Message vs Creative
Drop the audience-part of your two-word name once your brand is big and clear to the market.
When choosing a creative name, do the audience and market research to confirm how likely it is to be adopted or perceived as XYZ.
Follow one or two of the 9 rules on slide 5th.
A name is made perfect, it’s never born perfect.
A Tl;DR list of important marketing updates from September
The support for a U.S. TikTok ban continues to decline, and half of adults doubt it will happen.
The support might increase soon, all thanks to leaked documents revealed that users can become addicted in less or about 35 minutes of usage.
YouTube shared new tools and to protect creators and artists against AI copycats/deepfakes.
The Internet Archive lost its appeal over ebook lending. (TV)
They also got hacked, and it's making me angry because something so important to the Internet is/was under threat, and not enough people are aware of this problem.
AI worse than humans in every way at summarising information, government trial finds. (CK)
Instagram rolled out ‘turn on replies’ feature in broadcast channels. (TR)
Brands have been using it for community building: Refy Beauty.
42 state AGs endorsed federal plan to add warning labels on social media. (US)
IG also launched Story comments but most users aren’t adopting the feature.
Google Ads to deprecate enhanced CPC for search and display ads. (SL)
EssenceMediacomX got dissolved due to client losses.
Twitch revamped Ads manager tool with easier navigation. (TV)
Meta Marketing API adds Instagram reminder ads. (FB)
WPP acquires New Commercial Arts in potential £40m deal. (PN)
InMobi secured $100M for AI acquisitions ahead of IPO. (TC)
Australia threatened fines for social media giants enabling misinformation.
OpenAI introduced o1, a new LLM with ability to reason like Humans.
Reddit launched new ad manager updates and top ad library. (RT)
YouTube’s Pause Ads became accessible for all advertisers.
Hubspot rolled out ‘Breeze’ AI tools for marketing, sales and service. (SJ)
Substack introduces live video streaming in the app version. (SB)
Google’s NotebookLM became the hyped AI product in the town gets audio and YouTube support. (BG)
Meta releases Llama 3.2, a free model with visual skills. (WD)
LinkedIn expanded ‘Video’ tab to EU users. (TR)
Discord launches end-to-end encryption for audio and video chats. (HN)
Instagram introduced Teen accounts with built-In protection for teens. (IJ)
YouTube became reddit with launch of new community experience feature.
Microsoft announced a list of updates related to CoPilot: Pages, Excel with Python and more. (View)
X was declared too small for EU crackdown under DMA.
Deutsch LA rebrands as Deutsch with new logo and identity. (AG)
TikTok Search Ads Campaign launched in U.S. (TT)
X on web now allows you to search for the top posts across all communities. (HN)
Google Search completely kills the cache feature. (ST)
FT’s report highlighted X is losing users in the US and UK. (read)
Discord also became Reddit, introducing new feature ‘Forum Channels’, a space for organised conversations. (DS)
The Devil, Probably
Advertising has gotten more intrusive and less appreciative of the viewer. Wunderkid's 2023 research shows that 91% of shoppers won't purchase from brands that serve 'intrusive' ads. Most people believe ads are becoming good at targeting them but bad at impressing or connecting with their vision.
In a recent Morning Consult survey, 7 out of 10 consumers said the ads are irrelevant despite being targeted. Why is that?
Ad creatives are lacking universal truth and cultural insights.Brands have all the tools and references to gain attention, but they are hardly using philosophy to make people connect. A consumer knows that an ad campaign shows something of their interest or need. But they still hate it because brands are playing a psychological game instead of an ideological one.
We can't say the psycho ads don't work. But the decision is yours to make: Do you want only revenue, or love + revenue?
If you want both: Focusing on philosophy and culture will help you kill two birds with one stone.Your ads will be loved, and no one will blame your brand for killing trends.
Most brands make a mistake when incorporating the culture of XY generation in their ads. They add a recent practice of that culture, not philosophy. Using a new Gen-Z fashion aesthetic in their new ad campaign is called practice inclusion. Cultural inclusion would be Gen-Z's sustainable fashion approach and favorite brands.
A practice is fragile and temporary.
Culture isn't. Culture moves slowly. Practices originate every minute.
Most ads that feel intrusive yet irrelevant are based on recent practices of a culture. They capture attention through words like brat, demure, rizz, and diabolical. But they fall short on building a connection due to lack of cultural philosophy of XY generation. That's why people blame brands for killing a trend.
Here are a few ways to fix that problem:
1. Start tracking different practices of XY generation and observe what remains part of culture.
Every brand should regularly document internet culture and discuss every new trend internally.Most cultural practices we have today are recurring, and they simply take new shapes. If you have an idea of what they looked like before, you will simply do better. Like designers and art directors, marketers need their reference libraries.
2. Ask yourself, "How would you mention a trend in a classic music album?" Or take inspiration from classic albums referencing recent trends from the time of their release.
Music that references/represents an era or trend often faces disappearance. Take the pandemic as an example: there are so many artists and songs that are now out of my rotation, and possibly yours too.
Brand content also disappears like that when a trend is over, and people never recall it. To escape that, put yourself in classic album mode. Find unique ways to reference a trend; do a double-reference/ entendre: one old and one new.
3. Optimize where your brand shows up throughout the ad or content. The speed and positioning of your branding can change a lot of things.
Social should have a trend-related content strategy similar to a TV ad campaigns (ad with branding only at the end vs. ad with branding everywhere). You have a post ready for your close friends and another one for your new audience.
That's how you observe and find the balance between what's too brand-heavy and what's perfect for everyone. Test: zero brand mentions, one mention at the end, and integrated mention in the middle.
4. Focus on creative consistency and trust your existing partners.
A new research from System1 and IPA shares brands that remain consistent creatively achieve better growth. Also, trust your agency: Brands that maintain the same creative agency within a five-year period produce higher creative quality and grow their advertising distinctiveness.
The devil in advertising is laziness and ignorance. When brands rely too much on ad targeting tools and easy market penetration, they are only being intrusive and inconsiderate of the consumers.
When it comes to ad creative, brands shouldn't be ignorant or try to live in the cultural/trendy moment.Track and observe the cultural moment before you react, with your team, agency, or research firms.
Also, please hire people who are good at creating cultural strategies. Stop posting marketing jobs with "chronically online" as a skill/ requirement.
See you on Sunday.
Great article! So much information. Thank you for all your research. Yoi can tell you put a lot of time into putting all of this together.
insightful and clear, i really enjoyed reading this and will be sharing this with clients for conversations to happen (especially that point about love + revenue and the Cost of Change)