THIS WEEK SUMMED UP
AI bots are selling us sneakers, Coach gets cozy with college kids, and MrBeast is hawking chocolate. It's a weird world out there.
Read Time: 2 minutes and 15 seconds
THREE PARTS THAT MATTER
MARKETING
Remember those "Congratulations, you've won a sweepstakes!" emails that were always too good to be true? Well, thanks to first-party data and clever marketing, this one from MrBeast's Feastables might actually be real. Sure, you've gotta follow, comment, and tag friends just like always. But, by connecting the campaign to your phone number, they're making it a whole lot tougher for spammers to win. It's a smart way to collect valuable data and make those marketing dollars work harder. Should all of your contest entry forms look like this from now on?
CULTURE
Forget the metaverse: Coach thinks college campuses are the hot new place to connect with Gen Z. The brand is launching a roving pop-up experience called "Coach on Campus" that will visit 12 schools around the country. Expect photo booths, vintage Coach bags for students to customize, and of course, plenty of merch for sale. But Coach isn't the first to go old-school – last year, McDonald's did a similar activation and generated a ton of buzz on TikTok. The lesson here? Sometimes, going back to basics is the key to getting ahead.
TECHNOLOGY
It seems like everyone's got an ad platform these days. Home Depot, Paramount, even freakin' Discord... they all want a piece of that sweet, sweet advertiser money. And with data privacy becoming a bigger and bigger issue, it makes sense that brands want to target customers who are already using their services. But here's the thing to watch: if your Discord feed suddenly starts filling up with irrelevant promos, engagement's going to tank. And what happens when the ads don't work? Will these platforms go full-on subscription model?
ALSO ON OUR RADAR