THIS WEEK SUMMED UP

THREE PARTS THAT MATTER

Marketing

Culture

Technology

WHAT ELSE WE ARE READING

THIS WEEK SUMMED UP

| 2024 marketing is already about brands making culture (not ads) as influencer partnerships start to fizzle. Plus, there is a big email shakeup coming on Feb 1st - get ready!

Read time: 2 minutes and 14 seconds
THREE PARTS THAT MATTER
MarketingGiven most consumers can sniff out a half-baked idea, it’s more important than ever to understand why your brand exists. But how do you market that brand when the strategies of yore are increasingly irrelevant?Today, per Ana Andjelic, the Global Chief Brand Officer responsible for ESPRIT's renaissance, brands can’t just insert themselves into culture with a well-placed spot or flashy influencer campaign. Brands now have to create culture. This calls for inventing and amplifying the moments you want to be a part of rather than waiting to hop onto something already happening. This bottoms-up approach turns the things we buy into how we interact with culture at-large. Like Andejlic says:The new brand marketing is less about communicating (just) the brand identity and values and more about activating this identity and values as a consistent, encompassing, and entertaining brand world that people aspire to be part of and identify with.
CultureThe professionalization of influencing is starting to tear it apart at the seams. Let’s take two recent examples. Ur-influencer Chiara Ferragni whose success launched countless clones is facing criminal charges for partnering on a product  (an Italian Christmas cake called pandoro) whose proceeds she said would go to charity. You can see where this is going...In a similarly strange vein, Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, hired a self-avowed non-reader, model Marc Sebastian, to ride Royal Caribbean’s nine-month Ultimate World Cruise. Audiences are enjoying his cruise coverage which he compares to being at an Olive Garden (yikes) but is it selling books? Apparently, not really. In the first week the book only sold about 50 more copies than it had before the partnership.Product-market fit is crucial, sure. But influencer-product fit isn’t far behind.
TechnologyBig changes for email are coming into effect on February 1st (yes, Thursday, there is a day left to action 😵‍💫). Google and Yahoo are working to stop spam and phishing attacks, so as of Thursday, Google (including Google Workspace) and Yahoo inboxes won’t accept emails if they don’t fit certain requirements. This affects brands and individuals. If you haven’t updated this, this is what to spend the next 24 hours updating (Shout out to Dan at Inbox Collective for the rundown).
WHAT ELSE WE ARE READING