There’s no question that influencers are in high demand among marketers. But it’s not just Instagram posts and TikToks they’re after. Some are finding a backdoor to reaching their coveted followers: influencer-led podcasts.

Influencers have flocked to podcasts en masse in recent years, with some success:

• Logan Paul’s show is in the top 50 pods globally across platforms, according to Chartable.
• In 2018, podcast company Cadence13 teamed up with United Talent Agency to create Ramble, a podcast network dedicated exclusively to social media stars like Emma Chamberlain and the D’Amelio sisters.
• And The Bachelor franchise’s many contestants-turned-influencers practically have a podcast category of their own, given the number of pods they host.

Just like they post ads on social, these influencers also endorse brands on their podcasts, often evangelizing for 60 seconds or longer about the companies they choose to work with.

“These are real celebrities, and to be able to do these types of brand deals with them is unprecedented,” Lizzy Denihan, head of partnership strategy at Audacy’s Cadence13, told Marketing Brew. “When you’re getting your thoughts, your creative, your messaging read in their voice, there’s a huge value in that.”

That could be why its Ramble influencer network is “our most well sought-after category, right next to sports” for both direct response and brand advertisers, Denihan said.

Big picture: In the past few years, more advertisers have started showing interest in influencer-led shows, according to several hosts and the networks that sell their ads.

Click here to keep reading.—AM

If Eddie Revis, CMO of Magnolia Bakery, had a nickel for every time he’s been involved in a corporate rebrand, he’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?

In 2017, Revis was part of Chobani’s shift from a stark to a soft look. Now, he’s partnered with his former Chobani coworker Lisa Smith and her team at Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR) to redesign one of the most well-known bakeries in New York City—its first rebrand since 2007.

“The perspective I keep giving my team is like, that’s before the iPhone, so try to comprehend how long ago that was in the world of branding and identity and [visual] ID,” he told Marketing Brew.

A change will do you good

Before Revis became CMO of Magnolia Bakery a year ago, he said a rebrand wasn’t even on the table. Rather, he said the company was interested in what it could do to ensure success for the next 25 years. “Unfortunately, the identity and the brand guidelines and the visual identity that we had in place was not going to be a tool to help us get there faster.”

Looking ahead: Over the next 12–18 months, the look and feel of Magnolia Bakery will change.

• The brand has stayed true to its pastel color palette, but now uses a simpler, more modern font.
• They’ve also taken the storefront illustration that used to appear above the logo and moved it to the bakery’s shipping boxes.
• “We said, ‘Okay, if it’s Magnolia Bakery showing up at your doorstep, does an illustration of the bakery maybe make more sense there?’”

Read more about the refresh here, including the campaign Magnolia Bakery is rolling out to show off its new look.—KH

Women only want two things, and they’re disgusting: guys’ boxers and lots and lots of stuffed animals—at least according to underwear company Culprit’s tongue-in-cheek social video ad for its “LadyBoxers,” aka boxers made for women so they can stop stealing from their significant others’.

Throughout the ad, its star and narrator, Paige Elkington, tries to pour herself (and all of her stuffed animals) rosé, tells the audience not to take her word for it because, in her words, she’s drunk and plays tennis in her underwear.

As you could probably guess, there’s an interesting backstory behind many of these scenes. Marketing Brew chatted with Culprit underwear co-founders David Dinetz and Dylan Trussell (who directed and wrote the ad together), as well as Elkington, about how a cacophony of messy gal references came together into an ad that’s more than two minutes long.

The stuffed animals: Apparently, these little guys make appearances in other Culprit ads. “If you watch our bathing-suit commercial with Paige, she’s got a bunch of stuffed animals around her that she pulls into a hot tub with her,” Dinetz explained. But the reason why is more practical than whimsical. “We were shooting in this beautiful house that we got to use for free, but it was completely empty,” Dinetz continued. “We needed to fill it with something, and stuffed animals were super cheap to get, so that’s why we did that.”

The boyfriend: Turns out, the actor playing him started as Culprit’s head of customer service. “We found out he was a really talented actor. He has since worked his way up to COO of our company,” Trussell said.

The scene behind the scenes: No creative agencies were involved in the making of this ad…well, kind of. “Before we started our underwear brand, we ran a creative agency,” Trussell told us. “So all the creative was done in-house.”—PB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

EU: Heard of the Digital Services Act but are not sure what it is? A primer, here.

Always on: If you work in social media, here are seven tips for protecting your mental health.

Safe landing: Meta highlights the dos and don’ts of landing pages.

Get up close and personal: Whether in store or online, retail success requires personalized experiences. To figure out who’s getting it right, Sailthru surveyed 5K consumers and evaluated 500 brands for its 2022 Retail Personalization Index. Explore the research here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Looking to hire the best marketers out there? Submit your job openings to our new, free Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• Email Marketing Manager at Sofar Sounds
• Sr. Associate, Brand Partner at Morning Brew
• Growth Marketing Manager, Consumer Apps at SWIDIA

See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

Stat: Smart-speaker interactions on Amazon are being used for ads, leading to “as much as 30x higher ad bids from advertisers,” according to new research.

Read: Uh, leaked documents show that some Facebook engineers said they “do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data,” per Motherboard.

Another read: The Center for Data Innovation’s interview with Eric Seufert, a media strategist, quantitative marketer, and author who runs Mobile Dev Memo.

Want to work with influencers but don’t want to become Revolve Festival 2.0? Valid concern. So, what to do? A brilliant first step would be join us at our Influencer Marketing Forum on May 11 in NYC, sponsored by #paid. It’s free to attend, doesn’t involve waiting for a bus in the desert, and there’s an open bar. Too good to be true, right?

If you’re a director-level (or above) marketer located in NYC, join us to soak up insights from marketing powerhouse Najoh Tita-Reid, Global CMO of Logitech. Doors open at 5:45pm ET and spots are on a first-come, first-served basis. Register here.*

*Note this event has limited capacity.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• The story behind Havas’ new app for people with tremors
• Elon Musk bought Twitter—now what?
• Inside Susan Alexandra’s collab with meme account Starter Packs of NYC