When the pilot episode of Monarch premiered on Fox earlier this month, the broadcaster invited new viewers to buy into the country-music drama—literally.

• Viewers dazzled by the butterfly jewelry adorning family matriarch Dottie Roman (played by Susan Sarandon) and heir apparent Nicky Roman (played by Anna Friel) could purchase similar pieces online through a Fox partnership with jewelry retailer Nyrelle.
• Music lovers interested in learning country songs from the show could sign up for virtual lessons through the guitar-accessories company Fret Zealot.
• They could even imbibe Truthteller 1839 Bourbon, a liquor designed for the show with help from Next Century Spirits and ReserveBar, and which will serve as a plot point later in the season.

Big picture: It’s an ambitious move for Fox Entertainment, which is jumping headfirst into the consumer products game in an effort to boost excitement around one of its first wholly owned scripted series. The move highlights just how crucial entertainment companies believe consumer products are to keeping viewers coming back for more.

“The more I surround the consumer’s day-to-day life, the more fandom, hopefully, I’m creating for the IP itself,” said Laura Caraccioli, Fox Entertainment’s SVP, head of strategic creative partnerships. “I really want to put the brand into culture.”

Translating TV and movies into merchandise is big business: Retail sales of Disney’s licensed consumer products totaled an estimated $56.2 billion in 2021, according to a July estimate from License Global, while Warner Media and Warner Bros. (now part of Warner Bros. Discovery) raked in an estimated $15 billion.

Keep reading here.—KS

Marketing is all about getting people to want to buy a product. But what if you’re marketing a product that’s about to be pulled from the shelves (or, in this case, freezers)?

Back up: After announcing the end of the Choco Taco in July, Tracy Shepard-Rashkin, senior brand manager at Unilever, told us the Klondike team was surprised at how many people shared their love for the ice-cream treat online.

“I don’t think we ever could have anticipated the magnitude of the response,” Shepard-Rashkin said. “That’s really when we kind of jumped into planning mode, threw out our original plans to say goodbye to Choco Taco, and decided to do something bigger.”

Out with a bang: Shepard-Rashkin said the team rounded up the remaining 912 Choco Tacos they had in their inventory at HQ and in their networks to run one final campaign. They asked what they should do with them on Twitter and received suggestions like hosting an eating contest or making a musical.

One particularly disgruntled fan told them to “shove them where the sun don’t shine,” which they actually did by handing out Choco Tacos in Bellingham, WA, which only sees about 157 sunny days per year.

“We wanted to choose suggestions that could be executed in a humorous, kind of over-the-top way,” Shepard-Rashkin said.

Read the full story here.—KH

Retail Brew recently spoke to Steve Michaelsen, co-founder of Leisure Project, about why the hydration drink brand rolled out an NFT collection months before its first cans hit the market. Read an excerpt below or check out the full story here.

Leisure Project’s two-person team launched their NFT collection in March 2021, and today has 400 token holders who receive product discounts, early access to new flavors and merchandise, and who, in the future, will be able to vote on product lines and flavors.

The brand’s Leisure Creatures NFTs—colorful sneaker-wearing, hat-adorned graphic representations of Leisure beverage cans—initially sold for .08 ethereum. Today they’re available on OpenSea, and the average price is slightly higher, at .09 ethereum, or $121. Michaelsen said Leisure’s NFT holders tend to be “NFT-natives” who have an interest in CPG brands.

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

Hispanic Heritage Month: Click this link for social media tips from 14 Hispanic and Latin creators.

SEO: Find a beginner’s guide—updated for 2022—right here.

About me: If you want an Instagram bio that checks all the boxes, look no further.

Create demand, build a brand, and destroy commodity content.

Find your instant advantage today—listen to the B2B Growth podcast now.

• Rihanna—not Taylor Swift, as was rumored—will perform at the Super Bowl next year.
• Twitch’s SVP of global creators, Constance Knight, announced she was leaving the company on the same day it announced cuts to the amount of revenue its top streamers will make.
• TikTok is rolling out a Dislike button as a sort of content-moderation tool.
• Walmart must have noticed the wedding boom—it’s breaking into the bridal-gown biz.

Snap poll: If you work for a brand, do you have an in-house agency?

• Yes
• No

Miracle? This ad from 1982 manages to mention video games without saying the word “metaverse.”

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

• Investigation finds that nearly 90 apps may have been committing ad fraud
• Climate Week 2022: A marketing recap
• Meet Hollister’s head of social media, Capri Debiccari