Velveeta martinis, pants made of Chipotle napkins, and nail polish that can detect the temperature of a can of Coors Light. Brands went to great lengths to reach customers in creative ways and make headlines this year—and it worked.

As brands keep finding new ways to advertise their products, are marketers worried about unconventional campaigns feeling stale or becoming oversaturated? According to those involved in some of this year’s most out-there campaigns, the road signs aren’t pointing to a slowdown in 2023.

Act-vertising

While Velveeta has a base media plan for traditional advertising, Kelsey Rice, senior brand manager, brand communications at Kraft Heinz for brands like Velveeta, told us it dedicates a small portion of its budget to creating moments that “will drive relevancy for [its] brand and culture.”

• The focus this year, she said, was physically bringing its “La Dolce Velveeta” slogan to life. This manifested in campaigns like the “Veltini,” cheese-scented nail polish, and Foodie Call, a meal-delivery hotline, all of which were created in partnership with creative agency Johannes Leonardo.
• “We’ve had a really great success this year because the campaigns, while externally seeming really wacky, did a great job of getting attention,” Rice told us.
• While it depends on the activation, Rice said the primary KPIs Kraft measures in campaigns like these are earned impressions, social engagement, and overall conversation.

Jeph Burton, group creative director at Johannes Leonardo, told us that when thinking of fresh ways to introduce new products, the agency very rarely looks at competitors in the food industry but rather takes inspiration from the fashion industry.

“There’s an ostentatiousness about the fashion world that we wanted to tap into and say, ‘Why is it that they get to do these pretty radical things?’” he said.

Continue reading here.—KH

Snap and New Balance are standing under the mistletoe.

For a holiday campaign that’s running through December, New Balance and Snap have teamed up on a “Holiday Gifting Concierge,” which is basically a questionnaire that combines, for the first time, ML speech recognition and Snap’s AR lenses.

Big picture: These are the kinds of campaigns Snap is looking to in hopes of bolstering its advertising revenue.

• Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in an internal memo that he’s aiming to increase AR-based advertising to 10% of Snap’s total advertising revenue next year.
• A majority of Snap’s revenue to date has come from video ads, Snap spokesperson Ahrim Nam said over email, though she declined to share what percent of those ads are currently AR-based.
• FWIW, Snap made $1.13 billion in revenue last quarter—a 6% increase year over year—marking the first time the company’s growth slipped into single digits since it went public five years ago.

How it works: Marketing Brew tried out the branded lens, which starts with a few questions. It asks the user if they’re shopping for themselves, a friend, or a family member, as well as if the gift is for someone who prefers to “spend time in nature” or “enjoy a cozy night in,” among other choices. It also asks what kind of product the user is looking for, like footwear or clothing.

Then, it prompts the user to flip the camera in order to display three floating, wrapped presents, which, when tapped, reveal gift ideas. Users aren’t able to make a purchase on the app and aren’t directed to the New Balance online store to purchase the recommended gifts. The campaign is more of a brand-awareness play, Sharon Silverstein, Snap’s head of US verticals, who oversees Snap’s work with retail e-commerce partners, explained.

Read more here.—RB

It’s officially the holiday season, but for some, what’s perhaps more exciting is having a week off from work next week. “For many of us, this is the only time of year when it feels possible, and even encouraged, to do nothing. I look forward to it all year long,” Helena Fitzgerald wrote in The Atlantic last year.

But a week off is not a reality for everyone. It seems like many marketers are expected to work this year. Last week, we asked how many of you will work between Christmas and New Year’s, and about 1,350 readers responded, with a slight majority saying they won’t be clocking in next week:

• 54% said no
• 46% said yes

Zoom out: In 2017, one-third of employees planned to take the entire week off, according to a survey of more than 1,000 workers by staffing firm Robert Half, while 18% said they planned to work the entire week. (Of course, this was pre-pandemic, when taking client meetings from your childhood bedroom in your high school cross-country sweatshirt wasn’t really a thing yet.)

For those of you who are logging on next week, we hope you don’t have to do much besides move your mouse around while pretending to “strategize” for 2023. And for those of you actually working, well, we hope you get a raise and promotion in the new year.

And speaking of the new year: Marketing Brew’s Kelsey Sutton will be at CES in January. Let us know if you’re going and what we should keep our eyes on at the event.—MS

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

Tracker: You might want to bookmark this one—a tracker of every Super Bowl-related brand announcement.

Reflection: LinkedIn offers takeaways from its "10 highest-performing social posts” of 2022 here.

Feeling blue: Should your brand pay for Twitter Blue?

If you’ve watched Stranger Things, you’ve probably noticed that Hawkins, Indiana, is hawking a lot of products these days.

Over 140 major brands and products have appeared in the series, including Nike, Coca-Cola, KFC, and (Eleven’s favorite!) Eggo. Marketing Brew’s investigative crew sat down with the masterminds behind the show’s integrations to find out how production value and nostalgia guided the Duffer brothers’ decision-making and how Netflix maximized their brand partnership potential.

Stat: 48.4%. For the first time in eight years, the combined percentage of the US digital ad market that Google and Meta are expected to account for will slip under 50%, according to Insider Intelligence figures cited by Axios.

Quote: “It’s like Spotify Wrapped for your whole life.”—Amarachi Miller, head of product at Caden, a company that enables users to potentially earn money in exchange for personal data they share, to the Wall Street Journal

Read: “We Live in the Era of Mids” (Blackbird Spyplane)

Another read: “Who’s Getting a Car for Christmas? Ask the People Who Sell Giant Bows” (the Wall Street Journal)

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

• Brands are experimenting with deals and exclusives on BeReal
• Amazon owns almost everything—and that’s great for its TV shows
• Companies are finding new ways to advertise in your car