It’s been about a year and a half since the NCAA’s name, image, and likeness (or NIL) policy went into effect, giving brands the green light to ink partnership deals with student athletes.

Major brands have taken advantage of the opportunity ever since, including American Eagle, which has worked with 17 college athletes for a total of 55 million impressions over the past 14 months, according to CMO Craig Brommers.

Marketing Brew sat down with Brommers during our first annual summit for a conversation about the brand’s efforts to connect with Gen Z consumers through strategies like influencer marketing. We later reconnected with Brommers to learn more about how American Eagle approaches NIL partnerships in particular.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Marketing Brew: What can you share about your NIL plans for next year and going forward?

Craig Brommers: Since we’ve been doing this for 14 months, we’ve gotten smarter, and we can place bets in a more surgical way now. We’re going to continue to do what has worked for us, and that’s finding a diverse group of athletes. We’re better understanding the deal-making process involved, so it’s a win-win for both the athlete and the brand. There’s some news out there about some athletes who are feeling taken advantage of. It’s really been important for us to make sure that we have a really strong brand reputation out there for making deals that are win-win, so we’ll continue to do that. I think that this content is resonating most for us in the social channels, so finding athletes who are clever in that space is something we’re looking into. As we look at what could be a challenging macroeconomic environment, I will say that college athletes can be some of the most efficient and effective influencers for your brand, and we’re excited to continue these partnerships.

Read the full conversation here.—AM

It’s that time of year again—when lofty resolutions are made and every post, blog, article, and ad reminds you of ways you could be optimizing.

But this year, some brands are taking a different approach, encouraging people instead to maybe take it easy and have more of a low-key new year rather than set difficult goals.

“We’re hoping to really give people a break in how hard they are on themselves and how much people and brands around them are continuing to pile on, asking them to do more and more and more,” Brittany Izrailov, chief customer officer at vitamin company Care/of, told us.

• Rather than take a “new year, new you” route, Shaw told us that the company created its “Do Less, Feel More” campaign to “give [people] space to feel good just as they are and to know that they’re doing enough.”
• To go along with this idea, the company created the Anti-Planner as a way to encourage focusing on emotional well-being rather than checking off tasks.

Another vitamin company, Nature Made, decided to steer away from “scare-based advertising” and focus on positive messaging for its new year campaign. WeightWatchers similarly took a more gentle approach in its latest ad, which encourages people to reduce the negative self-talk often associated with weight management.

Tito’s vodka took a slightly different approach with a tongue-in-cheek, yet (sadly?) relatable take on Dry January in its latest ad with Martha Stewart, which shows Stewart finding ways to use Tito’s other than drinking it, while taking liberties here and there to get through the month.

Equinox seems to have also aimed for an anti-resolution theme in its latest campaign, which includes the slogan “We don’t speak January” and the hashtag #ItsNotFitnessItsLife.

Keep reading here.—KH

Here at Marketing Brew, we’re suckers for metaphors. And CES apparently serves as a pretty good one for the media industry as a whole.

“It’s at an inconvenient time, in an extremely inconvenient place that is incredibly hard to navigate, talking to lots of people with many, many different kinds of agendas,” Ben James, the chief innovation officer of the agency Gale, said. “But it can also be a lot of fun.”

And there is a lot of fun and hobnobbing to be had in Vegas this time of year—as well as the chance for marketers, agencies, and brands to pulse-check for the year ahead.

• The week “is really about setting the agenda,” Dan Robbins, Roku’s VP of marketing and partner solutions, told us. “Everybody is really trying to understand what comes next.”

What is next, though? For Roku and other streaming platforms, many of the pre-upfronts talks happening this week have been about the continued growth of streaming, which Robbins hopes can give the platform (and now TV manufacturer) a leg up.

“This upfront is going to be a really pivotal point where most brands are going to say, ‘I’m actually starting with streaming. And that is the first thing on my agenda, because that’s where the consumer is,’” Robbins said.

But wait…Due to questions about the 2023 economic outlook, some marketers are approaching any commitments cautiously, which “is having a cascading effect” down to pricing, Mastercard CMCO Raja Rajamannar said.

• “Unless you as a CMO know how much your CEO is going to let you spend, or your CFO let you spend, how are you going to commit?” He told us. “This is a sentiment I’m seeing across the industry…Given that there is a tentativeness in the industry, I think there’ll be better deals to be had.”

Not-so-next? The metaverse, which, to some attendees, felt a bit more like the meh-taverse this year. “The metaverse stalls have been, to me, a little underwhelming,” Rajamannar said, while Don McGuire, SVP and CMO of Qualcomm, cautioned that the metaverse is still “years off” from its prime-time moment.

Stat: 17.9 miles. The distance I walked around CES as of Friday morning, per my trusty Garmin watch.—KS

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

More, please: Some simple strategies to help increase subscribers on YouTube.

What’s next: “Ecstatic colors” and “mascot variations” are some of the packaging design trends to keep an eye on in 2023, according to this infographic.

I like it: Here are 24 things you can do to get more likes on IG.

In honor of CES, here’s an undated print ad from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, featuring Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.

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

• What to expect from the streaming industry in 2023, according to experts
• Meta’s ad-targeting practices violate EU rules
• CES 2023: Networking with the networks