If you can’t beat ’em, give ’em away for free.

That’s what Lululemon did in its “Dupe Swap,” a two-day event in which around 1,000 people in LA received a free pair of the brand’s $98 Align leggings in exchange for knockoffs. The pop-up was, in part, a response to the dupe culture that has taken over social media as creators scour for the best and least expensive alternatives to share with their followers.

The Dupe Swap activation drove a ton of attention online, with some posting that lines were so long, people were camping out overnight to secure their free leggings. One TikToker who works in product marketing called it their favorite activation they’ve ever seen, while some media outlets praised it as “brilliant” and said it showed the brand could be “imitated but never duplicated.”

So how did Lululemon pull off the event and justify giving out $98k worth of leggings?

Keep reading here.—KH

Ah, slow-loading web pages—online users’ #1 nemesis. One in three website visits leave customers frustrated. And frustrated customers, as you might guess, don’t stick around long.

Get your customers up to speed (and industry standard) with Contentsquare’s 2023 Digital Experience Benchmark Report. With data analyzed from over 161b page views and 2,942 websites across 9 industries, Contentsquare’s report covers the biggest factors impacting ROI in 2023.

You’ll learn which KPIs drive the most growth, how frustration factors affect conversion, and how to take advantage of prime online real estate. As if that’s not enough, you’ll also delve into data-driven insights about:

• the most-visited pages in each industry
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Find out how you stack up to the competition. Download your copy of the report.

It seems like everyone has a podcast these days, including marketers and CEOs. For Bob Pittman, the broadcasting executive who helped create MTV and the chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia—now the biggest podcast publisher in the US, according to Podtrac—it only makes sense that he’d get behind the mic.

Pittman’s podcast, Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, dropped its first episode in May of 2019 and is finishing up its third season, which featured guests like Gwyneth Paltrow, Paris Hilton, and Jon Bon Jovi.

“It keeps me tuned in to what we’re doing in podcasting…and plugs me into the system,” Pittman told Marketing Brew.

In addition to his work at MTV and iHeart, Pittman has served as CEO of AOL Networks, Six Flags, Quantum Media, Century 21 Real Estate, and Time Warner Enterprises, plus he helped found an investment firm and a tequila brand—so he could probably podcast about anything. Why focus on marketing, then? Pittman sat down with Marketing Brew to answer that question and share more about his personal experiences with podcasting.

Read our conversation here.—AM

Domperidone, Anakinra, Pancuronium. Prescription drugs have some pretty weird names, but that’s not (just) because pharmaceutical executives have a weird sense of humor. There are actually a lot of science and safety regulations behind drug names.

Pharma companies have to keep safety in mind when it comes to names, because if two drugs have names that sound too much alike, providers could easily mistake one for the other, Scott Piergrossi, president of creative at Brand Institute, a company that works with drugmakers to come up with brand names, told Healthcare Brew.

A drug’s name could also affect how much it costs—it could influence how physicians, pharmacy benefit managers, or investors perceive the drug, which could impact how it’s priced, according to the American Medical Association.

Continue reading here.—MA

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

Price list: How much it costs to advertise with Walmart, Amazon, and other retailers.

Be real: Six traits for B2B marketers to keep in mind to maintain authenticity.

Change the channel: Marketers are losing faith in individual channel-level measurement tools, according to Nielsen.

Bounce-rate blues: Is your website sluggish, buggish, or just plain boring? Dig into Contentsquare’s 2023 Digital Experience Benchmark Report and see where you stack up against the competition with dozens of KPIs benchmarking the customer journey.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

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

• Why agencies are getting B Corp certified
• Band-Aid is the most trusted brand in the US, report says
• Yes, Google’s AI-infused search engine will have ads