As summer roadtrippers likely know, out-of-home advertising is alive and well—or at least alive. The “well” part is up for debate.

Though OOH advertising is one of the oldest forms of marketing, it’s kept up with the times and has recovered from the massive downturn it experienced at the onset of Covid. Market research firm Magna called OOH “the success story of 2021 and 2022,” noting that in some countries—including the US—the sector reached pre-pandemic levels by the end of last year, and is on track to “complete a full global recovery” this year.

Other recent reports and OOH company earnings indicate brands will continue campaigning alongside highways, at transit hubs, on vehicles, in the sky, and anywhere else in the world they can find real estate, especially given digital advancements.

“Out-of-home really is a pretty durable, relevant portion of the entertainment and media ecosystem globally,” CJ Bangah, a principal in PwC’s customer transformation practice, told Marketing Brew.

Continue reading here.—AM

Despite what the internet may tell you, building a successful DTC empire doesn’t happen overnight. Once you’ve established a customer base, success can often boil down to two things: customer engagement and loyalty, two of the hardest things to earn as a new brand.

Retail Brew connected with top retailers—Mejuri, Casper, and Peloton—to talk about the marketing strategies they use to keep customers coming back and spreading the word. If you work in retail, this guide is for you. Download it now.

This month, Pizza Hut referenced a NSFW meme on Threads. It was subsequently deleted by the chain, one of many brands trying to figure out Threads, Meta’s new Twitter competitor that came out on July 5. Brands have flocked to the platform in droves, looking to capture eyeballs on the new platform. However, Threads has experienced a sizable drop in traffic since its debut.

That’s so last week: Threads clocked 100 million users in its first week online. According to analysis firm SimilarWeb, the app saw 49 million daily active users on July 7, just days after it rolled out. However, the app had 23 million daily active users one week later, on July 14, and average user time dropped from 21 minutes per day to just six in the same period.

As Digiday pointed out, according to Google Trends data—which scores search terms on a scale of zero to 100—Threads was “briefly a more popular search item than Twitter” the day after it was released, but has since seen its numbers drop significantly.

Plus, Threads users have complained about the number of spammy comments on the platform, prompting Instagram head Adam Mosseri to write in a post on Threads that Threads will “get tighter on things like rate limits” in response to “spam attacks.”

Meta introduced updates to Threads last week, including a translation button and a tab that lets users see their followers, though the app does not have direct messaging or a sophisticated search function yet.

+1: Retention is not the only issue Threads is grappling with; This week, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for documents related to content moderation on Threads as part of “an earlier subpoena related to the panel’s ongoing investigation of tech platforms’ policies,” CNBC reported. The app also isn’t yet available in the European Union because of potential “regulatory uncertainty” likely concerning data sharing.—JS

It can be lonely on the cusp.

If you’re an older Gen Z, for example, maybe there’s a pair of skinny jeans that still look so cute on you, or you still part your hair on the side rather than the middle, despite your fellow Zoomers berating millennials for these supposed aesthetic aberrations.

So it should come as no surprise that some older Gen Zs and younger millennials who don’t feel at home in either group have coalesced under a new banner: zillennials. (Portmanteaus to the rescue!)

Millennials are generally defined as being born between 1981 and 1996 and Gen Z between 1997 and 2012. Zillennials tend to identify as roughly the middle of that timeline. Deborah Carr, a sociology professor at Boston University, told CNN they were born from roughly 1992 to 2002, making them about 22 to 32 today, though there is no academic consensus about the timeline.

Born Zillennial, a private Facebook group that began in 2020, has more than 209,000 members. You might be a zillennial, the group’s about page suggests, if you remember “accidentally clicking the Internet on your flip phone and trying to close it before it starts charging you for surfing the web,” if you prized “the bright orange Rugrats VCR tape,” or if you “nearly broke your ankles with a Razer scooter.”

In 2020, the year he graduated from college, the group’s founder, Matt Duffy, said in an introductory video that he launched the group because he “felt lost between two rigidly defined generations.” Thanks to the popularity of the group, Duffy continued, “I feel seen because you guys feel seen right now.”

Now brands increasingly are seeing zillennials, too, and assessing what makes them tick…and what makes them shop. Read the full story on Retail Brew.—AAN

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

Strike a pose: L’Oréal Paris picked Kendall Jenner as its latest brand ambassador—here’s why.

Pretty in pink: How Duolingo leveraged its signature owl during the Barbie marketing blitz.

So yesterday: Why companies are leaning into “fauxstalgic” branding these days.

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Executive moves across the industry.

• Norm de Greve, ex-CVS CMO, was tapped by General Motors to become its SVP and CMO.
• Kristen D’Arcy, who’s previously served as CMO at brands including Pacsun, is True Religion’s new CMO.
• Tressie Lieberman, a Chipotle and Taco Bell alum, was brought on board as CMO at Yahoo.