Shake Shack had never done an NIL campaign before this month, but by the time next spring has sprung, the fast-casual chain plans to have worked with 75 college athletes.

In the more than two years since brands got the green light to start signing sponsorship deals with student athletes, marketers have approached the opportunity at different speeds. Some, like American Eagle, took advantage fairly early, while others have hung back—perhaps in part because NIL execs have warned against copy-pasting influencer marketing strategies onto college athlete campaigns.

In Shake Shack’s case, the brand took its time researching before looking into NIL deals, Rachael Caine, director of regional marketing, told Marketing Brew. But now the restaurant chain has a game plan that, if effective, could lead to more NIL and broader sports marketing deals down the line, she said.

The new campaign, called “Stand for Something Good,” will run for eight months—allowing Shake Shack to tap into both football and basketball seasons—and feature student athletes from 10 different schools.

Five athletes have been chosen this month (but haven’t yet been announced), and 10 (one from each school) will be selected for each of the seven months to follow. The campaign is meant to highlight the athletes’ contributions to their communities outside of sports by allowing them to select charities for Shake Shack to make donations to.

Athletes will each host a donation day at their local Shake Shack to raise money for their charity of choice, and 25% of sales from individual orders where guests mention donation day or use a code on digital channels will go directly to the selected organizations. As part of the campaign, the athletes will create social content encouraging fans and friends to come by, Caine said.

Read more about Shake Shack’s strategy here.—AM

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Addicted to watching TikTok videos? US consumers will soon be able to keep watching—even when their phones are put away.

A new offering from TikTok, called Out of Phone, is bringing TikTok videos and campaigns outside of the app itself. There are a few out-of-home options, including “Out of Phone: Billboard,” which will amplify TikTok campaigns on billboards, and “Out of Phone: Cinema,” which will run TikTok videos and ads on the silver screen during preshows that play before movie screenings. “Out of Home: Other Screens,” the third option, will run TikTok content on screens in bars, restaurants, airports, and other locations.

The content, which will be distributed globally, will be tailored to different audiences and will be regularly refreshed “to share only the latest and most engaging” videos pulled from the app itself, TikTok detailed in a press release. Digital platforms like Vevo and in-theater advertisers like Screenvision have already partnered with TikTok to display and distribute Out of Phone videos.

The out-of-home offering, released Tuesday during Advertising Week, is just one product for marketers that TikTok has debuted this year against a backdrop of increasing regulatory pressure. The short-form video app previously rolled out Pulse Premiere, an ad format offering ad inventory that is placed right after content from TikTok’s publisher and media partners like Disney, NBCUniversal, and Condé Nast. This summer, TikTok waded into out-of-home through an advertising deal with Redbox to run TikTok videos on Redbox kiosks. And the platform rolled out text posts, which marketers told Marketing Brew could help boost ad revenue by increasing time spent on the platform.

Perhaps its biggest product debut this year, TikTok Shop, went live in the US last month. The e-commerce feature, a rival to sites like Amazon and Temu, allows advertisers to buy Shop ads and promote their storefronts on the app. (As part of TikTok Shop, the company leased a sizable amount of warehouses around the country to house TikTok Shop products, per The Information.)

Even as TikTok expands its ad offerings, it’s exploring other options for monetization. Earlier this year, TikTok began testing an ad-free, paid subscription in one market in Europe.—JS

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Tifenn Dano Kwan is CMO at Amplitude, a digital analytics platform. Earlier in her career, she served as CMO at companies including Dropbox and Collibra.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? As a marketer, my favorite ads are the ones that elicit true emotion—whether that is laughter, tears, or inspiration. A recent ad I loved was the Dunkin’ ad at the Super Bowl this year with Ben Affleck. It centered on a genuine element of surprise and was incredibly authentic to the brand. Another one I love is the 2019 Nike “Dream Crazy” ad featuring Colin Kaepernick. It resonated with so many viewers, and its message of daring to be different was so simple yet powerful.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Within my first few weeks joining SAP Ariba, I was responsible for launching 12 innovations on stage at their global user conference, SAP Ariba Live, and we had less than two months to plan. My responsibility was a challenge I’ve come to love—getting the marketing and product teams to work together as one integrated team. One of my greatest strengths lies in creating order and structure where it doesn’t yet exist, and that is exactly what this project required of me. At the end of the day, we successfully launched all 12 innovations, creating more than 130 marketing assets in the process and, as a result, increasing pipeline by 30% year over year.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? I have three dogs at home with my wife, and I love spending time with them. I have two mini long-haired dachshunds and a southeast Asian village dog we rescued. I often say as a marketer, it can feel like my job is herding cats, and at home, I transition to herding the dogs.

Keep reading here.

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

Back to business: Get up to speed on CapCut for Business, a video and content-editing tool from TikTok parent company ByteDance that’s designed expressly for brands and advertisers.

Lights on: Read up on YouTube’s Spotlight Moments, a new AI-powered tool that places ads on the most popular and relevant videos (according to AI) related to “a specific cultural moment.”

Extremely online: Tumblr’s chief marketing officer shared some tips on making the most of the platform.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• WPP merged two creative agencies, VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson, into a combined agency that will be known as VML.
• Coca-Cola and Absolut Vodka plan to sell pre-mixed canned cocktails containing Sprite and vodka in several European markets beginning next year.
• Choice Hotels made a bid to acquire Wyndham Hotels & Resorts in a deal valued at around $9.8 billion.
• Microsoft completed its $69 billion acquisition of video game giant Activision Blizzard after almost 20 months. Nice.