It’s been a #scandalous year over at Bravo—you only have to look at the Vanderpump Rules cheating scandal, “Scandoval,” and The Real Housewives of New York City’s “Cheesegate” for proof. But those moments can translate to big business for Bravo and its parent company, NBCUniversal, plus the company’s brand partners.

That was on full display earlier this month, when Bravo brought together “Bravolebrities” from across its shows, including some of its most infamous, for the third BravoCon, which this year was held in Las Vegas.

• The event, which drew nearly 30,000 attendees, slightly below last year’s convention in New York, also included 20 brand sponsors, one more than last year’s BravoCon, including presenting sponsors Lay’s and State Farm, as well as Doordash and Wayfair.

The convention is a really big deal for fans, or “Bravoholics,” according to Jamie Cutburth, EVP of creative partnerships at NBCU. According to past exit surveys, he said, more than three-quarters of attendees “said this was the greatest day of their entire life. That’s talking about weddings and children, right? This is really important for people.”

To capitalize on the fan excitement (and Vegas’s larger-than-life reputation), Cutburth said the convention’s brand tie-ins were designed to amplify both.

“We always talk about [how] Vegas is the town where you go bigger, and we have absolutely done that with each of our brand partnerships,” he said.

Continue reading here.—JS

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It’s starting to feel a lot like—gesundheit!—cold and flu season, and a TV spot for Vicks NyQuil Severe Honey is in high rotation, having aired 3,734 times between August 14 and November 9, according to iSpot, a TV measurement company.

The 15-second commercial would appeal to everyone’s favorite ursine denizen of the Hundred Acre Wood, mentioning “honey” five times and “honeylicious” once. The commercial depicts honey descending from a wooden dripper, as does its packaging, which has a dispenser cup shaped like a beehive.

It’s no wonder why a cold remedy would want to be associated with honey, a demulcent whose effectiveness at coating and soothing throats is borne out in numerous studies.

But for all it does to associate itself with honey, there’s something curious about Vicks NyQuil Severe Honey: It doesn’t list honey as an ingredient.

“So where’s the honey?” That’s what Edgar Dworsky, a consumer advocate and lawyer, asked in a recent post on his website, Mouse Print. Dworsky noted that he’d reached out to Procter & Gamble, which makes NyQuil, to ask “how much actual honey, if any, was in the product, and whether they would modify their advertising to not give consumers the false impression that real honey and its medicinal benefits are features of this product.”

Dworsky wrote that P&G did not respond to his query, and still hadn’t when Retail Brew contacted him nine days after his post was published.

• We emailed P&G’s Mollie Wheeler, who’d been cited as a Vicks spokesperson a year ago, to ask why honey wasn’t listed as an ingredient. Wheeler responded that while she was still at P&G, she no longer worked on Vicks, so she referred us to a general media team email and told us they would “route your request appropriately.”
• Over four days we sent three emails to P&G’s media team, receiving three auto-replies assuring they’d respond “as soon as possible,” but never an actual response. So we emailed Wheeler again asking if she’d forward our questions to whomever had succeeded her, but she stopped responding.

So we did some digging.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—AAN

Newsflash: Half of US adults are getting their news, at least sometimes, from social media, according to a new study of American news consumption habits from the Pew Research Center.

Which social media, to be exact? According to the research, which surveyed 8,842 US adults between Sept. 25 and Oct. 1, Facebook—which has steadily deprioritized news content—is king, with three in 10 respondents saying they regularly get news from the platform. YouTube was also a major source for news, with around a quarter (26%) of respondents stating they regularly get news from the site. Instagram was next with 16%, while 14% of respondents said they regularly get news from TikTok.

While the number of Americans getting news from TikTok remains a small percentage, its popularity as a news source among its user base is growing.

• Among users of the app, more than four in 10 (43%) reported regularly getting news from TikTok, Elisa Shearer, a senior researcher at Pew, told Marketing Brew.
• That’s in line with the percentage of Facebook users who reported regularly getting news from the platform, and is 10 percentage points lower than X (formerly Twitter), where 53% of users reported regularly getting news from the app.

“When we first asked this question in 2020, about 20% of TikTok users got news there regularly,” Shearer explained. “This year, that almost doubled to 43%.”

The growth of news consumption on TikTok bucks a trend across other more established platforms, which users seem to be relying on less for news consumption. Users on X, Facebook, Reddit, and Snapchat reported regularly getting news from those sites in lower numbers than they did three years ago, Pew found.

Digital world: Overall, American adults are getting more news from social media, and are getting less from television. Almost six in 10 Americans said they prefer to consume news from a digital device, Pew found, and more than four in five (86%) said they often or sometimes get news from a smartphone. Only 27% of respondents said they prefer to get news from TV, with respondents ages 50 and older “more likely to prefer television and print publications.” Overall, about a third of news consumers (32%) said they often get their news from TV.

Read more here.—JS

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

Sound on: How to figure out what songs and sounds are popular on Instagram before they go out of style—and how to use them.

Game on: Roblox is testing out a new feature that lets brands link to their activations on the platform via in-game video ads.

Live on: Is the social media landscape as we know it dying? Here’s how marketers can adapt.

Read on: Curious about AI’s influence on the customer experience and online sales this holiday season? Check out this Retail Brew article for key insights to supercharge your retail marketing strategy.

Ready, set, shop: Get your business and your customers ready for the holiday shopping season with Apple Business Connect. Add a logo, upload a cover image, and update your holiday hours—all from your phone. Learn more.*

Insights in bites: We teamed up with MNTN to survey marketers and uncover the most pertinent info about Connected TV. Discover key findings about this emerging channel in our interactive report.*

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