It’s been more than a hundred days since Elon Musk officially renamed Twitter to X, and Aaron Hall still doesn’t like it.

Hall, a self-described “namer,” is the group director of naming at Siegel+Gale, a branding agency that helped create household names like Mastercard and Xfinity, as well as brands with worse fates, like the short-lived short-form video platform Quibi. (Hall himself led the team that dreamed up the name for Xbox One, but it was with a different agency.)

So far, he isn’t impressed with the rebrand of the social platform, which shares a name that Musk has reportedly been obsessed with since at least the late ’90s, when he pitched it as a potential name for Paypal.

“It’s very limiting. It’s just a letter, and it’s so overused,” he told Marketing Brew. “I don’t think the letter X—I refuse to call it a name—does anything for him.”

Don’t just take it from Hall. A cursory glance through the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and CNBC shows that in recent weeks, these news outlets often referred to the company as “X, formerly known as Twitter”—meanwhile, X.com still routes to…Twitter.com.

“I would have failed as a namer” if consumers still require reminders of what the brand is three months after introducing a new name, Hall told Marketing Brew.

• And why mess with a good thing? Like “google it,” the verb “to tweet” certainly had some cultural clout.

It was also a standard-bearer of sorts, Hall said: The brand name Twitter was often the example clients gave him when they wanted to come up with a unique and memorable name of their own, an example of “one of those few magical words” with just two syllables that worked well for the brand.

Keep reading here.—RB

It’s true, especially when it comes to creating next-level video campaigns. Getting the cameras involved usually means you need plenty of time, resources, planning—you name it.

Until now. PlayPlay can get you high-quality videos in just seconds. All you have to do is describe your video needs in one sentence, and their AI Assistant will turn your vision into reality. It’ll select the right template, text, images, and music to bring your video to life.

Trusted by enterprises like CVS, Dell, and L'Oréal, PlayPlay can seriously help you boost engagement with studio-like videos that won’t take hours to make.

Don’t forget to join them and 2k+ marketers at the leading marketing summit—100% free, 100% virtual. One day only.

Get started.

A coalition of platforms including TikTok, Snap, and gaming platform Unity are calling for better measurement standards for ads that run within mobile apps.

The group, led by analytics company AppsFlyer, is proposing new metrics related to how long ads are viewed within mobile apps, and whether ads are viewed longer than what’s minimally required to be considered a “view” on different platforms.

AppsFlyer and the consortium are introducing new measurement standards based on engagement, with the hope that new metrics will provide greater transparency to the mobile ecosystem, which has faced obfuscation in recent years due to privacy changes.

The proposed new metrics include an “engaged view,” when someone watches a skippable video for a minimum amount of time, or a video is completed in less than a determined number of seconds.

The second metric is called an “engaged click,” when a user engages with an ad and isn’t redirected to an app store or another app. An example could be an ad for a game demo, Karen Cohen, AppsFlyer VP of product marketing, explained.

View from the top: Outside of a few niche but growing metrics, digital advertising is often sold based on views, impressions, and clicks. In the mobile marketing space, there’s no consensus about how long an ad needs to be viewed to count.

• TikTok currently lets advertisers bid on people who view ads for at least six seconds, or who click on the ad.
• Snap, meanwhile, offers the same tools, but considers a view to be only two seconds.

That difference is something that the consortium is trying to account for, Cohen said.

“Viewability has been a problem for a very long time,” she said. “All those different companies have had their own definitions for it; the standard has always been a problem.”

Read more here.—RB

Each week, Marketing Brew recaps what people are talking about on social media, the trends that took over our feeds, and how marketers are responding.

Smoke show: Last week, Snoop Dogg announced his plans to “give up smoke,” attracting news coverage from outlets like CNN and sparking conversation online about what exactly he meant. Immediately, there was skepticism from some people who were prettyyyy sure this was going to be an ad, rather than a reversal of Snoop’s well-known stance on marijuana. Turns out, those people were right: The post was a campaign from The Martin Agency and Solo Stove to sell smokeless fire pits.

Though some were not swayed, the stunt apparently tricked others and inspired rapper Meek Mill to (actually) give up smoking. One marketer even called it a “masterclass.”

Stanning Stanley: One marketing decision that appears to be receiving nothing but praise is Stanley 1913’s offer to buy a woman a car after she posted a video showing the aftermath of a fire that destroyed hers and everything in it—except her Stanley tumbler, which still had ice in it. The brand’s response video from the president of the company has more than 32 million views and 4.5 million likes on TikTok.

First came Barbenheimer: Now it seems cross-promo is transcending TV and movie boundaries. It started with actors Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s promo video for their forthcoming rom-com, Anyone But You. Almost immediately after that promo was released, Nathan Fielder posted a parody of the promo featuring him and Emma Stone promoting their Showtime series, The Curse.

Fielder then released a statement feigning shock that Sony Pictures “copied” the idea. Then Anyone But You director Will Gluck responded to Fielder with a statement of his own, saying he had “appropriated [The Curse’s] poster for [the Anyone But You] campaign,” complete with a poorly photoshopped version of the poster.

While this may have all started with Nathan Fielder being Nathan Fielder, the back-and-forth seems to have generated a healthy amount of press for all parties.

Grinding my gears: Glossier is apparently selling a limited-edition pepper mill and mini-microphone to promote its Glossier You fragrance. Based on the posts and comments, many of which are just “what,” it seems that a lot of people are just as confused as we are.

*Screaming* Balenciagaaaaa: Or not. Ikea UK would like you to know that, rather than spend $925 on the designer’s towel skirt, you can wrap one of theirs around your waist for much, much less.—KH

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

Collab: Beyond that Snoop Dogg ad for Solo Stove, here are four other celebrity advertising collabs you need to know about, according to Ad Age.

Pilot: YouTube is reportedly piloting an ad program that’ll let buyers solely buy YouTube Shorts.

Social: Speaking of YouTube Shorts, here’s the kind of content that works best for driving e-commerce sales on the platform, according to an exec.

Like a pro: Matching with top freelancers is quicker than ever with Fiverr Pro. Seriously—this solution is your team’s ticket to seamless hiring and collaboration. Learn more in their latest report.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Successful marketers not only anticipate disruption but also respond to it with an outlook of opportunity. To help navigate the uncertainty of H2 2023, download a complimentary copy of Insider Intelligence’s e-book, 3 Advertising and Marketing Trends Shaping 2023’s Second Half, which explores the impact of generative AI, connected TV, and retail media.

Download your free e-book now.