The show with hot questions and even hotter wings has never been more on fire.

The YouTube series Hot Ones, where host Sean Evans interviews celebrities while they eat progressively spicier chicken wings, is now in its 22nd season after beginning in 2015. Over the years, the show has grown not just its cult following, but also its own branded product offerings: It has its own card game, a line of hot sauces, and, within the last year, frozen chicken bites and strips.

Hot Ones has partnered with other brands, too, not just to be featured on the show (like sauce brand Fly by Jing), but to create CPG offerings, like spicy Hot Pockets and limited-edition Pringles. Earlier this month, Panda Express announced its “spiciest dish to date,” a chicken-and-veggie dish with spicy bourbon sauce made in partnership with Hot Ones.

It’s all part of a marketing strategy designed to get Hot Ones in front of lots of viewers and consumers alike, Melanie Kiley-Baker, director of marketing for First We Feast at Complex Networks, which produces Hot Ones, explained. It comes down to a two-pronged approach: using viral collabs to reach consumers out in the world and its own white-label brand to reach them at home.

“We want [people] to see the show, be excited by it, feel a little bullish that they can take it on themselves…and then give them as many opportunities and as many touch points to say, ‘I went out into the world and I was able to try this Hot Ones sauce,’” she said.

Keep reading here.—KH

Struggling to find the best way to introduce your brand to influencers? Are your outreach efforts met with only the sound of crickets? We get it—making the right impression and sparking enough interest to get influencers to engage can be tough.

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Wake up, babe, new subcultures just dropped.

Gen Zers can be hard to understand, making them tricky for marketers to target using traditional demographics. In fact, their “fluid and fragmented interests will make traditional audience segmentation obsolete,” according to Horizon Media.

So the media agency’s Why Group intelligence center and affiliated social content agency Blue Hour Studios teamed up to put together their second-ever field guide to Gen Z subcultures, outlining 10 new subcultures marketers can use to engage with that group based on analysis of content, surveys, and interviews. We broke them down below.

1. Nu third-culture kids: Almost half (47%) of adult Gen Zers identify as “third-culture kids,” defined as “young adults raised in a culture other than that of their parents.” Brands looking to connect with members of this subculture should look to support individuality and self-expression and consider the “diverse needs and tastes” of the group when developing their products and services, Horizon recommended.
2. Culinary root remixers: This group is based around a mutual appreciation of food from around the world, embracing traditional recipes while “remixing ingredients for modern dietary needs.” Think influencer Cassie Yeung, who was a contestant on Next Level Chef and has almost 3 million TikTok followers. This group appreciates creativity while cooking, according to the report, so culinary brands might tap them to help promote new products and services.
3. Ability heroes: This group of Gen Zers share their experiences with different physical or mental conditions on “face-forward” platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. They show support for brands that offer inclusive products, which means that brands, the report suggests, could find favor with this group through things like sensory-optimized spaces or by partnering with creators and influencers from the group to promote relevant products.

Continue reading here.—AM

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.

Did Noah Kahan do this? Spotify Wrapped released this week with a new “sound town” category that told people where their listening habits lined up regionally. Based on many people’s posts, it sounds like Burlington, VT, is the place to be, regardless of music taste. But Caitlin Covington already knew that.

Meanwhile, Apple Music continues to struggle for relevancy among the masses, even with its own yearly recap, Replay, coming out the same week.

Big ladle lies: Last week, newsletter writer Rachel Karten posted a deep dive on a suspicious-looking trend circulating among food influencers posting about a “viral” roasted feta soup. Karten found fewer than 40 posts across TikTok and Instagram about the soup—and all were sponsored by Athenos Feta. It could have been Athenos’s attempt at manifesting virality by speaking it into existence, but, as Karten wrote, it’s probably better to build on a viral trend than try to create it.

Name game: Canned-beverage company Liquid Death posted about its decision to rename its “Armless Palmer” iced tea-and-lemonade drink “Dead Billionaire” after the company said it received a legal threat from Arnold Palmer’s estate. The whole ordeal had golfers up in arms and marketers frothing at the mouth.

What’s the deal? People seemed a bit disappointed by the lack of Black Friday doorbusters this year. As one post put it, “People used to hit each other over the head for a microwave. That’s how low the prices were.”

More, more, more: A ChatGPT trend in which people generate an image of something and then continue to ask for more has reached the marketing community. We can now rest easy knowing what it looks like to optimize a campaign or work in ad tech at an infinite rate.

If the rumors are true…And the Wonka movie is actually good? Then people would like to know what was going on when the trailer was made.—KH

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

Around the world: How Reddit plans to grow internationally.

Get it direct: Get up to speed on Pinterest’s rollout of additional direct linking options.

Ain’t nobody messin’ with my click: A look at zero-click content and how to create it.

Always be building: Resilient, successful brands have one thing in common—they invest in themselves, even in turbulent times. Hear brand-strengthening tips from 450 CMOs in Frontify’s new report. Download it here.*

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Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Verge went to a Shein pop-up and found “tube caps designed to look like a dog is shitting toothpaste,” in addition to the limits of the company’s stated commitment to transparency.
• The New York Times wrote about why so many people had Burlington, VT, as their Spotify Wrapped “sound town.”
• Vox wrote about why big-family influencers are having a moment.

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