If you felt like brand emails were out of control this Black Friday (and all of the days surrounding it), you aren’t alone.

Spencer Burke, SVP of growth at customer engagement platform Braze, told us that the company saw “record message volumes” this Black Friday, down to the number of messages sent per second. Activity was up across mediums ranging from brand emails to push notifications and texts, in part because the timeframe for deals just keeps getting longer.

“It’s not just Black Friday and Cyber Monday anymore; it’s a whole week,” Burke said. And in some cases, it’s even longer than that: The Ordinary held a month-long “Slowvember” sale, and brands like Sephora are still promoting Cyber Week deals.

Typically, around three-quarters of people actually like getting discounts via email, Julianne Hudson, SVP of marketing science at VMLY&R Commerce, told us. That could explain why so many brands were eager to reach out this year. So why the discontent among many of the recipients?

It’s less about the volume and “more about the deals themselves,” she said. “They aren’t as good as historic Black Friday deals where you’re getting 80% or 90% off.”

As a result, she said consumers are being more selective about which emails they choose to engage with. As some post about using Black Friday as an “unsubscribe day,” here are some ways marketers can try to keep people engaged and avoid the virtual trash can.

Keep reading here.—KH

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Even without the polar bears, Coca-Cola apparently has no problem getting consumers in the holiday spirit.

The soft-drink giant came out on top of data consultancy Kantar’s annual ranking of the best Christmas ads in the UK this year.

• The report surveyed 150 people across the UK, and when given permission, Kantar filmed participants’ reactions to the ads and later used AI to interpret the emotions on their faces, according to Kantar Head of Creative Excellence Lynne Deason.
• Coca-Cola’s “Holidays are Coming” ad, a 30-second spot featuring onlookers cheering a caravan of Christmas-themed Coca-Cola trucks as they pull into town, ranked in the top 2% for enjoyment and top 4% for ad distinctiveness.

Participants also ranked Christmas ads from Cadbury, Duracell, McDonald’s, and Amazon among the most powerful. McDonald’s clocked in with the funniest ad among UK consumers, and KFC’s spot was ranked as most persuasive.

While some of the same themes in Christmas ads can resonate among both British and American audiences, Christmas ads are particularly special in the UK, Deason said.

“Christmas in the UK is the equivalent of the Super Bowl, so we tend to get more epic, very emotive story ads at this time of year,” she told Marketing Brew in an email. “Whilst there are some of those in the USA during holiday season, there are also quite a few ads [in the US] that are a Christmas/Holiday version of the typical ad you might see through the rest of the year.”

Read more here.—JS

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

Gautam Mehandru is chief marketing officer at Illumio, a network security company. He’s previously held roles at the cybersecurity company Tanium, as well as at SAP Concur and Dell EMC.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? In the 2015 Super Bowl, where my Seahawks suffered a heartbreaking loss to the Patriots, there was a commercial that literally broke the internet. It was the “Like a Girl” spot. I was a dad to one of my girls at that time already, and it just connected with me on a deeper level. What was brilliant was that it had no mention of the product, but instead, it said what you thought you felt, and what you didn’t know was that the others felt that way.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I grew up wanting to be a professional tennis player and played competitively at the national level for several years growing up. Then, life happened. I still play recreationally and hope to continue to play with both my daughters as long as I can keep up with them.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I’m really excited to see that CMOs are starting to adopt a more strategic stance within the company’s C-suite. I’m a firm believer that the CMO role has the most complete and overarching view of the market and the customer journey, and by partnering with other C-suite members and sales leaders at a more strategic level, they can ensure that market strategy aligns with other business and stakeholders’ broader objectives. I’m optimistic about how data is already and will continue to be at the heart of modern marketing. Marketers in every field are analyzing and interpreting data to make informed business decisions.

Given the current macroeconomic situation and the focus on ROI, I’m less excited about some marketers and their organizations’ overfocus on short-term gains and quick returns, which will invariably lead to lack of investment in the long term. This short-termism at the expense of long-term building can have a negative consequence on an organization’s sustainable success.

Keep reading here.

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

Post it notes: How to figure out when to post on LinkedIn.

(Mis)behavin’: A collection of behavioral marketing tools and how to use them.

Prior engagement: Average engagement rates on social media across industries.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Apple and Paramount are in discussions to bundle their streaming services at a discount, per the WSJ.
• Speaking of streaming bundles, Verizon rolled out a $10-per-month deal for the ad-supported tiers of both Netflix and Max.
• Alaska Airlines plans to acquire Hawaiian Airlines in a $1.9 billion deal, pending regulatory approval.