On New Year’s Eve, the Baltimore Ravens clinched the top spot in their conference. In theory, this grants the team the easiest path to the Super Bowl. Yet the news was briefly eclipsed by the in-stadium appearance of Ronnie, a brash and beefy caricature of Maryland’s, uh, crustier sports fans.

Ronnie, a character performed and created by the Baltimore-born comedian Stavros Halkias, has given a postgame analysis of every Ravens game since at least 2021 in the form of Instagram posts, where he has 660,000 followers. The video, however, was posted to the Ravens’ official social accounts, and was delivered on the field of M&T Bank Stadium.

“Look where we are, yo. Finally, Ronnie is gettin’ the respect he deserves in this city,” he says into the camera, before sharing that his professional football career was derailed after he threatened a high school quarterback with a “makeshift, homemade weapon.”

While that particular video is relatively clean by Ronnie’s standards, the post was eyebrow-raising for the sheer fact that an official account belonging to a professional football team was willing to work with a comedian slash influencer who is sex-positive, crass, and outspoken.

He’s a hometown hero, Garrett Downing, director of social media for the Baltimore Ravens, told Marketing Brew. “He’s a diehard Ravens fan…He’s somebody that our fans love, and he loves our team. So it made too much sense. Of course, we had a conversation just to make sure that everybody felt good about it,” he said.

The videos featuring Ronnie generated 5.5 million views and at least 10 million impressions, according to Downing, with the pregame video as the team’s most popular X post that day, which is even more impressive considering the Ravens walloped the Dolphins 56-19.

“When we showed him on the video boards at the end of the game, he got a roaring cheer,” Downing said, adding that Ronnie’s appearance was “incredibly well-received.”

Keep reading here.—RB

You know the rest. Life is about the journey. And when every customer is different, that adds up to a lot of unique journeys.

Salesforce decided to spotlight the bigger picture by highlighting 5 routes to successful customer journeys. Their interactive guide helps brands discover how to integrate marketing channels to foster real connection and results.

Study up on 5 sample customer journeys for growth, onboarding, engagement, retention, and support. The guide also includes use cases from marketing pros and insight from the latest industry tech.

Get the free guide—and happy travels.

There’s ad-supported television, and then there’s Telly, a company that’s so ad-supported it’s giving away free 4K televisions in exchange for data and eyeballs.

If you haven’t heard, the company’s gimmick is a second “smart screen” installed underneath the TV, showing, among other features like the weather and sports scores, digital ads, subsidizing the free TV.

“All TVs come with ads. It’s time you got cut in. Brands pay for the non-intrusive ad on the second smart screen. Those ads pay for Telly. Plain and simple,” the company’s website reads.

Telly’s rollout last year earned tons of coverage, and the company then said it expected to ship 500,000 televisions by the end of 2023. That didn’t happen, Telly founder and CEO Ilya Pozin told Marketing Brew. So far, the company, still in beta mode, has shipped “thousands of devices,” though he declined to specifically say how many.

“Instead of rushing to ship 500,000 this year, We’re planning for a much bigger scale,” he said, emphasizing that the company was now working with “higher quality” manufacturers and device partners. Close to 400,000 people are currently on Telly’s waiting list, he said.

“It is important to note this was a strategic business decision we made,” Dallas Lawrence, Telly’s chief strategy and communications officer, told us over email.

• To coincide with CES, the company said in a press release Tuesday that its usage was “twice the national hourly average” for living room TV viewing time and that its second-screen ads had a 60% higher recall rate, in one case study. Telly also said it would unveil e-commerce capabilities, letting viewers shop on their TVs.

Telly is also partnering with the purchasing data company Attain, which manages apps like Klover and Frisbee, where users can connect their credit and debit cards and, in some cases, upload shopping receipts in exchange for cash and rewards. Attain is giving away 100 Telly TVs to its customers, connecting Telly’s viewership data with Attain’s purchasing data, down to a user’s hashed email. Because consumers are explicitly opting into each company’s features, both Telly and Attain call their data “zero-party data,” which may or may not be a real thing.

“The data that they are able to capture is completely complementary to the type of data that we work with, with our consumer base,” Brian Mandelbaum, Attain’s CEO, said.

Continue reading here.—RB

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

Patrick Ward is VP of marketing at Formula.Monks, the tech services and consulting division of the agency Media.Monks. He’s also held marketing roles at companies like Rootstrap.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? This is a controversial one, but my heart will always go back to beer commercials in my native Australia. Alcohol is steeped in our tradition, and rightly or wrongly, it lends itself to some of the best advertising campaigns. Carlton Draught’s “Big Ad” combines the best of humorous lyrics with bizarre visuals and the pomp and circumstance of “O Fortuna” (and a cheeky bit of Aussie swearing to boot).

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: My online life is LinkedIn, so there isn’t much you can’t guess; however, my fandom of sports knows no bounds. From American football to the Premier League, rugby and Aussie Rules to Irish hurling, cricket to the Tour de France, there is never an offseason for me.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? It might seem cliche to say, but AI. Having seen many a tech hype cycle, my skeptical senses always arise when the usual gurus plug the latest tech advancement, but this time, AI feels different. Why? Because everyday folks are using it to improve their productivity and be more human in their jobs, and that is sorely needed in the advertising field. Ultimately, I look forward to AI helping us all as marketers to spend more time strategizing on new ways to connect with audiences on a human level rather than stuck in operational nightmares.

I’m least optimistic about “unhinged content.” In this era of media polarization, this trend tempts brands to be more extreme to appeal to younger audiences. While the pressure to remain relevant and trendy is very real for brands, in this digital age, brands need to be exceptionally thoughtful as to what they put out online. It takes years to build a reputation and seconds to destroy it, so be mindful as to how your brand will be perceived and if your content is serving your overall goal. Despite what many brands believe, they don’t need to be a part of every conversation.

Continue reading here.

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

Newly posted: Nearly two dozen personal content prompts for posting on LinkedIn.

Explain it like I’m five: You’ve heard of greenwashing—now get up to speed on what green media is, as explained by Unilever’s head of US media investment and partnerships, Aaron Sobol.

Class is in session: A seven-step guide to building brand identity online.

Rerouting for results: Salesforce maps 5 routes to successful customer journeys in its free interactive guide. Learn how integrated marketing channels compel customers to act and spark real results.*

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Stagwell acquired Team Epiphany, an agency that, per Ad Age, “specializes in cultural relevance, experiential, and multicultural marketing.”
• GroupM partnered with Disney, NBCUniversal, Roku, and YouTube in an effort to standardize streaming ads measurement across platforms and develop new ad formats.
• Tiger Woods’s 27-year partnership with Nike is ending, the professional golfer announced Monday.