The “sleepy girl mocktail” is having a moment.

A little over a year ago, TikToker @caleeshea posted a recipe for a mocktail meant to encourage a better night’s sleep, consisting of tart cherry juice and the Lemon Ginger flavor of prebiotic soda Olipop. The “sleepy girl mocktail,” as it’s now known, has seen a recent resurgence, with some credit given to another TikToker, Gracie Norton, who went viral for her version of the drink.

It was Norton’s mocktail, containing tart cherry juice, magnesium powder, and Lemon Lime Olipop, that first drew the brand’s attention, Steven Vigilante, director of growth and partnerships at Olipop, said.

Olipop decided to seize on the organic opportunity and work with Norton, along with other creators, to create new mocktails for its Dry January “Mocktails in Minutes” campaign, which includes personalized recipes from the brand’s virtual sommelier, Olivier. In its first week, more than 20,000 consumers tried out the mocktail sommelier, and the brand’s Classic Grape flavor featured in the recommended recipes became the campaign’s top seller, with sales up 31% from the week before the campaign debuted.

Beyond sales, Vigilante told us the brand’s decision to engage with consumers’ and creators’ enthusiasm for sleepy girl mocktails has resulted in a PR success story for the brand.

“I don’t think it’s possible to truly engineer virality,” Vigilante said. “You gotta let the internet do its thing, but I think we put just enough gas in the fire to help make it global.”

Continue reading here.—KH

Molson Coors is all about going “beyond traditional media,” CMO Sofia Colucci said—and for a long time, that’s all the brand could do on Super Bowl weekend.

For more than three decades, the brewer was locked out of traditional broadcast advertising’s biggest stage, when competitor Anheuser-Busch InBev was the Super Bowl’s exclusive alcohol advertiser. AB InBev declined to renew that deal in 2022, and for the past two years, Molson Coors has seized the opportunity to run traditional Super Bowl commercials. But the beer brand didn’t throw its playbook from those prior 33 years out the window entirely.

This year’s Super Bowl campaign included a TV ad for Coors Light with an experiential tie-in, as well as a less traditional campaign spotlighting Miller Lite that was all about in-person and social engagement.

It’ll take a little longer than a few days for the brand to fully see results from a big-game ad, but the off-broadcast components of both campaigns have already proven their worth, Colucci told Marketing Brew.

Cracking the code: Coors Light and Miller Lite were both “on fire last year,” Colucci said, helping propel a YoY net sales increase of more than 9% for the parent company. Coors Light had the most momentum, and its position as the company’s biggest brand in the US and Canada earned it the broadcast treatment, Colucci said.

Miller Lite, however, wasn’t left high and dry—it ran 1,000 ads instead of one.

Read more here.—AM

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

Justin Leonard is the co-founder and CEO of Game Seven, the creative, social, and experiential marketing arm of the management and marketing agency Excel Sports Management. Game Seven counts companies like Amazon, Meta, Nike, and Spotify as clients.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Nike’s NYvsNY. It’s a Nike Basketball campaign that happens every summer, featuring the city’s top basketball players competing for bragging rights at the most iconic playgrounds in NYC. It is the perfect blend of grassroots, community, and big brand storytelling. It is hard to capture how special the environment is. It is truly a visceral experience. It happens every summer over the course of eight weeks. The program is also a platform to help launch and market Nike and Jordan Brand signature athletes and products. Over the years, the program has featured Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jayson Tatum, Kyrie Irving, Sabrina Ionescu, and more.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? My inspiration for starting Game Seven was sparked by the golden era of Nike advertising, and there are two spots that really stand out for me. First is Jordan and Mars Blackmon, and the second is Nike Freestyle. If I had to choose one, it would be Mars. Those spots were so different and so unique compared to anything else that was in the marketplace. To me, it helped define an entire industry and genre that we are still witnessing grow today.

Continue reading here.

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

Money maker: A rundown of the TikTok Creativity Program, aka the platform’s new version of the Creator Fund.

Analyze: More than a dozen sentiment analysis tools marketers may want to use for tasks like social listening.

Socialize: A step-by-step breakdown on using Instagram Reels for brand and business promotion.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Capital One plans to acquire Discover Financial in a $35.3 billion all-stock deal.
• Verizon renewed its partnership with the NHL, which makes it the league’s official 5G and wireless services provider in the US.
• Coca-Cola partnered with Time Out to create “Foodmarks,” a campaign mapping places “known for a legendary moment revolving around a meal.”
• Real Chemistry, a healthcare marketing agency, acquired independent agency Avant Healthcare to up its medical comms services.