Remember the “graphic design is my passion” meme? It’s been nearly a decade since the original image, featuring a red Papyrus font and a clip-art image of a frog, first started circulating as a tongue-in-cheek way to respond to less-inspired design choices. Now, it seems to be serving as a source of marketing inspiration.

Brands like Nutter Butter, Sour Patch Kids, and Wendy’s are posting grainy, “deep-fried” memes steeped in internet humor. Bottles of Kyse Perfumes, which retail for $85, feature Papyrus and Comic Sans-like fonts on the packaging. NPR’s Planet Money has become known for its low-tech graphics on Instagram and TikTok. And Surreal Cereal put out typo-filled billboards earlier this year that look as if they were made with Microsoft WordArt.

“It’s interesting to see this starting to emerge within advertising 10 years later, but there’s still that cultural relevance,” Sam Houle, creative director at brand experience firm Siegel+Gale, told us.

These designs may look as if they were made without a second thought (or any training in graphic design), but the creatives behind them told us that they’re just as strategic and intentional as they are entertaining to make—all with the goal of helping brands resonate with younger audiences.

Back to basics: Aubrey Burrough, a social media strategist at Dentsu Creative who works on Nutter Butter, said it’s now “becoming more commonplace for brands to start experimenting” with the form. Blake Pleasant, an art director and content creator at Dentsu Creative who has worked on social posts for the same account, considers the rise of the deep-fried brand post as a natural reaction to the ultra-polished looks that once dominated the internet.

“We see it as almost like a response to the overly curated Instagram aesthetic,” Pleasant told us.

Continue reading here.—KH

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College athletes and the sports they play are getting even more popular.

University of Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark’s autograph has been in high demand ahead of March Madness, and college football is quite literally worth billions—ESPN is reportedly paying $1.3 billion per year for the media rights to the College Football Playoff.

This year, college sports fans are planning on engaging even more with those games than in the past, according to a recent report from marketing analytics company Big Chalk—potentially good news for the brands that sponsor those sports in more ways than one.

Fan favorite: About one-third of the US population are college sports fans, according to Big Chalk’s estimate, which is based on the US census and a survey of 1,935 consumers conducted Jan. 29–Jan. 31. Of that group, 1,222 of them met Big Chalk’s definition of “college sports fan,” aka someone who watched (or at least tried to watch) one or more college sports events last year of their own volition.

• On average, those fans watched about 11 college sports events last year.
• Big Chalk estimated that number will increase to 13 in 2024, even considering changes like the realignment of conferences and the introduction of NIL deals to college sports.
• When asked to rank their opinions on NIL opportunities from a scale of “hate” to “love,” the largest share of respondents to the Big Chalk survey said they liked or loved NIL, for a net positive sentiment of about 29 percentage points.

Read more 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.

Here we go again? Tarte, which faced criticism last year over its hosted influencer trips in Dubai and Miami, recently sent influencers on yet another trip, this time to Bora Bora. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some people were not thrilled about the lavish vacation, which was called tone-deaf. Some defended the practice and cast the negative reactions up to jealousy. Others (including Tarte’s CEO and co-founder herself) observed that the critics don’t seem to object to brands spending millions on Super Bowl ads. Based on some people’s comments and posts, the answer may be that Super Bowl ads don’t necessarily flaunt wealth in the same way as influencer trips do, especially at a time when many people may be struggling financially.

PCB welcomes you: A new ad from the Miami Beach government encouraging people to please, for the love of God, go anywhere else for Spring Break is getting attention online. The ad is framed as a break-up message in response to past Spring Break mayhem in the city, and lays out some not-so-fun curfews and fines for those who decide to fight for their right to party this year.

Loco for logos: You may remember Emily Zugay, the creator who went viral in 2021 for claiming to be a graphic designer and ironically redesigning brand logos. Well, she’s back, and she has an intern: her puppy, Margot. Petco and Rover were among the brands that embraced Margot’s new designs and changed their profile pics on TikTok, while other brand social media managers begged for her attention in the comments.

Continue reading here.—KH

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Stories we’re jealous of.

• Rolling Stone broke down the brewing conservative backlash against Doritos over an ad with a trans influencer.
• The Atlantic made the case for abandoning the inbox and giving up on email altogether.
• The New York Times wrote about the future of the journalism industry amid new rounds of layoffs.