In 2019, when Kim Kardashian announced her new shapewear brand, it was called “Kimono,” a reference to both her name and to the traditional Japanese robe. Let’s just say, that didn’t go over super well.

Nearly five years and one rebrand later, Skims is a $4 billion business. The company has run campaigns with performers like Lana Del Rey and Usher and actors from the TV show The White Lotus, become the official underwear partner of the WNBA and NBA, and has plans to open brick-and-mortar retail locations later this year.

To support that growth, Skims chose Oscars night earlier this month to debut its first-ever TV ad, which featured Kardashian appearing as two-dozen different characters. The aim, according to the agency that created the spot, is to further expand Skims’s reach and appeal, and it comes as the brand continues its trajectory as one of the more successful celebrity-led brands in recent memory.

Fit check

Skims’s first TV spot, “Skims Lab,” a 60-second ad that features Kardashian and her clones testing Skims clothes in a laboratory, was an effort to reach a wider audience for the brand, which has historically enjoyed a strong Gen Z following, said Azsa West, chief creative officer at Wieden+Kennedy, which created the ad.

Why Oscar night? According to West, the brand was looking for a “big media moment” to debut the ad (it had also considered the Super Bowl, she told us).

Continue reading here.—JS

Marketers, you want your campaigns to soar, not flounder. Take flight with a measurement and forecasting solution built for today’s needs (not yesterday’s) and embrace a fresh, timely approach to media mix modeling (MMM).

Introducing: Northbeam’s MMM+. Northbeam’s MMM+ is bespoke for brands running modern digital marketing strategies. Forecast ROI, incrementality, and omnichannel budget, all in one tool.

What sets MMM+ apart from traditional MMM? Glad you asked:

• an interactive dashboard instead of static outputs
• monthly white-glove service from industry experts
• forecasting flexibility based on your goals
• extreme model transparency
• view incremental gains channel by channel

Google’s cookie deprecation will heavily impact cross-platform targeting and measurement, which means a statistically led approach to media planning is your safest bet.

Ready to evolve forward? Start with MMM+ and make the most of your marketing.

More than half of the country’s adults have cut the cord, or never had a cord to cut in the first place, according to a new report from the Video Advertising Bureau.

In the report: In 2022, cordless viewers, defined as people who have either never signed up for a paid, traditional television service or have canceled that service, made up about 49% of all US adults. As of March this year, though, that figure is up to 54%.

Streaming, unsurprisingly, is also growing, accounting for a 38% share of monthly time spent watching television, compared to broadcast and cable’s 51%. That streaming share is up six percentage points from 2022, when it was 32%; broadcast and cable viewership comprised 58% of share that year.

Continue reading here.—RB

Puneet Nanda spent much of his career in the background, churning out new products in the admittedly stodgy oral hygiene category. Now he’s the CEO of GuruNanda, the top-selling brand on TikTok Shop and a social media star in his own right.

His California-based account has 263,000+ followers and 5.8 million likes, numbers that he obtained from a daily regimen of content creation that might exhaust an energetic Gen Z influencer, let alone a 56-year-old product designer.

“I post 10 videos a day, so that’s what I do 10 hours, 12 hours a day,” he told Retail Brew. “Seventy percent of my job at the company is producing videos.”

The videos are a mix of health advice and information about his oral wellness products, the most popular of which is Cocomint Pulling Oil, selling 428,000+ units and raking in $3.35 million in revenue in the last 30 days, according to Tabcut.com.

The product is part of a unique crop of “TikTok-native” brands that are selling well on the social media marketplace due to their success getting noticed on the platform’s somewhat mysterious algorithms.

Continue reading here.—AV

Sip on this: Trying to engage a younger audience? Follow The Stream. Tubi partnered with The Harris Poll to find out what Gen Z is watching, who they’re watching with…and why ad-supported content aligns with their priorities. Don’t miss out on these marketing insights. Download The Stream.