A chef at a small Mexican restaurant in Georgia flips a chicken and gets 1.2 million views. A real estate agent pretends to fall in a listing video and racks up a quarter of a million likes. A Chevy dealership spoofs The Office and draws the attention of the General Motors CEO.

Small businesses are using social media in increasingly creative ways on TikTok and beyond in an effort to catch people’s attention.

Judy Wang, the owner of Judy’s Family Cafe in Galesburg, Illinois, has become a local celebrity as a result of her social media marketing efforts. In her most viral TikTok, which has accumulated more than 10.5 million views and nearly a million likes since it was posted in August, she appears ominously on the side of the road, wearing tiny sunglasses, before she appears to teleport into a car to pitch the riders on trying the cafe’s pancakes. Since that video was posted, she said, the restaurant’s sales have increased 50%, with some customers coming from miles away.

“People come from all over town, from Chicago,” Wang told Marketing Brew. “We had our first customer from Tennessee drive for eight hours.”

As more small businesses create funny or educational content online, marketers told us that it can lead to an increase in foot traffic—and, it seems, even a shot at fame for the people working there.

Continue reading here.—KH

Jamie Foxx in a wig. Kevin Hart clowning around with LeBron James. An urgent sense that there’s a giant pile of money free for the taking—if only the right parlay is placed.

This NFL season, sportsbooks are leaning on tried-and-true advertising strategies to entice new and old customers to pony up, and they’re buoyed by bigger ad budgets than last year.

DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM, the three largest sportsbooks in the US, bought more linear TV ads from August 15 through the first three weeks of the NFL season this year than in the same period last year, according to data from measurement firm iSpot.

• DraftKings spent an estimated $36.4 million, up 22% compared to the same period last year.
• FanDuel spent an estimated $27.1 million, up 14%.
• BetMGM spent an estimated $11.5 million, just shy of its 2023 spend over the same time period.

As a whole, spending in the casinos and gambling category is up 13.5%, according to iSpot. (It’s worth noting here that iSpot only measures linear TV ads and doesn’t factor in regional ads or ads on streaming platforms, where Amazon, Paramount, Peacock, and soon Netflix, stream NFL games, or social media.)

The start of the NFL season, when even Jacksonville Jaguars fans are optimistic, is a critical time for sportsbooks, Matt Prevost, chief revenue officer of BetMGM, told Marketing Brew.

“This is when many sports-betting customers decide which brands they are going to bet with over the course of the season,” he said. “Industrywide, you’ll see more advertising in the month of September than you will see in any other month outside of the Super Bowl.”

Read more here.—RB

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

Mike Molnar is managing partner at Glow, an independent creative agency, where he’s been for more than two decades. He was previously a senior media consultant at Sunshine Consultants, and he began his career as a publicist for America’s Most Wanted.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Crazy in advertising matters, but cleverness will always prevail. When you mix both, the recipe offers a unique opportunity to connect with consumers. In this case, I have two favorites. The little boy in me gives the ever-classic “Ship My Pants” from Kmart a nod. And the incredible power of the message, the visual redirect that Marcel agency did for Orange to promote women’s football in France, was clever, powerful, and poignant. A top-notch approach, purpose-built, and incredible audience and viewer results all around.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’ve got two official America’s Most Wanted captures I can be proud of for a story I found and brought forward when I worked with the show. It’s probably what helped get me in the door right out of college, and soon after quickly working my way to becoming the show’s publicist, traveling with the crew and host and conducting domestic and international interviews and press conferences.

Read more here.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• WPP and Roblox deepened their relationship to better help WPP clients leverage the platform.
• Domino’s is working with Twitch and the nail-care brand Olive & June as part of its renewed Emergency Pizza program that gives select customers free pizzas.
• Real Chemistry, a healthcare agency, partnered with pharmaceutical commercialization platform Corval to help pharma companies take drugs to market.