Why would a feminine-care company sponsor a WNBA team?

Jazmyn Williams, director of brand marketing at feminine-care company The Honey Pot, wouldn’t blame anyone for asking. But after attending an Atlanta Dream game last season, she became convinced The Honey Pot should have a spot on the team’s sponsorship roster.

Brands like The Honey Pot, which just wrapped up its first season as the exclusive body-care partner of the Dream, aren’t typically associated with sports. But in the WNBA, The Honey Pot is one of many nontraditional sponsors that have flocked to the league in recent years, contributing to increasing partnership revenue for the league and its teams.

This season with the Dream marked The Honey Pot’s first sports sponsorship, which Williams said felt natural from the start. Discussions are underway about extending the agreement beyond this year, she said.

Be a part of it: It wasn’t the size of the Dream’s arena that caught Williams’s attention—it was the vibe in the stands, she said.

“It feels like you’re hanging out with all of your friends and your neighbors—very community-oriented, very inclusive,” Williams said. “I just thought, ‘Wow, The Honey Pot should be a part of this.’”

Read more here.—AM

When a chronically online film studio like A24 makes a weepy, romantic film like We Live in Time, one might expect a promotional campaign designed around the heightened emotion of the movie. While there was some of that sappiness, A24 marketed We Live In Time with, well, a horse: a chaotic, scene-stealing, carousel-horse turned meme.

So A24 mounted the meme and trotted away with it—but it didn’t entirely follow an expected playbook.

Horsing around: On August 13, the X account Film Crave posted a first-look still from We Live in Time. In it, stars Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh are canoodling on a carousel, the very picture of romance. But it was the prominently placed, maniacal-looking prop carousel horse that attracted unusual levels of interest online. The horse was soon put into edits of iconic films, TV shows, and various awkward scenarios that delighted its internet fans and kept the film top of mind.

“Without him, we really are nothing,” Garfield said in a red-carpet interview with etalk at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September, joking that “no one would be aware of this film if it wasn’t for that fucking horse.”

When an organic audience reaction like this happens, speed can be of the essence, according to Samantha Schuster, connections director at creative agency VML. She typically recommends brands react to memes within 24 hours to about a few days after they emerge to leverage the moment before the masses move on to the next trend, she told us.

“If you catch it a week later, chances are, the internet has moved on…It all just moves so fast these days that you have to be really nimble and agile when it comes to meme marketing,” Schuster said.

Continue reading here.—JN

In September, Coca-Cola and Oreo, a Mondelez brand, declared themselves “besties” for a collaboration where Coke released Oreo-flavored soda and Oreo released Coke-flavored cookies. Shortly after the announcement, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey and Mondelez CEO Dirk Van De Put exchanged friendship bracelets and took to TikTok to post Shein hauls.

OK, we made up the previous sentence, but here’s why: To some observers, particularly those with the blush of youth, evoking “besties” may sound like the brands were trying too hard to strike a chord with Gen Zers.

“Marketers were told that to survive in today’s culture, they must keep up,” Gen Z research and strategy firm Dcdx wrote in a post about the Coke-Oreos besties approach on Substack. “Keep up with the trends, the memes, and the moments commanding attention.”

The post went on to warn that “the hunt for momentary relevance” is a “slippery slope that not only risks looking old or outdated but imposes a serious long-term side effect.”

A poll of 92 members of what Dcdx calls its “futurehuman partners,” who agency CEO and founder Andrew Roth told Retail Brew make up a sort of focus group of Gen Zers it surveys, asked this: “Brands saying ‘bestie’ in their marketing, cool or cringe?”

More than 8 out of 10 respondents (85%) thought brands saying “bestie” was cringe; just 15% considered it cool.

“We believe not all brands should try and hop on new trends,” Dcdx declared on Substack.

We asked Roth to shed light on how much brands are riding some recent TikTok virality, and he used the database from social-media insight agency Tubular Labs to respond.

Read more on Retail Brew.—AAN

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The New York Times wrote about the success and media placement value of the magazine Costco Connection.
• Vox looked at whether all those political campaign texts are actually effective.
• The Hollywood Reporter wrote about why streaming services are partnering with delivery apps like DoorDash.