At the start of this year, a video of 8-year-old twins Haven and Koti Garza went viral for proclaiming their status as Gen Alpha influencers.

The video, posted from the Garza Crew account run by the twins’ mom, seemed designed to poke fun at critiques of young influencers. “Of course we don’t have toys,” Haven says at the end of the video, before pushing a slime kit that she’s been playing with offscreen.

The twins may still play with toys, but the Garza Crew account also regularly posts the type of videos it poked fun at, including “get ready with me” videos in which the sisters slather on moisturizer and present “fit checks” for school. At the same time, backlash to content from younger influencers like the Garzas has grown, with some expressing fear that kids are, through social media, being pushed to grow up too fast.

The first wave of Gen Alpha, classified roughly as those born between 2010 and 2024, are now entering their teen years, and have never lived in a world without social media or influencers. As some become influencers themselves, brands are navigating the moral gray area of the space, both when it comes to reaching young people and potentially even encouraging some of them to become marketing mouthpieces themselves. All of this is happening as activists, experts, and some legislators push for more rights and protections for child influencers and determine whether children should be allowed on social media at all.

“It’s this two-part question for brands,” Elise Alverson, group strategy director at Ogilvy, told us. “First, is now the right time [to engage Gen Alpha], yes or no? If it is, then what are the strategic and creative guardrails that are going to help us do that in a way that is not harming them?”

Continue reading here.—KH

Goodbye, ChatGPT. Hello, WNBA.

After a season marked by viewership and attendance records and a roster of new sponsors, the women’s basketball league landed at the top of Morning Consult’s annual Fastest Growing Brands report, which is determined by comparing the share of consumers who said they were considering purchasing from a brand in Q3 to Q1. ChatGPT previously topped the list in 2023.

The WNBA was the only sports league to make the list, which otherwise included several brands from the food and beverage, streaming, and AI categories.

Take the dub: The WNBA clocked in as the No. 1 fastest-growing brand among all US adults, with a 3.82-percentage-point increase in the share of respondents who said they’d consider purchasing in Q3 compared to Q1. The league also saw notable growth among men and older generations.

• It was the fourth-fastest growing brand among men, with a 5.03-percentage-point increase.
• The W landed in the 16th spot among Gen X, and was 10th among baby boomers.
• It fell lower on the list among women (18th), and it didn’t appear on the demographic breakdowns for Gen Z and millennials.

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.

Emily Ketchen is CMO and VP of intelligent devices group and international markets at Lenovo. She was previously a marketer at HP, and she also worked on the agency side at McCann Erickson, Publicis Groupe, and Grey Group. Ketchen is also a board member of the Association of National Advertisers.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Two of the more recent ones outside Lenovo that I liked are the “WoMen’s Football” ad by Orange Telecom and the “Magnetic Stories” ad by Siemens Healthineers. Orange’s “WoMen’s Football” duped French audiences into addressing their gender bias and took two Grands Prix at the last Cannes Lions. Sometimes the idea wins out over everything and can make you feel so much.

Another campaign I thought was great was from healthcare service provider Siemens Healthineers, which also won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. Tapping into the simple insight that MRIs make horrible sounds, they created the “Magnetic Stories” campaign, an audiobook collection that cleverly transforms a loud, scary MRI into a more fun experience for younger patients as they listen to them via headphones.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I grew up as a “third culture kid” with an American father and a Scottish mother, moving across many countries. This experience came to shape my perspective and influenced how I operate as a leader. It instilled in me a comfort with being uncomfortable and ability to lean into the discomfort of challenges, a willingness to take strategic risks, and to embrace change, as well as an understanding and appreciation for diversity and inclusion. I believe that the art and science of marketing are really rooted in our ability to be lifelong students of life, humanity, and ultimately, people and customers. And this idea of being a lifelong learner of people and cultural trends stems from my upbringing as a third culture kid, too.

Read more here.

YouTube shows enormous advertising potential with Gen Z. Recent forecasts show that nearly 9 in 10 US Gen Zers (89.3%) are on YouTube, putting the platform ahead of Instagram (72.5%), TikTok (71.2%), and Snapchat (70.3%).

Understand YouTube’s growing influence across ad revenue, video viewers, app users, digital platforms, and social media usage. Elevate your YouTube ad spend strategy.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• TikTok signed a measurement deal with Nielsen.
• IPG sold design and tech company Huge to private-equity firm AEA Investors.
• Mercedes is sending off star F1 driver Lewis Hamilton with a global campaign as a 12-year partnership comes to an end.