HubSpot - 😻A few of our favorite things...

Caroline’s favorite lesson:

If you're not risking your career on a bold marketing move, you're not thinking big enough.

Ron Goldenberg, VP of International Marketing & Innovation at BSE Global, got plenty of pushback when he pitched a Brooklyn Nets activation — in Paris, complete with an orchestral tribute to The Notorious B.I.G. and Brooklyn Nets-inspired pizzeria.

One colleague even said to him, “You really think Parisians are going to show up to a Brooklyn Nets pizzeria?” (I get the hesitation — don't they live off of escargot and croissants?)

He knew there could be major ramifications if the event flopped. But he believed in the concept enough to risk it all.

“If I'm going to get fired for anything, it's worth [it] for an orchestral tribute to Biggie in Paris,” Goldenberg told me last week. “When your ideas are big enough and bold enough, and you believe in them to the degree that you're willing to take a reputational risk, that's when you're onto something.”

Playing it safe can be a risk in itself. But marketing thrives on standing out, which demands taking chances.

For Goldenberg, the payoff was massive:

• Fans snapped up all 15K tickets to the Nets-Cavaliers game, 3.3K visitors indulged in Brooklyn pizza, and Biggie's tribute sold out in five days 🍕
• 450K unique visitors to Brooklynets.com/paris
• 64K emails captured (90% net-new to their database)
• 195% YoY surge in ticket sales to French consumers and over seven figures in total revenue 💵

Goldenberg got stakeholders on board by being blunt: “You all need to understand how important this is, not just for the Nets but for our fans and the global sports industry,” he told colleagues. “It's never been done before at this scale.”

Sticking to the tried-and-true is tempting. But it was insight matched with instinct that landed Goldenberg his big swings.

Laura’s favorite lesson: Use the peanut butter method.

“Everyone hates advertising, but they're okay being sold to,” Hassan S. Ali, Creative director of brand at Hootsuite, says.

It’s like using peanut butter to sneak your dog a pill. “If people are willing to be sold to, pitch the pill in something yummy. People will watch it.” (Let’s ignore for a moment that we are all the hapless dogs in this analogy.)

“I often think that the best ads are ones we can't measure, because they're shared in a group chat with friends.” I sincerely hope nobody is working on a pixel that can track my group chats, but it’s true that if somebody shares an ad, it’s because it’s both funny and emotionally resonant.

Maybe you see a funny ad for diapers. Your sister’s just had a baby, and you share the ad in the family group chat. “All of a sudden, there’s a bond formed through this piece of advertising.” And it goes beyond “here, buy this thing,” Ali says.

Without that (hopefully imaginary) group-chat tracking pixel, traditional marketing metrics won’t necessarily be of much use.

“But what did you solve for the customer?” Ali asks. “Those are the real results.” The more we can focus on that, “the better we’ll be as marketers.”

Curt’s favorite lesson: Don't let growth marketing dominate your strategy.

A favorite rant of Brendan Lewis (EVP of global communications and public affairs for Oatly) is his belief that growth marketing needs to be “neutered, if not totally destroyed.”

“It's nothing more than spreadsheet marketing,” he tells me. When marketers are buying clicks and perfecting their emails for click-through rates, Lewis says they're leaving out an essential ingredient: emotion.

“If you water down your message to optimize it for clicks, you lose your soul,” he tells me without a trace of grandiosity. “The emotion and the belief has to be there. It can't just be somebody looking at email click-rates all day.”

(Got it – I‘ll stop obsessing about this email’s subject lines…)

For Oatly, this means taking the leap without testing it to death first. Like in 2023, when the company bought billboards in Times Square to proudly endorse its climate label. (The Oatly team invited the dairy industry to join them. They declined.)

The secret sauce? Oatly is a mission-led company that happens to sell oat milk; it’s not a product-led company in search of a mission. So its leaders are able to act on impulse and hunch as long as they know their messaging caters to their larger goal of promoting sustainability.

Did we pick the best? Indulge in the top 12 and see if you agree.