HOLIDAYS

Okay, But Have You Ever Seen a Hanukkah Ad?

With Hanukkah starting this Thursday, it’s a bit late to run a campaign for the kids cool enough not to spoil the whole Santa Claus thing back in the day.

And speaking as someone with both a Jewish family history and a Christmas tree in the living room right now, I get that a lot of Jewish folks don't want the mass commercialization of Christmas to come for Hanukkah. But does that mean they don’t deserve any holiday season representation?

Hear me out: 

• Yes, the Jewish population in the U.S. is only about 2%, as of December 2017.
• But “61% of Americans find diversity in advertising important, and 38% of consumers are more likely to trust brands that do well with showing diversity in their ads,” according to an Adobe study shared by Forbes in February 2020. 
• And while it's nowhere close to Christmas's level, Hanukkah is the most commercialized Jewish holiday.

TL;DR: Marketers could be missing out on major payoff by ignoring the Jewish holidays altogether.

Recent history

Admittedly, it was tough to find brands that ran creative around the festival of lights in recent memory, but nevertheless, I persisted. Here are some recent Hanukkah campaigns to learn from:

Pornhub: Three years ago, Pornhub ran a surprisingly PG and wholesome ad for its premium service around Hanukkah. 

• The video spot depicted a pretty extensive holiday light show and won “a publicity game of dreidel with stories appearing in Mashable, Refinery29, Gizmodo and Men’s Health,” per Ad Age. You can watch it here. 

Schmaltz Brewing: The beer brand will launch She’brew #RBG IPA this month as a tribute to Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Cheerios: Back in 2017, a year I’m starting to gather was the Renaissance of brands experimenting with Hanukkah advertising, Cheerios flopped with this tweet. 

• The Christmas ornaments in the tweet’s image and toasted rather than fried food prompted one Ad Age staffer to write, “Hey, General Mills: Where were the Jewish employees, or anyone aware of the story of Hanukkah, in the making of this tweet?”

Bottom line: “Think about the one house on the block with a menorah in the window when everyone else has Christmas trees,” Joseph Jacobs CEO Elie Rosenfeld told Campaign U.S. in 2017. “When that family sees a brand talk to them in their language, about their culture—it's something they don't forget.”

TV

Not So Super Bowl

Last week, Toyota bought its fourth consecutive Super Bowl ad spot. In light of the announcement, let’s take a look at where marketers stand re: 2021’s big game.

• In October, Avocados from Mexico said “pass” on a 2021 Super Bowl spot after six consecutive years as an advertiser. 
• Olay made the same call last week after a two-year Super Bowl run. 

On the other cleat: Mars Wrigley and WeatherTech are confirmed 2021 advertisers, with CBS noting 80% of its Super Bowl LV ad inventory has been sold. 

• In comparison, 2019’s Super Bowl inventory sold out before Thanksgiving—but many previous games have taken longer to sell out too. 

Looking ahead: If you’ve been following sports at all in 2020, you know many games get postponed when players get Covid-19. Perhaps CBS’s remaining 20% of ad inventory will be snatched up closer to non-rain check date as a result. 

+1: CBS’s 2021 ad spots currently sell for “$5.5 million per 30 seconds…slightly lower than last year’s rate of $5.6 million per 30 seconds,” per Adweek. But $5.5 million is still pretty high historically—in 2018, for reference, the price was $5 million.

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Media and Email Sittin’ In a Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Everybody knows marketing loves email and email loves marketing. But we need to let you know that email has an immense, burning love for another—and that’s media.

According to the superstar marketing platform LiveIntent, email can be used as a powerful media channel for engaging customers at every stage of the funnel.

We’re talking campaign types like brand awareness, content marketing, lead generation, product purchases, or seasonal marketing.

To further illustrate the power of this email-meets-media love affair, LiveIntent wrote an actual love story (all right, it’s an e-book) to show you how to build custom ad creative for engaging audiences at every stage.

Love knows no bounds, and neither does email.

Download the e-book today.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Shock Me Like an Electric Jeep

We still don’t know who’s behind the Stonehenge-esque monoliths popping up all over the world (aliens or marketers?). But if the monoliths came from an automaker’s marketing team, they can’t be happy about Jeep’s latest social media campaign.

What happened: Jeep and agency Highdive created a campaign in which the unexplained monolith in Utah = a charging station for Jeep’s Wrangler 4xe Hybrid. Posts with messaging centered around the hybrid car being “out of this world” ran on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

• The monolith post on Facebook “became the top static social post on the Jeep channel in less than 24 hours,” garnering the most reactions and shares on Jeep’s Facebook account year-to-date (102,000 and 15,000, respectively), per Adweek.
• Posts optimized for Jeep’s Twitter and Instagram saw similarly positive numbers.

My takeaway: Rather than crafting a quick Tweet and calling it a day, Jeep doubled down on the potential connection between its product and the monolith meme, enlisting Highdive to create a thoughtful, multi-platform campaign. 

The lesson: Engaging with the zeitgeist is most effective when marketing teams move both quickly and intentionally.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Anheuser-Busch and Travis Scott are partnering for a brand endorsement gig.
• Discovery Inc. tapped Hulu ad exec Jim Keller to head up streaming and digital efforts (hey there, Discovery+).
• Amazon is now Earth’s largest advertiser, according to Ad Age’s World’s Largest Advertisers report.
• Facebook is updating its misinformation policy to include vaccine-related content.

SPONSORED BY POSTCLICK

Digital advertising might be changing for good, but that doesn’t mean it should be part of a bad guessing game. To help you stay ahead of the curve, our pals at Postclick drew insights from 1,440 marketers and created their 2021 Digital Advertising Trends Report. Find out what marketers are prioritizing, where they’re investing, and what top performers do differently. Download the report today.

FRENCH PRESS

Marketing tips to make you fancy

TikTok: This infographic outlines 10 TikTok trends to help guide your 2021 social strategy. 

SEO: Pretend you know one (1) thing about coding with these 9 HTML tags you need to know for SEO. 

Community building: IFundWomen shared a guide with Buffer to “Cultivating an Inclusive and Engaged Digital Community.” Read it here. 

CMOs: This week you have not one but two upcoming CMO Series episodes to add to your calendar—Farryn Weiner, CEO and founder of Farrynheight, and Garrison Yang of Facebook Disruptors.

CMO SENTIMENTS

Sign up here for Morning Brew CEO Alex Lieberman’s CMO Series on LinkedIn, in which he chats with the most important marketing leaders in the industry. Then read on for three questions that’ll help you get to know these marketing leaders a little better.

Director of Creative Strategy at Twitch Jack Appleby stopped by the CMO Series to not only answer the following questions, but also to chat about creating a winning social campaign, career building on social, and agency versus in-house planning. 

Alex Lieberman: Favorite book or favorite podcast since the beginning of the year?

Jack Appleby: For me it’s Book of Basketball. It’s an 800 page Bill Simmons book that has incredibly nerdy analysis.  

AL: What is the thing that you do in the morning to have your most productive day?

JA: Five minute journal. It’s a gratitude journal where you focus on what’s bringing you happiness and what you need to accomplish for the day. It legitimately changed my perspective on life.

AL: If all of your followers were wiped out on every platform, knowing what you know today, what is the one platform you’d focus on to start building your audience?

JA: Initial instinct is Twitter just because I’m a writing guy. It’s fast, it’s easy, and I can get thoughts out there concisely. 

Watch the full interview, and any others you might have missed, here.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Marketing Brew stories from the last few editions.

• How to turn Spotify Wrapped into branded content
• Walgreens unveiled Walgreens Advertising Group (WAG), its retail media offering
• Discovery Inc. announced Discovery+ streaming service