Happy Friday. It’s December, which means it’s time to collectively remember the worst Folgers ad of all time. ’Tis the season!
In today’s edition:
- Macy’s got a brand-new mascot
- No pictures, please
- Unwrapping Spotify’s “Wrapped”
—Phoebe Bain, Katie Hicks
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Macy's
Move over Rudolph—there’s a new reindeer in town. And, just like the red-nosed reindeer, this one was also created by a department store.
- ICYMI, Macy’s rolled out a new holiday brand mascot of sorts last month—a blue reindeer named Tiptoe—complete with a few ads telling her story and a giant Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.
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There have been “mixed reactions” to Tiptoe online, according to Heather Taylor, senior editor at PopIcon, a website run by Advertising Week all about brand mascots. But Tiptoe fans are hopeful that, like Rudolph, this reindeer is here to stay.
It’s arguably too soon for a new reindeer to overshadow Rudolph just yet—he was created in 1939, after all. So Tiptoe has some big shoes to fill. But according to Taylor, if Macy’s plays its cards right and makes a few strategic moves, she could become a bigger part of the brand’s holiday-season messaging for years to come.
Tiptoe, a history
Here’s Tiptoe’s basic premise: Blue reindeer meets the North Pole at Christmas time. Blue reindeer can’t fly because she is too shy (been there, girl). Her friends—Polar Bear and Penguin, obviously—get help from some elves who invent a flying machine (read: balloon wings) for Tiptoe. She successfully flies Santa’s sleigh…until her balloon wings pop. But, like the Girlboss™ she is, she realizes she doesn’t need the balloon wings at all. She just needs to believe in herself to fly .
A 90-second spot rolled out in early November in cinemas and online, telling Tiptoe’s story with the help of agency BBDO.
Why now?
Although 2021 might seem like an odd time for a retailer to roll out a new brand mascot (with declining in-store foot traffic leading to fewer opportunities to meet these characters IRL), Taylor told us the pandemic’s impact may have actually created product-market fit for a character like Tiptoe.
“We’ve gone through a very difficult couple of years. The biggest message in this campaign is really believing in yourself, and that you are capable of great things,” she said.
On Dasher, on Dancer, on…Tiptoe?
“I feel like there’s more to come from Tiptoe, for sure,” Taylor told us. She suggested a few ways the retailer could move the reindeer’s brand forward over the rest of the holiday season, such as debuting a Tiptoe product line. Taylor said Macy’s is “definitely trying to tap into a younger demographic,” with the character, which is partly why she thinks it was created in the first place.
What does Macy’s have to say about Tiptoe’s crystal-ball forecast? “At this time, it is too early to tell what the future holds for Tiptoe,” Macy’s external comms director, Orlando Veras, told Marketing Brew. However, he added that Macy’s has seen “numerous requests” for longform Tiptoe and friends content.
Read the full story on-site here.—PB
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Dianna "Mick" McDougall; Getty Images/Bo Zaunders
If you’re a social media manager, you know there are two types of images you can’t post: someone else’s photo, and a picture of someone else’s child. Despite dozens of workarounds (like getting a parent’s permission to post their adorable kid, for instance), image privacy has always been (pretty much) that simple.
But now, it’s getting a little more complicated.
What happened: Twitter decided to crank its privacy rules up a notch. It’s now cracking down on what can be in your own photos…yeah, the photos you took. Specifically, other people can’t be in them unless they’ve given you permission, and Twitter can remove photos and videos if they violate its new policy. There are some exceptions to the rule (think: public figures), but critics worry it’s still too broad and gives Twitter too much subjective enforcement power, per NPR.
What else happened: In a move similar to Twitter’s, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) this week rolled out a campaign “aimed at ending online abuse by protecting peoples’ images from exploitation,” according to Ad Age. Produced by Edelman, the effort protests the act of posting someone’s image online without their consent.
Why it matters: Both Twitter and the UNFPA say these efforts are intended to protect women and others likely to face digital violence, like marginalized groups or minorities. “According to a study completed by The Economist Intelligence Unit in 2020, 85% of women around the world reported witnessing online violence against other women, and 38% of women reported personal experiences of digital abuse,” per Teen Vogue.—PB
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That’s AP for Associated Press, and don’t worry, it’s no snoozefest. It’s the timeless tale of a famed newswire service—the AP—that needed a liiittle help with its email strategy.
So where’d they turn? To Sailthru, naturally.
As the US’s largest and oldest newswire service, the AP had tons of loyal readers and lots of info to convey to them. So a manual email setup just wasn’t cutting it—not scalable, or sustainable in the long term.
So now, they use Sailthru to send highly relevant newsletters to more than a million of its most loyal readers. In the process, they collect valuable first-party data insights about its audience, empowering them to increase email engagement and grow their newsletter subscriber base by over 400%.
We’ve dabbled in email newsletters ourselves, and...dang, that’s impressive.
Download this case study to learn more about how the AP revamped its email strategy with Sailthru.
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Giphy
It’s that time of year again, when Spotify takes the songs we’ve listened to over the last year and feeds our egos or embarrasses the hell out of us.
The theme for its 2021 Wrapped campaign is the new normal, accompanied by online and in-person ads highlighting things this year that were everything but—from angry gardening to having a “no bones day.”
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Spotify’s global head of brand design, Rasmus Wangelin, said in a blog post that it’s important the design “matches the sentiment of the way we’re talking about the year conceptually.”
New features were added to this year’s in-app Wrapped experience, including an “Audio Aura” and a game of Two Truths and a Lie that quizzes users on their listening habits. This also marked the first year that users could post their results directly on TikTok.
But while some eagerly shared their year in streaming (Taylor’s Version), others were less impressed with the annual data dump:
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Journalist Elle Hunt wrote in The Guardian that Wrapped is “little more than free advertising” for Spotify, adding that it reduces music to a numbers game largely dictated by the company’s algorithm.
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On a surface level, critics had something to say about the wording used this year, which felt a bit, “How do you do, fellow kids?”
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The font choices were also subject to memery.
Last year the company saw a 21% increase in app downloads in the first week of December after Wrapped was released. If they’ll surpass that number this year isn’t clear yet, but one thing’s for sure:
Twitter—KH
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Leave it to the creator marketing machine. Finding the right creators and building an effective campaign doesn’t have to be a time suck (or suck at all, really). On #paid, just plug your goals into their campaign builder, pick from 10 creators who already love your brand, hit the Launch button, and watch the results roll in. Give it a go on #paid, right over here.
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Trevor Noah will host the 2022 Grammys on January 31.
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Meta is making it easier for crypto ads to run on its platform.
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Kacey Musgraves is collabing with puzzle company Jiggy.
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Taco Bell hired Sean Tresvant, former CMO of Nike’s Jordan Brand, as global chief brand officer.
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The New York Times dedicated its Thursday Styles section to the late Virgil Abloh.
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Francis Scialabba
There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.
Audio: Facebook released a guide on how to create and promote podcasts on its platform.
SEO: 57 SEO insights, courtesy of Google’s search advocate John Mueller.
OOO: How social media marketers can prepare for their upcoming (and well-deserved) break this holiday season.
Ad-buying, simplified for streaming: You can buy TV as easily as you stream it when you use OneView, the ad-buying platform built for TV streaming. It’s the easiest way to get your ad campaigns on big screens, mobile screens, and everything in between. Start here.*
*This is sponsored advertising content.
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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.
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4. Heineken isn’t getting into the stocking-stuffer game just yet (that we know of).
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Written by
Phoebe Bain and Katie Hicks
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