Red pandas, the reddish-brown mammals native to southwestern China, are sometimes known as “firefoxes.” So it was a particularly memorable day this summer when employees at Mozilla, the company known for the web browser Firefox, saw a trailer for the upcoming Disney Pixar film Turning Red, in which a girl transforms into a red panda when experiencing strong emotions.

Seeing double: In fact, the team “completely freaked out” when they saw the trailer, recalled Lindsey Shepard, chief marketing officer of Mozilla. While Firefox’s browser logo, named Foxy, is decidedly fox-like, the company has long embraced both the fox and the red panda as mascots.

“Everyone was like, jaws dropped, ‘OMG. A red panda!’” Shepard told Marketing Brew. “We just knew we had to reach out and see if we could get something going.”

Teaming up

After months of partnership, Firefox and Disney Pixar are rolling out a dual marketing push ahead of Disney+’s exclusive streaming premiere of Turning Red on March 11.

• US users can visit a custom website that jointly promotes the upcoming film and Firefox’s various functionalities.
• There, users can watch a video designed in tandem with the Disney Pixar animation team that encourages people to use Firefox when they use the web.
• Plus, 500 fans have a chance to win a free month of Disney+, and a boy-band name generator introduces readers to Firefox’s privacy policy. And if fans use Firefox, they can customize their web browsers’ colors and looks to match with the film’s major characters.

The unconventional, interactive promotion is designed to help introduce Firefox to new users at the same time that it drives attention to Disney+, which, at nearly 130 million subscribers worldwide, is a core focus for the company. At Firefox, it will also kick off the beginning of a months-long effort to grow its user base.

“We are thinking about the collaboration with Disney Pixar as the beginning of a new way of connecting with our followers,” Shepard said.

The Disney contingent

Firefox’s partnership with Disney Pixar is an opportunity for the internet company to win over people who may not be as well-versed in privacy and technology as the browser’s core user base.

Break it down: Firefox averaged more than 25 million monthly active users in the US in February, according to internal data, and the company, which only accounts for about 4% of browser market share, is keen on growing its user base this year. Shepard is betting that families who are fans of Turning Red may resonate with the campaign’s messages of online safety.

“What our research tells us is that these sorts of folks are really invested in things like independence and data sovereignty and privacy online, and making sure that their kids don’t get caught up in some of the darker, grosser places on the web,” Shepard said. “When we think about this collaboration with Disney, it can help us reach and attract whole new audiences that haven’t necessarily heard about us.”

Read more about the marketing push, including where it will run, here.—KS

Though cryptocurrencies and the companies hawking them were all but unavoidable during the Super Bowl, only one commercial featured Larry David, the lovable, irritable, and idiosyncratic creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Appearing in FTX’s first-ever Super Bowl spot, the advertisement looks back on some of the greatest achievements of mankind—the wheel, the lightbulb, the first indoor toilet—with David there to offer kind words of discouragement, every step of the way.

Marketing Brew spoke with Andrew Hunter, creative director for Dentsu’s 360i agency, whose pitch inspired the spot.

The pitch: Many people are skeptical about cryptocurrencies. And who better to broach the subject than the king of skepticism and questioner of cultural niceties himself? Though the journey-through-history part was already pitched, the idea came to life when David and his team joined the production.

“The first thing we wrote was Larry emerging from the darkness to people inventing fire and just sort of going, ‘Eh, too hot,’” said Hunter.

Of course, the joke, in the end, is to not “be like Larry.”

Foisted: David brought on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld alumnus Jeff Schaffer to shoot the spot, bringing the Curb look to the Elizabethan era and beyond. And, as a bonus Easter egg, one of the security guards dragging Larry out of the Japanese board room is Yaz Takahashi, who played a sushi chef in Curb’s most recent season.

Read more about how the spot came to be (and which scenes didn’t make the cut) here.—RB

FB Reels (you know, Instagram Reels—but on Facebook) already debuted in the US back in September. But yesterday, Zuck’s empire announced that Reels are now avail on Facebook’s iOS and Android apps in 150+ different countries .

Tacked onto this announcement was some (potential) good news for creators. In a similar move to Snap’s recent mid-roll ads beta test, Meta said it’s building ways for Facebook Reels creators to earn money through “ad revenue share and fan support.”

The ad-revenue part: That “ad revenue share” opp comes in two different formats: sticker ads and banner ads. “These non-interruptive ads enable creators to earn a portion of the ad revenue,” per Meta’s blog post announcing the change.

The fan-support part: Meta will test Stars (aka a way for fans to gift creators $$) on Facebook Reels “in the coming weeks.”

+1: Additionally, Meta is expanding some of its Instagram Reels tools (like drafts and video clipping) to FB.

Why it matters: Meta also dubbed Reels its fastest-growing content format “by far,” noting that video now accounts for half the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram.—PB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Explainer: Marketing jargon like “conjoint analysis,” might make you want to break out in hives, but it can help you understand your audience.

Somebody’s watching me: Snapchat added a real-time, location-tracking feature, citing safety in a partnership with the nonprofit It’s On Us.

Going live: YouTube is rolling out a TikTok-inspired feature: colored rings and a badge that highlight when an account is live-streaming.

Media is a-changin’. Roundel by Target wants to make sure it changes for good. Built on the idea of using people-based (aka first-party) data and maintaining brand-safe environments, Roundel provides comprehensive marketing tools and programs that drive actual results. Learn more here.*

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Stat: Republicans are outspending Democrats on advertising in four out of the top five gubernatorial races in the US this year, according to Ad Age.

Quote: “Except an ad agency did do that ad.”—The Martin Agency’s Kristen Cavallo, responding to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s Twitter thread about the company’s Super Bowl ad, which included the line, “no ad agency would have done this ad”—but agencies were involved, to Cavallo’s larger point: Accenture Interactive worked with Coinbase to create the commercial.

Read: The rise of digital health in five charts.

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• Robots have landed in grocery stores
• How this content marketer describes her job