Sean Winterhalter wanted a treadmill. His young son and a global pandemic made it hard to get to the gym, so he was in the market for exercise equipment he could use at home.

He started noticing a TikTok ad for a seemingly discounted slim treadmill called the Treadly in November, but it wasn’t until after the holidays that he clicked on it. He made the purchase through PayPal and was swiftly sent a receipt bearing a language he didn’t recognize. He didn’t know who he paid, but he knew it wasn’t Treadly, a US-based company.

He later made a video on TikTok detailing his plight with the hashtag #didigetscammed.

“Did TikTok scam me?” he asked his viewers. Well, somebody did.

Alleged scam artists are running ads and posing as real brands on TikTok, offering ludicrous deals to swindle unsuspecting users. Alongside suspicious-looking ads for Treadly, Marketing Brew saw questionable ads for L.L. Bean, Le Creuset, Bowflex, and Wayfair.

Big picture: That these fake accounts appear to be valuable to bad actors signals TikTok’s ascension as an advertising partner, as Facebook and Twitter have long wrestled with similar scams and fake accounts. And now, scams are showing up in the feeds of TikTok’s at least 1 billion users.

“I feel like one of those old people that get scammed by those Nigerian prince’s emails,” Winterhalter told Marketing Brew. “I would think that TikTok, being a multibillion dollar [company], and it being a social media platform, would take pride in everything that it hosts and everything it’s advertising to protect its patrons…You’re letting people get scammed.”

ScamTok?

One video seen by Marketing Brew shows what appears to be an ad for kitchenware brand Le Creuset, complete with its branding and logos. In it, a woman unpacks her kitchenware and admires the brand’s famous bright-orange hue. The video says a 20-piece cast-iron set costs only $79.99 as part of a “clearance sale,” which is the first major : These sets retail for as much as $1,799.95.

• “It looked to me to be too good to be true,” said Sarah Baird, who screenshot and shared questionable Le Creuset advertisements with Marketing Brew. “No way you’re getting a piece for $50 or $60, or whatever the price was advertising.”
• Baird says she reported the ads to TikTok in December, but was still seeing them “quite frequently” as of February. “It feels like this is very pervasive, and represents a high percentage of the ads that I see when using the platform,” she told Marketing Brew.

Read the full story here, including why these ads are likely showing up on TikTok in the first place.—RB

David Tann, founder and CEO of Tantrum Agency in Atlanta, never pursued a career in education—but he keeps coming back to it anyway.

Tann, who has years of experience in marketing for brands ranging from Abercrombie & Fitch to the Atlanta Hawks, is an adjunct professor and lecturer at the Miami Ad School’s Atlanta campus. He also used to substitute teach while in college at Wake Forest University, where he met Dr. Nakesha Dawson, marketing coordinator for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina.

Together, they’re working to bridge the racial and economic divides in marketing by training students–one high school class at a time.

It started while scrolling

A few years ago, Dawson said she was on Instagram when she saw some of the talks Tann was giving to high school and college students: “I was like, ‘Okay, David’s doing all these amazing things. I wonder what that would look like if he could bring some of these things into our classroom and give our students those experiences?’”

• After sitting in on one of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s marketing classes, Tann said he noticed much of what was being taught was out-of-date or strictly conceptual. “[Teachers] would talk about these key words or definitions or terms. And I would sit there, and I’m like, ‘I’ve been doing this for 15 years. I have no idea what that is.’”
• To bridge the gap, Tantrum developed workbooks and exercises under the name “Lacuna” (which literally means “gap”) for the 2020-2021 school year as an addendum to the district’s level-three marketing course. The goal, Tann said, was to “still be able to address the things that are theoretical, but also bring them to life so that the students can actually see how they actually really work in the real-world environment.”
• For instance, students could look at case studies (like Adidas’ work with Beyoncé), as well as learn about newer marketing concepts, like micro-influencers and cookies.

Big picture: Teachers deemed the program a success, so much so that they asked Tann to create a full-fledged class specifically focused on digital marketing. The state of North Carolina approved a semester-long course, and it is now offered as an elective to juniors and seniors at seven high schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district.

Click here to read more about how the class is helping students prep for a career in marketing.—KH

Earlier this week, we highlighted earnings reports from some major companies. Yesterday, iHeartMedia wrapped up a round of earnings from the audio industry, in particular. The highlights below:

iHeartMedia: Q4 revenue grew 59% in iHeartMedia’s “Digital Audio Group” division, which encompasses iHeartMedia’s podcasting business, digital service, and ad-tech companies. Podcast revenue alone increased 130% YoY. The company said the growth was partly due to “general increased demand for digital advertising” and “the growing popularity of podcasting.”

Acast: Acast’s podcast ad sales increased 40% YoY in Q4, setting a record for the company in quarterly net sales growth. The company said that figure is “particularly impressive” given that Acast saw “unusually strong growth” during Q4 2020 as the ad market recovered from the initial effects of the pandemic. Acast also noted that its “programmatic sales are growing rapidly.”

Spotify: Spotify reported its Q4 earnings at the top of the month, just as it was embroiled in a controversy regarding its leading podcaster Joe Rogan. CEO Daniel Ek addressed the issue on the call, but noted that it was “too early to know what the impact may be” on user churn. On the ad front, Spotify’s ad-supported revenue was up 40% YoY, accounting for a record 15% of total revenue in Q4. Spotify doesn’t break out podcast ad revenue in particular, but noted that monthly active users who engaged with podcasts increased by double digits from Q3 to Q4.

SiriusXM: SiriusXM saw $495 million in advertising revenue in Q4, up from $474 million during the same quarter in 2020. According to the company, Pandora’s ad revenue grew 30% last year compared to the year prior, to $1.5 billion.—AM

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Brand consultancy Prophet, which counts companies like Marriot, General Electric, T-Mobile, Chick-fil-A, Gatorade, and UBS as clients, is out with its seventh Brand Relevance Index.

The deets: Prophet surveyed more than 13,500 consumers about 293 brands across 27 categories. About 90% of the brands included on the survey were chosen based on revenue size and/or recent growth, while the other 10% were based on market entry factors such as potential for disruption.

Top five: The most relevant brands of 2022, according to Prophet’s survey, are…

1. Apple
2. Peloton
3. Spotify
4. Bose
5. Android

Common ground: What do the top five brands have in common? They’re all tech companies in some regard, and help people connect without leaving the house, Prophet said in a statement.

The top 25 brands also include Amazon, Costco, Dyson, Lego, and Marvel, so it seems that perhaps not everyone is ready to emerge back into the world quite yet, given the fact that many of these brands are home-oriented.

Flip side: Sephora, Ulta, and Hilton all rose from their respective positions on the BRI from last year, while Planet Fitness and Crossfit also made the top 50, and Ritz Carlton made its BRI debut at No. 81.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Disney Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’ finds a friend in Firefox
• Larry David’s skepticism transcends time in FTX’s Super Bowl ad
• The deets on the Facebook Reels update