The inaugural episode of the new Apple TV+ series The Studio starts with frazzled movie studio exec Matt Remick, played by Seth Rogen, receiving an assignment for an unusual project. His boss (played by Bryan Cranston), enamored with the success of movies like Barbie, has asked him to make a movie about Kool-Aid.

Kool-Aid was not directly involved in the development of The Studio, but in the first two episodes of the season, the brand has played a big role. And not always in the most positive light: Remick, who sees himself as a champion of serious, auteur-style filmmaking, isn’t enthusiastic about the project, and only agrees to work on the movie to secure a better job at his studio. One character says that Barbie, whose IP was transformed into a blockbuster movie in 2023, is “ten thousand million times better IP” than Kool-Aid. It culminates with Martin Scorsese (playing himself) and a script about the Jonestown massacre—yes, the same massacre where a cyanide-laced Kool-Aid-like drink played a somewhat infamous role in the deaths of hundreds of cult members. Kool-Aid declined to make an executive available for an interview.

It’s the latest example of how getting name-dropped can be a blessing for brands—or, depending on the context, a stroke of bad luck.

“Brands have a lot of opportunity to embrace being discussed,” Caressa Douglas, SVP of strategic partnerships product placement at BenLabs, told Marketing Brew. “There’s that old adage…no PR is bad PR. [It’s] just being a part of the conversation.”

Continue reading here about how brands can navigate unexpected cameos.—JS

Google’s days of playing Monopoly could be coming to an end.

Late last week, a federal judge ruled that Google’s control over multiple facets of the online advertising industry is illegal, a blow for Google in the landmark trial that began last fall and put the internet giant’s ad tech under the microscope.

It’s the third time in less than two years that Google has been found to be operating in violation of antitrust law. In 2023, a federal jury ruled that the company’s Android app store policies violated antitrust law, and last year, a federal judge ruled that Google’s search business was monopolistic.

In her ruling Thursday, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema wrote that the tech giant “willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising” in violation of the Sherman Act.

By “depriving rivals of the ability to compete,” Brinkema wrote, “this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.”

Read more here about the ruling and what’s next.—KH

One of the big four Premier League clubs is ruffling its feathers.

Liverpool FC, which is sitting atop the league standings, recently introduced a new brand design meant to unify the club’s look across areas like the match-day experience, retail, and social media, while making its brand identity clearer. Liverpool has a massive, global fanbase, and because many of those fans don’t get the chance to engage with the team in person, connecting with them on social is crucial to keeping them invested.

“Our social platforms are fundamentally to drive a level of emotional engagement,” Drew Crisp, Liverpool’s SVP of digital, told Marketing Brew. “They’re there to drive the first touchpoint, the connection with the club, and that’s through storytelling…It’s an opportunity for us to give fans content that they might not otherwise see.”

As Liverpool continues to roll out its new look, Crisp said he hopes the effort will unify the club’s content across its many social platforms and help to drive increasing fan engagement.

Bird’s-eye view: The idea for the Liverpool rebrand was hatched about two years ago, Crisp said, when fast business growth resulted in some fragmentation in the way the club presented itself across its operations beyond soccer, including its charitable foundation and concert business.

“We have never had a common brand purpose that everybody in the club can really align with,” Crisp said. “Any campaigns that we do, any big social messaging, any big things that we want to then talk about, has [to have] something to hang on to.”

On the team’s crest, the liver bird is front and center, but on digital assets, crests tend not to appear very clearly, Crisp said. “They just look like splodges,” he said.

• That was a problem: 98% of Liverpool’s followers were viewing social content from their mobile devices, according to the club.

So the team decided to use the liver bird on its own to build out digital assets, including custom fonts with letters that curve the same way the bird’s wings and talons do.

Read more here about the rebrand and Liverpool’s broader engagement goals.—AM

Executive moves across the industry.

• Uber Advertising promoted Megan Ramm to global head of sales.
• Snap promoted VP of Consumer and Business Marketing Grace Kao to CMO.
• Burger King tapped Applebee’s CMO Joel Yashinsky as its US and Canada CMO.
• Spirit Airlines, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, named a new CEO: Dave Davis, formerly with Sun Country Airlines.