Sometimes the best partnerships start with a maintenance request.

That’s, in part, how Catbird’s latest collab with writer and comedian Jenny Slate came to be—one that led to “peak traffic” to the jewelry brand’s site and hit its sales goals when the products went live late last month, Sriya Karumanchi, director of marketing and communications at Catbird, told Marketing Brew.

Since 2019, the 20-year-old New York-based jewelry company has also worked with musician Phoebe Bridgers and her band boygenius, stylist Leith Clark, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art on custom collections. The Bridgers collection, in particular, led to “record-breaking” site traffic, per Karumanchi.

“When we collaborate with a muse or a tastemaker or any talent that we really admire, one of the things we really look for is authenticity through them being a fan of the brand or an existing customer,” Karumanchi said, adding that the frequency of collabs is based on the right opportunity arising, rather than any sort of quota.

In Slate’s case, Karumanchi said the comedian has been “wearing our jewelry for years,” and purchased her wedding band from the company. Back-and-forth communications on jewelry maintenance and styling for various public appearances led to thoughts of—and emails around—a potential collection.

“From our creative director to our head of social media…to our founder and CEO, everyone was like, ‘Oh, yeah, she’s a Catbird woman,’” Karumanchi said. “When the gut-check is that cohesive across all those people, we know it’s the right thing to go for.”

Continue reading here.—KH

Is it okay to ask your co-worker how much they make? Is Gen Z set up for failure in the workplace? Should you really bring your whole self to work? Each week on Per My Last Email, Morning Brew’s resident career experts, Kaila and Kyle—whose careers have collectively spanned the corporate, government, nonprofit, and startup sectors—debate the trickiest challenges in work life and share insightful (and sometimes hilarious) tactics on how to overcome them.

Listen now.

Despite industry uncertainty around proposed privacy legislation, loss of attribution, and general economic uneasiness, advertisers continued to pile money into online advertising.

$$$$: Advertisers spent a record-setting $225 billion on digital advertising in the US last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which on Tuesday published a report on online advertising revenue. The IAB worked with the firm PwC on the report.

It’s still a bit of a slowdown compared to previous years, growing 7.3% year over year compared to a 10.8% increase between 2021 and 2022.

• Perhaps unsurprisingly, retail media revenue popped 16.3% YoY, reaching $43.7 billion in 2023.
• Video advertising revenue jumped 10.6% YoY, rising to $52.1 billion, with streaming contributing about $22 billion, and the IAB expects continued investments in live-streamed sports to keep the category humming.
• Social advertising grew 8.7% YoY to $64.9 billion.
• Audio advertising grew 18.9%, reaching nearly $7 billion. That’s a lotta podcast ads.

Now searching: Search and display advertising, the bread and butter of the digital ad ecosystem, grew 5.2% to $88.8 billion, and 4% to $66 billion, respectively.

Takeaways: Going into a rapidly changing year as a whole, advertisers are having to contend with changes coming from inside the industry itself, the report points out: Google and Apple are continuing to invest in privacy-preserving technology, including Google’s phase-out of third-party cookies and Apple’s limitations on data collection across iOS devices.—RB

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Brian Rappaport is the founder and CEO of Quan Media Group, an out-of-home advertising agency. In prior roles, he’s managed OOH buying for brands like Chipotle, Dunkin’, Nokia, and Outdoor Voices.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? I put brands on billboards.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Bombas’s campaign promoting 100 million items donated. It was an incredible social cause with an iconic brand. Having it take place in NYC didn’t hurt either.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Liquid Death’s eBay auction for ad space on their packaging is genius. They always seem to redefine incredible marketing, but they’ve truly done it this time.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I was on (and won) two game shows. Most recently, I was on The Match Game, hosted by Alec Baldwin, in 2017.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I’m most optimistic about OOH as a lower-funnel marketing tactic. Measurement and attribution continue to be fleshed out, and brands can truly understand the effectiveness and ROI of their OOH campaigns. I’m least optimistic about AI taking media-buying jobs. You can’t automate the human touch and anecdotal experience.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? Limited Supply, hosted by Nik Sharma and Moiz Ali.

Ready to compete? Because that’s just one of the findings in the latest report from SurveyMonkey: Marketing Trends for a New Era. Want to learn more and hear strategies for getting ahead? Register today for Curiosity Con 2024 on June 12, celebrating the power of curiosity to answer big questions and drive big results.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• WPP and Google are teaming up to combine Google Cloud’s AI capabilities with the holding company’s marketing operating system.
• Roblox has tapped PubMatic to let brands buy in-game video ads programmatically.
• Adobe is “in the early stages of allowing third-party generative AI tools,” including OpenAI’s Sora, inside of Premiere Pro, its popular video-editing software.

A strong out-of-home (OOH) ad leverages creative thinking, puts content where people will see it, and has the potential to be shared online. EMARKETER forecasts that campaigns like this will help drive a projected 6.5% YoY growth in US OOH ad spend this year, reaching $9.51 billion.

From cleverly branded buses to bizarre alien billboards, here are five recent OOH campaigns that caught EMARKETER’s eye.