Netflix original series Emily in Paris isn’t exactly prestige TV. The show’s bright, colorful scenes and low-stakes plots have led some viewers to describe the experience as “CoComelon for adults.”

Still, the show is attracting high-brow brand attention. Luxury brands including AMI Paris, Boucheron, and Augustinus Bader were featured in Season 4 as clients of main character Emily Cooper, who works at a French ad agency. Other high-end brands, like Louis Vuitton, Porsche, and Rimowa, also make more low-key appearances in the latest season, which quickly became the No. 1 series on Netflix when its first five episodes were released in August.

Baccarat, the 260-year-old French crystal company that also sells fragrances, was featured early in Season 4 as a client looking for help in selling a fictional perfume called “Heartbreak.” Adam Banfield, Baccarat’s North America president and CEO, told Marketing Brew that it was the brand’s first TV show integration, facilitated by actress Lily Collins, who plays Emily.

“It’s obviously been a really exciting moment for the brand, and it all came about quite organically, which is always a nice plus whenever you do these sorts of things,” Banfield told us.

Luxury French resale site Vestiaire Collective also made its first TV appearance in the show this season, US CEO Samina Virk told us via email. Both she and Banfield said the cameos were part of a broader effort by the brands to reach a US audience.

Crystal clear: Baccarat is perhaps best known among younger demographics for its Baccarat Rouge 540 perfume, which has been the topic of countless videos on social media in the last few years. Banfield told us that the US is the “strongest market for the fragrance,” which created “fertile ground” to speak to consumers through Emily in Paris.

“This was a wonderful opportunity, for those that may think of Baccarat as a fragrance brand, to introduce them to the world and the beauty of the Baccarat brand more holistically,” he said.

Read more here.—KH

When used-car retailer CarMax underwent a brand repositioning a few years ago, it turned to one of the trendiest sports in the country to do it.

The company wanted to be seen as more online and was generally seeking to modernize its image, CMO Sarah Lane said. Enter basketball.

“It’s a place where younger people are, [has] a very diverse audience, and [is] certainly very connected with culture—sneaker culture, fashion culture, all the things that are great to align with if you’re trying to modernize something,” Lane said.

CarMax was named the official auto retailer of both the NBA and WNBA in December 2020, when WNBA sponsorships were less common. As the league’s record 2024 season wraps up and interest in women’s basketball continues to reach all-time highs, CarMax’s once-novel partnership is paying off, Lane said.

Good old days: Since CarMax started working with the NBA and the W, the brand has featured athletes from both leagues in its ads.

• One series of the brand’s early basketball spots starring Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry and WNBA legend Sue Bird went viral in 2021.

“We got a bunch of earned media for that spot, and people were talking about it all over the place,” Lane said. “We were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this really is striking a chord and saying something about us that I think is hard for us to say about ourselves’...From that point, we said, ‘This is more than just advertising.’”

Continue reading here.—AM

Meta’s pivot to video continues.

The company, which said that 60% of users’ time spent on Facebook and Instagram is on video content, introduced new tools for advertisers during this year’s Advertising Week. Those tools include:

• A tool called Video Expansion that will give users the ability to expand video content by “generating unseen pixels in each video frame to expand the aspect ratio,” similar to the company’s existing Image Expansion tool, and the ability to make video content from static images using generative AI.
• The ability for advertisers to integrate creator content into collections ads on Reels and “additional surfaces.”
• A Partnership Ads Hub, which will house all partnership ads tools, including creator campaigns, on a single page in Ads Manager.

Meta also touted its new, full-screen video tab for Reels on Facebook, which was first announced last week at its Facebook IRL event in Austin, Texas. At a press event Tuesday, Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business group, emphasized the “diversity of ad formats” opened up by full-screen video, including standalone video, carousel ads, in-stream ads, and overlay ads.

Continue reading here.—KH

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Atlantic wrote about VP Harris’s decision to go on the podcast Call Her Daddy and how political campaigns are using podcasts to reach non-news viewers.
• Wired sat down with podcast host and influencer Bobbi Althoff, concluding that she is “proof you can brute-force your way to online fame.”
• The Wall Street Journal wrote about Amtrak’s latest marketing campaign.