Beliebers, Carpenters, EYEKONs, and other cleverly named artist fandoms reported to the desert for Coachella this year—and alongside the fans came the brands, just as they always do.

At this stage of Coachella’s cultural reputation, the brand and influencer pilgrimage to Indio, California, is expected. But every year, it’s still part of the reason one constant refrain echoes beyond the desert’s great expanse: Coachella is dead, the masses like to say, and the brands and influencers killed it.

But Coachella is not dead, if attendance figures are any indication: last year’s festival drew in about 250,000 total attendees, and ticket sales this year are projected to exceed $120 million. That in-person audience alone is enough to entice plenty of brands to activate onsite, not to mention via the official YouTube livestream or adjacent creator content.

While the average observer might think the increasingly commercialized experience has killed the festival, it’s the brands’ and influencers’ very presence that actually keeps it alive, according to Alex Rawitz, director of research and insights at the creator marketing tech platform CreatorIQ.

“By making it more of a branded experience and by having this narrative, it still shows that people are paying attention to Coachella, that creators are still going and that Coachella really has emerged as one of the most powerful engines for brand storytelling via creators all year,” Rawitz said.

Continue reading here.—JN

Jumping on a Peloton for a workout is a great way to get the heart pumping. But you can get the same effect from watching its newest ad campaign.

The brand’s latest ad, which dropped last Tuesday, a continuation of its “Let Yourself Go” marketing platform, stars Heated Rivalry actor Hudson Williams dancing, strutting, and working out to David Bowie’s “Fame” in an all-white short-shorts-and-tank-top getup. The spot was directed by Bethany Vargas, whose past work includes Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” music video and Gap’s “Better in Denim” campaign, and it is running in the US and Canada across channels including TV, OTT, online video, social, and digital out-of-home.

It’s one of CMO Megan Imbres’s first big projects at Peloton after joining from Apple last summer, and she said it’s all about evoking big feelings and influencing culture, a favorite goal for many CMOs.

How top marketers go about involving their brands in cultural moments differs, but there’s one method that’s proving popular for at least a couple of brands this year: pairing one of the Heated Rivalry stars with a celebrated director, putting them in tank tops that show off their biceps, and letting the internet do the rest.

“I knew it was going to connect,” Imbres told Marketing Brew. “I did not think it was going to connect at the level that it has.”

Read more here.—AM

Find us a marketer who doesn’t like seeing their work receive an award, and we’ll give you a trophy.

Actually, we don’t have any to spare (we only got one for our recent Webby win for our Marketing Brew Weekly podcast!), but Jesse Feister, executive director of Webby Media Group, might. We caught up with Feister, who is now in his second year leading the organization that sets out to honor the best of the internet across more than 100 categories, to dig deeper into some takeaways from this year’s winners, particularly in the advertising, media, and PR categories.

“Each generation of the internet has people who are really individually making their mark, and we’ve recognized that for various points throughout history. It’s now pretty different,” Feister told Marketing Brew. “There’s just an explosion of creative people making things across the internet.”

Talk to me a little bit about the brand side of things, and brand creative in particular, online. How have you and the Webbbys seen this particular category evolve?

One of the big trends that I’m observing is that it’s almost like the creative is coming out of the internet. And it’s not just insights about the audience, but actually intersecting with what creators are already doing and figuring out how to not just tap into that but engage in it in a way that builds on it…More and more what you’re seeing is it’s a dialogue with the internet—back and forth, and a lot of the award-winning work this year came from the internet, not the other way around.

Read more here.—JN

Join the marketers behind brands like ESPN, Spotify, Anthropologie, CAVA, OLAPLEX, and more as they share how they’re navigating social and creator marketing right now. Learn how top teams are approaching platform shifts, creator partnerships, and performance pressure—without relying on outdated playbooks.

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• Brand & Advertising Manager at Neuberger Berman
• Brand Manager, Grocery Innovation at Post Holdings Inc.
• Vice President, Digital Health Strategist at FleishmanHillard
• Sr. Director, CEA Operations BP & Head of Global Site Communications at CSL Behring
• Vice President of Marketing at Schrödinger

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The New York Times wrote about whether CEOs should be the faces of the brands they run.
• Bloomberg wrote about how Chobani made Greek yogurt ubiquitous.
• The Wall Street Journal wrote about how Vogue came to embrace The Devil Wears Prada and turn the sequel into a marketing moment.