“It’s come to my attention that y’all don’t really know the full scope of what Staples does,” begins a recent TikTok video from Staples print specialist Kaeden Rowland that now has nearly 7 million views and more than 776,000 likes. “We can make ornaments, we can make mugs, shirts, backpacks, signs, posters…whatever you could need.”

Rowland, who posts under the TikTok handle @blivxx and sometimes goes by the name Oblivion, has worked at Staples for just around eight months, but when she began posting about the company in January, it “only took a couple days to really start getting consistent traction” on those videos. It wasn’t long after that before she became known as the “Staples Baddie.”

“I loved how that organically developed and it just stuck,” Rowland told us of the nickname. “I was like, ‘I guess I can live with that.’”

As people increasingly share their lives, including their 9-to-5s, online, employees like Rowland are part of a growing cohort of de facto social ambassadors for the brands they work for. Not every employer is on board: in recent years, an employee at Chick-fil-A said she was asked to stop filming content related to her work, and one Sherwin-Williams employee was fired after growing a following from paint-mixing videos created while on the clock.

Staples is taking a different approach. Rowland said that while she had some initial fears around how the’ corporate team would react, the response has been “overwhelmingly positive and truly unexpected.”

Staples CMO Bob Sherwin said in a statement sent by social media and PR director Dina Mortada that the brand is “incredibly proud” of Rowland and is “exploring opportunities to collaborate and continue supporting her creativity and engagement with the community.” According to the New York Times, Staples has reported “measurable increases” in store traffic and “meaningful lifts” in products shown in Rowland’s viral posts, including mugs and specialty print products.

Continue reading here.—KH

Everyone knows the ESPN logo: Bright red color, slightly angled uppercase letters, and a horizontal line cutting through the middle.

But the legacy sports media company has never actually had official brand identity guidelines down on paper—until now.

After several months of work, the ESPN Creative Studio team officially introduced its identity framework, which includes a custom typeface, the exact degree angle of the “E,” and an officially authorized shade of red, ahead of the six-month anniversary of ESPN’s newest direct-to-consumer service last month.

Chin Wang, VP of design, creative systems, and strategy at ESPN Creative Studio, said the DTC platform roll-out was the moment that execs realized the brand could benefit from more officially cemented design principles.

“We realized the ESPN brand did not have a clear definition,” Wang told Marketing Brew. “When you thought about ESPN, you thought about the logo, and then you thought about the color red, and there was nothing else to really hang our hat on to create any sort of cohesive, identifiable design system.”

The guidelines are meant to be used to help better define the brand ahead of ESPN’s first Super Bowl broadcast next year.

Read more here.—AM

If your TikTok feed isn’t inundated with videos of Rob Rausch from the Traitors finale last month, there will soon be another place to see America’s favorite snake-catching overalls-wearer.

Beginning this summer, Peacock is rolling out “Your Bravoverse,” a vertical video product featuring an AI avatar of Andy Cohen, host of the eponymous Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, that will guide viewers through personalized Bravo content on mobile devices, which according to the company will highlight “iconic scenes, connected storylines, and behind-the-scenes moments.”

“Your Bravoverse” will also offer a new way for advertisers to activate on Peacock. The Andy Cohen avatar will, according to NBCUniversal, be able to reference brands during interactions with users in a new advertising capability. The goal is to keep users hyperengaged: The streamer developed over 600 billion combinations of content, stitching clips and weaving storylines together so users “can go down that rabbit hole forever,” John Jelley, SVP of product and user experience, Peacock and global streaming, said during a press event at 30 Rock.

“That’s way more stars than there are in the Milky Way,” he said. (About 500 billion more, to be exact: NASA estimates there are around 100 billion stars in the galaxy.)

“Your Bravoverse” is one of several ways NBCUniversal is looking to boost engagement on Peacock, which last reported having 44 million subscribers in January. During the Milan Cortina Olympics last month, NBCUniversal rolled out several vertical video offerings, including “Rinkside Live,”a feature that provided vertical video from multiple angles around hockey and figure skating competitions, as well as vertical recaps called “Can’t Miss Highlights.”

Peacock is also rolling out mobile games, including one based off of the Law & Order universe, debuting this summer, and one tied to Jeopardy!, rolling out this spring, the company announced.

Continue reading here.—JS

Executive moves across the industry.

• Jimmy John’s elevated CMO Darin Dugan to the role of brand president.
• Uncensored, Piers Morgan’s media company, tapped ex-MSNBC chief Rashida Jones as CEO.
• OMD USA named Red Ventures President Bradley Rogers as its new CEO. Rogers replaces Chrissie Hamson, who joined Dentsu.
• Fox Entertainment tapped Billy Parks, formerly of The Chernin Group, to head its Fox Creator Studios division.