BRAND STRATEGY

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Screenshots via @meta, @claude, and @liquiddeath2793 on YouTube

“What if we started to be more human again?”

A voice poses that question near the end of “Hope in Hard Questions,” a 90-second ad for Anthropic’s Claude. The spot, which debuted earlier this summer, moves through existential quandaries like, “Can AI be trusted?” and “If it ends up taking, like, almost all the jobs, then what does it mean to work?” before taking a more optimistic tone.

In late July, Meta also used techno-optimism in a new ad called “The Future is For Everyone,” albeit set to a song about the apocalypse. During the 60-second spot, an unseen narrator says Meta is “doubling down” on people “because while technology will change, our intention behind it never will.”

It’s perhaps not surprising that massive tech companies are trying to soothe the growing concerns about the negative effects of AI. Cratering public sentiment, especially when it comes to data centers, has inspired recent protests. And when there’s an image problem, after all, it’s marketing’s job to fix it.

But tech companies aren’t alone in putting humanity front and center in advertising messages. Even more comical ads, like Garage Beer and Liquid Death’s recent 90-second musical satire telling audiences to send in their urine to cool off AI data centers, position the move as a way to “save humanity.”

The message that a brand is made by and for humans and will benefit human consumers in some way is not often something that brands have historically been compelled to spell out so explicitly. Marketing experts told us the shift to more overt references to humanity is a reflection of the zeitgeist as the rapid push toward AI adoption and narratives around the tech’s inevitability have led to larger, more existential questions.

“We’re in a cultural moment where it feels like we are not in control,” Megha Parikh, executive strategy director at VML, told us. That reality, she continued, means humanity is “a very powerful message to empower people…You are in charge of your own destiny. I think that’s a really powerful cultural tension that’s playing out in ad land.”

Continue reading here.—KM

      

Sponsored By impact.com

Move over, traditional affiliate channels and co-marketing: Brand-to-brand partnerships are on the come up.

A new e-book from impact.com makes it clear to see why more and more B2B companies are investing in these partnerships. After all, they allow both sides to harness the trust and brand equity of their partners to reach high-intent, warm audiences.

Beyond that, these partnerships can also solve a holistic customer problem: A single brand typically can’t fulfill every customer need. Pairing with complementary solutions creates a more comprehensive product ecosystem.

Check out the e-book to learn about 16 different types of brand alliances and what strategies help ensure their success.

TV & STREAMING

FX

There’s nothing quite like being a few years out of college, living in a big city, and trying to figure it all out with your friends in your 20s.

Ahead of the Season 2 premiere of the FX sitcom Adults, which follows a group of friends through early adulthood, the network looked to bring that quintessential sense of chaos to life.

In New York, where the show takes place, FX teamed up with local favorite Prince Street Pizza to put on Munchie Mart, a bodega-style pop-up takeover of the entertainment venue Arlene’s Grocery. In Los Angeles, the team aimed to bring a piece of New York’s stoop-sale culture to the West Coast via a partnership with live-selling app Whatnot at Melrose Trading Post.

Together, the two experiential activations were meant to help immerse fans in an experience that was true to the Gen-Z-focused show, Kenya Hardaway, SVP of integrated promotions at FX, told us.

“We want to engage the fans in that world and into the elements and themes that they really enjoy and appreciate,” she said. “In building that, we are careful to carry through with the look and feel of the show to highlight the characters, to highlight some of the tone, and build out a consumer journey that allows them to step inside that.”

Read more here.—JN

      

Sponsored By Roku Ads Manager

What’s the skinny on CTV? Streaming continues to grow in popularity, but when it comes to advertising on this channel, lots of questions remain. How’s the reporting? What are the costs? What kind of channel even is it? We partnered with Roku Ads Manager to survey marketers and get those answers. Check out what we learned.

COWORKING

Kate Fairweather

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

Kate Fairweather is co-founder and head of human behavior at Electric Innovation, a consultancy. She has also worked at the design services firm frog and the strategy and design firm Fahrenheit 212.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Dove’s “Real Beauty”—not for the creative execution, but for what it reveals about where great commercial ideas actually come from. Someone looked at a truth that millions of folks were quietly living every day and had the courage to name it out loud, then build a business proposition around it. That’s strategy at its best: not inventing a trend, but excavating something real from culture and giving it language.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I have an encyclopedic knowledge of drag culture—RuPaul’s Drag Race specifically—and I’m genuinely convinced it’s one of the most sophisticated masterclasses in innovation on earth. The way queens tap into true emotional and human insight, construct a personal brand around it, evolve it under pressure, and communicate it in a short stint on stage is extraordinary. You’re much more likely to find me using drag as a boardroom metaphor than sports or war.

Continue reading here.

      

Sponsored By WRITER

Everyone’s got AI now. When most teams use the same intelligence, your advantage is what only your company knows: your brand, your rules, and your way of working. Join WRITER CEO May Habib and CMO Diego Lomanto on Sept. 9 for a product launch powering the continuous customer journey, and hear from leaders at Qualcomm and Salesforce on where the real competitive edge lies.

EVENTS

Morning Brew Inc.

Marketers from Reddit, Liberty Mutual, Netflix, SharkNinja, and more are all taking the stage at this year’s Marketing Brew Summit—real strategy from brands you already know, no fluff included. Catch the full lineup Sept. 30 in NYC, built around this year’s theme: intuition, insight, and integration.

Level up your career with these resources from our sponsors!

french press

Morning Brew

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

📺: How consumers are using second screens during sporting events.

📌: Research from Pinterest about how teens are using the platform.

👂: Trending sounds on Instagram for soundtracking your next social video.

Jobs

Real jobs, shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

JOINING FORCES

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Fage inked a multiyear sponsorship with the FIA WEC Lone Star Le Mans race, an endurance sportscar racing event.
• L.L.Bean partnered with New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and his wife, creator Ann Michael Maye, for its latest campaign.
• Barilla Group is set to acquire macaroni-and-cheese brand Goodles.