SOCIAL & INFLUENCERS

Nuuly

Fall can be a great time for brands to get cozy, dig into the archives, reactivate nostalgia, or take over TV screens with a classic campaign.

Not for Nuuly.

The clothing rental company is throwing its own seasonal rulebook out the window, foregoing its typical omnichannel strategy for a fall campaign and instead rolling out a microdrama social series aimed at building brand awareness and emotional connection with consumers, according to Kirsten Henri, the brand’s senior director of creative and content.

The series, called Heart on My Sleeve, is a 12-episode microdrama starring Overcompensating’s Wally Baram as an art teacher looking for love while trying outfits that represent different aspects of her personality. The series will be published on Nuuly’s TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube accounts, dropping in four batches of three episodes each beginning August 19.

Nuuly’s fall push will live entirely on social, with the brand’s marketing team betting that fully embracing a microdrama format will help drive connection with its audience in a way that will feel fresh.

“People are very fatigued of being inundated with brand content,” Henri told us. “We just really want to make an emotional connection. We want people to feel something. We want to feel something, too.”

Continue reading here.—JN

      

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SPORTS MARKETING

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

With the first World Cup on US soil in more than three decades, the US Soccer Federation has had a banner summer. And though international fan-favorite players like Norway’s Erling Haaland, England’s Jude Bellingham, and France’s Kylian Mbappé have returned to their home clubs, there are lessons and learnings from the recently wrapped tournament that US Soccer plans to leverage to further promote soccer stateside.

While peak World Cup hype waned with the tournament, US Soccer research found that fandom tends to last for about 90 days after a tournament ends, according to CMO Catherine Newman. The federation is working to foster fandom during that window and beyond in the lead-up to the Women’s World Cup in Brazil taking place next summer, including re-creating some of the activations that drove results among USMNT fans this year.

• During the first couple of days following the USMNT’s elimination from the Round of 16, US Soccer’s primary messaging aim was to thank the fans for their support throughout the tournament, Newman said.
• For the remainder of the 90-day post-tournament window, the focus has shifted to making sure fans who enjoyed the action this summer know they can continue watching the beautiful game. The unifying message for this phase is that “everyone has a home in soccer,” whether through watching, playing, coaching, or reffing, Newman said.

“We have a moment to continue the movement, so to speak, and so we are wanting to make sure that all those people that had an awesome time know where to go,” Newman told Marketing Brew. “We have some of the best women’s players in the world here that you can worship and have a great time doing it, so we’re hopeful that [fandom] continues from the World Cup.”

Read more here.—AM

      

AI

Adobe Stock

Remember last month’s troubling OpenAI–Hugging Face incident, in which OpenAI agents escaped a test environment and hacked the AI platform Hugging Face?

OpenAI has posted multiple open roles dedicated to communicating to the public its effort to deploy AI responsibly, according to job listings viewed by Marketing Brew. One role, for a strategic narrative and impact lead on OpenAI’s Intelligence and Investigations team, is aimed at helping communicate the company’s safety efforts, according to the job listing, including creating “‘evidence-backed safety impact retrospectives’ that facilitate safety publications, threat reports, and workshops designed for engagement while also not creating “unnecessary additional reporting burdens.”

Another open role at the company, which is still live, is for a safety transparency editor on the company’s “Trustworthy AI Team” embedded in OpenAI’s Safety Systems division, which works to explain OpenAI’s safety protocols. Job responsibilities include supporting the production of technical materials like system cards and blogs focusing on safety.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

The job listings are part of a broader trend of AI companies looking to bring on people whose jobs entail helping to communicate company safety efforts to the public, as fears regarding AI safety remain heightened and amid several AI-related safety scandals. After OpenAI disclosed the Hugging Face incident, Anthropic reported last month that three separate incidents occurred where agents were able to access the internet to hack other organizations.

Consumers also have their own reservations around AI regulation: 59% of US adults indicated they have “little or no control” over AI use in their personal lives, according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in April.

Continue reading here.—JS

      

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Marketing’s AI gets specific. Camp Opticon pitches its tent in New York (Sept. 1), London (Oct. 13), and online (Oct. 21), bringing marketing-built AI agents into daylight. Attendees can watch live tech, swap what’s working, and see where agentic marketing heads next. No chatbot cosplay. Marketers can claim a free spot.

french press

Morning Brew

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

Plan ahead: Tools to help with social media post scheduling.

Make an impact: Tips for improving TikTok campaigns.

Spam sandwich: What’s inside Google’s latest spam update and how to monitor potential effects.

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Quiz

Amelia Kinsinger

The week’s biggest Marketing Brew stories, now in quiz form. Test yourself on the latest headlines in brand strategy, social media, influencer trends, sports marketing, and more in a quick, competitive challenge built for marketing pros. Challenge your coworkers and see how your score stacks up!

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.

• Marketing Manager at Henkel
• Brand Manager at Warner Music Group
• Head of Digital Marketing at Neuberger
• Program Manager, Brand Management at Whirlpool Corporation
• VP, Business Development Officer, Small Business Lending at Banc of California

WISH WE WROTE THIS

Morning Brew

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Wall Street Journal wrote about how more brands are going on Reddit in the hopes of affecting LLM search results and recommendations.
• Bloomberg wrote about the “optimization backlash” happening in response to social media, AI, and modern beauty standards.
• Bloomberg also wrote about the diamond industry’s multimillion-dollar marketing effort to get consumers to buy “natural” stones instead of often more affordable lab-grown options.
• The New York Times wrote about tech giants that, after embracing AI, are now looking to remove AI slop from their platforms.