If you don’t know Grant & Ash, they have a song for you.

Since 2022, creators Grant Gibbs and Ashley Gill, also known as A Twink and a Redhead, have amassed more than 900,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, where they post comedy skits and music videos. They’re currently on a North American tour performing a collection of songs that often poke fun at brands, including hits like “Panera,” “Barnes & Noble,” “Disney Adult,” and “BJ Maxx,” which riffs on the retailer TJ Maxx (or TK Maxx in Australia and Europe). The backdrop of the stage is, quite literally, a strip mall.

“It’s a brand-heavy show,” Gill told us. “I think we name-drop a lot of brands because it was just what we were raised with in New Jersey, being around strip malls all the time.”

While the content is company-focused, the duo’s humor isn’t exactly safe for work. (In one video, they fake a brand trip with Disney to Avatar’s Pandora and imply that Gill got intimate with the Na’vi.) It’s all part of the charm, and Gibbs said he’s determined to never sacrifice art for money.

“The majority of our content is satire,” he told us, acknowledging that certain creative choices may mean that “Disney will never work with us, and we’re fine with that,” even if the company is one of his dream brand partners.

While Disney may be out of the question, the duo has built a Rolodex of other brand partners including Netflix, La Roche-Posay, Bravo, Bose, and American Eagle. Even the DNC got in on the joke, letting the two sing about getting “dicked down” at the convention for a video that racked up more than 76,000 likes on TikTok.

“People will still stop us, that was two years ago now, to be like…that was funny,” Gill said.

Gibbs and Gill, who became friends in sixth grade, have learned a lot in their time together, including how to make content, branded or otherwise, that gets people watching.

“We’re not trying to cater our normal videos to be appealing to a brand,” Gill said. “We’re just hoping the brands that get it, get it.”

Continue reading here.—KH

Kotex is in the midst of a makeover.

Or, rather, it’s in the process of “a complete brand overhaul” of everything from innovation to marketing to activation, Katie Moran, president of the adult and feminine care business unit at Kotex parent company Kimberly-Clark in North America, told us.

The impetus for the change is simple: In the last decade, the Kotex brand, which was founded more than a hundred years ago, has been “losing relevance” with its customers, Moran explained, all while broader category innovation has stagnated to a point where consumers are unhappy—and saying so in market research, on social channels like Reddit.

Rather than ignoring the feedback, Kotex is taking it head-on in its latest campaign, called “You Asked. We Heard.”

The 60-second hero spot, from GUT Miami and directed by Camila Zapiola, pans across women in bathroom stalls who voice their complaints about pads. “Girl, it feels like someone stuffed a kitchen sponge in my underwear,” one woman says. Finally, the ever-increasing crescendo of voices is silenced when someone offers up a redesigned Kotex pad under the stall divider.

The spot continues with a new tagline for the brand first introduced in February of this year: “Own your flow.”

Read more here.—KM

One argument for getting marketing localization right is the crises that can erupt when brands get it disastrously wrong.

Just ask Dolce & Gabbana. In 2018, the Italian fashion house produced a video campaign featuring a Chinese model struggling to eat Italian fare including pizza and cannoli with chopsticks. Following accusations that the ads were racist, major Chinese retailers removed the brand’s products from their websites, the brand canceled a Shanghai fashion show, and its eponymous owners issued a video apology.

Or ask Ikea, which in 2012 airbrushed women out of photos in a Saudi Arabia catalog, presumably to appease government censors, and which also ended up apologizing.

Whether it’s adapting messaging from one country to another, or one city to another, marketing localization is where brands connect with consumers by demonstrating their cultural literacy. And it’s about much more than hiring a translator.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—AAN

You could spend hours scrolling trying to keep up with social trends. Or you could hear directly from the people behind brands like ESPN, Spotify, and Anthropologie who are actually figuring it out. Join us May 12 in NYC for a smarter, faster way to get up to speed on what’s working—and what’s not.

This one’s for the girlies—and by “this,” we mean the latest ads from Verizon and Peloton starring our favorite Heated Rivalry guys. Brands looking to win culture are tapping heartthrobs, but it looks a little different this time around. Join us as we dig into how brands are tapping into fandoms that do their marketing for them.

American Eagle unveiled its latest campaign starring Sydney Sweeney, extending a high-profile partnership that began last summer. Here’s what you need to know about a collaboration that sparked conversation and drove strong results for the brand.