BRAND STRATEGY

HP

If you’re in New York City, go out for a walk today and treat it as a scavenger hunt: See if you can spot a Dan Smith flyer.

Chances are, you can. Smith, a guitar teacher, has been papering the city for nearly 35 years, advertising his services to prospective students with simple flyers that read, “Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar.”

“That was me trying to be as direct as possible,” Smith told Marketing Brew of his copywriting style. Early on, “there were a few other guitar teaching flyers around, and a lot of what they talked about was the guitar teacher themselves…That seemed really irrelevant to me. I wanted to put the focus on the student and what they could expect when they called me.”

Smith’s direct and dogged approach with his flyers has made him a notable New York City fixture and a regular pop culture reference. Last month, his flyer got a new stage—albeit with the same plain-yet-familiar Word design—with a Times Square billboard that will be up through October 12, made possible through a partnership with HP.

Promoting Smith with a billboard isn’t an act of altruism, of course—instead, Smith’s posters are a way to highlight the value of a high-volume printer like HP’s Smart Tank. When we say high-volume, we mean it: Smith estimates that he’s printed around 1.5 million flyers over the years.

When brainstorming the campaign, the creative team tried to think of people who print at a high volume, ultimately landing on Smith, a “local legend,” Laura Morris, VP of marketing for North America at HP, told us.

For Morris, working with Smith in this capacity marked a new way for the brand to be a part of culture. “The ultimate goal in marketing is to be able to find relevant places where your brand can be inserted into culture and into local culture,” she said. “We all know what it looks like when it’s not a natural fit, and it’s forced. And we know what it looks like when it is such a natural fit.”

Smith was, of course, the latter, she said. “Printing for [Smith] is relevant,” she told us. “It is his entire marketing plan.”

For more on why HP is partnering with local business owners like Smith, continue reading here.—KM

      

Sponsored By PwC

Salesforce Dreamforce was chock-full of executive POVs, and we’re pumped to be spotlighting a few standouts. Consider this your rare sneak peek into their insights.

Today, we’re spotlighting Ian Kahn. He is a partner, global and US customer, and commercial excellence platform leader at PwC.

Kahn noted that CRM was built entirely around human relationships and human loyalty. So what happens now, when the entity making the purchase is an autonomous AI agent?

Typically, this system in a business is something you’d pay for per person, or per seat, as they say in enterprise software. With AI, the unknown number of tokens it takes to do something has broken that. And 70% of companies say they’re struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

Kahn explained the shift from seats to consumption is the way the market has to move. Learn more.

SPORTS MARKETING

Jason Miller/Getty Images

The NFL is a giant when it comes to TV viewership, crushing its competition like Los Angeles Rams defensive end Myles Garrett does against pretty much any quarterback he’s up against.

Of the top 100 most watched programs on TV last year, more than half were NFL programs, according to Nielsen ratings. For American Express, which became the league’s official payments partner as of this season, that popularity was exactly the point.

“The NFL is an incredibly rich media opportunity for us,” Jessica Ling, EVP of global advertising at Amex, told Marketing Brew. “We have been advertising in the NFL for a long time, but now that we’re an official [sponsor], it just unlocked more opportunities to integrate into the programming itself [and] deepen our partnerships with networks and broadcasters. That was, for us, always part of the calculus.”

That being said, NFL media rights are extremely fragmented, making those opportunities sometimes disparate. While Amex has a presence in NFL broadcasts across networks, Ling said, its partnership with Amazon Prime Video for Thursday Night Football is particularly deep—and still developing as both companies work to navigate the football landscape.

Read more about Amex’s strategy around the NFL and around some of its tentpole programming and talent here.—AM

      

MARKETING BREW WEEKLY

Is the CMO role disappearing, or is it more important than ever?

On this episode of Marketing Brew Weekly, Kelsey Sutton, Katie Hicks, and senior reporter Kristina Monllos debate the future of the chief marketing officer role, courtroom-style, using findings from our State of the Industry report on the CMO role (450+ marketing professionals surveyed).

They discuss fractional vs. full-time CMOs, AI pressure on marketing leaders, and why new words keep getting added to the “CMO” title.

Katie holds the gavel. The verdict is…well, you’ll just have to listen. Some takeaways:

• The role is gaining importance…or is it? 60% of respondents say the CMO is more important than it was five years ago, but only 17% say a company always needs a full-time one.
• There’s no consensus on fractional CMOs. 39% say part-time leaders can match full-time ones, and about the same share disagree.
• AI is landing on marketing’s desk. About two-thirds of respondents own AI strategy and governance, and 66% feel pressure to appear “AI-first” even when it doesn’t improve the work.
• The clock is tighter for marketers. Seventy-nine percent say marketing leaders get shorter timelines than other execs to prove results, which feeds the role’s short tenure.
• The title continues to morph. From chief marketing and communications officer to chief entertainment officer, the clean “CMO” label is getting rarer, even if the job is still essential.

Listen to the entire conversation on Marketing Brew Weekly.

      

Sponsored By Hightouch

AI’s role in creative strategy. As creative teams speed up, communication matters more than ever—both with your LLM and with people. Perfect world? Creative teams focus on ideas + craft while technology augments manual execution demands. Join Hightouch’s honest discussion about this evolution and get five tips for expert LLM prompting from the Hightouch Forward Deployed team. RSVP here.

french press

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

Sharing notes: Scheduling tools for posting Substack Notes.

Get it right: Tips for brand marketers on how to show up in AEO results.

’Tis the season? Early holiday shopping trends to be aware of.

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Jobs

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• Entry-Level Marketing Associate at Onias Marketing
• Direct Marketing Intern at Direct Marketing Solutions, Inc
• Growth Marketing Operator at Direct Online Marketing
• Sales and Marketing Intern at Blitz Marketing
• Staff Solutions Product Marketing Specialist at Renesas

WISH WE WROTE THIS

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Bloomberg wrote about Setlog, a BeReal-like hourly posting app gaining traction with young users in Asia.
• The New York Times Magazine looked into microdramas and asked whether they represent “the future of Hollywood, or the end.”
• The New York Times examined the AI-generated food images proliferating on restaurant signage and ads and explained why it’s so upsetting to look at.