SOCIAL & INFLUENCERS

Screenshots via BetterHelp

Sometimes all it takes is one comment to make a change.

That could be taken as a grand statement about life, but here, it’s a literal one: After posting a comment on a video that went viral last year, BetterHelp’s marketing team has doubled down on the comment section as a growth strategy.

“The team had a breakthrough moment with the Pitch Perfect conversation that was happening online,” Sara Brooks, chief growth officer for BetterHelp, told us, referring to a comment the brand made on the viral post of college students performing a capella from last November. (The film features college a capella groups competing for prizes.) “The team came into the comments section in TikTok and said, ‘Close enough! Welcome back, Treblemakers!’ And it really resonated with the community. Got over 300,000 likes on just one comment. We started to see, ‘Hmm, something is happening here.’”

It can be hard for some marketers to replicate viral success, but for BetterHelp, the move fit into a larger strategic shift to focus on speaking to communities. Since its first outsized response to that TikTok comment, BetterHelp has continued to find different comment sections to be a part of—mostly on TikTok, where BetterHelp has 537,400 followers, and on Instagram, where the brand has more than 635,000 followers.

“What we found is that this is a really repeatable, scalable way to show up in culture,” Brooks said. “Fast forward to today, our follower count on TikTok, our daily new followers has grown a hundredfold. People [are] really resonating with the brand as we’re showing up in these cultural conversations.”

Continue reading here.—KM

      

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AI

OpenAI

OpenAI’s ads business is expanding.

Next week, ChatGPT ads will roll out in 31 new markets, including Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, and Austria, according to the company.

The international expansion comes on the heels of OpenAI recording more than 25% growth in daily ad revenue since the start of August, Colin Fleming, OpenAI’s business CMO, told reporters during a briefing Tuesday.

Fleming, who is roughly 80 days into his role, also detailed his broader approach to enterprise marketing as the company continues to build out its advertising business and push for adoption of its tools across industries.

“There’s three motions that we’re focused on,” Fleming said. “We’re focusing on usefulness for the end customers…Then the advertising utility, of course, and then revenue.”

Read more here.—JS

      

DATA & TECH

Getty Images

The Wild West of AI use in advertising is getting some more suggested clarity, courtesy of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

On Tuesday, the IAB released an update to its “AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework,” which accounts for regulation changes in New York, California, South Korea, and the European Union requiring disclosures of certain AI use in advertising.

It’s the first update since the IAB released the guidance in January, and while the fast-moving regulatory landscape means more changes will likely be required, the aim is to help provide top-level guidance, according to Caroline Giegerich, VP of AI at the IAB.

“There’s been a lot of legislation that has matured, come into effect,” Giegerich told Marketing Brew. “Even doing the legislation section for this Part 2, I’m constantly thinking: ‘Am I missing something new?’ And I know that it’ll be out of date by literally one day, but this is just kind of the environment we’re living in…I still think [the framework update] has an intention as the voice of the industry.”

For now, the IAB suggests that advertisers use “targeted disclosure rather than universal labeling, particularly when AI use materially affects authenticity, identity, or representation in ways that could mislead consumers,” according to a release about the new framework.

The IAB suggests disclosure when using AI-prompted images and videos, as well as “some” synthetic voices, avatars, digital twins of deceased individuals or living individuals, AI chatbots or assistants, according to the organization, which also notes that advertisers can use a “standardized sparkle icon or text label” to disclose the use of the technology.

Continue reading here.—KM

      

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EVENTS

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A CMO and a VP of Brand are joining the lineup, and both know how to build a brand people actually talk about. They’re taking the stage at the Marketing Brew Summit on Sept. 30 in NYC, bringing real playbooks on intuition, insight, and integration. Get your ticket.

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

Buy side: Lessons from the ad channels and formats that Amazon invests in.

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Morning Brew Inc., Photos: @westworldhbo/Instagram, @goodwipes/Instagram, Chili’s

From storytelling to social strategy, marketers share what it actually takes to pull off a buzzworthy brand pop-up, plus the planning details that separate a hit activation from a forgettable one.

METRICS AND MEDIA

Stat: $146.3 billion. That’s how much Grand View Research found the global denim market is expected to be worth by 2033, according to Adweek; that comes after brands aired nearly 70% more denim ads on TV last year compared to the year prior, per EDO.

Quote: “We don’t want to hear from you when we’re gossiping about you.”—Rachel Karten, social media expert and author of the Link In Bio newsletter, speaking to the Wall Street Journal about how users feel about brands trying to infiltrate Reddit

Read: “AI slop melodramas are taking over X—and their creators are cashing in” (Wired)