“I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! How dare you?”

Tyra Banks’s infamous words, which first aired on an episode of America’s Next Top Model in 2005, have lived on as a meme for years—and in Milani’s latest campaign, it’s not a model, but a makeup primer that pushes its Tyra stand-in over the edge.

To promote the brand’s newest product, the Conceal + Perfect Blur Out Smoothing Primer, the Milani team re-created a short episode mirroring ANTM, with three primers competing to be crowned America’s next top primer. The early-aughts homage is running across digital and social platforms, as well as in Entertainment Weekly’s nostalgia TV issue, which Milani is sponsoring.

It’s the beauty brand’s take on nostalgia marketing, and is also designed to connect the brand to top cultural moments, according to Milani CMO Jeremy Lowenstein.

“We really were going back to what is resonating right now with consumers. What cultural inflection point can we lean into, especially as an indie brand, that also makes sense for Milani and for this primer?” Lowenstein told us. “We saw the opportunity to lean into a sort of SNL-style spoof on America’s Next Top Model, which [also] elevates Milani’s brand around prestige and luxury.”

Read more here about why Milani opted to pay homage to the classic 2000s reality show.—JN

CMOs, you got an A. Well, about a quarter of you did.

For the fourth time, independent marketing agency Boathouse conducted a survey of CEOs to get a sense of their opinions of CMOs and the overall marketing functions at their companies. When asked to grade their CMO using an academic scale, 24% of the 150 CEOs of US companies surveyed from Jan. 7 to 24 gave them an A. That’s similar to the 26% who gave out As in last year’s CEO survey, and up from 16% the second time Boathouse ran the survey in 2022.

Close to three-quarters (71%) of CEOs gave their CMOs either an A or a B.

While the results reveal some improvements in the ways CEOs view their top marketers, there are also several “areas of concern and disconnects” when it comes to how CEOs think of CMOs and marketing in general, according to Boathouse’s CEO study.

“The CMO is trending up and marketing is trending down, which is a contradiction,” John Connors, Boathouse co-founder and CEO, told Marketing Brew. “The CMO…got smarter in Covid about how to build better relationships, and yet I think marketing continues to be less trusted.”

Continue reading here.—AM

First, Best Buy sold plasma TVs. Now it’s selling Facebook ads.

Last week, the electronics retailer announced a tool called Social+ that will let advertisers target Best Buy customers on Facebook and Instagram.

So what? In recent years, retailers have turned their treasure troves of first-party data into billion-dollar advertising businesses. Retail media networks are expected to account for $129 billion in US ad spend by 2028, according to eMarketer.

Best Buy’s retail media offering, Buy Buy Ads, was first rolled out in 2022, joining the likes of Walmart, Amazon, and even Uber.

How does it work? Advertisers will be able to use Best Buy’s first-party data to target its customers using Meta’s automated Advantage+ AI-powered ad tool. The company intends to expand the offering to other social platforms, according to a press release.

“Our world relies on technology more than ever, and no one understands customers who use and love tech better than Best Buy,” Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads, said in a press release announcing the product. “We’re excited to launch this in collaboration with Meta. With Social+, we’ve set a new industry standard that will help our partners thrive, boost their return on investment and provide more ways to measure meaningful impact.”

Read more here about the partnership and what it entails.—RB

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Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Wall Street Journal wrote about the lucrative world of LinkedInfluencing.
• Business Insider wrote about how a much-memed “rise and grind” influencer is drawing attention to Saratoga water.
• The New York Times wrote about the rise of prebiotic soda and whether the label itself is a gimmick.