In the weeks leading up to the premiere of Season 33 of Dancing with the Stars last September, Anna Delvey’s casting set the internet aflame.

While the fake heiress and convicted felon’s controversial dancing debut drummed up fresh interest in the decades-old show at the season’s start, it may have been her pro partner’s internet savvy that helped carry engagement in the season to record-breaking levels.

That pro partner is Ezra Sosa, a 24-year-old ballroom dancer that joined the DWTS cast as a troupe member in 2021 before being promoted to a pro dancer partnered with contestants in 2024.

Delvey was his first ever celebrity partner, and while there was great fanfare, it was short-lived: the duo was the first pair to be eliminated. But their short run gave way to a long tail of viral moments on both TV and phone screens, and even after the pair was voted out, Sosa’s TikTok account became a go-to destination for newer fans to engage with the show.

Now between seasons, Sosa is managing a budding personal brand while still representing DWTS’s newly modernized image—a perception that he says is a result of both his work on social and the show’s clever casting efforts.

“They’re like, ‘Okay, we have a convicted felon. Okay, let’s give her to the twink who has a good social media presence. Let’s go. Let’s make the most out of this,’” Sosa told Marketing Brew.

Keep reading here.—JN

Could American Eagle’s most expensive campaign to date end up being its most costly mistake?

The campaign, which launched last week with actor Sydney Sweeney at the helm, reportedly cost millions of dollars as a big-bet play to reverse declining sales after the company reported a $68 million operating loss in Q1 of this year.

Initially, the campaign caused American Eagle’s stock to jump (perhaps due in part to it becoming a meme stock), but as the campaign spread, its focus on Sweeney’s physical attributes caused a social media firestorm on multiple fronts.

A video touting Sweeney’s genetics as a play on the jeans/genes homophone, in which she states, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue,” drew backlash for what some called eugenicist dogwhistle language given Sweeney’s traditionally Aryan features. Others took issue with the campaign’s use of sex appeal as a vehicle for domestic violence awareness and the general weirdness of the visuals and the script, which has now become a meme.

“People were very upset, and not only people who didn’t look like Sydney Sweeney,” Myles Worthington, CEO and founder of marketing agency Worthi, told us. “They missed the mark, both tonally when it comes to the copy and the visuals they put out there.”

Comedians to marketers to celebrities continue to weigh in, as American Eagle is seemingly retreating. Some of the brand’s most controversial posts, including the “My jeans are blue” video and another that zooms in on Sweeney’s chest, appear to have been taken down from some of its channels.

Keep reading here.—KH

Ad gamification continues, this time with a new ad for Netflix’s Happy Gilmore 2 on Spotify.

Users of the audio app who encounter the ad can play rounds of golf to reveal Easter eggs from the Happy Gilmore universe, hear clips from the film, and access a personalized “happy” playlist.

The ad is the first time it has created a custom audio gaming experience for an advertiser. That said, it’s not a new ad unit or offering—Spotify has been creating custom experiences for advertisers since 2021. Spotify has previously created experiences for a collaboration between Coca-Cola and Oreo as well as for Amex.

The ad unit is dubbed “the stage,” Kay Hsu, global head of the creative lab at Spotify, said. “It’s an in-app branded experience. It’s usually really interactive. It’s custom-made for each brand, so each experience is very different.”

To create the game, Spotify worked with Netflix on a brief inspired by the character of Happy, and “leaned on a lot of nostalgia, obviously, to develop the design treatment,” Hsu said.

While there has been more interest in gamified ads from marketers like Disney, Amazon, and Discord, as Marketing Brew previously reported, that trend wasn’t the starting point for Spotify. That Happy Gilmore 2 is about a game made it a natural fit to gamify the ad, Hsu said. The experience was created by Spotify’s in-house team and produced by MiK Studio.

Should advertisers want their own game, that’s something Spotify is game for—Hsu said the platform is up for still more when it comes to immersive ads. “People think of Spotify as just an audio platform, but it isn’t,” she said. “It’s really immersive.”—KM

Get ready for a deep dive into data that drives change. Charlene Polite Corley, VP of inclusive insights at Nielsen, joins the Marketing Brew Summit on September 10 to explore how inclusive data storytelling can better reflect and connect with audiences. It’s insight that goes beyond the numbers—and straight to the heart. Grab your ticket now before they sell out.

Executive moves across the industry.

• Virgin Group Chief Brand and Marketing Officer Claire Hilton is departing the company.
• PayPal tapped Shopify alum Brian Peters as VP of strategic partnership innovations.
• Citigroup tapped JPMorganChase vet Pankaj Goel to co-lead tech investment banking, per Reuters.