While some gifts keep on giving, others, as certain brands have learned, can keep on taking.

Extravagant influencer trips, like Tarte’s ventures to Bora Bora and Dubai, and large-scale influencer offerings, like Poppi’s decision to loan vending machines to creators ahead of the Super Bowl, have prompted consumer backlash, causing some brand marketers to reevaluate whether big-name creators are the best recipients for lavish gifts or trips.

As a result, some brands, including beauty brand Cocokind and beverage brand Vita Coco, have turned their attention to customers with community-oriented getaways and giveaways.

Last year, hydration packets brand Waterboy and makeup brand Refy took customers on trips to Mexico and Spain, respectively, and in January, Cocokind took seven customers on a trip to Napa Valley.

“We found ourselves having these conversations around our [influencer] mailers and other costs and expenses…while simultaneously seeing all these conversations happening around influencer trips,” Maria Maciejowski, Cocokind’s CMO, told us. “We decided to redirect the budget and create this unforgettable experience for people who’ve supported us the most over the years.”

Based on the success of the initial trip, Cocokind is planning to bring a different group of customers on a trip in June, Maciejowski said. “At the end of the day, those are the people who are showing up for you every single day,” she said. “They deserve equal, if not more, recognition than people who have a platform.”

Continue reading here about the customer-centric getaways and giveaways that some brands are embracing.—KH

For advertisers, privacy is stuck in purgatory—at least on the federal side.

Lina Khan, an advocate for consumer privacy, is no longer leading the Federal Trade Commission. And even though some federal privacy legislation has made its way through Congress, legislators on the Hill have yet to pass any such bill.

What’s an advertiser to do? At Marketing Brew’s Tactical MarTech event last month, a trio of privacy advocates told us to continue looking at the states, where the patchwork quilt of privacy legislation continues to grow ever more complex in the absence of any significant movement on the federal side.

“You have a lot of states that are trying to assert dominance,” Richy Glassberg, co-founder and CEO of SafeGuard Privacy, said during a panel discussion.

Read more from our look into state-level privacy legislation here.—RB

The retail media landscape might be young, but it’s moving at breakneck speed in terms of competition—and retailers are increasingly feeling less confident in their ability to increase retail media revenue.

In four short years, retail media has exploded from being an $18.8 billion business to one that’s worth $54.9 billion, according to a new Retail Media Industry report by media buying firm Dentsu. And as the pie has grown, more and more players have jumped in to grab a piece.

Intense competition is why 78% of retailers surveyed expect retail media revenue to increase in the next three years, down from 91% last year, Dentsu reported.

“It’s a drop, but it’s still a lot of retailers that are saying, ‘I’m going to see revenue increase next year,’” Megan Cameron, EVP of new stream media at Dentsu’s retail media practice, told Retail Brew. “Perhaps that level of increase is going to be smaller and the increases will be harder fought and harder earned for those retailers that do see an increase year over year.”

Retailers that run an ads business are citing their own direct retail media networks as competitors, but also called out first-party data providers like Meta and YouTube as top competitors, the report stated.

“This year was the first year that we actually saw retail media networks respond as saying that first-party data providers and then media publishers are the No. 1 and No. 2 competitors as they go out into the marketplace,” Cameron said. “The majority of them are saying that the No. 1 competitor that they go to market against is actually a first-party data provider, so what that points to is we are seeing this competitive landscape increase exponentially.”

Read more on Retail Brew.—VC

Executive moves across the industry.

• Patreon hired Mike McGarry, Shake Shack’s VP of brand marketing, to serve as its first-ever SVP of marketing.
• LePub New York City hired McCann Worldgroup global EVP and ECD, Jim Curtis, as chief creative officer.
• Amazon MGM Studios head Jen Salke, who oversaw Prime Video hits like Fallout, is stepping down. The studio does not plan to fill her role.