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Marketing Brew

Katie Hicks

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Brands are capitalizing on ’90s nostalgic appeal 

Why brands like Osea Malibu, Skims, and Reformation are all capitalizing on throwback appeal. 

The ’90s—and the icons that defined the decade—are so back 

Jasmine Sheena

Why Spotify‘s personalization features are in the marketing spotlight

“People see their friends having fun with Daylist and they want to get in on the action, too,” Spotify’s senior director of global marketing said.

The FOMO effect: Why Spotify‘s personalization features are in the marketing spotlight

Alyssa Meyers

MLS revenue from sponsorship, season tickets, and merchandise is all up

“We have an audience that’s young, they’re multicultural, they’re tech savvy,” one MLS exec said. “Marketers are really drawn to that.”

Two dots and an arrow connected by a curving line denoting marketing brand strategy

Brand Strategy

A cartoon image of Kristina Monllos created by Morning Brew

Kristina Monllos

Getting married can be quite a production. There’s the venue, food, drinks, dessert, flowers, decorations, and invitations to think about, not to mention the couple’s attire, officiant, photographer, videographer, entertainment, and a wedding party to choose as part of the perfect day.

So it’s no surprise that some couples are keen to have pros at managing massive productions take the reins. We’re not talking about wedding planners, though—we’re talking about brands.

Last month, the expense management platform Ramp held an experiential activation in New York City, during which the company 

 star Brian Baumgartner serving as the officiant and Christian Joseph, aka The Rizzler, serving as the ring bearer. Ramp joins a growing list of brands to play host to a couple’s nuptials: In July, 

 mascot, Manny Mayo, married a couple in Vegas after they won a contest for a brand-sponsored wedding, and in February, Whataburger sponsored a “WhataWedding” for a couple in Las Vegas after first supporting six weddings at different locations across Texas on Valentine’s Day in 2020. Since 2017, Taco Bell 

 have gotten married at the brand’s Las Vegas Cantina after the brand first held a contest offering couples the chance to tie the knot at the location.

That brands would want to be associated with weddings isn’t surprising to agency execs, who say that as companies look to associate with positive, breakthrough moments, it’s possible that sponsored weddings could see an even bigger surge.

“This is a peak emotional moment for people,” Heather Miller, managing director at McGarrah Jessee, the ad agency behind Whataburger’s wedding work, told Marketing Brew. “If you can associate a brand with love and happiness and commitment, it’s just creating this positive memory…that transcends transactional loyalty.”

Beyond that, weddings get people to pay attention—often for the right reasons. “Especially for such a divisive hellscape that we’re in right now, I feel like legally marrying two people is probably the easiest thing you can do to raise eyebrows without raising eyebrows,” Katie Dyer, strategy director at Mother LA, said.

For Ramp, the wedding, part of an hours-long in-person activation, the initial plan was for the wedding to be a staged bit. A week before the activation, Kendall Tucker, head of creative experimentation at Ramp, realized she kept getting asked whether the stunt was a real wedding, and decided it was worth listening to.

“I messaged the Ramp team, the entire company, and I said, ‘Is anyone willing to get married next week?’” she said. “I got three couples within an hour who said they would do it. I got eight couples that were like, ‘We’ll renew our vows.’” (The company ultimately went with the first couple who reached out.)

The final execution turned out even better than she expected. “They wrote their own vows,” she said. “I cried watching it. It was so beautiful.”

The turnaround time on a brand-sponsored wedding can vary. For Ramp, it all came together in a week. According to an account from 

, the bride from the Hellmann’s-sponsored wedding, she and her fiancé found out “two and a half weeks” before their wedding that they’d won.

“Our mayo-fueled wedding was an unhinged fever dream which spared no feral joy,” Schroering wrote in Bon Appetit.

Finding ways to make the wedding true to the couple while also “keeping it fun, real, and culturally on point” was crucial for Hellmann’s, according to Brent Lukowski, senior director of marketing for US condiments at Unilever. The idea for the wedding came about as a promotion for the company’s new Chicken Tender Dips line—a play on the union of chicken tenders with the dips.

“For Hellmann’s, the magic is in the details—from a marriage certificate signed in mayo to Manny hitting the dance floor with guests,” Lukowski wrote in an email. “Tying it all to National Chicken Tender Day added the perfect timely twist and boosted engagement even more.”

The wedding and the content generated some 2 billion impressions and 270 earned media placements, according to Lukowski, who noted that sentiment was 95% positive.

In the case of Whataburger, McGarrah Jessee held “several planning calls” with the couple to find out ways to make the big day feel authentic to them, Miller said, adding that the couple was awarded the wedding a month prior to the nuptials.

“We of course had creative ideas, but we wanted to make sure they felt really comfortable with them,” she said. “So it was conversations and planning like you would for any wedding. We just ended up being the wedding planners, which is a fun role for an advertising agency to take on.”

Are brand weddings here to stay? To Miller, the next brand wedding will need to raise the stakes in some way, as “the bar for creativity and spectacle is constantly being raised.”

If the recent fascination with simple brand pop-ups is any indication, though, brands don’t necessarily have to go all-out if they find a way to be part of some consumers’ big life moments.

“It feels like we’re kind of harkening back, in a way, to a simpler time when it comes to brand activations right now,” Dyer said. “I would like to see brand-sponsored paying off mortgages or car loans…student loans would be nice.”

The mascot of Hellmann's, Manny Mayo, stands in front of a Las Vegas wedding chapel marquee.

Why brands like Ramp, Whataburger, and Hellmann’s are sponsoring weddings

To cut through culture and stand out, brands and their agencies are signing on to be wedding planners.

Why brands like Ramp, Whataburger, and Hellmann’s are sponsoring weddings 

Want to be a brand for the rich and famous, or one that fits the average consumer’s lifestyle? Many brands are looking to be both.

 on big purchases, yet aspirational content on social media continues to thrive, some more accessibly priced brands are positioning themselves as part of an aspirational lifestyle, while higher-end brands are positioning themselves as accessible to the masses. This summer, Delta Air Lines 

 positioning itself as a “lifestyle” airline, adopting a “premium” brand identity as part of its first brand refresh since 2008. Other brands, like wine brand Josh Cellars and Carbone Fine Food, have begun positioning their food and beverage products as affordable luxuries. Even some pharma brands are starting to 

 more like lifestyle brands as GLP-1 weight loss drugs gain popularity.

Carolyn Rooke, managing director at VML, told us she’s noticed an uptick in brands positioning themselves as aspirational lifestyle brands, which she attributes, in part, to the demands of social media.

“The Glossiers and the Away luggages and the Liquid I.V.s of the world made something that has not always been sexy or aspirational feel more like a lifestyle and more like a personality characteristic than just a product that you buy,” Rooke said.

At the same time, traditionally upscale brands like American Express and JPMorganChase have begun 

 their more exclusive credit cards to everyday buyers, as brands like Patrón have begun selling 

 of more expensive products to reach younger and potentially more price-conscious audiences.

To keep attracting consumers that may be both price- and image-conscious, brands of all kinds are making the case that the luxury lifestyle is, in fact, for everyone.

Many brands have been marketing themselves as lifestyle brands for years, so those doing so now are in many ways simply adjusting to the modern marketplace, Rooke said. Beyond social media, she said, brands are achieving “lifestyle” status by listening to their core consumers and offering “things that aren’t directly tied to sales” like merch drops, events, and partnerships.

Josh Cellars, which is known for its affordably priced wine (and its 

), has sought to establish an aspirational brand image, most recently through a partnership with Hotel Lobby Candle on a $58 Prosecco-scented candle and a $75 Prosecco-and-candle set.

Dan Kleinman, chief brand officer at Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, which oversees the Josh Cellars brand, told us the idea for the collab came out of the brand’s first influencer trip last fall to its Italian winery, which Lindsay Silberman, the founder of Hotel Lobby Candle, attended. The goal through the higher-end partnership, he said, was to raise the brand’s esteem among its millennial customer base.

“Seeing [Hotel Lobby Candle] choose us to do a collaboration helps with our relevance as a brand,” Kleinman said. “It lends credibility to Josh within wine as the brand that luxury companies want to partner with.”

Despite positioning itself as an upscale lifestyle brand fit for high-earners, Kleinman said he wants Josh Cellars to remain relatively approachable. (Some of the brand’s bottles retail for under $10.) He emphasized that the gift set is aimed at consumers looking to give a gift under $100 this holiday season and said that the brand has seen a lot of growth with its mini-bottles of wine. He also noted Josh Cellars’s loyalty program, which the brand launched a few weeks ago in response to the state of the economy, and will allow customers to accumulate points that can be exchanged for merch and gifts.

“We think that is going to be a big driver for us as we get that going because it really is a way to reward frequent purchasing from our most loyal consumers,” he said.

Italian restaurant Carbone is known for being a tough (and pricy) ticket, so it’s perhaps no surprise that when its CPG brand, Carbone Fine Food, was created, its founders wanted to convey that aspirational image. Chris Wendling, EVP of marketing at Carbone Fine Food, told us that the brand’s recent collab with luxury skin-care brand Malin+Goetz on a $205 limited-edition tomato-scented “supercandle” was in service of that mission.

To further its positioning as part of an aspirational lifestyle, the brand has also partnered with celebrities like 

 podcast host Alex Cooper and publications like Vanity Fair.

The goal, Wendling said, “is really taking these lifestyle influences and finding really good, meaningful partnerships that are sticking true to the restaurant and this aspirational lifestyle branding.”

In evaluating the CPG category on social media, Wendling said his team saw a white space when it came to lifestyle branding as competitors posted about current events and memes—something he said he’s not entirely opposed to here and there. For inspiration on Carbone’s lifestyle brand image, Wendling’s team looked to brands like Rhode Skin, which has combined food with beauty to promote various products.

“The whole reason that this brand was created was…there is a good portion of the country that doesn’t know the restaurant,” he said. “What does bringing that restaurant experience into a home look like?”

The other reason for building the brand, he said, is increasing accessibility, given that not everyone can get a reservation (or afford to eat) at Carbone. With that, Carbone Fine Food is aiming to position itself as both luxurious and affordable, which Wendling hopes to achieve through channels like user-generated content showcasing the sauce and the ways it can be used—ideally, he said, in a style reminiscent of Rhode’s. More partnerships could also be on the horizon: Wendling said he hopes to work with cosmetics and fashion brands next year to further appeal to Gen Z and millennial customers.

“We want to keep this lens of being an aspirational brand, but also still being approachable and really highlighting the product and the branding behind it,” he said.

As the CPG brand grows, Wendling said he wants to further encourage the brand’s status as affordable luxury through a mix of private and public events, owned and organic content, and product seeding—something that may become more important as some consumers pull back on dining out, which Wendling said is only more opportunity to sell the idea of a restaurant-quality experience at home with a $10 sauce.

“It lends well to everything that’s going on in today’s economy,” he said. “Of course people are going to be pulling back on spend, but we formed this brand during Covid…and we continue to grow every month with a household penetration base, so we see no signs of slowing.”

A collage containing images of a hand with red fingernails holding a champagne glass, a navy blue Carbone Fine Foods sweatshirt, and a cream-colored Hotel Lobby brand candle collaboration with Josh Cellars

It’s not a brand. It’s a lifestyle 

As customers cut spending, brands are increasingly positioning their products as part of an aspirational-yet-accessible way of life. 

Huggies has a message for those in the midst of family planning: Get busy right now.

Why? Great question. If by some miracle a couple who heeds Huggies’s message and conceives right away, their subsequent parental leave should line up perfectly with the 2026 FIFA World Cup. And wouldn’t that be perfect?

To encourage the activity, Huggies and creative agency Gut made a 90-minute spot uploaded to YouTube, called “Do It for the Team,” featuring sultry jams, imagery, and narration designed to get people in the mood. The company also created a shorter 10-minute version, cut-downs for Instagram and TikTok, as well as a 

. And if that’s not enough encouragement, Huggies is also running a sweepstakes offering entrants the chance to win six weeks of free diapers come June 2026.

“We care about babies, and we care about parents,” Matt Barresi, VP and general manager for Huggies, told Marketing Brew. “We know that many parents are fervent sports fans, especially around the world’s largest soccer tournament, especially when their national team is at play, right? And obviously parents are very fervent in their love for their babies, and a lot of them love to turn their little ones into the next generation of fervent sports fans. So that’s the inspiration.”

 to advertise around the 2026 FIFA World Cup months before the competition kicks off. Earlier this month, Verizon 

 its own sweepstakes with the help of soccer star David Beckham, offering fans a chance to win pitch-side access to World Cup matches.

With that said, getting a jump on next year’s World Cup marketing wasn’t the primary reasoning for the Huggies campaign.

“At the end of the day, we’re really focused on the consumer versus any particular event, and things that are relevant to them are important to us,” Barresi said. “Things like the world’s largest soccer tournament [are] important to them, kind of made us say, like, ‘Oh, there’s some fun if you kind of plan backwards, right?’ So what’s more fun than watching that with the ones you love the most? And nobody loves anybody more than [they love] their baby.”

A faux pregnancy test that Huggies made with a positive read for soccer tournament.

Ahead of the World Cup, Huggies wants consumers to ‘do it for the team’

A 90-minute playlist from the brand is designed to encourage would-be parents to have their parental leave line up with the soccer tournament.

Exactly nine months out from the World Cup, Huggies wants consumers to ‘do it for the team’

The Onion seems to always know how to seize the moment with a topical headline. At the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, President Donald Trump attempted to ascend an escalator that stopped working after he set foot on it. The company followed up the incident with the headline “Trump to Travel with Own Escalator Following UN Embarrassment.”

While the publication has for years maintained a steady reputation for providing a constant source of edgy satire, it has gone through plenty of ups and downs, including a series of sales, first to G/O Media in 2019, and in April 2024 to Global Tetrahedron, a firm created explicitly to house the publication and 

 by the co-founder of customer engagement platform Twilio, Jeff Lawson. At Advertising Week in New York, Jordan LaFlure, The Onion’s executive editor, and Leila Brillson, its CMO, discussed some of the changes, including providing an update on its attempted purchase of InfoWars, the media company founded by right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, and shared more about its expansion efforts and work with advertisers.

The brand is “made for right now,” Brillson told attendees.

“We hear all the time that ‘truth has become too ridiculous,’ that ‘The Onion

has to shutter its doors,’ or ‘the truth is now more ridiculous than The Onion,’” she said. “I have to say that in these moments where things feel heightened and, dare I say, ridiculous, The Onion shines.”

 During the panel, Brillson and LaFlure discussed The Onion’s

continuing attempt to buy InfoWars, which it won at a bankruptcy auction last November after the site was put up for sale as the result of a defamation suit tied to false claims Jones made about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. A federal judge rejected the deal in December, but the publication “is still very much a part of that conversation…and given recent developments, sees a path forward,” Brillson said. (Jones has made a number of efforts to pause the judgement and stop the sale; earlier this month, the Supreme Court 

In the meantime, The Onion’s team is “trying to figure out how it would work if we got it,” LaFlure said. “It is part of a larger strategy where we as a brand want to show up in weird places…We want to show up in unusual places and make an impact. This, thus far, is maybe the most impactful, and we haven’t even gotten the damn thing yet.”

 Acquiring other brands isn’t the only way the team is thinking about expansion. The publication has also been running its 

, America’s Finest Creative Agency, since May, which Marketing Brew exclusively reported. Its client roster has included Project Liberty, an initiative promoting the cause of a decentralized internet, and Brillson said she has found that clients tend to self-select given the company’s reputation.

“We’re not really dealing with the Procter & Gambles of the world,” she said.

, which LaFlure said is designed to provide a “much more intimate experience” for its fanbase. In distinguishing its physical brand from its digital one, the publication is more strategic with the jokes that appear in the physical edition, opting for “shorter, punchier” jokes.

“It just made sense to create a channel that had a more direct one-to-one relationship, where we send you very personalized little printouts that are slightly ridiculous,” Brillson said.

As The Onion charts its path forward, one thing remains constant: It won’t be using AI, at least not on the editorial side, LaFlure said. “From the editorial staff’s perspective, it is a nonstarter,” he said. “We are vocally, publicly, strongly anti-AI. …As far as it generates content, we will never touch it.”

On the business side, though, it’s a different story.“If we’re running a display media campaign across 18 different platforms, we learned that if we optimize the campaign via AI, we lower the [cost per unit], blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” he said.

The Onion publication in a newspaper distributer

Why The Onion is ‘made for right now’

At Advertising Week, the satirical publication’s executive editor and CMO talked about the media brand’s evolution.

Why The Onion brand is ‘made for right now’

Jennimai Nguyen

Some say television’s audience reinvigorated when color came onto the scene. Oura is looking for a 

The wearable fitness tech company recently debuted the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic, which is available in four new colors and made from zirconia ceramic, a departure from the brand’s existing metal-forward colors. The product drop also comes alongside new multi-ring support capabilities, along with a new charging case, and additional health features.

To announce it all to the world, Oura rolled out a campaign across social media, traditional TV and CTV, and OOH activations in New York, LA, London, Berlin, and Helsinki, along with a series of “vignettes” called “Ring True to You” that focus on a message of self-expression. It’s all aimed at grabbing Gen Z and millennial consumers, which Oura CMO Doug Sweeny says marks a pivot from the brand’s 

“We wanted to get out of the clichés of ‘young people doing yoga’ and [avoid] the tropes,” Sweeny told Marketing Brew. “We wanted to broaden it up and talk about really living your best life.”

Oura’s “Ring True to You” ad spot and the accompanying vignettes feature the new ring being worn by young people in a variety of scenarios, including a handshake between friends, drumming on a desk, and completing a new outfit. Rather than position the ring in what might be a more expected healthcare or athletic setting, Sweeny said that showing the product off in everyday life was a way to stand out from Oura’s previous approach.

“When we introduced smart rings, the technology or the product itself [fell] into the background. Like, it’s on your body, but it’s sort of discrete,” Sweeny said. “This is a shift in that it’s actually about expression, and it’s about your own style.”

With this campaign and product, Oura is also looking to lean into the idea of tech as fashion.

“Within the smart-ring category, I think we’re breaking new ground here,” he said, noting that the ability to collect and wear multiple colors and styles of Oura rings stands out from other wearable fitness trackers that may not be as interchangeable. With the Oura Ring 4’s colorful appearance, Sweeny said the campaign seeks to emphasize the visibility of the product, as opposed to some other tech-as-fashion products on the market that aim to blend in.

On social media, Oura is particularly focusing on TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram in an effort to reach a targeted youth audience. “We wanted to lean into the audience and where they show up,” Sweeny said.

This isn’t the first time Oura has shown up on these platforms, but this campaign does feature a virtual try-on filter on Snapchat, which is the company’s first foray into that kind of tech. The goal of that filter, Sweeny said, is to help show off the new multi-ring support capability.

The campaign comes a few months after Oura faced backlash for its 

 the software company Palantir, which creates military intelligence and surveillance tools, and its 

 with the Department of Defense, with critics wondering what that could mean for user data privacy. At the time, Tom Hale, Oura’s CEO, responded to the concerns in a 

, stating that the company’s work with the DoD and Palantir is separate from its consumer work, and saying that neither party has access to Oura user data. “Your personal data never touches any government system, and nobody from Palantir or the government has access to your data, full stop,” Hale says in the TikTok.

Sweeny said the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic campaign was not designed in response to the controversy, and said he doesn’t expect to see any lingering effects in the campaign’s reception. Instead, the social-forward and youth-focused campaign is designed to boost what Sweeny called Oura’s “most important 2025 hardware launch,” which means consumers will see the campaign running into the new year.

“There’s no plan to stop supporting it,” Sweeny said.

a woman in a blue athletic outfit sits on a picnic blanket in a park, her head turned. She is wearing an Oura smart ring around her index finger, as is another person in brown pants who is nearly out of frame. 

How Oura’s new colorful chapter aims to connect with young people

Like its new rings, the fitness tech brand’s latest campaign is designed to stand out with Gen Z and millennials. 

A love story is timeless. When it’s done right, the stakes are clear, the audience can’t help but root for the characters to get together, and lots of moments—big and small, good and bad—help show a couple’s life together.

That’s why Uber used a love story to lead a new campaign targeting suburban riders, Georgie Jeffreys, head of marketing at Uber, North America, told Marketing Brew. The hero spot for the campaign, called “In Good Time” and created by Mother New York, uses snippets of a couple’s story over the course of a little over two minutes to show all the different ways suburban riders might use the rideshare company.

“Because this campaign centers on the everyday moments that matter, a love story felt like a natural way to show how Uber fits into all parts of life,” Jeffreys wrote in an email.

Uber is one of a number of brands like Audible, Neutrogena, and Vera Bradley leaning into romance in marketing. As 

 has previously reported, brand marketers recognize that some people want a distraction from doom and gloom, with stories of romance serving as a cheat code to making someone feel something.

Throughout the campaign, called “There Are Drivers In Your Area,” Uber uses the tick of a countdown clock—how far away the Uber driver is from the characters—as a storytelling device. That device works twofold in the hero love-story spot by also educating consumers about the speed they can usually get rides.

“It raised the stakes of it, and it gave ‘In Good Time,’ specifically, it gave it this really beautiful device,” Oriel Davis-Lyons, chief creative officer at Mother New York, said. “But it also has a really practical reason in that one of the biggest barriers for people in the suburbs is that they don’t know if there are Ubers actually available…Most people in the suburbs are no more than seven minutes away from an Uber. That’s something very practical and real that we had to kind of tell people.”

Aside from the love story of “In Good Time,” the campaign is designed to show off Uber’s versatility to non-city dwellers. Other scenarios depicted throughout the ad campaign, including a ride to the airport or needing a larger vehicle to transport recently purchased furniture, are aimed at speaking to suburbanites; those messages will be supported through social, out-of-home, digital, and audio placements.

“People in the suburbs think about the brand a little differently,” Davis-Lyons said. “When you’re out in the suburbs and you [have] maybe one or two cars. So really it was about, how do you remind people in the suburbs of those use cases?”

Some of those ad placements use creative contextual to specific locations or contain messaging that changes depending on how close an Uber may be or what the average wait time for an Uber is in that area, Davis-Lyons noted.

Going forward, Uber will continue to lean into the idea of available drivers through stories that show how people can use the company’s services throughout their lives.

“We wrote hundreds of stories, hundreds of scripts,” Davis-Lyons said. “There’s a depth and a richness to it that feels like we’re just kind of scratching the surface.”

A woman taps on the glass of an Uber car window. 

Could you fall in love before your Uber arrived?

With a new campaign from Mother New York, the rideshare company wants people to rethink how they see the brand.

Can you fall in love before your Uber arrives?

The US might only have 11 federally recognized holidays, but a Taylor Swift album release day just might qualify as No. 12—especially if brand celebrations are taken into account.

On October 3, Swift released her twelfth studio album, 

, and several brands used the opportunity to up their marketing ante. It’s not the first time that 

 at the opportunity to get involved in the pop star’s milestones. But while her album announcement and engagement news had a flurry of brands reacting via social media, 

’s official release inspired brands like Uber, Spotify, and Baked by Melissa to get involved beyond social media, rolling out tangible products and pop-up events to mark the occasion.

“Because the Taylor Swift universe is so broad…we can tap into it in different ways,” Georgie Jeffreys, head of marketing for Uber in the US and Canada, said.

For brands going the extra mile, doing something IRL offers one way to stand out among Swiftie-centric brands that may all be trying to get in on the hype.

“When everyone’s doing something, it’s not special to do that thing,” Douglas Brundage, founder and CEO of brand studio Kingsland, told us during Swift’s album announcement phase. “You have to be additive to the culture.”

On album release day, Uber Eats partnered with Best Friends Animal Society to put on an event called Uber Showcats that featured adoptable cats along with charm jewelry-making stations and photo ops in New York, LA, and Nashville. In total, more than 1,000 people attended, and 28 cats were adopted, the brand said.

The event was aimed at spotlighting Swift’s love of cats along with nodding to Uber’s own history with furry friends, Jeffreys said. In Uber's early days, it ran a promotion that let users book 15-minute cuddle sessions with adoptable cats.

“A lot of brands get involved these days around the Taylor Swiftdom, and…we felt that we had a role to play,” she told Marketing Brew. “We could bring it to life in lots of different angles, both for our rides app, through our delivery app, and by connecting with Uber’s DNA and roots with Uber Kittens.”

Orange truck with cats on display with Uber Eats logo and "Meet the Showcats"

While having a brand connection to the Taylor universe helped inform Uber’s participation, its users didn’t need to be aware of the brand’s own kitten history for it to make sense, and Jeffreys said the company’s efforts were designed to help fans celebrate.

In contrast to Swift’s other recent cultural moments, which came with an element of surprise, this more unique activation was made possible with the gift of advance notice.

“When you have the opportunity, like what we did, where you have a little bit more lead time…it obviously opens the aperture of how you can activate and how you can bring ideas to life,” Jeffreys said.

Spotify also took advantage of a longer lead time to activate around 

, one that was even slightly longer than other brands’ due to the music streamer’s relationship with Swift’s team. On social media, Spotify posted images of billboards with Spotify codes and the album cover around the time that Swift announced 

. But for the album release itself, Spotify hosted a three-day immersive activation that included new lyric reveals and allowed fans to search for and engage with the pop star’s famous Easter eggs.

“We use the time to be quite intentional, and to think [through] every reveal that came through the activation,” Leroy Harris, global head of music marketing at Spotify, told Marketing Brew, later adding that “It’s really about us being the brand that’s able to add a layer of touchability to this exciting moment and really make it something beyond the music.”

Many brands have capitalized on the power of a major Taylor Swift moment throughout her career, but 

 inspired certain brands to get in for the first time or in new ways.

KitchenAid, which makes a cult-favorite stand mixer, used the album to release its first-ever fan-inspired product, giving fans a chance to win one of 12 sparkly orange mixers in the week leading up to the album’s release. This followed Swift’s album announcement in August, when the brand was one of many making social 

 featuring products in the now-Taylor-associated color—but KitchenAid opted to make the product real in time for the album release.

The cupcake brand Baked by Melissa, meanwhile, hadn’t posted about Swift’s new album ahead of last week’s release, but the brand released a limited-edition themed cupcake pack tied to the album for launch week. Founder and CEO Melissa Ben-Ishay said the move was “a no-brainer.”

“I knew that it was going to be successful because you could feel the love and the passion that went into it from my team,” Ben-Ishay told us. “It’s a cultural moment that also gave my team a chance to work on something that they felt a connection to.”

When the cupcake pack became available, the brand’s account took the opportunity to post about it. It marked a departure from her brand’s usual style of content, which is normally founder-led. But the opportunity to show off the Taylor-powered product was too good to pass up.

“Quite honestly, I posted it to social because I was just so excited,” Ben-Ishay said. “Organic social is very sacred to me. I really value the community and the relationships I’ve built, and that’s where I give recipes and just connect on a more human level. But when we saw the response from the public, it did feel like I was just adding value and giving people more of what they want.”

Collage of brand activations featuring Taylor Swift's album's iconography and teal-and-orange color scheme.

Brand Strategy

Why brands like Ramp, Whataburger, and Hellmann’s are sponsoring weddings

It’s not a brand. It’s a lifestyle

Exactly nine months out from the World Cup, Huggies wants consumers to ‘do it for the team’

Why The Onion brand is ‘made for right now’

How Oura’s new colorful chapter aims to connect with young people

Can you fall in love before your Uber arrives?

Why some brands went beyond social to celebrate Taylor Swift’s album release

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