MARKETING MAYHEM + MORE
"I live in a van, down by the river." Matt Foley, motivational speaker, SNL
First, let’s jump into some Marketing News. I’m trying to avoid everything on X (formally Twitter) thinking you already know all about that.
Don’t skip my shorts at the bottom if all this marketing stuff bores you!
From PR Newswire:
White Claw® Hard Seltzer Wants You to 'CLAW™ Back Your Summer' with an Epic Remote Vacation and More Getaways
With the midpoint of summer quickly approaching, a new survey from White Claw® Hard Seltzer shows that a staggering 54% of employed Americans haven't planned their summer vacation and 1 in 4 (24%) won't take all of their vacation time this year. As the nation's leading hard seltzer* and a brand that's synonymous with summer fun, White Claw is giving away a range of iconic summer getaways for fans and friends so they can unplug and unwind before the season's over.
From Revolution:
CHIPOTLE CHALLENGER SERIES TAKES ESPORTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL
CHIPOTLE CHALLENGER SERIES
On July 6th, Chipotle, supported by REV/XP, hosted the finals of the Chipotle Challenger Series, featuring the recently released and highly popular Street Fighter 6 as the title game. With an astounding 471 teams competing in the qualifiers, this event stands as one of the largest-ever Street Fighter team tournaments in the history of the legendary gaming franchise.
THE ULTIMATE PRIZE
For the talented competitors who took part in this thrilling tournament, the stakes were higher than ever. They vied for a share of the staggering $30,000 prize pool and an entire year of free Chipotle, which would be enough for most branded tournaments. However, Chipotle always strives to do more for the community, so for this year’s Chipotle Challenger Series, the brand offered the Top 2 teams a paid trip to the 2023 Evolution Championship Series (Evo), the premier global fighting game tournament.
From Marketing Dive:
AF: This is brilliant. Smart. So cool. Here are a couple of ideas we could do like this Barbie example:
Restaurants: Create something cool with your restaurant, the chef, the food where the person can insert themselves, screen grab it a “postcard” that says “Let’s eat here this week” and let’s them forward it to someone.
Dealerships: Get your hottest vehicles for sale, let people put themselves in the car and send It to people and post on social media with your logo on it.
Barbie’ AI selfie generator goes viral with 13M users
The playful experience, released ahead of the film’s debut, attracted the attention of celebrities like Rihanna and Pedro Pascal.
Dive Brief:
PhotoRoom, an AI-based photo editing app, shared success indicators from its recent tie up with Warner Bros. and agency Bond for an official “Barbie” selfie-generator filter ahead of the film’s July 21 debut, according to a press release.
In total, the interactive barbieselfie.ai filter has been used over 13 million times since its April 3 release. The filter functions by using PhotoRoom’s API to remove backgrounds from user-generated content, replacing it with an image that replicates the film’s promotional posters.
The filter has proven popular, having been used by consumers, brands and celebrities including Rihanna and actor Pedro Pascal. The effort was one of the many marketing plays for “Barbie” that helped the film garner a $155 million opening weekend at the box office.
Consumers using the interactive offering can upload an image of themselves to be instantly plugged into the “Barbie” film’s promotional poster. The filter, which has gained much of its attention from being shared across social media, relies on the use of visual AI and took less than an hour for PhotoRoom to implement, suggesting that similar activations could be within reach for others.
“There are boundless opportunities to harness the power of generative AI for our upcoming campaigns. Its potential to create captivating and personalized experiences is truly remarkable, opening doors to innovative storytelling and audience engagement that were once unimaginable,” said Cameron Curtis, executive vice president of worldwide digital marketing at Warner Bros., in release details.
I’m so 100% all about this. In fact, I just bought the sheets and pillowcases. You do your own research.
Supposedly the best pasta dish ever. And there’s no meat in it! Everyone knows reading the comments in the NYT Cooking section is key to a perfect dish!
You have to be kidding me. Seeing that many stupid people in one place gave me anxiety.
I love NYC. It's my favorite vacation. I’ve always been a city girl. The energy, the vibes of the neighborhoods, the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity of all the shops and restaurants. I feel so alive when I’m there - more than anywhere else. I’ve never been to the touristy places (except Ground Zero) and instead like to pretend I live there, shopping at the Bodegas, chatting with SoHo coffeehouse people. NYC just gets me. This is one of my resources I like to check out before I go.
Over 20+ years ago, I graduated from Second City Improv school in Chicago. I did it for fun and it helped with the millions of presentations I did all over the country with my career. These people do it best. This is just a small sample. Some people don’t appreciate improv but to me watching it, it takes very quick wit and the ability to play nice with others to be a success.
"A lot of people say, “If you want to be happy, don’t have expectations.” And I think that’s a really good way to be unhappy for the rest of your life because … if you don’t have expectations, you will just put up with everything. I mean, you don’t expect anything for yourself. With high expectations, with [a] kind of enforceability around that, you’re not going to put up with a bad relationship, a bad work environment, a bad employee, all of these types of things." - Dr. Julie Gurner
Watching next. Watching now. Ha ha - you didn’t see that one coming, did you? Me neither. The show stinks but it was all to see Jenna Lyons (which is the case everywhere, I’ve been reading!). Long story - she’s a pretty cool marketer - but learning a lot about her on this show. Read this and this and this if you’re interested.
Hotels smell like that on purpose.
Did you know this was out there? To each their own for sure (I ain’t preachin’), but this is a great publication.
Make it a great Tuesday!