There is an interesting lesson to Fazoli's campaign to bring customer data down closer to the main point of contact between brand and customer. To get everyone in an organization on board to help build brand, treat them more like brand marketers. Give them insights into how their work impacts customers. Most people like to think they would make great marketers. Find creative ways to empower them to do so.

LEGOLAND Florida will be the first theme park resort destination to become a Certified Autism Center (CAC). Marketers and employers have only begun to recognize cognitive diversity. But as Kelly Hornick, Director of Marketing and Communications for LEGOLAND tells Brand Insider this week, focusing on niche constituencies is not just about serving oft-overlooked customers. These kinds of outreach have a multiplier effect far outside the initial target.

What is the use of good quality, tasty food, a great price point, even fun advertising or convenience if a restaurant's ambience and service leave customers feeling flat...or worse? Every customer touchpoint, from ad exposure to restaurant design to a waiter's attitude is part of a total customer experience that adds up to the overall impression of a brand. And this means that marketing has to be more than "marketing," a siloed practice within a company.

Empowering communities of color with tools and training to build the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders is not just "good will", it is good business, argues Salim Holder, founder of 4th Ave. Market. At last month's D2C Brand Insider Summit, Salim outlined how his company is not just recruiting social influencers from HBCUs to build the 4th Ave. brand. He is offering a real exchange of value - a leg up on their own careers. None of this is new. It draws on two centuries of underserved communities understanding that community and commerce, profits and purpose, are entwined.

At this week's Brand Insider Summit - QSR, Insomnia Cookies' Brand Manager Nicole Geyer gave us the secret password to enter its hidden Cookie Lab. This "Sweet-Easy" format admits its brand loyalists literally into a hidden space in their South Philly location where they can experiment with cookie flavors in a trippy, neon-laced world. More than a cool concept that has lines forming down the block (because it's not so secret any longer), the Lab renders genuine customer intelligence and flavor combinations even the cookie scientists at Insomnia hadn't anticipated.

I have spoken to the Visible Wireless team a number of times since the Verizon-owned D2c cellular brand launched four years ago. One of the things I have noticed about talking with Pearl Servat, Head of Brand Marketing and Demand Generation, is that she answers all of my questions about marketing strategy ultimately by talking about product attributes instead. Pearl clearly believes that the Visible Wireless product itself is its best marketing tool. In her view, marketing is not supposed to "sell" the goods so much as get the prospect to the product experience as efficiently and clearly as possible. …

As millions of digital users tap the record button to their Instagram, YouTube and Tikok feeds, the old lines between consumer and manufacturer, viewer and creator are collapsing. Logitech for Creators is trying to market into that new dynamic. We spoke with the brand's CMO Erin Chin about what it means to truly "partner" with your own consumers in order to empower, not just sel,l to your target market. This is not about buying reach or influence. It is more about buying into the ambitions and values of your customer.

What do you do when performance CPMs balloon from $2 to $6? One of the largest manufacturers of licensed entertainment icons like Batman and Wonder Woman, Eaglemoss, gets creative. As Imran Hassan, Eaglemoss's VP of Global E-commerce & Marketplaces, relayed at last week's D2C Brand Insider Summit, this involved brand investments that made performance ads more efficient as well as thinking harder about Snapchat, TikTok and yes, even NFTs.

Don't mistake CityRow for a Peloton wannabe. Both companies launched about the same time a decade ago. But CityRow started as a network of boutique HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) studios that only started selling connected home exercise machines several years ago. And for co-founder Helaine Knapp, the growing physical presence is the brand and marketing special sauce. As she tells Brand Insider this week, that omnichannel "flywheel" drives the two achievement metrics every D2C trains for - cost of acquisition (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV). As Knapp explains it, from lower-key content marketing to laser-focused performance advertising, D2C brand …