• ZIPs Has New Reasons to Take Us To The Cleaners
    It's not just about getting missing buttons replaced and taking that pet hair-infested suit jacket out for a refresh. ZIPS Cleaners is a national franchise of dry cleaners that hopes to break out of the narrow range of services associated with the category. We spoke with CMO Mary Ann Donaghy this week about how a new generation of consumers is looking for someone else to do their laundry, among other chores. It turns out that sending customers a drop-off laundry bag is often more effective just advertising new services.
  • Managing the Hotness: Can Dave's Hot Chicken Scale Authenticity?
    When Dave's Hot Chicken outlets open in a new city, it feels more like a blockbuster movie premiere or iPhone launch days, circa 2013. Earned media buzzes for weeks, and long lines form early. Which raises a lot of good-to-have marketing questions about how a brand leans into and maintains cult status as it aspires to expand quickly. And how does it maintain that buzz well after launch?
  • Rite Aid Bending the Adoption Curve
    New digital features are useless to your brand unless patients are actually using them. On MediaPost's recent Brand Insider Summit: Pharma & Health, Rite Aid's Dustin Humphreys shared how the company built a business case around digital adoption and how to measure utilization. By focusing on usage, not just features, the company has learned how to bend the adoption curve, so that "digitization" of the user base is adding real value to patient experience and brand investment
  • Q Mixers Wants an Informed Impulse Buyer
    Q Mixers can be found in thousands of outlets nationwide. It promises to upgrade the typical flat and overly sweet drink mixer with better ingredients and more fizz. But of course, mixers typically are last minute add-on, low-consideration purchase. The brand needs to be at the point of inspiration and sale, but it also has a specific story to tell. Which is one of the problems Nick Wooten, their CMO tries to solve in part with an evolved out of home ad strategy
  • Bonin Bough's New Mission Is Deeper Than Media
    Bonin Bough doesn't just want major advertisers to support Black-owned media. He wants them to support communities. Bough famously led digital at Pepsi then media at Mondelez. But in recent years as co-founder of Group Black he is incubating, financing and selling advertisers into a mushrooming portfolio of black-owned businesses. He will be appearing next week at MediaPost's Publishing Insider Summit in Bonita Springs. But this week on Brand Insider we dug into Bough's vision for bringing brands beyond media and into the lives of more diverse communities.
  • Turning Red Blue: Learning from the Beshear Win
    As polarization of the electorate seems to escalate, political campaigns engage in an existential question. Can media move minds...and votes anymore? At last month's Marketing Politics event in Washington D.C., Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear's Campaign Manager Eric Hyers outlined how locally focused messaging, careful data analysis, and targeting helped drive a Blue candidate's re-election in a deep Red state. The win also demonstrated the simple power of a heartfelt, authentic campaign ad...that didn't even include the candidate.
  • Are There Persuadables?: The Lincoln Project's Anti-MAGA Media Plan
    As culture wars rage, polarization hardens, clustering congeals, it is a fair question whether there are any persuadable "swing voters" to target in the coming election. Rick Wilson, co-founder of the notorious Lincoln Project SuperPAC of Anti-Trump, disaffected Republicans thinks so. Modern programmatic nano-targeting can find and optimize to these audiences. But it requires explicit, in-your-face, even rude creative, he argues.
  • From Passion to Purpose: Santa Teresa's Gang Reform Mission
    Hey, "meaningful marketer!" You think hosting "service days," tithing .5% of profits or claiming "sustainability goals" make you a "brand with a mission?" How about having your CEO and marketing team walk into a gang-run neighborhood to convince these young toughs to come work for you instead of criming? That's called walking the talk - a perilous one.
  • Beyond Beyonce: Lemon Perfect Water Pours Into the Full Funnel
    We don't just drink water, anymore. We "hydrate." And with that distinction comes a host of science (pseudo and real) marketing, branding, health claims, flavors, and a clutter of choices. How does a brand break out in such a morass? Lemon Perfect is one of the hydration brands contending for attention. It has the benefit of being backed by Beyonce as well as alignments with some athlete partners. To discuss the strategy behind breaking through and selling water we have Dana Barba, who's the SVP of Marketing at Lemon Perfect. Dana joined the company in May after a lengthy career …
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