If you’ve been keeping up with recent branding news, you’ve noticed that unusual brand collaborations are the new black.
Recently, Goldfish collaborated with Frank’s Red Hot to release a Red Hot-flavored Goldfish. The idea was that Goldfish has become associated with toddlers and are thought of as children’s food. Frank’s Red Hot, on the other hand, is solidly an adult sauce. Combining the two to get their brands to more people seems like a clear win-win.
Additionally, with Y2K trending and millennials feeling nostalgic, connecting adults with the brands of their childhood sells. (Side note: We recently wrote a story about the power of nostalgia in marketing.)
Goldfish and Frank’s both being food-related brands makes the collaboration somewhat established and likely easier to execute. But brands as disparate as Oreo and Lady Gaga, Cheetos and Forever 21, Lego and Stranger Things, Vlasic and Candier, Starbucks and Samsung, and—most surprisingly to us—Marvel and Pandora have been collaborating, too.
“In the time that sales were up 12 percent for novelty flavors, sales of the classic were up almost 22 percent, according to Nielsen. When we do it well, it drives our classic Oreo cookie as well as the sales of the limited edition.”
-Justin Parnell, senior director of the Oreo brand
Collabs like these are exciting and easily get press, but if the product you create isn’t actually premium or novel, it can degrade brand trust and leave your consumers feeling duped.
If you want to do a brand collab, our advice is: Know your audience, create something innovative, and make sure it’s actually good.
youtube brings shorts to tv
On Monday, YouTube Shorts launched on TV models from 2019 and later, meaning more opportunities for content marketing, influencer deals, and paid ads.
Shorts, which are vertical, will appear centered with a white border. YouTube’s UX directors broke down the design, prototyping process, and motivation in this blog.
YouTube TV hit 5 million subscribers this summer, and last year, it was reported that more than 120 million people were streaming YouTube on their TVs, according to Stacked Marketer.
Other news
- Meta began laying off more than 11,000 employees this week (13 percent of its workforce) after losing $67 billion in stock market value amid a weak holiday forecast and high costs. It’s unclear how many of its 2,000 employees in Austin will be impacted.
- Amid Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and the ensuing drama, Germany-based Mastodon reached 1 million active monthly users.
- Speaking of Twitter, things are not going well. This story sums it up. Users are now speculating that the platform could shut down any day now. Meanwhile, Elon Musk says Twitter usage is at an all-time high.
- As of Monday, UK users attempting to change their age from under to over 18 on Instagram will have to prove their age via ID or video selfie that will use “age estimation technology.” This comes after a 14-year-old girl died of self-harm after exposure to graphic content on the app that romanticized self-harm.
- A recent study found that you need 10 reviews to begin ranking locally on Google.
- Lastly, Erez Druk broke down the five positioning questions you need to be able to answer for your customers to “get it.”
That’s all for this week‘s Marketing Roundup. Check back next week for more news. And subscribe to our newsletter below for additional updates.
