I'm on a plane back from Paris to California. My Paris scene report is that once again, the French are holding out on us (by having fully stocked stores of Perrier x Starck).  Clayton and I spent a few days together in NYC working on a new video series with Air, I went to London to lead a content workshop with my friends at Adobe (our latest collab here), and then we ended the trip at the excellent Premiere Vision tradeshow in Paris, a well-orchestrated (and free) access point to the world of European manufacturers, Japanese and Korean fabrics, and a world of actual luxury suppliers. Full breakdown of that coming in a few newsletters!

Since I'm on an 8.5 hour Jetblue flight with no wifi, today's newsletter is... a novel. I am writing this purely to the tune of the mp3's on my computer, since Apple apparently doesnt store anything local anymore. This consists of 9 mp3's from a 2013 folder called "tumblr" which luckily was Neon Trees, Foals and Capital Cities and not some potentially dark alternatives of the soundcloud rap era.

But now that you have context, the below is a frank conversation about what cultural moments still matter, and how to roll out campaigns in the modern era.

-Oren

NAVIGATING CULTURAL MOMENTS AS A BRAND

Cultural moments have become ephemeral. For sports fans, think back to just a few years ago. A Super Bowl meant a week of podcasts, analysis, conversation on what teams happen next.  Youtube videos of ads analysis dropped within a few days, discussing the implications for brands of campaigns that kicked off then and would run for months.

Now, you can post the next morning and feel late.  An intelligent, thought-out recap of what's next 72hrs later is dated.  You either lead the conversation in the moment, directly after, or are part of the noise.

So what does that mean for us? The creatives, brands and entrepreneurs...

Reporting what happened drives no values. A news article or social recap of here's what happened with some response is at an all time low.  Anyone who makes content saying "this thing happened" that isn't sharing it LIVE AS IT UNRAVELS is participating in an economy that drives no value.  This is the second screen era.  Youtube, Twitch, Stories on snap and IG and X/Twitter (more than ever) live commentary is the extent of the valuable conversation. Good analysis now no longer discusses the implications of a single thing, but ideas and possibilities of how multiple events are woven together.

Cultural moments have less and less value. You could rely on the secondary effects of major moments, and allocate spend accordingly in years past, now, you need to justify right away and account for it as such. Legacy big agency and old-school thinkers will tell you the opposite, that you need to find what cultural capital you can in the moments that happen. They are wrong. There are only the moments that are organic to your brand story, that you either create or that are fully aligned, and anything else is ingenuine and likely not a return on investment.

Moments are harder to engineer. In years past, you could have your PR teams seed a few publications, bring on a few major voices, and force a campaign into the conversation.  No more.  You can extend the reach of something actually resonant, but you can't game it.  The smarter move is to create something unique, with groundswell, targeted purely towards those that matter to consume it.

But you can market in waves.  The idea of a campaign or throughline isn't that you launch a big campaign, and then get those with influence to discuss it or hope it resonates with your consume it.  It's that you open a second chapter immediately.  The post Super Bowl influencer campaign isn't talking about the campaign, it's launching its next extension, so that you can own the next moment of conversation.

The wave analogy is a perfect one.  After the big one, more come, quickly, often unexpectedly, and they continue coming forever.  This is your playbook.

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THE ANATOMY OF A CULTURALLY RELEVANT CAMPAIGN

This next section is about the campaigns of the last few weeks that resonated, with what and how. These include

• Hexclad's first truly mainstream ad campaign

• Poppi's super bowl campaign

• Carl's Jr and Allix Earle

If you want some quick context on the campaigns I discuss below, I rapid fire through ad campaigns from this last week in video here:

Disclaimer - Vaan Group, where I am in Creative in Residence, did the (amazing, shameless plug) Hexclad website, but it was before my time and I have no relationship with them. Unrelated, this is an Olipop house but I wont let that impact my analysis.

Campaign Breakdowns

Hexclad - noted DTC pan brand, now crossed fully over and in big retail etc, roughly mid 9 figures in revenue, celebrity face with Gordon Ramsay.

• They launched their campaign with a teaser photo from on Instagram Gordon Ramsay flying looking out the window

• They followed up with the wild guy from TikTok who finds locations by their clues (if you haven't see this he'll see like... a brick in a photo, note that it's Sumerian stone and then tell someone they weren't Barbados like they said but we're instead at some hotel in the middle east and its excellent viral content), noting that it looks like they're headed to Area 51

• Then they launched an alien-themed super bowl ad, with Gordon, plus Pete Davidson

Notes on why this is orchestrated that matter

• The Super Bowl campaign started on Instagram. Weeks in advance, there were easter eggs.

• Then it continued on TikTok. Two networks, leveraged where they were performed best, and leveraging a viral creator authentically.

• The choice of Pete Davidson... affordable, and timely given he immediately launched another campaign a week later with Reformation (text me back Pete) - a key Hexclad target demo, and unveiled his rebrand as a hunkier, no tattoo Pete.

• It's called world building, look it up (sorry)

• They should have added Nara Smith to really complete the insanity level (but somehow, she probably says no?)

Now onto Poppi, noted big soda alternative

• Launched an influencer game giving 32 influencer temporary fridges that received tons of positive engagement and 9 figures of social views

• Their rival Olipop dropped an embellished number online that these cost $25k which lead to TikTok revolt (as someone who has ordered branded fridges these cost nowhere near 25k, maybe if they sent them on a jet from China and then another air freight to the customers house, and then freight back to Poppi. If they did cost $25k, call me and I will fix that, and also let me fix the merch for any alt soda while we're at it, but I digress)

• In the midst of all this, Poppi dropped another Super Bowl ad (they also did last year, which was a great move), but this time the video was filled to the absolute brim with niche TikTok stars.  So many to the point that my friend group assumed everyone in it was a TikTok star and we one group chat actually went through the trouble of hunting most of them down. 

• After the Super Bowl, the overall TikTok reaction got equal as much attention as the original influencer campaign, so much that the founder hopped into the convo. As a noted social personality she knows how to handle this and did it well in a way that prolongs their attention

• I firmly believe no press is bad press for Poppi. Soda is purely a game of recognition.  At this point the more people are seeing the Poppi name the more it is consumed the more big soda boards have to yell at each other about the likely absolutely legendary acquisition price. This is not bud light.

• A contextual anecdote -  Olipop doesnt have to do any of this, is profitable, and just raised at 1.85b valuation because they have better market fit (its... better than Poppi, a Coke to Pepsi type comparison) and they have a legendary ground game (there's a convo with one of their execs, Ashwinn, Jordan and I floating around the internet that breaks this down in detail)

Some analysis

• The multi-stage rollout of this campaign with multiple waves of influence (32 fridges, plus everyone in the ad) is god-level influencer activation. Hat tip to the team that did this

• The ad full of TikTokers is something I've harped on on short form a bit prior. WHY HIRE traditional models or actors for any ads, whether social or otherwise? You might take a little longer to get the acting or model part right (the Poppi ad suffers a bit from these folks not knowing how to act, Carls Junior below suffers a hit from Alex Earle not being able to really speak on cam at a pro level) but you are paying for a moment that activates their fans to a pretty insane level, and has additional viral potential.  ESPECIALLY for something like putting htem in a super bowl ad. You think they're not gonna share the ad, BTS, promo and 400 stories about this organically? And probably bring it up for years?  Less washed celebs, more influencers on TV.

Last, Carl's Jr.

• If you're looking for cultural analysis on whether bikini girl ads are back, look elsewhere. I do not dare to offend either my liberal creative followers or my based brahs, I am the Switzerland of bikini ads. They exist, I am conceptually aware of them only and have dedicated all my brainpower purely to the analysis of the non-bikini nature of the campaign.

• Alix Earle stars in this, if you don't have context, she is a famous TikToker, she is one of the ones that doesn’t have any particular angle or thing, she is just extremely good at being popular online, which is an angle and skill in itself. She is arguably one of, if not the the most famous TikTokers, but I would say at best 10% of Super Bowl watchers have any idea who she is.  This does not matter, because she is not really presented as Alix Earle, she is presented as... well, a bikini girl.

• But my focus here is on the rollout.  There is far different content on her social media (which has many posts about this and her super bowl attendance, that have insane views and incredibly locked-in fan support), than there is on the Carl's Jr social (which also has a LOT of non-primary ad content of the rollout), and the ad itself plays very little roll on social. It's about her outfit reveal, a BTS reel (I've been TELLING YALL) etc

• What's most interesting here is they are... kind of the only brand that did this (besides Poppi).  They had like a 30 post approach to the ad rollout and the celebrity around it.  This is how to do it.

My point on why these are good is that they

• use time in and around the Super Bowl to build a bigger campaign

• run different campaign aspects on different social networks

• bring in social personalities into the campaign rollout

This is the playbook for any campaign of a brand of really any size.

• The teaser, rollout, campaign, behind the scenes, and secondary and third waves of the campaign is the actual campaign.  Milk the time

• Rollout on different networks is different, and connected enough that fans will go hunt it down

• Social personalities are talent that stars, and accelerates the rollout of the campaign itself

A brand that is not at this size that has run this playbook very well online is Australian intimates slash risque clothing brand I Am Gia.  They run LOTS of campaign content, its not unusual for a single shoot to yield 12-20 dedicated posts. They feature influencers before the world really knows and use them in the world building.  They're a brand I keep an eye on to see what I should be thinking about when it comes to strategy. Please note... if the Carl's Jr ads offend you, please do not look at I Am Gia. 

Final note

A note about brands like Poppi and Hexclad (and OpenAI tbh) and Super Bowl ads.  For most brands I thoroughly believe these ads are a waste of money that is just the legacy agency industrial complex squeezing one last round of executive profits out of brands that are too afraid to know any better.  BUT for emerging categories that can be at-home conversation points I believe they are actually very valuable.  Last year when Poppi ran their ad, the first time a new alt soda was promoted on that level, it promoted likely millions of at-home conversations between millennials, gen-z and their parents about if they've tried them.  This is a catalyst that is hard to buy and worth every penny.  The same convo is likely prompted for Hexclad (to a lesser extent, since its more niche and not a new category, but also much different economics). The same convo is DEFINITELY prompted for OpenAI, ChatGPT and AI in general, which a shocking amount of elders (50+, sorry uncs and aunties) are regularly using and very excited about. 

If you want even more conversation here, Ashwinn, Jordan and I do a breakdown as wel

Thanks for reading!

Hyper Reports

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