Happy Monday the 15th!

Summer is here in full force in Texas and I’m doing my part by consuming as much watermelon as possible. 🍉

I’ve been just eating it straight, but I need to bring out some of my favorite watermelon recipes, like watermelon gazpacho, juice, and homemade popsicles. 🤤

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Write funny content in minutes a day.

Every day, you stumble across boring content.

The kind that feels like getting stabbed in the eye. With a plastic fork. Dipped in Absolut Vodka.

The cold, harsh truth? Boring content kills sales.

The good news? You're not boring. You just need better inspiration.

That’s what this free newsletter is for.

Inside, you’ll find some of the funniest, sharpest, most effective writing on the internet. 

And every weekday, you'll get one funny example, plus a quick breakdown of exactly why it works.

So, in just a few minutes a day, you'll read, giggle, steal a few ideas and write content that gets more attention. And more sales.

Tickle me to write funny

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➰ Costloop | Subscription and recurring cost tracker for freelancers and small businesses.

Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

Every traditional grocery store executive operates under the crushing weight of a universal truth: retail grocery is a brutal, low-margin game of logistical efficiency. 

You fight for fractional percentages of pennies on high-volume packaged goods, optimize supply lines to beat competitors by a nickel, and count on a massive scale to keep the lights on.

…But then there is Erewhon.

It has built a hyper-profitable cultural phenomenon where consumers gladly stand in long lines to buy products intentionally priced at a premium.

Let's look at how an organic grocery market turned into a lifestyle monopoly.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What is Erewhon

• Target Demographics & Positioning of Erewhon

• Erewhon Marketing Strategies

• Campaigns Erewhon Should Run Next

• Wrap Up

advertisement

Write funny content in minutes a day.

Every day, you stumble across boring content.

The kind that feels like getting stabbed in the eye. With a plastic fork. Dipped in Absolut Vodka.

The cold, harsh truth? Boring content kills sales.

The good news? You're not boring. You just need better inspiration.

That’s what this free newsletter is for.

Inside, you’ll find some of the funniest, sharpest, most effective writing on the internet. 

And every weekday, you'll get one funny example, plus a quick breakdown of exactly why it works.

So, in just a few minutes a day, you'll read, giggle, steal a few ideas and write content that gets more attention. And more sales.

Tickle me to write funny

What is Erewhon

Some Stats:

Instagram: 657K followers

TikTok: 59.6K followers

Facebook: 7.8K followers 

Erewhon is a luxury organic grocery chain in Los Angeles. It currently runs 13 locations (all in LA County), generating roughly $900,000 per location per week.

The store is, at its core, a food and beverage brand that also sells groceries. Not the other way around.

Target Demographics & Positioning of Erewhon

The core Erewhon customer is a high-income millennial or Gen Z in LA - health-conscious, wellness-forward, and embedded in the cultural conversation around clean living.

Its customers include celebrities and influencers, which helps position the brand as exclusive and aspirational. 

What's interesting is that Erewhon has leaned into the tension between "premium" and "boujee." They're not trying to make everyone feel welcome.

Positioning-wise, Erewhon sits in a category it essentially invented: luxury experiential grocery. 

They're essentially competing with high-end restaurants, boutique fitness studios, and luxury skincare brands - all of which are also selling you a version of the good life.

Erewhon Marketing Strategies

1. The Smoothie Collab 

Everyone talks about the celebrity smoothie collabs as a marketing stunt. What most people miss is that they're also a sophisticated, multi-layered revenue engine.

Here's how it actually works: Erewhon co-designs a limited-edition smoothie with a celebrity. The celebrity earns $1 per smoothie sold. Erewhon gets the brand heat and the foot traffic. So far, fairly standard influencer collab territory.

But then there's the ingredient layer. 

Up to five ingredient brands pay an "inclusion fee" to be credited in the smoothie recipe - which means Erewhon is making money before a single drink is sold. It's brand placement inside a product. 

And brands pay willingly, because being listed in a celebrity smoothie means your product is sitting right next to the people their audience wants to emulate. 

Read More: How an Erewhon Celebrity Smoothie Is Born

The Hailey Bieber Strawberry Skin Glaze smoothie was selling roughly 40,000 units a month at $19 each - generating around $10.6 million in a single year from one smoothie variant (according to 2023 data). 

It also served as a de facto launch campaign for Bieber's Rhode skincare line, which she released simultaneously. They reinforced each other perfectly.

2. Scarcity as a Distribution Strategy

Every smoothie collab is technically limited-time. Sabrina Carpenter's "Short N' Sweet" ran from August 5 to September 5, 2024 - timed to her album release. 

That 30-day window creates urgency. 

And because these launches get picked up by pop culture accounts, entertainment media, and music press, they reach audiences that have never been inside a grocery store's marketing funnel. 

Erewhon has continued to partner with Kourtney Kardashian, Olivia Rodrigo, and Emma Chamberlain for celebrity reach and revenue.

3. Engineered Virality 

In February 2025, Erewhon started stocking a Japanese Tochiaika strawberry - a single berry, in a miniature plastic cloche, shipped from Kyoto, priced at $20. 

The craze started when Alyssa Antoci - whose family owns Erewhon - posted a TikTok claiming that’s the best strawberry, amassing 16 million+ views. 

Instagram post

Demi Lovato shared a taste-test video that got a high reach. The story was picked up by multiple news outlets. A regional grocery got international press coverage for the cost of importing some fruit.

4. The Fashion Crossover 

At Balenciaga's Fall 2024 runway show in Los Angeles, models and guests carried Erewhon shopping bags, and co-branded hoodies and tees were scattered throughout the show. 

A co-branded jet-black charcoal juice was available at Erewhon locations after the show. There was also a $1,150 Balenciaga x Erewhon hoodie. 

Instagram post

For a luxury fashion house to co-sign a grocery bag as a runway prop (yes, for real) - that's a signal that Erewhon's cultural capital had crossed into territory fashion cares about: identity, aspiration, and the art of making ordinary objects feel extraordinary.

5. The Membership Program as a Loyalty Flywheel

Erewhon's paid membership - up to $200/year - has around 60,000 members who get perks including a free branded drink each month and quarter (Source). 

There are 16 of these branded drinks per year, and non-food brands like Salt & Stone (skincare) and Vacation (sunscreen) have paid to create and fully fund their own drinks to get access to this audience. 

The members are an ultra-targeted group of high-income wellness consumers - and brands are paying to reach them through Erewhon's credibility, not their own.

Campaigns Erewhon Should Run Next

"Ingredient Origin" Short-Form Content Series

Erewhon's biggest unexploited asset is its sourcing story. 

A 60-second vertical video series shot at the actual farms - raw, specific, not polished - would give the price point a narrative that converts skeptics. 

This also matters for expansion: new markets won't have the cultural context that LA customers already have. They need to understand why it costs what it costs. Show, don't tell.

Wrap Up

Erewhon wins on something difficult to copy: meaning. 

They've made their store a place that carries cultural weight - and then methodically protected and amplified that weight through collaborations, scarcity, and deliberate silence where other brands would send a press release.

What Erewhon really sells is the belief that what you buy says something about who you are. 

And they've built every touchpoint - the store design, the smoothie menu, the fashion collabs, the membership perks - to reinforce that belief. 

That's not a marketing strategy. That's a worldview. And right now, enough people share it to make it generate half a billion dollars per year.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 8th!

First of all, did you miss my article about Crocs last week? It’s a wild ride.

Anyway, today is my 14th wedding anniversary with my wife! 🥳🤵👰

We celebrated over the weekend (I actually wrote this on Friday, so I’m anticipating that it was a fantastic weekend).

Advertisement

Write funny content in minutes a day.

Every day, you stumble across boring content.

The kind that feels like getting stabbed in the eye. With a plastic fork. Dipped in Absolut Vodka.

The cold, harsh truth? Boring content kills sales.

The good news? You're not boring. You just need better inspiration.

That’s what this free newsletter is for.

Inside, you’ll find some of the funniest, sharpest, most effective writing on the internet. 

And every weekday, you'll get one funny example, plus a quick breakdown of exactly why it works.

So, in just a few minutes a day, you'll read, giggle, steal a few ideas and write content that gets more attention. And more sales.

Tickle me to write funny

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Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

My wife has been asking me to write about Crocs for months, so this one’s for you, babe!

When I think of Crocs, I’m always reminded of the movie Idiocracy. 

The costume designers needed to dress "stupid people in the future." 

They wanted clothing that no self-respecting person would be caught dead in. 

Guess what shoes the characters wore? Crocs!

Today, Crocs does over $4 billion in annual revenue. 

Post Malone has a collaboration. So does Bad Bunny. Justin Bieber. KFC. Balenciaga. And millions of perfectly reasonable people wear them everywhere.

That's the Crocs story - doubling down on exactly what people hated and winning because of it.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What Is Crocs

• Crocs Target Audience

• Crocs Marketing Strategies

  • 1. They never tried to fix the ugly

  • 2. The collaboration strategy 

  • 3. Jibbitz and the personalization economy

  • 4. Community over broadcast

• Wrap Up

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Write funny content in minutes a day.

Every day, you stumble across boring content.

The kind that feels like getting stabbed in the eye. With a plastic fork. Dipped in Absolut Vodka.

The cold, harsh truth? Boring content kills sales.

The good news? You're not boring. You just need better inspiration.

That’s what this free newsletter is for.

Inside, you’ll find some of the funniest, sharpest, most effective writing on the internet. 

And every weekday, you'll get one funny example, plus a quick breakdown of exactly why it works.

So, in just a few minutes a day, you'll read, giggle, steal a few ideas and write content that gets more attention. And more sales.

Tickle me to write funny

What Is Crocs

Some Stats:

Instagram: 2.7M followers
TikTok: 3.2M followers
Facebook: 8M followers
X (Twitter): 169K followers

Crocs is a footwear brand founded in 2002, originally designed as a boating shoe. 

The foam clog became one of the most polarizing products in fashion history - simultaneously mocked and beloved - and has grown into a global lifestyle brand with a rabid fanbase.

Crocs Target Audience

Originally, Crocs was made to be a boating-friendly clog. 

But their current cohort - Gen Z and Millennials - made the brand a cultural phenomenon.

Younger consumers wear Crocs precisely because they're ugly. 

It's an aesthetic statement. 

A rejection of the idea that shoes need to be sleek and inoffensive. This group is vocal, creative, and deeply invested in the brand's identity. 

They customize their Crocs with Jibbitz charms. They post their fits online. They will defend their Crocs in comment sections with real passion. 

And they are not trying to fit in.

Crocs Marketing Strategies

1. They never tried to fix the ugly

When you have a product that people openly mock, the instinct is to sand down the edges. 

Make it slightly more palatable. 

Run ads that address the criticism head-on with slick visuals and confident copy.

Crocs leaned in instead. 

They've acknowledged that their shoes are not conventionally attractive. And rather than creating distance from that perception, they turned it into a badge of honor. 

When you own the insult, no one can use it against you. The moment Crocs decided "ugly" was the point, they took control of the narrative entirely.

2. The collaboration strategy 

The way to shift cultural perception is to attach your product to something that already has the image you want.

The Balenciaga collaboration was a major turning point. 

Putting a $600+ price tag on a clog reframed the entire conversation. Suddenly Crocs was the ugly shoe that high fashion had co-signed. 

The diversity of their partnerships meant Crocs appeared in every corner of culture simultaneously.

Each collaboration also functioned as a limited-drop, which created scarcity and demand. 

Furthermore, this strategy completely shifts the brand's pricing power. 

While a consumer might hesitate to pay fifty dollars for a standard pair of black clogs at a local retail store, they will happily pay double or triple that price for a limited-edition collaboration that signals their participation in a specific cultural moment. 

The brand successfully detached its pricing structure from the physical cost of its raw materials and attached it directly to cultural equity. 

Each distinct partnership acts as a targeted acquisition campaign, allowing Crocs to systematically break into isolated consumer subcultures without diluting the core identity of their main product line. 

3. Jibbitz and the personalization economy

The brand realized that their foam clog was essentially a blank slate - a minimalist canvas that could be subverted by external creators. 

So, Crocs acquired Jibbitz - the charm company - in 2006 for about $10 million. At the time, it probably looked like a small accessory play. In retrospect, it was one of the smartest moves in the brand's history.

Jibbitz turned Crocs from a product into a canvas. 

People could customize shoes with charms that represent their favorite shows, sports teams, food, and inside jokes. And people become deeply attached to things they've personalized.

From a marketing perspective, they represent an incredibly elegant solution to the consumer retention problem. When a consumer buys a pair of foam clogs, their purchasing journey with the brand is usually over for the next few years due to the product's durability. 

Jibbitz completely solves this long product lifecycle problem by transforming a one-time transactional purchase into an ongoing lifestyle subscription. 

4. Community over broadcast

Crocs has built a community of people who actively evangelize the brand. 

On social media, there are millions of videos of people showing off their Croc customizations, their Croc collections, their "Croc fits."

Instagram post

The brand created the conditions for this by building a product people feel ownership over, and then getting out of the way.

Their social media strategy has consistently amplified content relevant for GenZ. The brand understands that authenticity is the product now, not just the shoes.

Wrap Up

At the end of the day, the ultimate lesson from the Crocs playbook is that market consensus is a highly overrated asset. 

Crocs built a billion-dollar company by being completely fine with not being liked by everyone.

Instead of changing what critics hated, they celebrated it. 

And in a global marketplace crowded with legacy brands desperately trying to look sleek and perfect, the bravest, most profitable thing you can do is have the courage to stay ugly.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 1st!

Know someone who loves reading marketing insights and discovering martech tools?

Share this email with them 😃

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Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

For a long time, fast-food marketing followed a predictable, comfortable cadence:

You buy up late-night TV spots, plaster billboards with high-res photos of a new burger, blast out a press release to industry trades, and drop a coupon code in an app. 

It is a transactional playbook built for volume.

But then Taco Bell decided to treat a fast-food menu pipeline like Apple treats the announcement of a new iPhone or OpenAI treats a new model drop.

Live Más LIVE is Taco Bell's annual product launch event - part keynote, part variety show, part fan convention - and it has become one of the most interesting marketing experiments in the food industry.

For a fast food chain selling $2 burritos, that is an extraordinary thing to have pulled off. 

And there's a real strategy underneath all of it.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What Taco Bell Is 

• Target Demographics and Positioning

• All About Live Más LIVE 

• Campaigns Taco Bell Could Run Next

• Wrap Up

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Winning, on-brand ads—without endless prompting

Most AI creative tools fall short for one simple reason. You can generate tons of ads, but they aren’t up to par.

Refining copy, adjusting layouts, or nudging a CTA into place shouldn’t require rewriting prompts over and over. It slows teams down and breaks the creative process.

With Hightouch Ad Studio, AI gets you 90% of the way there. For the final 10%, use a built-in editor to quickly refine copy and design, or export directly to Figma for seamless collaboration with your design team.

Move faster without losing control. Every ad, exactly how you want it.

See how Ad Studio works

What Taco Bell Is 

Some Stats:

Instagram: 2M followers 

Facebook: 9.8M followers

Twitter: 1.8M followers

TikTok: 4.3M followers

YouTube: 172K subscribers

LinkedIn: 284K followers

Taco Bell is a Yum! Brands-owned Mexican-inspired fast food chain with 8,757 locations globally. It has become one of the most digitally engaged QSR brands in the US.

Target Demographics and Positioning

Taco Bell's core audience has always been younger consumers - Gen Z and millennials, broadly ages 18 to 34. But the more interesting thing about their positioning is that they don't just sell to this group, they talk like this group. 

Their social content leans into meme culture, self-aware humor, and internet-native references. 

Instagram post

Their loyalty program, Taco Bell Rewards, had active users accounting for 40% of digital orders, and digital sales surged 32% in 2024. 

It’s safe to say that Taco Bell’s digital presence is actually bringing in sales and loyalty.

Their positioning is also price-anchored in a smart way. They occupy a specific lane - fun, affordable, customizable, always changing, and culturally on-point.

All About Live Más LIVE 

The genius of Live Más LIVE starts with one structural insight: instead of drip-feeding product announcements throughout the year, Taco Bell made one giant, singular moment of it. 

Traditionally, restaurant chains send out releases and other marketing materials as the year goes on, in advance of their introduction. 

Taco Bell flipped that entirely - they concentrated all the year's innovation into a single event, created scarcity and anticipation around it, and let that moment carry them through the rest of the year.

The very first event kicked off on February 9, 2024 in Las Vegas, NV. 

The livestreamed keynote introduced over 30 new products across Taco Bell's development pipeline, test, and national launches.

The first event was patterned after Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference - only for Crunchwraps rather than iPhones. 

Apple's WWDC is built around the idea that people wait for it - it's appointment media. 

It has hype cycles, leaks, fan speculation, and hot takes. 

Taco Bell looked at that model and decided there was no reason a fast food brand couldn't create the same dynamic.

Traditional Fast Food PR: 

Press Release - Industry Trades - Disjointed Local Ads - Passive Consumer 

Taco Bell's Live Mas Playbook: 

Live Keynote - Superfan Evangelism - Viral Social Hype - Active App Adoption

Taco Bell FIRE! Tier Rewards Members had the first chance to score tickets, hotel accommodations and a voucher towards travel and expenses for the 2025 event. 

They're rewarding loyalty with access. 

They made their most loyal customers feel like insiders, not just repeat buyers.

Another foundational pillar of this event was the aggressive integration of their digital ecosystem and first-party data capture. 

To get access to the livestream details, exclusive merchandise drops, or a chance to attend the event live, consumers had to interact with the Taco Bell Rewards app. 

This is a brilliant growth hack.

While the audience felt like they were getting exclusive, VIP access to a secret club, Taco Bell was actively migrating casual foot traffic into registered app users.

Once a consumer is inside that app ecosystem, Taco Bell owns the relationship. 

They can bypass third-party ad networks, send hyper-targeted push notifications based on past ordering habits, and use gamified rewards to increase the lifetime value of that customer. 

The event served as the top-of-funnel hook for a highly sophisticated, data-driven retention engine.

Live Más LIVE is also aimed at the celebrity-and-influencer culture. 

The event featured a "purple carpet" at the Hollywood Palladium complete with paparazzi, and the press room displayed food items, so social media personalities could test the items on camera. 

The entire physical setup of the event was designed to generate content - a production optimized for the feed.

The 2026 event streamed exclusively on Peacock, marking the event's first appearance on the platform, making Taco Bell's biggest innovation night into a shared entertainment experience for fans nationwide. 

No other fast food chain has a product launch that airs on a major streaming platform. They're acting almost like a media company that also happens to sell tacos.

The brand's Global Chief Brand Officer Taylor Montgomery put it directly: "Live Más LIVE is our way of co-creating with fans, inspired by their passion and designed to bring them inside the show experience." (Source)

Campaigns Taco Bell Could Run Next

The Live Más LIVE machine is in great shape, but there are a few logical extensions worth considering.

One obvious move is a regional version of the event. 

Right now, Live Más LIVE is a US-facing moment. 

But Taco Bell is a global brand with a serious international footprint, and fans in other markets are watching through a screen. 

A Live Más LIVE: International Edition - or even a localized version for specific markets - could replicate the excitement in markets where Taco Bell is still building cultural cachet. 

Another area worth exploring is a year-round content layer that builds toward the main event. 

Right now, the event happens once and then the buzz dissipates. 

But what if they treated Live Más LIVE the way sports leagues treat their draft - with months of speculation content, fan voting on which test kitchen items make it to the main stage, and countdown content? 

The hype cycle could be 12 months long instead of a few weeks.

Wrap Up

Live Más LIVE is now three years old and showing no signs of slowing down. 

What started as a two-month experiment modeled on an Apple keynote has turned into a genuine media property - one that streams on Peacock, generates earned media across every major outlet, and gives Taco Bell a cultural moment that no competitor can easily replicate.

A lot of brands throw events. The lesson here is about concentration. 

By collapsing all of their year's innovation into a single, high-production moment, Taco Bell made themselves impossible to ignore for one day - and the ripple effect of that carries through the entire year.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 26th!

For Memorial Day weekend, I whipped out the grill and BBQ’ed some chicken, corn on the cob, and made one of my all-time favorite summer dishes: watermelon gazpacho.

It was peak Memorial Day dining 🤌

Advertisement

Winning, on-brand ads—without endless prompting

Most AI creative tools fall short for one simple reason. You can generate tons of ads, but they aren’t up to par.

Refining copy, adjusting layouts, or nudging a CTA into place shouldn’t require rewriting prompts over and over. It slows teams down and breaks the creative process.

With Hightouch Ad Studio, AI gets you 90% of the way there. For the final 10%, use a built-in editor to quickly refine copy and design, or export directly to Figma for seamless collaboration with your design team.

Move faster without losing control. Every ad, exactly how you want it.

See how Ad Studio works

Top Apps

🚀 Apollo | The AI sales platform for smarter, faster revenue growth

🍸 Mixily | Host with style: beautiful invitations, effortless RSVPs, zero noise.

🧑‍✈️ SchedPilot | A social media management and scheduler tool

Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

For decades, Apple has been the master of the slick, hyper-polished, almost sterile product reveal. 

However, recently, they released a commercial and also dropped a BTS video of exactly how the ad was made. 

When a company as calculated as Apple changes its content playbook, there is always a deeper economic and psychological reason.

Today's Treasure Trove

• About Apple

• Target Demographics and Positioning

• The BTS Drop Ad

• Why "human-made" is the new luxury signal

• The Labour Theory of Value

• Industry Insights

• Wrap Up

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Why does every QBR sound like it took an hour to prep?

The strategic-account QBR has a different feeling. The CSM walks in knowing the buying committee, usage trends, support history, news on the company. They've blocked an hour to prep. The customer feels seen.

The other 190 QBRs don't get that hour. The CSM scans the dashboard five minutes before the call. They wing it. The customer answers the same baseline questions for the third time this year.

What if every QBR was a strategic-account QBR? Two minutes before the call, your CSM has the full brief in Slack: usage trends, support history, NPS, news on the company, what their champion just posted on LinkedIn.

Every customer feels like your top customer. Even when there are 200 of them.

3,000+ tools connected. SOC 2 certified. Your data never trains models.

"It was almost instantly adopted by the bulk of my team." Boris Wexler, CEO, Space Dinosaurs

Get Started for Free

About Apple

Some Stats:

Instagram: 36.5M followers
FaceBook: 16M followers
TikTok: 8.7M followers
X: 9.9M followers
YouTube: 20.6M followers

Apple is the world's most valuable consumer technology company - hardware, software, and services wrapped in one of the tightest aspirational brand identities ever built. 

Target Demographics and Positioning

Apple sits firmly in the premium tier - their core buyers are 25 - 45, college-educated, higher household income, and care deeply about design, privacy, and the feeling of owning something that works without friction. 

Apple's positioning has always been simplicity as sophistication. 

That brand position is now under a new kind of pressure - because AI is making everything faster, cheaper, and more frictionless. 

And Apple has to decide what "premium" means when the machines start doing the creative work too.

The BTS Drop Ad

Recently, Apple rolled out an ad for MacBook Neo:

But then they released the behind-the-scenes footage - something they've essentially never done before. 

The BTS footage showed exactly how the ad was made: real directors, real crew, real hands adjusting real things on set. 

Think about what's happening in the broader market right now. AI-generated video, AI-generated copy, AI-generated ads are flooding every channel. 

Any brand can use these tools to cut production costs. 

And consumers do notice the slight uncanny valley of AI output. 

The BTS footage then becomes a differentiator. It shows the team, time, and effort - all coordinated by original human thought. 

This works on multiple levels simultaneously. 

Firstly, it's authentic - they're actually showing real footage of real production. 

Secondly, it speaks directly to a creeping anxiety consumers have about what's real in media. 

Thirdly, it draws a clear line between Apple and every brand cutting corners with AI-generated creative. 

But the most underrated aspect is that it signals respect for craft. 

In a world drowning in content generated in seconds, Apple is saying they still believe it's worth spending months making something properly.

Why "human-made" is the new luxury signal

The "handmade" premium has been well-understood in physical goods for a long time. 

You pay more for hand-stitched leather because it represents human time, skill, and judgment that can't be fully replicated at scale. 

The imperfection is actually part of the value - it proves a person was there.

Digital creative work is now hitting the same inflection point that mass manufacturing hit for physical goods in the 20th century. 

When factories made cheap goods en masse, luxury brands leaned into craft. 

Now that AI generates cheap creative en masse, the new luxury will be human-made work. 

And it’s not just one brand doing it.

Even Coinbase rolled out the behind-the-scenes for their recent ad:

There's also a competitive intelligence angle. If Samsung or Google respond by also releasing BTS footage, it validates Apple's framing. If they don't, Apple owns the space. 

The Labour Theory of Value

The core strategy behind Apple’s behind-the-scenes push relies heavily on a psychological concept known as the Labor Theory of Value. 

This theory suggests that consumers naturally evaluate the worth of an object based on the amount of human labor that went into producing it. 

Apple’s strategy is to explicitly show the receipts of their labor. 

In their behind-the-scenes footage, they show the specialized technicians calibrating the camera, the physical set construction, and the details of getting the shots. 

This transforms the commercial from a simple piece of marketing into an artifact of human dedication. 

It signals to the audience that Apple does not cut corners. 

Industry Insights

To understand why Apple is pulling back the curtain now, you have to look at what their closest competitors are doing. Companies like Samsung and Google are leaning heavily into automated software features as their primary selling points. 

The message is: technology should remove the friction of human effort.

But this creates a massive strategic vulnerability for a brand that positions itself on premium artistry. If the future of content is completely automated, then the visual style that Apple pioneered becomes commoditized. 

If a mid-tier Android phone can generate a perfect cinematic shot using an onboard model, then the "cinematic look" loses its luxury status. 

So, Apple is in a way protecting their high margins by aligning their brand with the scarce resource: human craftsmanship.

Wrap Up

Today, anyone with a laptop and a decent prompt can generate a visually stunning, high-definition video in about thirty seconds. 

And when high-end visuals become cheap, fast, and automated, they stop being a status symbol. 

Apple realized that the old way of showing perfection was no longer a differentiator.

The brands that win will be the ones that treat their marketing, their product design, and their content as an art form worth fighting for. 

After all, pulling back the curtain to show your work is the ultimate flex of resource, dedication, and brand power.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 18th!

Are you creating content for your brand’s LinkedIn page?

…are your teammates?

There’s so much untapped potential in empowering your team to be advocates on LI for your brand. I’d love to spend just a few minutes of your time hearing how you use LI at your company.

And I’m happy to provide an Amazon gift card for your time 😄 

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Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

OTT platforms now aim to create content that can be consumed along with scrolling on phone or multitasking – the “second screen” phenomenon. (Source)

Yet, comedy shows often have higher retention because of multiple factors (which we will see in a minute).

An amazing example of this is the show I Think You Should Leave. 

From a pure marketing standpoint, this show has done something that brands with actual budgets would kill for: it built a community so devoted that the audience does the marketing themselves, endlessly and for free.

So let's talk about what's actually happening here, why it works, and what you can steal from it.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What the Show Actually Is

• Who Watches I Think You Should Leave

• The Marketing Strategies 

  • The content IS the marketing

  • Community as distribution

  • Netflix as a "Silent Partner" 

• Wrap-Up

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What the Show Actually Is

Instagram (fan community): 939K followers

Reddit (subreddit): 363K members

I Think You Should Leave is a Netflix sketch comedy show created by Tim Robinson - a former SNL writer - alongside Zach Kanin. 

The sketches are short, bizarre, and deliberately uncomfortable. There's no clean resolution. Nobody learns a lesson. Everyone is simply unhinged.

The real audience lives in memes, clips, Reddit threads, and group chats - which one can say is a more durable kind of presence than follower counts anyway.

Who Watches I Think You Should Leave

The primary audience is millennials and Gen Z who are digitally native, extremely online, and fluent in meme culture. 

The comedy is weird enough, niche enough, and uncomfortable enough that casual viewers often bounce off it. And that's fine. The people who get it feel like they've found their people. 

There's a tribal quality to being a fan of this show - it acts as a social filter. 

This is the foundation of every cult brand ever built. You don't appeal to everyone. You appeal intensely to the right people.

The Marketing Strategies 

Before we talk about the show’s marketing, I wanna talk about the genre - absurdist comedy.

Absurdism as a philosophy is the idea that humans are hardwired to search for meaning, but the universe has none to offer. 

Absurdist comedy sits in the chaos and laughs.

You expect a social situation to resolve, and instead it escalates into something completely unhinged. It breaks your pattern recognition. 

In ITYSL, the absurdism usually stems from something real. 

The surreal escalation works because the emotional core is completely human. You laugh because you recognize yourself in it, even when the behavior is objectively insane.

This is also why it spreads the way it does. Comedy researchers call it "benign violation" - something that feels wrong but safe enough to enjoy. ITYSL lives exactly in that zone.

Now let’s look at some of its marketing strategies.

The content IS the marketing

The sketches are built in a way that naturally generates clips, quotes, and memes. They're short enough to share whole, weird enough to create conversation, and specific enough in their absurdity that they lodge in the brain.

Tim Robinson made something genuinely strange and committed to it completely. But the byproduct is content that is almost purpose-built for social media even though it wasn't designed with social media in mind. 

Meme economics. 

ITYSL gets memed indefinitely. 

Sketches from Season 1 are still being referenced years later because the imagery is so specific and odd that it becomes genuinely versatile. The baby of the year sketch. lol.

In fact, there’s a website called I Think You Should Meme which is a searchable database for all memes from the show.

It’s no surprise then that a meme page dedicated to the show has 41.4K followers.

They have become cultural shorthand that fans use to communicate emotions and situations in their real lives. That is an incredibly powerful form of brand integration into daily life.

Community as distribution

The subreddit, the fan accounts, the Twitter threads, the Discord servers - none of these are run by Netflix. They exist because the fans built them. And these communities are active. 

Every new season announcement travels through these channels faster and more authentically than any paid media could achieve. The community is the distribution network, and it self-maintains.

Netflix as a "Silent Partner" 

They understand that spoiler culture doesn't exist for ITYSL. You can see the funniest part of a sketch on Instagram and it actually makes you more likely to watch the full episode to see how the character got to that level of insanity. 

They allow - and likely encourage - the proliferation of "Out of Context" accounts. By not being precious about their IP and allowing fans to chop up the content into five-second reaction gifs, they've ensured that the show stays top-of-mind even during the two-year gaps between seasons. It’s a strategy of ubiquity over exclusivity.

Wrap-Up

What ITYSL does - completely by accident, or maybe by instinct - is the thing every marketer is trying to manufacture: genuine, lasting, community-driven relevance. 

It commits fully to a specific, weird, uncomfortable vision and trusts that the right people will find it.

The lesson is that when you make something genuinely specific the audience that connects with it connects hard. They become advocates, distributors, creators in their own right. 

You stop having a fanbase and start having a community.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 11th!

I’ve been building an employee advocacy tool to help marketers make the most of their workforce on LinkedIn.

We all know LI is a valuable tool, but it’s the people posting that really moves the needle.

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Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

The Cheesecake Factory is probably most known for its massive menu of 250+ items. The portions are comically oversized. It lives in malls. That’s basically it. 

And it keeps showing up in Drake lyrics, in Kardashian episodes, in YouTube rabbit holes. 

What I came across recently is a bold move they made, which shows they aren't afraid to play the dark arts of modern marketing to stay relevant in a world obsessed with "aesthetic" dining. 

We’ll look at that and more about how they became what they are today in this deep dive.

Today's Treasure Trove

• About The Cheesecake Factory

• The Cheesecake Factory Target Audience and Positio …

• Marketing Strategies of The Cheesecake Factory

  • 1. The YouTube "Psyop"

  • 2. PR Machine That Runs Almost for Free

  • 3. Cheesecake Rewards

  • 4. Digital and Social Push

  • 5. Micro Brands

• Wrap up 

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About The Cheesecake Factory

Some stats: 

Instagram: 1.1M followers

TikTok: 398K followers

Facebook: 4.6M followers

The Cheesecake Factory is an American casual dining chain that's been around as a restaurant since 1978. They are essentially a full-service restaurant empire disguised as a single iconic chain.

The Cheesecake Factory Target Audience and Positioning:

The restaurant attracts young professionals and families, among others. They usually want a proper sit-down dinner without the formality of a fine dining experience. 

And critically, it's a veto-vote buster - meaning when a group can't agree on where to eat, The Cheesecake Factory has something for everyone. They are the ultimate "middle-of-the-road", making luxury feel accessible (and incredibly caloric).

The positioning is essentially: upscale experience, approachable price, overwhelming choice, and a strong occasion appeal. They're not cheap, but they're not pretentious either. 

Source

With a moderate average check, they're driving some of the highest unit volumes in the casual dining industry.

Marketing Strategies of The Cheesecake Factory

1. The YouTube "Psyop"

I recently came across this post that claims how The Cheesecake Factory was paying YouTube creators (channels with millions of subscribers) to eat at their restaurants - empty restaurants, food chosen for them, no #ad disclosure - with the comment sections flooded by well-written praise from suspiciously new or inactive accounts. 

Clean. Organic-looking. Effective.

This is what's called a dark social play. 

It's not new - movie studios and streaming platforms have been doing this for years - but seeing a casual dining chain execute it this cleanly is rare. 

The brilliance is in the layers: you get the credibility of a creator with 5+ million subscribers saying the food is great. The video looks authentic because the creator is genuinely reacting to food they didn't pick. The comments section then reinforces social proof for anyone who goes looking. 

By the time a viewer is done watching, they've been exposed to multiple layers of "organic" endorsement that all point in one direction. 

Whether or not the comment seeding is ethical is a separate conversation. Or even if this is accurate, as I could not find any other sources pointing to this.

But if they did do it, it works because it exploits how we actually trust information. We trust things that feel discovered, not things that feel advertised.

2. PR Machine That Runs Almost for Free

They generated approximately 52 billion media impressions in fiscal 2025 at minimal cost. Read that again. 52 billion impressions. At minimal cost.

How? They show up everywhere culturally without buying their way in. 

Last year, they celebrated #NationalCheesecakeMonth, that generated 12.85M impressions. They also have yearly offers (like half-price slices for members) + cause-based campaigns to drive footfall and massive organic buzz without heavy ad spend. 

Their unique, oversized menu and dessert focus naturally fit TV and memes, keeping the brand relevant in pop culture. It was also a part of Penny’s job over several seasons of The Big Bang Theory, adding to its cultural clout. 

They've built a brand presence that generates its own gravity. People write about them, talk about them, film themselves there. With this, the audience markets the brand for them.

3. Cheesecake Rewards

They launched their Cheesecake Rewards program with the objective to leverage data analytics and insights to engage more effectively with guests and drive incremental sales. On the surface, it looks like a standard loyalty program. 

Underneath, it's a data collection engine.

The program runs three types of offers: published offers available to all rewards members, personalized offers tailored to guest behavior and preferences, and marketable offers tied to cultural and brand moments like April Fools' or National Cheesecake Day that drive excitement and broad engagement. 

That tiered approach keeps casual users engaged with broad offers while rewarding high-frequency guests with personalized incentives. And the behavioral data feeding into those personalized offers is the real asset being built here. 

They now know what you order, when you visit, and how often. 

That's powerful for targeting, for menu decisions, and for knowing exactly which customer segment to push during slow periods.

Read more about their rewards programme here with details from the president of The Cheesecake Factory. 

4. Digital and Social Push

The Cheesecake Factory focuses on eye-catching digital content and strong delivery systems. Their social media drives organic reach through short videos of food prep, menu hacks, and user-generated content, making the brand feel fresh and engaging. 

Instagram post

I mean😋😋

5. Micro Brands

The Cheesecake Factory has been able to turn small elements into big brand drivers. Their brown bread has built a cult following online without ads, with people constantly talking about it and recreating it. 

At the same time, standout items like the Godiva cheesecake act like mini brands, making the overall experience feel premium and worth the price. 

Wrap up 

What makes The Cheesecake Factory interesting is that it engineers perception at scale. Every touchpoint, from menus to memes, is designed to feel discovered. 

That’s the real takeaway: the future isn’t louder ads, it’s layered experiences that create their own distribution. When your product becomes content, your customers become creators, and your brand becomes culture, you stop competing on spend and start compounding on relevance. 

The playbook here is about building a system where marketing is no longer a function, but the outcome.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Tuesday the 5th (¡Cinco de Mayo!)

Last weekend I visited Arizona and was blown away by how beautiful the desert landscape is.

I’ve always been a fan, but AZ is the peak of desertscape. 🏜️

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Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Also, I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn – shoot me a message and tell me you read Marketer Gems!

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

There's a very specific type of brand that makes you feel like you found a secret. Quince is one of them.

They occupied the position between price and prestige - “quiet luxury” for the masses.

A $50 cashmere sweater. 

A silk dress for $79. 

Bedding that looks like it belongs in a swanky Airbnb, priced like it belongs in your apartment. 

For a few years now, Quince has been showing up everywhere - TikTok hauls, Reddit threads, those "best things I bought this year" Instagram posts. 

And the more you look at it, the more you realize it isn't an accident. There's a deliberate and smart brand strategy running underneath all of it.

They use a factory-to-consumer model that cuts out the traditional retail markup.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What is Quince 

  • Quince Target Demographics and Positioning

• Quince Marketing Strategies

• Campaigns Quince Should Run Next

• Wrap Up

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50% of software buying decisions involve 5 or more people

And two-thirds of those buyers shift what they care about somewhere in the middle of the process. But most ABM motions still roll everything up to a single account score and treat the entire buying committee the same way.

So what’s the solution?

On May 6, Influ2 is hosting a live webinar with Devin Reed (The Reeder) and Ed VanderBush (LiveRamp) to dig into the three things that quietly kill buyer momentum, and how to solve them.

If you run an ABM program, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Register now

What is Quince 

Some stats:

Instagram: 1.4 Million

Facebook: 233K followers

TikTok: 156K followers

Quince sells high-quality essentials - cashmere, silk, linen, leather - by going straight from the factory to your door, cutting out every middleman in between. 

They have beautifully detailed their initiatives and how they are able to offer low prices while maintaining similar high end quality here.

Quince Target Demographics and Positioning

Quince's core customer is a millennial or Gen Z from 25-45 years online shopper who care about durability of the products they buy over engaging in the short life spans of fast fashion products. 

These customers can buy it for themselves or as a premium gift of quality products. 

The positioning is the interesting part, because Quince doesn't play the discount game. It isn't "affordable fashion." It isn't clearance-rack energy. 

The brand uses serif fonts, muted earth tones, and clean photography that gives it a premium feel. 

Their M2C model makes the prices shockingly reasonable. 

Selling cashmere specifically is a big part of this - cashmere is culturally coded as luxury, so offering it at $50 immediately puts you in a different conversation than a $15 H&M sweater, even if the audience is broadly similar.

There's also a values layer that appeals to a younger customer. Quince talks about ethical manufacturing, family-owned partner factories, and not overproducing. 

Quince’s head of brand, Antonieta Moreland, summed it up well: their “pricing isn't about cutting corners, it's about cutting out unnecessary markups.” (Source) 

That's a line that works on both a practical and emotional level, which is why it keeps showing up in their messaging.

They show you what the "competitor" charges for the same item. This creates an immediate "aha!" moment for the shopper. 

Quince Marketing Strategies

The UGC machine is the engine. 

Quince works with roughly 300 creators a month, and critically, the content that performs best isn't polished or branded - it's someone genuinely delighted that their $50 cashmere sweater held up through an entire winter. 

The brand saw 366% year-over-year EMV growth on Instagram and a 437% surge on TikTok. This was from a broad, sustained layer of creators talking about the brand in their own voices. 

72% of their best-performing content came from creators who had never posted about Quince before (source). That means they keep finding new audiences instead of just preaching to existing fans.

TikTok, as acknowledged by their head of brand, introduced them “to a whole new generation of customers…[and] made us rethink how we tell our story.”

The pricing of the cashmere sweater at $50 serves almost as a pattern interrupt, turning the video into a discovery engine with organic shareability as well. Even though TikTok's raw numbers were smaller than Instagram's, it offered more cultural reach. 

Their Instagram also maintains a luxurious old money aesthetic with simple, on-brand content that still gets them reach. 

Instagram post

They also collaborate with stylists like Jamie Mizrahi, perfect for their brand.

For the A$AP Rocky collab in January 2026, Quince partnered on an exclusive product drop tied to his album release. 

Instagram post

This tells you something about where the brand is heading - it's no longer just a value-first basics brand, it's reaching for cultural credibility with tastemakers. 

The M2C model keeps the margins and the messaging clean. 

No wholesale means no retailer cuts. 

No overstocking means no end-of-season clearance sales that dilute the brand. 

Quince runs tight production cycles and limits launches to products that meet their standards - and that constraint is actually a brand asset. Scarcity and selectiveness signal quality in a way that an endless catalog doesn't.

Campaigns Quince Should Run Next

The A$AP Rocky drop proved they can pull off a cultural moment. 

The next step is institutionalizing it - one or two capsule collections a year with artists, designers, or creatives who share the aesthetic DNA: clean, considered, quality-forward. 

Keep the price points in Quince's range. 

The goal isn't revenue from the collab itself - it's earned media, cultural signal, and new-audience acquisition from the partner's fanbase. Think emerging ceramicists, independent film directors, or independent designers with small but devoted audiences. The more unexpected the pairing, the more interesting the press.

Another massive opportunity is "The Travel Capsule" Collaboration. Travel is a high-intent, high-spend category. Quince could partner with micro-creators, maybe get a group of them together to stay at a boutique hotel, and show how Quince products can be used in multiple styles and stay durable while giving a luxurious feel. 

Wrap Up

The fundamentals of Quince are strong and the momentum is real. They built the aesthetic and their products proved their value. 

They are selling the feeling of being a smart shopper. They’ve managed to make "buying a dupe" feel like a sophisticated financial decision rather than a budget compromise.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 27th!

I heard about LinkedIn Thought Leader ads performing incredibly and thought, no way. Must be someone fudging the numbers.

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50% of software buying decisions involve 5 or more people

And two-thirds of those buyers shift what they care about somewhere in the middle of the process. But most ABM motions still roll everything up to a single account score and treat the entire buying committee the same way.

So what’s the solution?

On May 6, Influ2 is hosting a live webinar with Devin Reed (The Reeder) and Ed VanderBush (LiveRamp) to dig into the three things that quietly kill buyer momentum, and how to solve them.

If you run an ABM program, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Register now

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Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

Uno has become almost a universal experience, being played by millions around the world.

It’s easy and fun - anyone from a kid to an oldie can play (and enjoy) it. 

But how is a card game marketing itself? 

We’re looking at how Uno moved from a kitchen table staple to a meme icon, a digital powerhouse, and soon, a cinematic universe player.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What Uno Is 

• Uno’s Target Audience

• Marketing Strategies of Uno

  • Social media that earns attention

  • UNOWHOYOUARE

  • Influencer, Collaborations, and PR working togethe …

  • Digital monetization

  • Uno on the Big Screen

• Campaigns Uno Could Do Next

• Wrap Up

advertisement

50% of software buying decisions involve 5 or more people

And two-thirds of those buyers shift what they care about somewhere in the middle of the process. But most ABM motions still roll everything up to a single account score and treat the entire buying committee the same way.

So what’s the solution?

On May 6, Influ2 is hosting a live webinar with Devin Reed (The Reeder) and Ed VanderBush (LiveRamp) to dig into the three things that quietly kill buyer momentum, and how to solve them.

If you run an ABM program, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Register now

What Uno Is 

Some stats: 

Instagram: 986K followers
Facebook: 9.9M followers
Tiktok: 1.4M followers

Uno is a card game published by Mattel that has sold over 150 million units worldwide, making it one of the best-selling card games in history. 

It has spawned dozens of spin-off editions - Uno Flip, Uno Attack, Dos, themed versions with everything from Disney characters to Minecraft - and has a dedicated mobile game with tens of millions of downloads.

Uno’s Target Audience

Uno's real audience is broad and layered.

It’s essentially a family game. Parents pick it up at Target for game night, grandparents know it, and it's a go-to for all ages (well, 7 and up). 

The brand is recently targeting the younger generations via activities on social media as well as pop culture collaborations like Harry Potter and BTS, leading to a “new” feel with just a few tweaks. 

The brand's positioning is something like: the universal card game. 

It is convenient and an easy social play for get-togethers. It doesn't require much explanation. It crosses age groups, cultures, and languages. 

Marketing Strategies of Uno

Uno is five decades old and still growing. Mattel has built a smart, layered marketing playbook - one that works across age groups, platforms, and cultural moments without ever feeling forced.

Social media that earns attention

Wanting to target the younger demographic, Uno is active on social media, especially with relatable short form content. 

Instagram post

This makes people feel ‘seen’ and engage in banter. My favorite part is when people ask about rules on Uno’s social media, and their team actually replies:

UNOWHOYOUARE

The #UNOWHOYOUARE campaign is the clearest example of Mattel doing social right. Instead of promoting the game, they promoted the people who play it - tagging player archetypes like "Sore Losers" and "Dodgy Dealers." 

Character-driven content invites people to see themselves in it, which naturally drives shares. 

Influencer, Collaborations, and PR working together

Mattel uses influencers as amplifiers. Influencer content is backed by paid social to extend reach beyond organic audiences, while PR runs alongside it to cover events, partnerships, and new editions. 

Instagram post

They attach the game to whatever culture is already moving. 

Themed decks with Marvel, Barbie, and Minions put Uno in front of existing fanbases without needing to build new ones.

Artist editions like Keith Haring, fashion editions like ONLY, street wear tie-ins like The Hundreds, and many more, push into demographics that wouldn't typically browse the toy aisle.

The mechanic is smart: a $10 themed deck is an impulse buy for fans who might not buy a standard deck or would want it as a part of a collectible. 

It also generates consistent PR cycles. Every new collaboration is a news hook. Product as PR is underrated, and Uno does it consistently.

Digital monetization

The UNO! mobile app has 100M+ downloads. It adds a revenue layer through AdMob while keeping the brand present in players' daily lives - something a physical card game can't do on its own. 

It also acts as a retention tool. 

Players who might not have bought a new deck in months can still engage with the brand on their phones, which matters when it's time to push a new campaign or edition.

Uno on the Big Screen

Uno's movie (yes, it’s happening) - a live-action heist comedy set in Atlanta's hip-hop scene - has been in development since 2021 with no release date confirmed yet.

If it lands, the marketing upside is enormous. The Barbie film drove a 25% sales lift and proved that IP movies can reignite entire product categories. 

For Uno, that means meme explosion, themed merchandise, app spikes, and a fresh cultural moment to anchor campaigns around. 

The hip-hop angle with Lil Yachty and Quality Control could unlock audiences Mattel hasn't deeply penetrated. 

Campaigns Uno Could Do Next

1. The Creator League

Partner with 20–30 mid-size gaming, comedy, and lifestyle creators - not mega-influencers - and give them each a "custom edition" of Uno that reflects their niche. 

But instead of just selling these, you make the creation process the content. Creators design their deck on camera, their audience votes on the designs, and the final product ships as a limited-edition run exclusively through the creator's community. 

This builds Uno into creator culture in a way that doesn't feel like a brand integration.

2. Uno Reverse on Life - A Campaign About Comebacks

The Uno reverse card is genuinely one of the most recognized visual metaphors on the internet for turning a situation around. There's a full campaign on that idea. 

Partner with athletes, musicians, or everyday people who have had real comeback stories, and use the reverse card as the visual hook. It works as a social campaign, a video series, and a limited-edition card design all at once. 

It also ties into a cultural moment around resilience and wit that's on-brand for the game's personality.

3. The "Silent Uno" Social Experiment

A digital campaign focused on the "quiet tension" of the game. A series of short-form videos with no dialogue, just the aggressive slapping of cards and the "death stare" of a friend who just got skipped. 

It can be a 3 part series of building the story, the climax, and the resolution. A chaotic UGC vibe will keep it unpredictable with a viral appeal. 

This also targets the aesthetic of ASMR trends.

Wrap Up

Uno is the ultimate proof that you don't need a complex product to win; you just need to understand human psychology. 

They know that we all have a little bit of a "villain arc" when we play games, and they’ve built a multi-billion dollar empire by letting us lean into it. 

By embracing memes, picking fights over rules, and collaborating with everyone from Disney to streetwear icons, they’ve ensured that the "Wild Card" remains the most powerful tool in their marketing arsenal.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 20th!

I heard about LinkedIn Thought Leader ads performing incredibly and thought, no way. Must be someone fudging the numbers.

But they work (I got CPC < $3).

Your audience is on LinkedIn – so why not mobilize the company?

This tool makes it easy for folks at your company to post content on LinkedIn (and even gamify it!).

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50% of software buying decisions involve 5 or more people

And two-thirds of those buyers shift what they care about somewhere in the middle of the process. But most ABM motions still roll everything up to a single account score and treat the entire buying committee the same way.

So what’s the solution?

On May 6, Influ2 is hosting a live webinar with Devin Reed (The Reeder) and Ed VanderBush (LiveRamp) to dig into the three things that quietly kill buyer momentum, and how to solve them.

If you run an ABM program, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Register now

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Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, Marketer! 

There's a window cleaning company out of Austin, Texas with a brand so good that people are buying their t-shirts. 

Pink's Window Services is a fascinating marketing story in the home services space right now.

I think it's worth pulling apart how a "boring" service business managed to build a brand with genuine cultural pull - and what they can do next to turn that momentum into a real national machine.

Today's Treasure Trove

• What is Pink’s Window Services

• Pink’s Window Services Target Audience

• Marketing Strategies and Growth Hacks of Pink’s Wi …

  • Branding as a moat

  • The franchise-as-marketing loop 

  • The Codie Sanchez partnership 

  • The merch play 

  • Vans as billboards

• Wrap Up

advertisement

50% of software buying decisions involve 5 or more people

And two-thirds of those buyers shift what they care about somewhere in the middle of the process. But most ABM motions still roll everything up to a single account score and treat the entire buying committee the same way.

So what’s the solution?

On May 6, Influ2 is hosting a live webinar with Devin Reed (The Reeder) and Ed VanderBush (LiveRamp) to dig into the three things that quietly kill buyer momentum, and how to solve them.

If you run an ABM program, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Register now

What is Pink’s Window Services

Some Stats:

Instagram: 27.8K followers

LinkedIn: 2K followers

Pink's Window Services was founded in 2020 by Brandon Downer and Carter Smith - two guys who got laid off and decided the home services industry needed a rethink. 

That’s right. The “boring” business that so many entrepreneur gurus yap about – these guys actually did it.

They offer window cleaning, power washing, gutter cleaning, solar panel cleaning, and a handful of other exterior services, and they've since grown into a franchise model under ResiBrands.

Pink’s Window Services Target Audience

The first audience is typically a homeowner in an affluent-ish suburb aged 35-65, someone who cares about their property and has been burned before by a no-show contractor. 

They want reliability, and they'll pay a premium for someone who shows up on time and doesn't leave a mess.

The second audience is commercial clients like office buildings, local businesses, and retail centres that also need similar professional and trustworthy services.

Pink's has positioned themselves at the intersection of nostalgia and professionalism. 

It's a very deliberate aesthetic choice that signals: we take this seriously, and we have personality. That's a rare combo in trades.

Marketing Strategies and Growth Hacks of Pink’s Window Services 

Branding as a moat

Pink’s sells services, so there is a recurring business in place. But visually, the industry is BORING. 

Pink's went the opposite direction, which immediately made them stand out.

Pink’s uses a bold retro style with bright pink-and-blue colors, custom uniforms inspired by 1950s mechanics and milkmen, and nostalgic VHS-style visuals to make window cleaning feel fun and premium.

Pink is their entire brand identity. 

It's distinctive, it's memorable, and it's completely ownable in their category. 

No other window cleaner in the country "owns" a color. That's a competitive moat that costs nothing to maintain but took real conviction to build.

Instagram post

The franchise-as-marketing loop 

Pink’s is present in 100+ locations across the USA, mostly operated by franchisees.

These franchisees benefit from ResiMarketing which includes SEO, national and social campaigns, creative assets, and lead generation tools. This helps local franchisees grow their visibility independently.

Many franchises lead with a “business-in-a-box” value proposition: “We have the business model figured, so you can just plug and play.” 

But for Pinks, the business model is simple, but the brand and “customer-acquisition-out-of-the-box” model of providing the marketing is a major selling point for boring business operators.

Here, marketing is positioned as an incentive for franchisees, helping spread awareness of the brand and drive the company’s growth without depending entirely on headquarters.

The Codie Sanchez partnership 

Codie Sanchez has built a media brand around the idea that boring businesses are underrated wealth vehicles. 

Her audience is already primed to believe that a window cleaning franchise could be a great investment. 

That partnership was a direct pipeline to Pink's most valuable growth audience and also added to trust and distribution.

The merch play 

Pinks employees have uniforms inspired by the 1950s, combining the look of body shop mechanics and milkmen. They include collared shirts, classic work jackets, white button-ups, and striped designs in pink and blue.

These custom, retro-style outfits - which are also sold as merch - are designed to look sharp and professional. The idea is to help cleaners feel confident and bring dignity back to blue-collar jobs. 

Carter Smith describes the shirts "like a decades-old piece straight out of your dad's closet." (Source) 

That's remarkable. 

They created merch demand for a window cleaning company, which makes them closer to a lifestyle brand. 

Vans as billboards

Pink’s Window Services turned its branded vans into mobile billboards by using real-time traffic insights instead of relying on traditional advertising. 

They partnered with Parking Pin to identify high-visibility parking locations using traffic data, mobility patterns, and demographic overlays.

The campaign pinpointed 20 high-traffic locations across 14 zip codes, including busy commuter routes, retail corridors, and medical lots. They parked vans in areas with up to 31,000 vehicles per day, ensuring consistent exposure among their target audience. (Source)

This strategy helped Pink’s build rapid local awareness while keeping costs low, effectively replacing expensive billboards with existing parking spaces. 

The campaign also supported geographic expansion by strengthening visibility in priority neighborhoods.

Wrap Up

Pink’s Window Services is a masterclass in how to take a "boring" industry and make it electric. 

They proved that you don't need a tech product to have a sophisticated brand strategy. 

Owning a distinct color, simplifying their message, and focusing on the premium segment has helped them build a strong competitive advantage that’s difficult for others to replicate.

Pink’s Windows will be remembered as one of the pioneers who brought the "blue-collar renaissance" to life.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems

Happy Monday the 13th!

First, how are you using LinkedIn at your company?

I’m a big believer that employee pages are underutilized and they matter much more than company pages for brand awareness and lead generation.

But here’s the thing – most folks at your company aren’t producing content. Not because they don’t want to. It’s simply time-consuming and there’s isn’t a “nudge” in the right direction.

If you want to mobilize your employees on LI better, I think you’ll be interested in being a test user for this app.

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Lift pipeline conversion by up to 118% with Contact-Level ABM

Influ2 analyzed 2M targets and found that when teams run ABM at the contact level, pipeline conversion increases by up to 118%!

But the lift doesn’t come from sending more emails or targeting more accounts.

It comes from catching the first moments of real buyer interest and knowing exactly who’s behind it.

And that’s only possible with contact-level ABM.

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Meme of the Week

Thanks for reading and I hope you found something useful in it this week 💎

Thanks! ✌🏻

Tom at Marketer Gems

Sponsor | Marketer Tools Directory | Funny Ads Club

Howdy, marketer!

After reading this sentence, I might lose half of y’all’s attention - this deep dive is about a period care brand.

That’s the exact problem that August set out to fix. 

One of the most common ways period products have been represented in advertising is sterile and clinical (pharmacies, blue liquid in commercials, nothing that acknowledges this is a human experience).

August came in and said, what if we just... talked about it? 

What if the product was beautiful, the brand was conversational, and the people selling it actually looked like the people using it?

That choice - to be direct and unapologetic - is the entire foundation of their marketing. Everything else flows from it. (no pun intended)

Today's Treasure Trove

• About August

• Target Demographics and Positioning of August

• Marketing Strategies of August Period Care Brand

  • 1. Founder-Led Content as Primary Growth Strategy

  • 2. High-Volume Content Testing Strategy

  • 3. Education-First Content Strategy

  • 4. August Advocates Program

  • 5. TikTok Live Commerce Strategy

  • 6. Organic-First, Paid-Second Strategy

  • 7. Transparency-Driven Marketing

  • 8. Partnership-Led Marketing

• Wrap Up

advertisement

Lift pipeline conversion by up to 118% with Contact-Level ABM

Influ2 analyzed 2M targets and found that when teams run ABM at the contact level, pipeline conversion increases by up to 118%!

But the lift doesn’t come from sending more emails or targeting more accounts.

It comes from catching the first moments of real buyer interest and knowing exactly who’s behind it.

And that’s only possible with contact-level ABM.

Want to see the details?

Read the report

About August

Some stats:

Instagram: 187K followers

Facebook: 3.3K followers

TikTok: 400K followers

August is a Gen Z-focused period care brand that sells eco-friendly, organic tampons, pads, and liners through a subscription model. 

They're essentially selling the idea that your period product shouldn't be something you hide in the bottom of your bag.

Target Demographics and Positioning of August

August's target audience is inclusive, primarily Gen Z people who menstruate aged roughly 16 to 29.

Their audience is socially conscious, value transparency, are comfortable with taboo conversations, and most importantly, are digital-native. 

Positioning-wise, August sits in a specific lane: it's more premium than drugstore brands, but it's not trying to be a luxury product. 

As periods are still stigmatized, they’re education-first, aiming to normalize conversations. 

They're also notably subscription-first, which shapes their entire funnel.

Marketing Strategies of August Period Care Brand

1. Founder-Led Content as Primary Growth Strategy

Nadya Okamoto became the brand voice herself. 

She posted high-volume content on TikTok, talked openly about periods, shared the founder's journey, and answered customer questions in real time. 

Instagram post

A founder speaking directly to their audience carries a kind of credibility no agency-produced ad can replicate. Awareness, trust, and conversion all was aided through the same channel, which is an extraordinarily efficient way to grow a brand from zero.

2. High-Volume Content Testing Strategy

August treated TikTok like a testing lab: post frequently, try multiple angles, double down on what works, and drop what doesn't. 

This is a speed-based strategy, and it gives you a real advantage on algorithm-driven platforms where consistency and volume signal relevance. 

Instagram post

The community-focused and relatability focused content on socials helped them build a loyal audience that wanted to keep coming back. 

3. Education-First Content Strategy

Because periods are still stigmatized in a lot of contexts, August made education their top-of-funnel strategy rather than product promotion. 

Content around period myths, ingredient transparency, real experiences, and stigma-breaking conversations pulled in organic audiences. 

Education builds trust before a purchase decision is ever made, which is especially valuable in a category where consumers have real hesitation and real questions. By the time someone is ready to buy, August has already done the work of becoming the most credible voice in the room.

4. August Advocates Program

The August Advocates Program places August period care products in school and university bathrooms by training students to champion the brand on campus - turning mission-driven advocacy into a direct, low-cost distribution channel.

What makes it strategically interesting is that it works on three levels simultaneously: 

1. it's a low-cost distribution channel

2. a period-equity proof point that gives the brand real-world credibility

3. and a Gen Z acquisition engine that reaches students at the exact moment they're forming brand habits

5. TikTok Live Commerce Strategy

August used TikTok Lives for product demos and real-time Q&A. Live video creates the kind of low-pressure intimacy where those questions actually get asked and answered, and that interaction removes the hesitation that often kills conversion. 

In categories where trust is the primary barrier to purchase, live commerce is a trust-building mechanism.

6. Organic-First, Paid-Second Strategy

August used organic content to build demand and paid ads to convert it - not the other way around. Paid ads dropped into a cold audience in a stigmatized category tend to underperform. 

But when someone has already seen five TikToks from the brand and the founder, read about the ingredients, and followed the brand, a retargeting ad on Instagram becomes a gentle nudge rather than a cold pitch. 

Organic does the relationship-building; paid handles the closing.

7. Transparency-Driven Marketing

August openly shared ingredients, pricing rationale, and brand mission in a category where usually companies say as little as possible. 

Transparency works as a marketing strategy because it shifts the dynamic from brand-to-consumer broadcasting to something closer to a two-way conversation. 

8. Partnership-Led Marketing

August partnered with DoorDash, USA Track & Field, and WeWork - a deliberately varied set of collaborators that expanded reach across different contexts and audiences. 

#journeytogold #augustusatf #augustusatf #usatf #itsaugust #onmyperiod #trackandfield | August

BIG NEWS📣 August Period Care is now the official period supplier of USA Track & Field🏃🏽‍♀️🩸 Menstrual products are a necessity, not a luxury. Access to quality period products shouldn’t stand between athletes and a championship performance. August and USA Track & Field are proudly coming together to support menstruating athletes on their #JourneyToGold with 100% organic cotton, ethically sourced, sustainable menstrual products that will keep them protected all the way to competition day💪🏽🏃🏾‍♀️ Together, we’re conscious of the footprints we’re leaving behind🌎👣🌱 Follow along with the hashtag #AugustUSATF across all platforms as we roll out interviews and BTS with track stars like Ashley Spencer, Jasmine Todd and more, coaches, USA Track & Field officials like Robert Chapman (PhD FACSM, Chief Sport Science & Medicine), and USATF spectators like Sierra Chanell Patrick! #AugustUSATF #USATF #ItsAugust #OnMyPeriod #TrackandField

LinkedIn

Partnerships like these place the brand inside moments and environments where people are already engaged. 

Each partnership extends the brand narrative into a new context without requiring the brand to start a new conversation from scratch.

Wrap Up

August is proof that the DTC playbook just needs to be executed with real specificity. 

They picked a generation, picked a tone, picked a community model, and built consistently toward it. 

People trust people - and if you make the right people actual believers, you don't necessarily need to depend on ads.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems