Brand Insider

The US Open is a vibe like no other and this week’s brand knows it. They’ve been with the tournament for 40 years. This year, it’s also celebrating its 200th anniversary and they’re celebrating with Carlos Alcaraz, Frances Tiafoe, Jeff Koons and a host of activities from Las Vegas to New York.

But big live moments come with big uncertainty, especially in sports. You can't control how athletes show up on the court, and you definitely can't control culture. How do you modernize while respecting 200 years of heritage?

Turning 200 is impressive. Still competing like you're 20? That's the hard part. We sat down with SVP Fran Mulhern at Danone, to talk about 40 years at the US Open and why origin still matters.

There are two kinds of men in the shower. The first are those with a washcloth and a bar of soap. The second are those who assure you he’s fine with what he has. He doesn’t need you to buy him body wash. He likes his stuff. Then he uses yours. Your very expensive, very specific stuff. All of it. And he doesn’t replace it. 

For a long time, that was the men's grooming aisle: the do-it-all bottles, the bars of soaps, the borrowed products, and not much in between. But men’s grooming is having a moment. It’s one of the fastest growing categories in personal care, which means it's also one of the most crowded.

That’s where Every Man Jack finds itself. Nearly 20 years ago, they were one of the few specializing in men’s personal care, but as the competition piled in, "naturally derived and outdoor-inspired" wasn't enough to stand out. They went back to the basics to figure out who their guy really is and rebuilt the brand around him. They realized it’s less about the finish line and more about the grind it took to get there, and that’s how “For Men Who Put in the Work” was born. 

The messaging landed, but how do you get it out there? Sports are the priciest real estate on TV, audience data costs continue to rise, and every retail media network has its own idea of success. What’s a challenger brand to do? How do you compete for attention when you can’t afford to be the official sponsor? How do you know which dollars are actually pulling their weight?

We sat down with Nick Hasselberg, VP of Marketing and Omnichannel at Every Man Jack to find out.

Halloween is eight days away, and this is the candy aisle's time to shine. Lately, though, candy has been cast as the villain. Wellness has become a full-on identity, and it’s easy to get sucked in. It seems like everyone is on a wellness journey, but go too far down the social media rabbit hole and all of a sudden sugar is poison, birthday cake needs a disclaimer, and spinach has become an ingredient in brownies.

Candy doesn't have to be the bad guy. It just has to know what it is, and that's what Bazooka Brands is betting on. Yes, Bazooka. If that name doesn’t conjure up a red and blue logo, a comic strip, and a blonde kid with an eye patch then we are living very different lives.

It’s synonymous with gum, but it’s also the company behind Push Pop, Juicy Drop and the beloved Ring Pop. They’ve spent the past year moving from candy culture to cultural candy. That may sound like marketing speak, but it’s a small nuance that makes a big difference.

It’s things like a Ring Pop wedding collection with celebrity planner Mindy Weiss. It’s giving 70,000 blue and green rings to Seattle Seahawks fans at their home opener. It’s tapping into MomTok and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to sell candy for a cause. It’s not about the sugar rush; it’s about the way you feel eating it, or wearing it in Ring Pop’s case.

It would be easy to call that nostalgia, but nostalgia looks back. This takes something we all grew up with and asks it to do a new job. At a time when everything is supposed to be good for you, convincing people that a treat can just be a treat might be one of the hardest jobs in marketing.

We sat down with CMO Dave Dreyer to hear how he’s tackling the job.

Every restaurant has a personality. Some are loud, some are cozy, some you only visit at 2 a.m. That’s the thing about restaurants. We don't always remember the menu, but we remember how the place made us feel. A lot of casual dining restaurants forgot that. Brands tried to be everything to everyone and ended up being nothing to no one. The category is at a crossroads: adapt or die.

TGI Fridays is choosing to adapt, and they're doing it by getting their personality back. They’re rebuilding their social presence and giving the brand something it hasn’t had in years: a sense of humor. They've rebuilt their app around the three things guests actually want, and they're rebuilding loyalty around the data they already have so it feels personal instead of promotional.

It's a brand trying to have a voice again. With attitude. With opinions. Snarky, sometimes spicy, and a little nonchalant about the whole thing. Because when your guests have a high BS meter, the only way past it is to actually mean what you say.

Personality isn't a nice-to-have in the brand guidelines. It's the reason someone picks you at 2am. We sat down with Director of Digital Marketing Christopher Houston to hear how TGI Fridays is getting theirs back.

Like many kids, I was convinced that if you swallowed gum, it would sit in your stomach for seven years. That myth sat right alongside the other greatest hits of '90s parenting. Wait 20 minutes after you eat before swimming. Keep making that face and it'll stick like that. 

For the record, none of it is true. Gum passes through normally, but frankly seven years in my stomach was the least of gum’s problems. The bigger one? Nobody could figure out what it actually was. Is it candy? Is it a mint? Is it dental hygiene? C'mon, gum. Pick a lane.

For most of its life, that lane was fresh breath. Then 2020 happened and suddenly nobody was close enough to smell anything. The job gum was built for just disappeared. What didn't disappear was the pressure, and everybody needs a release valve. Turns out, chewing is also a highly effective way to relieve stress, and that’s exactly the bet that Trident is marketing with its latest campaign. 

Trident is owning something no mint or candy or toothpaste ever could: the chew itself. The result is the brand's first regional campaign across Latin America. Twelve months. Thirteen countries. Three languages. One global superstar. 

It's a big swing. Because asking a legacy brand to let go of the thing it's always been known for? That's a whole different level of pressure.

How do you reinvent the role of an entire category? How do you build one campaign for 13 countries without losing local nuance? And how do you convince an entire generation to care a little less and chew a little more? We sat down with Lauren Flanigan, Head of the Global Brands Refreshment Category at Mondelez to find out.

In the south, college football is our religion, and for 13 weeks every fall, Saturday is our holy day. Weddings are planned around them. Strangers become friends, and friends become enemies during them. And every single one of them starts with a tailgate and a cooler.

I met my lifelong friends at University of Florida. I also met friends who I never learned their names. Friends who I stormed University Avenue with (four times). Friends who I painted my body orange and blue with. Friends who I hugged like family when the clock hit zero and the Gators had won it all. And as a millennial, I had a beer in my hand during most of those sporting events. Right or wrong, for me, that just feels right. 

So when I was pregnant at an Atlanta United game years later, I was a bit at a loss of what to do with my hands. I grabbed a Heineken 0.0, fully expecting to be disappointed, because every other non-alcoholic thing I tried was basically juice. But this? It tasted like beer. Like, actual beer. 

What stuck with me wasn't really the taste. It was that I still got to raise a glass when Atlanta scored. I cheersed the stranger next to me. I was still part of it.

Sports just brings people together. And in a time when it feels like we’re socializing less, listening to music in earbuds instead of festivals, and watching the game on our phones instead of with friends, aren’t we all craving just a little more friend time?

Heineken knows this first hand. From Formula 1 to the US Open, they're betting that shared passion is still one of the best cures for a lonely world. We sat down with Marketing VP Guilherme de Marchi Retz to hear how they’re bringing people back together.

Fandom is universally understood no matter what language you speak, what tax bracket you’re in or how you define football. Fans are just built differently because we all know what it means to love a little team so much it hurts.

Fandom like that has existed for generations, but the way fans show up is drastically different now. Fans aren’t just tuning in anymore. They want to be inside the moment, the roster, the play. There’s so many more ways fans can live and breathe their team than just experiencing it in a stadium, on a field, or on the pitch.

Nobody has built a bigger bridge between watching sports and playing them than Electronic Arts. From Madden to FC, Electronic Arts has turned the fan on the couch into the fan with the controller and made participation the whole point. We sat down with SVP and GM, Global Marketing, Andrea Hopelain, to hear how they’re doing it. 

We sat down with SVP of Global Marketing, Andrea Hopelain, to hear how they’re doing it.

My toxic trait is that I do not replace things on any sort of schedule. Cars, phones, sunscreen past its expiration date. I live and die by frugality’s motto: “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” 

This is not my husband’s motto. He is routine, schedule, and order though and through. He changes air filters every three months and knows when to change the batteries in our smoke detector before it starts beeping. Bless him for carrying the load of that quiet, recurring maintenance that keeps things running. I just don’t have that gene.

Most of the time, these opposites complement each other, but last year it came to head when he said it was time to buy a new mattress. Our thirty-year-old mattress, I should add. Calm down, we’ve cleaned it; I’m not a monster. Still, it wasn’t broken. It was doing the job. We were sleeping. Case closed.

My husband did not agree, and over the course of many months, it caused more arguments and more headaches —something that might have been caused by the mattress in question — than I care to admit.

In the end, we bought a new mattress, one with all the latest gizmos and gadgets. Turns out, mattresses have come a long way in thirty years. Our next guest knows that first hand.

He’s the CMO behind some of the most recognizable names in the industry. He knows that comfort is personal, sleep is a necessity, and that trust is earned over decades, not quarters. He’s modernizing a portfolio of legacy brands during a time when shopping, discovery and intent looks drastically different than it did thirty years ago.

Tim Oakhill, CMO at Serta Simmons, told us all about it.

I went to college at University of Florida from 2005 to 2009, which was one of the single greatest eras in the history of college athletics. Tim Tebow. Urban Meyer. Billy Donovan. Two football national championships. Two basketball national championships. 

We were insufferable – we had every right to be – and we took our celebrations very seriously. We stormed University Avenue. We painted ourselves orange and blue. We coined the phrase Tequila Touchdown, so we had every excuse to raise a glass with every Gator score. (And there were a lot of them back then.)

Still, we were broke college students, so this tequila wasn’t exactly top brass. It was the kind of tequila that came with a worm and warning label, the kind you’d shoot fast, not the kind you sipped and savored. It didn't matter. It wasn't about what was in the glass. It was about the moment the glass got raised.

That instinct, that tequila belongs in the biggest, loudest, most euphoric moments, is exactly the territory this week's guest lives in. 

Don Julio 1942 has spent years showing up organically in the moments that matter most in sports: that moment the confetti drops. Super Bowl locker rooms, NBA championships, and this year, they went global, building a full campaign around the World Cup. They partnered with Thierry Henry to bring the campaign to life. There was a gold-plated bottle modeled after the trophy itself. There was a luxury megayacht takeover in Chelsea Piers.

How do you build a celebration brand with intention instead of just chasing the next big game? How do you turn a sponsorship into a cultural moment people want to be part of? And once the confetti settles, how do you stay top of mind?

We sat down with Julian Garcia, VP of Marketing for Don Julio at Diageo, to find out.

My parents were strong believers in after-school jobs. If I wanted something, I was expected to earn it myself, not ask for it. I cleaned a fabric store, I scooped ice cream at Bruster’s, but my favorite job was working at American Eagle. Shout out to Store 885 at North Point Mall. 

Sure, the $10 per hour was great, but what does a 16-year-old girl like more than money? Clothes. And the 40% employee discount paid dividends to me when I was in high school. So, for two years I paid my dues to the retail gods in sacrifice to fashion. 

I folded (and refolded) graphic Ts. I worked overnight on floor sets, swapping out inventory when the season changed. I clocked in at 4 a.m. on Black Friday back when people still lined up outside malls. To this day, I still fold my jeans the American Eagle way.

After I graduated, I left for college at University of Florida, but that first summer home I went right back to American Eagle. Sure, I needed some cash, but more importantly, I needed that 40% employee discount for my Rush outfits the following August.

When I Rushed, RushTok wasn’t a thing. Hell, this was before TikTok and Instagram were a thing and when Facebook was still limited to .EDU email addresses. Our Rush dance routines looked like bad backup dancers in a Mandy Moore music video.

RushTok, from where I sit now, is a genuinely terrifying place for a millennial. I do not recommend this for the faint of heart. 

For American Eagle, showing up for Rush isn’t foreign territory. They belong there. They’re running sorority house takeovers, content studios and DIY denim drops, treating RushTok not as a moment to capitalize on but an economy to build.

How do you take a viral, fast-moving moment like Rush and turn it into something durable? What does the creator economy unlock that a traditional media buy never could? And when dozens of brands are chasing the same audience, how do you make sure yours sticks out?

We sat down with CMO Craig Brommers to find out.