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Your Rummikub Group Has a Sponsor, and a Brand Strategy
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Welcome back. I hope your weekend included some good offline activities. So do marketers.
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RummiKlubLA, a social club for fans of the tile game Rummikub, hosts events at swanky venues with the support of sponsors. Ben Arnst
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Just when the ad industry feels like it’s been swallowed by programmatic processes and AI tools (see Friday’s newsletter), marketers are descending on offline get-togethers from book clubs to game nights.
Event sponsorship isn’t new, of course, but a new wave of sponsor-savvy get-togethers are capitalizing on brands’ desire to reach people outside of digital, the WSJ Leadership Institute's Katie Deighton writes this morning.
Sponsors’ largesse in turn is helping beneficiaries become brands themselves.
RummiKlubLA, a social club for players of the tile-based game Rummikub, has expanded beyond Los Angeles with pop-up events in New York City, London and Miami, bringing along sponsors like Astral Tequila and beauty company Tower 28. It also calls itself “your favorite game night brand” and sells its own game sets at retailers like Revolve.
“We were doing it for fun at first, and then all these venues started reaching out to us, and all these brands started reaching out to us,” said RummiKlubLA co-founder Marnie Wekselblatt, who works in media ad sales and partnerships by day.
You can see the case for this kind of marketing even though it requires more work per consumer contact than, say, programmatic. But there’s also the risk that brands will undermine the connections that attracted them in the first place. Here’s the former brand executive Ochuko Akpovbovbo, writing in her culture newsletter As Seen On:
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“The most interesting communities right now are getting smaller and quieter—private group chats, gatherings with no Instagram presence by design, spaces whose value derives precisely from the fact that they can’t be optimized. The appetite for something that can’t be monetized is growing in direct proportion to how thoroughly the monetized version has saturated every available surface.”
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Marketers may want to steer their swag and sponsorship dollars toward offline groups that maintain a low logo penetration.
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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Herbalife’s Next Evolution: Personalized Health and Wellness
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In more than two decades at Herbalife, Chief Commercial Officer Frank Lamberti has seen several transformations. Today, he and his team are working to advance a more personalized customer experience. Read More
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Three Things I’m Watching
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The government began an inquiry last year into whether ad firms were funneling client dollars away from certain media platforms. Benoit Tessier/Reuters
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The Federal Trade Commission is negotiating a potential settlement with several major advertising companies to resolve a probe into whether they violated federal antitrust laws by coordinating boycotts against platforms like Elon Musk’s X, Suzanne Vranica reports in an exclusive for the Journal. As part of the proposed resolution, ad firms including Dentsu, Publicis and WPP would make a commitment to not direct clients’ ad budgets away from media platforms based on political content, although individual advertisers could still avoid specific sites.
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Amazon’s car listings have expanded from an experiment with Hyundai to include vehicles from Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Chevrolet and Jeep in more than 130 cities, including L.A., Dallas and New York. The potential payoff for Amazon is bigger than a chunk of auto sales: Amazon Autos could lure budgets from one of the biggest advertising categories.
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Surcharges are back. Those extra fees consumers got to know and loathe during Covid are popping up again everywhere as companies try to recoup their own rising costs while blaming outside pressures.
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$243.46 billion
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Meta Platforms’ projected global net ad revenue this year, enough to surpass Google and become the world’s top digital-advertising business for the first time. Meta’s ad business is seeing a lift, thanks to the success of offerings including Reels and the broader boost that AI has provided. Google is facing increasing competition in the highly profitable search business, with rivals like Amazon taking some share.
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The community where marketing leaders drop the corporate speak and share what’s actually happening. The WSJ CMO Council unites leaders from the world’s most influential brands including Adobe, Audi, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Taco Bell, P&G and Verizon.
Tap into the connections and WSJ intelligence that move careers forward and separate the prepared from the scrambling.
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Jewelry brand Kendra Scott kicked off a Mother’s Day campaign starring dozens of creators along with Erin Foster, the actress, podcaster and “Nobody Wants This” co-producer. [Glossy]
Nike’s chief innovation officer is leaving the sneaker company after less than a year in the job amid signs that its turnaround efforts are sputtering. [WSJ]
Tucker Carlson is getting his own book imprint with Skyhorse Publishing, with the stated aim of challenging the boundaries of what legacy media deems acceptable. [WSJ]
Popeyes introduced a meal-and-merchandise collaboration with “One Piece,” the manga juggernaut with anime and live-action adaptations. [Crunchyroll]
Claire’s is leaning on the squishy hunting trend to reassert its claim on teens’ retail dollars. [Ad Age]
Zendaya stars in a three-minute, stop-motion ad directed by Spike Jonze to promote a new On footwear and clothing collection. [Campaign]
Brazil is giving the Amazon river its first brand campaign. [Famous Campaigns]
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