In the first ballot referendum since Roe v. Wade was overturned, voters in Kansas this month rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have removed the right to abortion and opened the door to a complete statewide ban.

One of the groups working on behalf of the no vote was Kansans for Constitutional Freedom (KCF), a year-old bipartisan coalition of reproductive-rights advocates and organizations, including Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, the ACLU of Kansas, and the Trust Women Foundation.

• The group executed a multi-million-dollar campaign in the months leading up to the vote.
• The amendment lost 59% to 41%, marking a massive win for KCF in a historically red state.
• A Washington Post analysis found that about 1 in 5 Republican voters turned out in favor of abortion rights.

Big picture: KCF Communications Director Ashley All told Marketing Brew the bipartisan coalition was “essential” in securing the final election results and credits their messaging with why they were able to win.

Left, right, and center

“We needed to make sure people understood that you can be somewhere in the middle on this issue—not at the far left, not at the far right—[and] you can have complicated personal feelings about this issue, but we need you to protect the right to make that choice for other people,” All said.

• In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution protected the right to bodily autonomy, including access to abortion, in its Bill of Rights.
• All said that was the basis for the coalition’s overall messaging, as seen in its first TV ad, which doesn’t explicitly mention abortion but does mention “individual and personal rights.”
• According to All, it was the ad that got the most “media and political coverage because of its unique approach” compared to traditional pro-choice ads.

Read more about how the campaign came together here.—KH

If you’re one of the many travelers who’ve dealt with flight cancellations, lost luggage, and one too many glasses of overpriced airport wine while waiting out a delay, you can (partly) blame advertisers.

Why? They’ve been upping their ad spend this year, using all kinds of tactics to convince people to take a few more days of PTO and book a trip.

• According to MediaRadar data cited by Digiday, ad spend in the travel sector increased to $2.1 billion in the first half of this year, an 83% jump compared to the same period last year.
• Travel brands spent nearly $560 million during the first half of 2022 on TV advertising, according to iSpot, up 151% from the year prior, Insider reported.
• In the second half of this year, US travel brands plan to dish out 27% more on media spend than initially expected, per an IAB survey.

But what about the recession…? Some marketers are taking a potential downturn and inflation into account. As Ad Age recently pointed out, brands ranging from RV-rental company Outdoorsy to Discover Puerto Rico are being strategic with their campaigns. The latter, for instance, is “targeting US markets where airfare to Puerto Rico is lowest and avoiding regions with costlier flight increases.”

Others are taking a more, uh, aspirational route.

+1: This week, Cosmopolitan—the magazine, not the Vegas casino—debuted CosmoTrips, a trip-booking platform that handles “all of the curating and headaching for you and your entire crew.”—MS

Each Tuesday, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Pedro Porto Alegre is director of business development and marketing at Kluane Partners, a boutique corporate finance advisory firm. He started his career at PepsiCo, working in sales, business development, and analytics before pivoting to marketing.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? I tap into the minds of the financial experts in my company, translate it into common language, and communicate it to the world through engaging and compelling campaigns to spark interest in those looking for capital or advisory to grow their businesses!

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Architecting the big brand idea for Ruffles Canada and working through the first-ever TV campaign for the brand in Canada. I worked with cross-border agencies in the US to strategize the opportunity after having identified the key brand-equity KPIs that we needed to grow, stirred the creative team to come up with a killer campaign that would resonate with the Canadian audience and meet the brief goals, and eventually recorded the 30-second commercial in Montreal, all during the pandemic lockdowns.

It was a lot of Zoom calls and remote production direction, but the end result was a fun ad that was launched on TV and digital and helped us turn the corner on the communications journey as the brand became the third largest in Frito-Lay Canada!

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Havaianas “Manifesto” (2012). This one hits close to home, as this is a brand that I grew up with in Brazil and always had on my feet. The simple yet powerful connection they made between the product and the “territory” you enter when you slip them on, was something that Brazilians could be extremely proud of, and non-Brazilians wanted to be a part of.

What’s one marketing-related podcast, social account, or series you’d recommend? What’s Working in Marketing by RightMetric. They’re a Vancouver-based marketing research company that puts out a lot of high-quality content for marketers to learn from and engage with.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Your thoughts? Spotify is testing a feature that prompts listeners to record audio reactions to playlists.

Reel good: Scheduling Reels on Facebook and Instagram is now available to users via Meta’s Creator Studio—here’s a quick review of how to do it.

SearchTok: TikTok is becoming the search engine of choice for young users, which means it may be time to start thinking about an SEO plan for the platform.

Learn: What if you could anticipate what a customer wants to buy before they even know it? Learn to use data and analytics so you can forecast the future. Take the Brew’s Business Analytics Accelerator to fast-track growth for your business (and your career). It starts September 6—apply today.

theCLIKK is a conversational Tuesday–Friday newsletter from your fellow marketers on the latest news and oldest principles in marketing.

It’s free. It’s informative. It’s mildly amusing.

Why the weird spelling? To quote our founder: “You can’t spell things normally. This is the internet.”

Sign up here.

Nike’s iconic tagline “Just Do It” has been a core component of the sportswear brand for decades. When was the tagline first introduced?

1. 1971

2. 1988

3. 1993

4. 2001

Keep scrolling for the answer.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Advertisers back away from TV scatter market amid recession fears
• Inside Fishwife and Graza’s recent cobrand
• Why brands and agencies are hiring TikTok creators