What’s it like to lead social media at a company? In our new series, Marketing Brew attempts to figure that out by going straight to the source: heads of social themselves.

Books: They’re basically the opposite of sports. And yet, when Penguin Random House’s head of social media, Alyssa Castaneda, was in college, she wanted a career in sportsball.

That passion sent Castaneda to Adidas, where she held a slew of social media and community roles. But when publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) reached out to her about its head of social media role, she took the opportunity.

It was a fit: Adidas and Penguin Random House are both brands that, in Castaneda’s words, are “driven by culture.”

Publishing, though, is a “traditional industry,” she told Marketing Brew. Perhaps, she mused, PRH wanted to change that—hence why it hired her last year.

• She’s on the consumer marketing team, reporting to PRH’s director of brand strategy.
• According to Castaneda, her role largely involves creating social media and influencer marketing playbooks for the company’s various arms, including its children’s sector, Brightly.
• Those playbooks guide various teams through understanding the publisher’s social media strategy from a 30,000-foot view (remember, the publishing industry’s last big digital innovation was the Kindle in 2007).

We sat down with Castaneda and dug into what being head of social media actually means to her in practice. Read what she had to say here.—PB

Advertisers—don’t be distracted by the death of cookies. It’s privacy legislation you should be worried about, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau in a report released Tuesday. It’s the sixth edition of the trade group’s State of Data report, which includes qualitative surveys and recommendations from advertisers, media buyers, and developers on advertising strategies.

More specifically, it raised red flags about “inconsistent state-level and/or poorly crafted privacy regulation” that it anticipates will make targeting consumers and measuring ad campaigns more difficult. Though the IAB declined to name specific states, the introduction of new state-level laws and revisions to current ones are “outpacing companies’ abilities to enact and adopt consistent measures and protocols,” the report read.

• Amendments to California’s CCPA will take hold on January 1, and new privacy laws in Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, and Utah will go into effect before the end of 2023.
• In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, privacy laws are in committee.
• A federal privacy law is currently stuck in legislative limbo. In July, the IAB said that the proposed legislation “falls short” and would impose “heavier regulations than any state currently does.”

Looking ahead: The “vitality of the entire digital media economy as it operates today is at stake” as a result, according to the report, and, of those surveyed, “few seemed truly prepared for ongoing data-privacy legislation changes and the effect that these impending laws, and platform and browser changes, will have on their businesses.”

Keep reading here.—RB

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

Filtered: Turns out, showing ads to real people—and filtering out idle sessions—can improve campaign results, according to research.

Spooky szn: Snap shares some tips for marketers ahead of Halloween.

24 hours only: No one knows how to TikTok Story. Here are some tips on how brands and creators should use them.

Learn: Things change when you move from managing campaigns to managing a team. Don’t worry—the Brew’s Leadership Accelerator is here to help you navigate all your new responsibilities. Join our September cohort now.

Consumer behaviors are rapidly changing. Join us for a can’t-miss discussion about how every marketer should navigate major digital landscape shifts.

Download the report now.

Quote: “The latest power move for middle-aged men: looking like an ad for protein powder.”—The Wall Street Journal on why the “real CEO flex is washboard abs”

Stat: $1,600. That’s the amount that one influencer, who at the time had 80,000 followers, made from Revolve for an Instagram post last year, per Insider.

Read: “Dress Code: The Future of Fashion in the Metaverse” (Esquire)

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

• Lawsuit against Kochava raises serious questions about location data
• Podcast brand-safety tools are trying to demystify the space for wary advertisers
• Agency new business revenue is down year over year, report says