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A cartoon image of Kristina Monllos created by Morning Brew

Kristina Monllos

marketingbrew.com

A love story is timeless. When it’s done right, the stakes are clear, the audience can’t help but root for the characters to get together, and lots of moments—big and small, good and bad—help show a couple’s life together.

That’s why Uber used a love story to lead a new campaign targeting suburban riders, Georgie Jeffreys, head of marketing at Uber, North America, told Marketing Brew. The hero spot for the campaign, called “In Good Time” and created by Mother New York, uses snippets of a couple’s story over the course of a little over two minutes to show all the different ways suburban riders might use the rideshare company.

“Because this campaign centers on the everyday moments that matter, a love story felt like a natural way to show how Uber fits into all parts of life,” Jeffreys wrote in an email.

Uber is one of a number of brands like Audible, Neutrogena, and Vera Bradley leaning into romance in marketing. As 

 has previously reported, brand marketers recognize that some people want a distraction from doom and gloom, with stories of romance serving as a cheat code to making someone feel something.

Throughout the campaign, called “There Are Drivers In Your Area,” Uber uses the tick of a countdown clock—how far away the Uber driver is from the characters—as a storytelling device. That device works twofold in the hero love-story spot by also educating consumers about the speed they can usually get rides.

“It raised the stakes of it, and it gave ‘In Good Time,’ specifically, it gave it this really beautiful device,” Oriel Davis-Lyons, chief creative officer at Mother New York, said. “But it also has a really practical reason in that one of the biggest barriers for people in the suburbs is that they don’t know if there are Ubers actually available…Most people in the suburbs are no more than seven minutes away from an Uber. That’s something very practical and real that we had to kind of tell people.”

Aside from the love story of “In Good Time,” the campaign is designed to show off Uber’s versatility to non-city dwellers. Other scenarios depicted throughout the ad campaign, including a ride to the airport or needing a larger vehicle to transport recently purchased furniture, are aimed at speaking to suburbanites; those messages will be supported through social, out-of-home, digital, and audio placements.

“People in the suburbs think about the brand a little differently,” Davis-Lyons said. “When you’re out in the suburbs and you [have] maybe one or two cars. So really it was about, how do you remind people in the suburbs of those use cases?”

Some of those ad placements use creative contextual to specific locations or contain messaging that changes depending on how close an Uber may be or what the average wait time for an Uber is in that area, Davis-Lyons noted.

Going forward, Uber will continue to lean into the idea of available drivers through stories that show how people can use the company’s services throughout their lives.

“We wrote hundreds of stories, hundreds of scripts,” Davis-Lyons said. “There’s a depth and a richness to it that feels like we’re just kind of scratching the surface.”

A woman taps on the glass of an Uber car window. 

Could you fall in love before your Uber arrived?

With a new campaign from Mother New York, the rideshare company wants people to rethink how they see the brand.

Can you fall in love before your Uber arrives?

Tired of the doom and gloom in the news cycle? Perhaps a brand can interest you in a romantic distraction.

take social media by storm, as brands like Audible, Neutrogena, Vera Bradley, and even Doritos have rolled out campaigns that are meant to not only appeal to romance fans but also celebrate the genre—all while, potentially, providing some light entertainment.

“The world is on fire for all of us,” Nic Climer, executive creative director of the marketing agency Rapp, said. “So I think the thing we are all trying to do right now, and we’re all trying to attach to, is to feel something real.”

It’s not just a matter of making consumers feel something; brands are aiming to give them something to feel good about in a time where positive feelings can be hard to come by. “The rise of romance in pop culture is about escapism and joy, two things people are craving right now,” Neha Minj, senior marketing director for face care at Neutrogena, told Marketing Brew in an email. “For brands, it is an opportunity to meet consumers where they are and connect through creativity and shared experiences, rather than just transactions.”

Leaning into stories with a romantic bent to them is almost a cheat code to making people feel something, which is why some marketers see the trend as having legs.

“Romance is having its moment,” James Finn, SVP, global head of brand and content marketing at Audible, told Marketing Brew. “There’s highly, highly engaged conversations [and] brands are seeing that, and with streaming content, movies, and TV shows, it’s a category that continues to grow.”

Part of brands’ interest in the trend can be chalked up to changing cultural sentiment around the genre. “I feel like in North America, romance has been looked down on for so long, especially the last 20 years of media and culture,” Megha Parikh, executive strategy director at VML, said. “I think that [the] tide is turning. If you look at what people are buying in terms of books and the stories that they’re watching and TikTok and things, it’s okay to have just pure romance and enjoy that for the sake of that romance.”

For a brand like Audible, tracking what’s trending for readers comes with the territory of promoting and selling audiobooks, and while the company focuses on various genres each quarter, the company has found that romance is one of the “most engaged genres on the service, outpacing every other one significantly,” Finn noted. “And [the] audience is a really passionate audience.” (That fervor mirrors traditional book sales, where sales of romance, long a powerhouse genre, are on the 

Audible aims to reflect that passion in its campaigns with efforts celebrating the genre. Last Friday, as part of its romance marketing efforts, Audible hosted a “Romance Rowboat Experience” in Central Park.

“We’re bringing fans, and we’re having actors there, and basically re-creating that whole concept of audio storytelling with rowboats kind of lean[ing] into different types of romance genres,” Finn said.

Meanwhile, Neutrogena’s entry into the romance marketing trend has also aimed to recognize the passion of the genre’s fans. Last month, the brand partnered with influencer Serena Kerrigan on two “

” short stories that are available on Wattpad, a site known for fan fiction, as a way to target millennials and zillennials on BookTok.

Brands have been going beyond romance to stories of lust and desire. In addition to Neutrogena, Doritos recently featured actor Walton Goggins 

 that used the tagline “spicy but not too spicy” as part of a throwback parody more akin to a late-night 

Pushing into different niches is a way for brands to not only test the boundaries of what stories brands can tell but also look to stand out in a fragmented media landscape.

“I think actually [it’s] not so much that they’re willing to test the boundaries, but more that they are desperate enough to [do so to] win attention,” Parikh said. “If you look at the Doritos, the reason it’s wild and smutty is that it’s wild and smutty for a brand, but it’s not wild and smutty for TikTok.”

Even if brand marketers are more willing to roll with more risqué content, it all comes down to making those consumer connections.

“If you think about how brands are trying to evolve and how they’re trying to connect, I think what we’re trying to do as marketers is be more layered and more nuanced,” Climer said. “Romance is a part of that.”

A classic romantic painting of two lovers. The Audible logo is a stand in for one of the lovers.

Why your latest romance find might come from a brand

Brands like Neutrogena, Audible, Vera Bradley, and Doritos are tapping into stories from sincere to smutty to attract consumers.

Morning Brew Creative Studio

Life presents millions of little choices each day: what to grab at the grocery store, how to tackle that growing to-do list, which movie to unwind with after work. But when life's big moments arrive—like graduating college, buying that first home, or welcoming a tiny new family member—these everyday decisions suddenly carry new weight.

These milestone moments completely transform the way people shop. Instead of reaching for that familiar laundry detergent, new parents find themselves diving deep into research about baby-safe options. Rather than grabbing the usual cleaning supplies, first-time homeowners seek out products worthy of their dream space. It's more than just daily routines getting a makeover—it's an entire shift in how people connect with and choose their brands.

The numbers back this up: Amazon Ads partnered with market research firm Alter Agents on 

 research, which reports that 68% of consumers say life events directly influence their spending habits, and 6 in 10 people saying they dedicate more time to product research during these transitions. These aren't just temporary changes either. The brand relationships formed during these pivotal moments often last long after the initial milestone, creating unique opportunities for brands to build lasting loyalty by meeting consumers' evolving needs.

From the minute a family knows a baby is on the way, it's go time. There are cribs to buy, diapers to stock up on, baby care products to research, and so much more. Amazon Ads 

 research also reports that nearly half of consumers say they're more likely to compare brands during big life events, and expectant parents are no exception.

Why? Their priorities shift dramatically. Compared to other life events, expectant families are 53% more likely to prioritize physical health, 48% more likely to prioritize family time, and 23% more likely to take on more responsibility. This mindset shift, combined with being 28% more likely to increase their spending, leaves consumers reevaluating their brand choices.

Amazon Ads can help brands reach more than 80% of baby product shoppers in the U.S. during this crucial consideration phase.

 But connecting with expectant parents isn’t just about being there during shopping moments — it’s also about reaching this audience as their media consumption increases and their patterns evolve:

This shift in media habits creates opportunities throughout the consumer journey—from building awareness during evening TV streaming to driving conversion when parents-to-be are actively researching products. While expectant parents show these distinct patterns in media consumption and purchasing behavior, changes in habits are common across many major life milestones.

Life milestones often overlap and intersect. Many consumers navigate multiple transitions simultaneously—welcoming a new baby while moving into a larger home, for instance. For brands, these moments of change represent prime opportunities to reach new customers who are actively reevaluating their product choices.

Homebuyers show a clear desire for expert guidance, being 20% more likely to seek professional opinions during their purchase journey. They’re also more engaged with media, showing a 21% increase in streaming TV consumption and a 17% increase in both music and livestreaming.

This is a great opportunity for brands to drive awareness during these transitions. Success means partnering with industry experts while leveraging expert reviews, Q&A forums, and professional endorsements. To effectively connect with these consumers, brands need to deliver the right message at the right time across today’s diverse media channels. Amazon Ads connects with 86% of household shoppers,

 enabling brands to orchestrate tailored campaigns that resonate at specific moving milestones—precisely when consumers are establishing the product preferences that will define their household for years to come.

To help brands better serve consumers during these milestones, Amazon Ads can help brands reach specific audiences through its demand-side platform (DSP) for consumers experiencing major life events—whether they're expecting a child, buying a first home, or starting a new job. These audience segments are powered by Amazon's trillions of unique shopping, browsing, and streaming signals, enabling advertisers to create meaningful connections with consumers at the right moments.

Brands can reach these audiences across Amazon's extensive media network—from Amazon.com to IMDb, Prime Video, and Twitch, plus devices like Alexa—and beyond thanks to Amazon's third-party supply.

In today's dynamic environment, success means reaching consumers 

at the right moment with the right message

. Through Amazon Ads, brands can build relationships that drive long-term value by being there when it matters most.


1. Amazon Ads with Alter Agents. Life Events: reaching consumers during moments that matter. Fielded March 2024-June 2024. U.S. data. Among A18-74 who experienced/plan to experience a life event in the last/next 12 months. N=10,015.

Amazon Ads Branded Article 2 Q3 2025

How life-changing events affect consumer shopping habits

As shoppers navigate life’s biggest moments, CPG brands can engage with them in new ways.

How life events change the way we shop: What CPG brands need to know 

Got a ton of people on the internet talking about the same thing for a day? Brands might 

. Got a ton of people talking about the same thing for weeks on end? Brands 

That’s exactly what has happened over the last two months amid the third and final season of Amazon Prime Video’s 

, an adaptation of a book series by Jenny Han that nabbed 25 million viewers in the first seven days following its premiere, according to Amazon internal data shared with Marketing Brew. The coming-of-age romance drama following Isabel “Belly” Conklin and her relationship with two brothers has been the talk of the summer on social media, with fans speculating what will come next each week, making predictions, and dissecting episodes. And 

Social media teams who spoke to Marketing Brew said the response to their show-related posts has largely been positive. So why not continue to build on the momentum? For some marketers, the show has a particular element making it ripe for conversation: there’s a team element to the show, with many fans rooting for either Conrad or Jeremiah Fisher to win over Belly’s heart and declaring themselves #TeamConrad or #TeamJeremiah.

“What really excites us in social is that fandom is a universal language, whether or not you are a fan of a baseball team or a TV show or a musician,” said Cameron Gidari, VP, social media and innovation for MLB, which has been posting about the show on its socials since August. “This show is having watch parties [where] you’re team Conrad or you’re team Jeremiah, so a lot of the instinct and the behavior is really similar to that of a sports fan.”

’s popularity—and brand placement in the series—is driving big numbers. Engagement for social content about the show’s third season is up 514% from Season 2 for Mondelez’s Swedish Fish, according to the company, and the brand’s 

 TikToks for the summer were both about the show. Meanwhile Sour Patch Kids, another Mondelez brand, has netted 12 million impressions so far this year for its show-related social content, the company said. 

Both brands were referenced in the show at the end of the second season, with each brother debating which candy she will choose—an on-the-nose metaphor for which brother Belly will ultimately end up with.

“It was a pleasant surprise to us to be featured in such a prominent way,” John Vasington, senior brand manager, candy, at Mondelez, told Marketing Brew. “Jenny is a fan of the brands, and I know has included us in the third book, so we had an idea that we’d probably at some point make an appearance in the show. But for it to happen in such an impactful way in Season 2 was a really welcome surprise.”

In the gap between seasons, social chatter tying the brands to the show didn’t slow down, said Sandra Yang, associate director of social and strategy for Dentsu Creative, Mondelez’s agency, and both brands opted to advocate for the brother tied to the brands online. For the third season, the brands became an official brand partner, with 

 of Sour Patch Kids for Team Conrad and Swedish Fish for Team Jeremiah.

“We knew this show was going to be very top of mind for Gen Z as the new season kicked off, and we wanted to be a part of it in a much more substantial way,” Vasington said.

Most brands don’t have the luxury of appearing in the show’s universe. Even so, brand social accounts big and small have recognized the value of staying up-to-date on the show.

MLB, for example, started posting about the show in mid-August after a member of its social media team who is a fan of the show pitched getting involved, Gidari said. As of late August, the social content around the show had generated 2.5 million views and 540,000 engagements.

In addition to the brand TikToks and Reels referencing episodes, brand accounts are also showing up in the comment sections of edits that fans make for the show, sometimes doing so with commentary about the episode or rooting for a particular character.

“I think why this phenomenon caught wildfire this summer, in addition to the pure escapism… [is that] it allows us to talk the way these people talk, make creative the way that they’re already seeing stuff on their own algorithms and their own platforms, like it doesn’t feel brand-y,” said Mimia Johnson, SVP of creative excellence at VaynerMedia, which created social content around the show for brands like Miralax and sparkling-water brand Bubly.

“People don’t want to see ads. They want to see brands that act like people,” Johnson noted. “That’s why we see the brands in the comments. That’s why we see brands activating Team Jeremiah versus Team Conrad, talking about love triangles.”

Nick Mazzucco, head of social strategy at Burrell Communications, said that at a time when social media managers worry about the high stakes of internet chatter, something like this can be a low-stakes way to participate in a trend.

“It is that spark of old internet monoculture,” he told us.

, social media and brand managers said they are careful to use language like the names of the characters from the show rather than specific IP like quotes, soundbites, or even the Taylor Swift songs used in the show that could land them in hot water when creating content.

“There wasn’t a specific line in the trend that you had to use, you could really make it your own,” Katherine Blessis-Poto, social media specialist at Hannaford Supermarkets, said. “So we felt comfortable taking that risk and putting it out there.”

Some brands have an advantage by working with the show’s cast or creators to get them to be part of the content that they’re making around the show. The reigning WNBA champs, the New York Liberty, for example, hosted cast members and Han courtside; a subsequent post with the cast garnered more than 80,000 likes on Instagram, and on TikTok, content with the cast was one of the top four highest-engaged videos of August. Meanwhile, content with the cast for Barclays Center, where the Liberty plays, nabbed 8.1 million views and more than 920,000 engagements on TikTok and 3.1 million impressions on Instagram.

Shana Stephenson, the Liberty’s chief brand officer, said the partnership worked well because Liberty players are fans of the show themselves.

“Liberty center Nyara Sabally is a fan of

 Team Conrad,” Stephenson wrote in an email. “Bringing her together with the cast courtside postgame felt organic and true to who she is—and that authenticity is exactly what we aim for.”

After the show’s season finale on September 17, brands will look for more shows to, like consumers, throw themselves into.

“We’re going to continue to see that more and more as people are looking for that escapism,” Johnson said. “They’re looking for something that totally sucks them in.”

A photo collage of a poster of the Amazon show The Summer I Turned Pretty surrounded with iPhone message bubbles, reading #teamjeremiah and #teamconrad

Inside the social media frenzy around ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’

Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids, MLB, the New York Liberty, and more got involved in the Amazon show. 

The design landscape is changing rapidly. In some ways, it’s more accessible than ever as AI tools flood the market and AI companies pitch consumers and businesses alike on its ease of use. In others, it’s becoming more difficult to balance the need for personalization, the myriad touchpoints, finding ways to stand out amid the onslaught of AI slop, and more.

To understand how brands are managing this shift, Marketing Brew caught up with Kiser Barnes, chief creative officer and partner at Red Antler, who is set to speak about that topic at our upcoming 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You joined Red Antler last year as partner and chief creative officer. Tell us about what you’re doing. 

What I’ve been doing over the past year is really helping to evolve Red Antler into the new era of what brand building means. Brand building now is much more multidisciplinary in terms of the touchpoints that it needs to impact, the touchpoints that it needs to affect.

There are two things that are happening. One is [that] tech and marketing are merging. Tech brands are becoming marketing brands. Marketing brands and agencies are becoming—are being forced to become—tech brands. And the tools are accelerating the speed at which we need to get to market. They’re also accelerating the ability to personalize and customize brands in ways that it’s never been before…The second part of that is about social and the idea that people are interacting with brands in very fragmented ways and multi-touchpoint ways around social. The first way you might interact with a new brand might be through a social post versus the traditional way of the past, which was typically through advertising or through a website or through some sort of marketing material…In order to be a brand expert and a brand builder, now you have to be able to think about how you orchestrate across all of these different touchpoints. You, of course, have to think about the tools and the ways that those tools become increasingly relevant to the work that you do, and you have to evolve constantly.

How does the cultural desire for personalization change the design conversation? 

It’s so exciting from a design standpoint. It means that we have to build increasingly modular brands. A lot of the ways that we think about brands are shifting from this idea of the brand bible that sits on a shelf somewhere and collects dust into this mode of a living, breathing thing that should always be evolving and always shifting…It means that we have to build a wider toolkit for brands. We’ve got to build enough of a toolkit that can be taken right by social influencers, or it can be taken by vendors, or it can be plugged into experiential in the real world. And so we have to really think wide now. I don’t think that brand teams ever did that in the past…To build a brand now, you can’t just think about the logo and the font and the color and that stuff. You’ve got to not just test it out but really think about how it shows up in the real world as experiential or retail, how it shows up on social platforms. And you have to really know those spaces…It just means that we have to build brands from a design standpoint, brands that are much richer, much more modular, much more connected to full-ecosystem thinking.

That’s all happening at a time when people have much stronger reactions to brand changes today, like we just saw with 

Brands are much more fluid, and they’re really responsive to culture now. This old idea of a pristine brand sitting in an ivory tower is not as relevant anymore. And again, it’s this influence. It’s the impact and amplification of social and influencer[s]. If you think about it, we’re in a culture of influencer. I don’t think that’s set in, but our president is an influencer, our entire cabinet is made of influencers. Not to be provocative, but we are in a culture now of influence, where influence is king. That means that brands have to be more democratic. They’ve got to really think about what their people and their fans and their loyalists really think about and care about in the brand.

Ultimately—hopefully—that’s a good thing for brands. It means it’s more influenced by [the] community, it’s more influenced in the sense of co-ownership. But I do think that’s a huge pivot.

Another major shift that we’ve touched on is the introduction of all of these AI tools to the market. That’s changing the design landscape. I’m curious, if everyone is using the same tools and those tools are trained on what has been, how can design continue to push the envelope? 

The tools are really great for, in my mind, workflow, amplification of ideas, creativity. I have a thesis that the human soul is about experimentation. What makes us really creative, and what makes us feel, what creates differentiation is experimentation. It’s like when jazz came into the scene and it created a new language of music. Every single cultural shift and change has been driven by this incredible explosion of creative experimentation. And that is what makes us uniquely human…The machine and AI can’t do that, certainly not now. I’m sure it’ll be programmed to do a little bit more of it. But that’s what makes us unique, and I do think we’re already starting to see a response to AI and to this mass adoption of AI.

You’ll see it in fashion and luxury brands are going back to stop-motion and handcrafted techniques for creating content, which is really beautiful. I do think there’s always a pendulum swing…Brands go back and forth. But I do think, ultimately, the tools allow us to do things more rapidly. They allow us to touch more spaces, and they allow us to have more depth in terms of strategy research, the foundational pieces of brand building. So from a design perspective, they allow us to take an idea and really amplify it…I do think we will always have to, as creative leaders, show up in ways that feel differentiated and cut through that sort of clutter of noise. There’s this idea of AI slop, that everything will be kind of created by AI, and it’s bots speaking to bots—the dead internet theory. There’s so many kinds of theories around this and that. Ultimately, we’ll have to find ways to differentiate, and once those tools become widely adopted, we will come up with more interesting ways to approach creativity and to approach marketing. I believe that strongly. That’s what the human spirit’s all about.

Red Antler’s CCO on the new era of brand building

Ahead of the Marketing Brew Summit, Kiser Barnes told us how the design shop is creating “richer, more modular” brands for the future. 

Rebrands aren’t just rebrands anymore. No, silly—they’re a moment for public discourse about where brands stand politically and an opportunity for onlookers to declare what design overhauls say about those stances.

Consider the case of Cracker Barrel. Last week, the chain eatery known for its kitschy Southern aesthetic introduced a new brandmark that removed its titular barrel as well as the character known as Uncle Herschel or Old Timer as part of a 

 and restaurant experience refresh. After the move was announced, Cracker Barrel’s stock took a 12% dip amid public criticism, which quickly 

 as right-wing commentators accused the brand of “going woke” instead of simply opting for a re-

The company released a statement on Monday that it “could’ve done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be,” before President Donald Trump 

 in on Tuesday and urged the company to return to its previous logo. Later that day, Cracker Barrel 

, releasing another statement announcing that “‘Old Timer’ will remain.”

Cracker Barrel isn’t alone in managing backlash to a rebrand. MSNBC’s rebrand to 

 caught ire and scorn in equal measure last week, and HBO Max’s short-lived there-and-back-again 

 was the internet’s favorite punchline earlier this year. But increasingly, rebrands are getting dragged into the culture wars. Late last year, Jaguar faced a round of 

 for its new logo that opted for a sleek new design over its beloved heritage mark to signal its move into the electric vehicle market; one ad from the new look was recently derided by the president as being “woke.”

Rolling out a rebrand is no longer a simple act of changing typefaces, logos, or taglines, and brands are faced with evaluating rebrands from all angles and determining how best to communicate them. While there have been many controversial rebrands over the years (remember Tropicana, Gap, or Pepsi?), the current cultural climate makes it all the more likely that a rebrand could draw the wrong kind of attention, and there are few ways for brands to prepare for the possibility, according to branding experts.

“Brands need [to] start getting comfortable with the [fact that the] culture wars may pull you in,” Douglas Brundage, founder and CEO of brand studio Kingsland, told Marketing Brew.

Anticipating responses to a rebrand is par for the course for marketers, and rebrands of any kind can often attract loud feedback from naysayers, experts say.

“At this point, I’ve yet to see a brand do a significant identity shift that didn’t get people hating it,” Nathan Jun Poekert, a CMO advisor and marketing consultant, wrote in a text.

In a moment where political tensions are high, a shift of any scale can draw negative attention or projections about company reasoning, which is something marketers have little control over. While marketers could do more focus groups, testing, and spend more time talking to their core customers, there’s no guarantee that will help mitigate that risk, especially from high-profile individuals intent on inflaming political tensions.

“I’m just not sure how much testing is even valuable anymore in an era where people are getting millions of views [when they] have thousands of followers for a single post targeting brands,” Jun Poekert said. “Focus groups have zero defense against cancel culture in a politically charged environment where a majority of the country is angry right now.”

With that said, there are some ways marketers might look to communicate to well-intentioned consumers about the reason behind the change. Sadie Dyer, strategy director at brand consultancy Siegel+Gale, suggested that if Cracker Barrel had found a way to give “people reassurance that this was not a strategic move to appeal to a different audience,” that could have helped it get ahead of any backlash.

In many cases, though, rebrands are still necessary, and Dyer said brand marketers are more careful and thoughtful about making a change.

The types of questions marketers ask when embarking on a rebrand “haven’t actually changed that much, because it’s always been about distinctiveness and authenticity,” Dyer said. “What makes you distinctively you, and what does this [make] you look like in the future? What do we want to be for the future, and then how do we evolve to meet that?”

As marketers consider those questions, they’re doing so at a time when people seem to be paying more attention to how brands are communicating with customers, how they show up, and the moves they make in the market.“We’re in an era where brand is becoming valued in the way it should be by a lot of these companies,” Brundage said.

Fixing a brand’s challenges in the marketplace often doesn’t start—or end—with a brand logo, and rebrands can be costly as well as time-consuming: Dyer said it can take anywhere from six months to a number of years, depending on the number of stakeholders involved and the extent of the changes. Before making that investment, marketers may consider evaluating whether brands need to change their product offerings to reflect the needs of today’s consumer, Brundage noted.

Once they’ve done that, marketers also recommend considering if their approach to advertising could use a shift first. “In my opinion, before approaching a rebrand, ask yourself, ‘Do I actually need the rebrand or are we just bad at awareness and upper-funnel marketing?’” Jun Poekert said.

For marketers who are looking at a rebrand to change how a brand is showing up in the market, the problem could instead be their media mix, Jun Poekert noted.

“You may not need a rebrand,” he said. “You just may need a better upper-funnel marketing strategy.”

If all of that still brings brands to the conclusion that a rebrand is necessary, Brundage advised reaching an understanding about what customer feedback really matters—and which opinions don’t.

“Know who you are, know who your customer is, don’t piss off your customer,” he said. “If you [piss off] someone that’s not your customer, you shouldn’t really care.”

How the rebrand became part of the culture wars

With Cracker Barrel and Jaguar at the center of political firestorms, marketing experts say brands are taking extra care before making changes.

If your TikTok feed looks anything like ours, you’ve probably seen videos of 

 with tickets to the Oasis reunion tour since it was first announced. Now that the tour is officially underway and brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher are performing together again, said dads are 

 and having emotional experiences watching Oasis perform—as 

Simply put: The Oasis reunion can’t be ignored, making it no surprise, then, that brands quickly got involved.

In June, Adidas announced a collaboration with the band that included a 

 as well as an apparel collection featuring 26 co-branded pieces to be sold online and at tour stops. Also in June, Amazon debuted its 

 with exclusive merch and limited-edition items in tandem with a curated Oasis playlist from Amazon Music.

Spotify got into the mix in mid-July with its own campaign, “This is…An Oasis Fan,” a fan portrait series that was used for out-of-home ads in Manchester, London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, as well as a 

 of fans talking about how much the band means to them. Just this week, Oasis announced the locations of fan store 

 in North America ahead of the first gig on the continent on August 24 in Toronto.

For marketers and agency execs, the Oasis reunion presents a unique opportunity to tap into a tour that’s become a rare cultural force, even while the famously volatile relationship between the Gallagher brothers could present potential challenges for companies tying up with the tour. But working with artists is no easy feat, marketers told us, and can take months of special consideration to determine whether there’s a genuine fit.

“It’s not just any reunion, right? It’s like the biggest reunion in the last decade,” Billie Baier, co-head of marketing, Spotify UK and Republic of Ireland, told Marketing Brew.

Baier said the Spotify campaign isn’t without a level of uncertainty, considering the Gallagher brothers’ tumultuous history and 

. But that’s all part of the fun, making the reunion more enticing for fans; it comes with the potential for a curveball.

“With any campaign, there’s always a risk,” Baier said. “Anything could happen at any time, but you’ve got to take the risks that you believe in.”

Paul Furia, who previously worked in entertainment marketing at talent agency William Morris and now serves as head of content and creative packaging at Media by Mother, said that to mitigate that risk for brands, agencies and talent representatives likely negotiated with that in mind.

“This is where the recovering agent in me would answer: You will have strong protections in your contract,” Furia told Marketing Brew. “If anything were to truncate this, you would get your money back, or you would get your money back plus penalties.”

Spotify’s Oasis campaign was in the works for roughly six months, Baier told us, and the marketing team decided to focus its efforts on celebrating fans of the band. Spotify then worked with Oasis’s label and management teams, which provided archived footage, video, and memorabilia to support a one-day immersive gallery activation in London dedicated to Oasis in late July, Baier said.

The company declined to share its overall media spend for the campaign, but Baier noted that it was one of its biggest marketing moments for the year for music in the UK.

“Oasis is a British story. It’s a Manchester story, and it travels around the world,” Baier said. “The strength of the anticipation and the reach of the Oasis fandom globally makes [it] a super exciting story for us to tell from a UK perspective, especially in celebrating those fans and putting them in front of and center.”

Oasis’s management team and Adidas did not respond to requests for comment. Amazon declined to comment.

In general, marketers looking to advertise around a musical act’s tour will start by finding the best fit for their brand rather than aiming for the biggest possible get, Furia explained. Questions about the artist like, “Do they align with your audience?” and, “Do they share your values?” will come first followed by considerations like scale, reach, price, notoriety, and venue size.

In the case of Oasis, there’s particular value that the “cultural zeitgeist” of the tour comes from “artists of their age,” said Rick Faigin, executive vice president for Acceleration Brand Advisory—value that could help the tour stand out with brands looking to target slightly older audiences.

Once artist and brand details align, marketers and agency partners usually suss out how the partnership can be beneficial for fans of the act, whether that’s serving as a utility (like a brand sponsoring power-charging banks at festivals like Coachella for example) or providing something more integral to the story of the tour.

“You also don’t want to be a logo slap, right?” Furia said. “A lot of times, when you speak directly with the talent or the manager or the promoter, there’s usually a story that goes along with the tour…and if you can align yourself with the narrative of what that show is going to be, that’s a multiplier.”

For bigger tours, marketers could work a year or more in advance of when a campaign will roll out, but the timeline can depend on when in the tour cycle the brand activates their marketing. Brands that have more experience sponsoring tours may get involved with as little as a few weeks ahead of time, Faigin said.

“If you are a brand that you know it’s important for you to be part of the announcement of the tour and part of the offer you need to be much further upstream,” he said, adding that financial services brands offering early access to ticket sales typically need to button up details early.

Cost may vary depending on terms including exclusivity, length, territories, sponsorship level, original content creation, total number of assets, media days with the artist, and exclusive experiences. Faigin estimated that the cost could range anywhere from low six figures to seven figures or even eight figures for some artists.

“Part of it depends on what your value [is as a brand], what you’re bringing to the table from a value standpoint for the artist,” Faigin said. “If you are selling your tickets, they like that. If you’re putting advertising behind the offer or behind the tour, they like that, too. So you may pay less in a sponsorship fee and say, ‘Look, we’re going to put $500,000 or a million dollars into working media around the tour,’ and, depending on the artist, that might be very attractive.”

That said, he noted, brands typically believe there’s more benefit in sponsoring festivals like Lollapalooza or Coachella compared to an individual tour.

For brands, the cultural interest in the reunion has already had an effect. Following the reunion’s first show on the weekend of July 5, Oasis streams were up 400% in the UK and 320% globally on Spotify, according to internal data shared with Marketing Brew. It’s not just relegated to Gen X and millennial dads: the platform also found that there have been over 16.6 million “user discoveries” of Oasis so far in 2025, with more than 50% of those from Gen Z users.

The Adidas collection initially sold out, but has been restocked, and some of the hottest items (read: the bucket hat) have sold out multiple times. Tickets for the reunion tour have also been notoriously difficult to get: In North America, tickets were 

The hype, combined with continued uncertainty of how long the Oasis reunion might last, likely makes it all the more appealing for brands to show up and celebrate along with die-hard fans.

“Reunions sell, nostalgia sells, this one specifically because it was one of those bands that none of us thought would get back together,” Furia said. “That scarcity element is so important.”

An image of Oasis along with Adidas merch and a ticket. 