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Marketing Brew

Ryan Barwick

marketingbrew.com

 X ad costs, engagement continue to fall, per report 

Data from Tracer provided a snapshot of the ad platform ecosystem.

 X ad costs and engagement continue to fall, per report 

Katie Hicks

Influencer at the center of a ring light being scanned

Deepfakes are spreading, putting creator and brand safety at risk

Michel Janse, who said her likeness was recently used without her consent, told Marketing Brew the experience was “violating.” 

How brands are thinking about a possible TikTok ban

Duolingo, Osea Malibu, and Truff are among the brands that tell us they’d turn to alternative short-form video platforms, like Instagram Shorts and YouTube Reels.

An @ symbol denoting social media and influencers

Social & Influencers

A cartoon image of Kristina Monllos created by Morning Brew

Kristina Monllos

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. 

If there’s one brand that’s come to define the “unhinged” social marketing era, it’s Duolingo.

, the language-learning platform has figured out how to continuously shock its audience while somehow getting them to do their next lesson. The brand now has more than 20 million followers across TikTok and Instagram and, in its latest earnings report, reported a 41% increase in revenue and 47.7 million daily users, a 40% increase.

Manu Orssaud, CMO of Duolingo, is set to speak at our upcoming 

 on September 10, and ahead of the event, we caught up with him to hear how the brand is continuing to push the envelope online to drive growth and customer loyalty.

This year, Duolingo had its most successful marketing moment yet with the “

” campaign. What did that stunt teach you about how to drive and sustain audience engagement? 

One of our team mantras is that the comments section is our brief. We pay close attention to what people say, and we aren’t afraid to experiment in response. Duo works because he’s not just a mascot, he’s an internet personality that people feel connected to. This campaign reminded us that sustained engagement comes from building a character people care about, then giving them a story they want to be part of. It also showed us how powerful these moments can be, and we’re excited to create more of them in the future.

As a chief marketer, how do you empower your team to take big swings and act quickly while minimizing risk? 

Part of my role is knowing how far we can push things. Our team has a great deal of autonomy, which means they can move quickly and make smart calls in the moment. Speed and trust are what enable us to stay current with culture and respond in ways that feel fresh. Of course, not every risk lands perfectly, but the goal isn’t to be safe; it’s to create work that sparks conversation and keeps people engaged with our brand.

How does Duolingo use community insights and data to deliver on what its audience is looking for? 

We use A/B testing constantly, whether that’s testing new features in the app or experimenting with something like our app icon. Community insights are also critical for our brand—we pay attention to comments, cultural trends, and how different regions respond to our content. Being a global brand means you can’t assume one size fits all, so we listen closely and adapt based on what resonates with each audience.

What are your tips for translating social virality into customer loyalty? 

Virality is only valuable if it brings people back to the core of what we do, which is helping them learn. For us, that means reminding people to do their lessons in ways that feel natural and fun. In a world where our competitors are anything that takes up screen time, building loyalty comes from meeting people where they are and showing up consistently so Duolingo stays top of mind.

As more brands adopt “unhinged” marketing tactics, how is Duolingo continuing to push the envelope to stay ahead? 

We will continue to take risks and listen to our audience, as that’s the foundation of our strategy. What keeps us ahead is that we don’t rely on one platform or format—we’re flexible and always trying new things. For example, we’ve invested in YouTube Shorts, where we’ve seen a 400% YoY growth in impressions, and we’re continually looking at where audiences are spending their time next. Staying ahead means experimenting before something becomes oversaturated and ensuring our voice always feels authentic.

 of your social media manager Zaria Parvez, who became known for spearheading Duolingo’s “unhinged” antics, how is Duolingo thinking about the next phase of its social strategy? 

Duolingo’s social presence has always been guided by a culture of experimentation and a deep understanding of our audience. That approach will continue to guide us as we keep testing, learning, and iterating to make sure our brand personality stays unique and central to cultural conversations. Zaria was instrumental in building the brand we have today, and we’re grateful for her impact. At the same time, our approach has always been driven by the entire team, with social-first thinking embedded across everything we do. We have a talented team that understands our brand and audience deeply, and we will continue building a brand with a unique personality that stays at the heart of cultural conversations.

How are you thinking about growth and brand-building as Duolingo ventures into games like 

 and continues building its roster of mascots beyond Duo? 

We see growth as expanding the ways people can engage with Duolingo while staying true to our mission of making learning fun and effective. That means exploring new subjects, like chess, which taps into the same idea of building skills through daily practice. It also means continuing to tell stories through our [mascot] characters, as they provide us with new ways to connect with diverse audiences worldwide. We’re excited to continue exploring new spaces and discovering innovative ways to engage with our audiences.

What trends in marketing are you watching right now or most excited about? 

I’m excited about the rise of in-person marketing experiences. As much as digital is at the core of us, there’s real power in showing up physically where our fans are. Our Charli xcx concert stunt and our merch store pop-up, which featured special-edition Crocs in New York, are great examples of how we can translate our online presence into experiences people want to be part of. These activations let us connect in a deeper way and create cultural moments that extend far beyond the screen.

CMO Manu Orssaud shared insights into how the brand stays on top of culture to drive loyalty

How Duolingo turns social stunts into long-term growth

Ahead of the Marketing Brew Summit, CMO Manu Orssaud shared insights into how the brand stays on top of culture to drive loyalty.

When a brand seeds products to creators, it’s often clear from the packaging and labels who sent the product.

That wasn’t the case for K-beauty-inspired skin-care brand Peach & Lily’s latest product launch. Instead, the brand chose to send its newest anti-aging serum, the MiniProtein Exosome Bioactive Ampoule, to creators sans brand name, product name, or even instructions to post.

The goal, CEO Alicia Yoon said, was to generate intrigue among its creator set, which ranges from dermatologists to makeup artists, and to encourage them to review the product and educate viewers in an honest and engaging manner.

“This could be a launch that you do in a very boring, dry way, where it almost feels like a lecture that nobody asked for on the science,” Yoon told us. “We thought, ‘What can we do where we don’t sacrifice on the things that we need to do at launch, while keeping engagement super high?’”

Seeding products anonymously seems to have paid off for Peach & Lily. Within the first two hours of the MiniProtein Exosome Bioactive Ampoule’s official unveiling at a 

 in Manhattan that was attended by around 60 creators, the brand generated 1 million impressions and five times the engagement of previous campaigns, Yoon said. Since then, she said, engagement has remained more than double that of past launch periods across social media and in inquiries across email, DMs, and customer service channels.

“We really were excited about that as a win because it shows that there’s a lot of passion and excitement about the product, and that was our initial challenge,” she said.

From a marketing perspective, there are some risks to sending out an unbranded product and asking for feedback. For one thing, a reviewer may be inclined to be harsher in their review without having any brand affinity to consider.

While Yoon said there were some nerves before launch, the years of studies about the product instilled some confidence that creators would like it.

“There was a lot of excited nervousness around the team because [the creators didn’t] know the brand,” she said. “It’s not like they were given a brief, or we had any control over what they were going to share, so it was actually really exciting to see what kinds of things that they would notice and talk about.”

Of the 14 creators who received the product, Yoon said only a handful had worked with Peach & Lily before, although many had posted about the brand organically, which put them on the brand’s radar. There were also creators who had never posted about or worked with the brand before, but had the level of skin-care expertise the brand was looking for.

“We wanted to select experts who could talk at the level of depth that we know that we needed for the product and still have very high engagement with their audience,” Yoon said.

To get the products to the creators anonymously, Yoon said Peach & Lily used an intermediary agency that sent creators a product ingredient list and a few details about the science behind the product and asked if they were interested. Creators who said yes then received the product from the agency in unmarked glass bottles.

After several creators posted organically, a few also did paid posts about the branded product on social and Substack following the afterparty reveal.

Makeup artist Erica Taylor, who has more than 2.2 million followers on TikTok, was one of the creators who posted about the product in pre- and post-reveal videos, the first of which has racked up more than 320,000 views and 13,000 likes. She told us this was the first anonymous mailer she’d received.

“I’ve been in this industry for 30 years, and so much of the stuff is the same,” Taylor told us. “It was just really exciting to be a part of that and experience it like a blind date.”

 growing in popularity, it’s perhaps no surprise that some creators were intrigued to post about an unbranded skin-care product. Taylor said the intrigue contributed to the level of engagement she saw on the video, and that she also enjoyed the simplicity of the mailer, which helped it stand out among other brands.

“I find the really big PR packages very wasteful and excessive when it’s a giant box and shenanigans and one little product,” she said. “I like that it was a small box to just try the product and let it speak for itself.”

Photo collage of a woman holding a product in her hand and a written Instagram post from Peach and Lily contained in abstract shapes.

How one skin-care brand cut through online with an unbranded product 

To drum up interest, Peach & Lily sent creators its newest serum anonymously, which to some creators felt like a “blind date.” 

Jasmine Sheena

TikTok wants sellers on TikTok Shop to livestream on the weekend.

The short-form video’s e-commerce platform is incentivizing sellers to livestream on the weekend by offering to co-funds coupons on products for eligible sellers. The effort, according to some sellers and agencies Marketing Brew spoke with, is dubbed “Golden Weekend Live,” and it marks a dedicated effort from TikTok Shop to try to get weekend live-shopping events to catch on in the US market.

, particularly those in East Asia, but it hasn’t picked up steam in the same way in the US. Livestreaming on the weekend in particular could present a lucrative opportunity for sellers, according to Cory Iffert, owner, co-founder, and CEO, at the agency Iffert Media.

“The weekends are really beneficial for people to go live,” he said. “People that have full-time jobs may just not want to go live on the weekends, because they have family, they have plans, [or] they’re going on vacation.”

TikTok declined to comment on the record.

Livestream shopping set-ups are a time-intensive process, according to William August, CEO at the agency Outlandish Inc, and some brands may choose to outsource it to agencies like his. For brands, livestreaming can be a big time commitment: both August and Iffert recommended that sellers do at least a two-hour-long livestreaming session every time they go live. That way, they said, brands can gain exposure for their products and build trust with customers through familiarity and consistency.

“Many sellers don’t realize that these are real people watching you, so you have to entertain and do customer service and educate on products and sell very quickly to 300 people at the same time,” August told Marketing Brew. “Generally, the sellers let us do it.”

Both Outlandish and Iffert Marketing have built out physical spaces (in Santa Monica, California, and Nashville, Tennessee, respectively), that feature sets from which they livestream for clients. While Iffert does all livestreaming for its clients, Outlandish occasionally allows certain clients for bigger livestreams to run their own streams.

While length is a crucial factor in livestreaming, so is content. Iffert said that his company’s hosts often point viewers to positive reviews left by customers, sometimes quoting from them directly, to highlight the potential benefits of products while also looking to gently push back on any negative sentiments they see in less-than-positive reviews, Iffert said.

Outlandish uses an approach called FABES, August said, an acronym for features, advances, benefits, evidence, and sell. A key part of the strategy, he said, is to use storytelling to emphasize “the pain points [that] this product is solving.”

Timing is key for driving sales on livestreaming, too. Running flash sales, in which a product is usually offered at a discounted price for a short period of time, can sometimes boost sales from livestreams, Iffert said.

After “we got all the product info done, now we’re like, ‘Okay, it’s on a flash sale for the next five minutes. You guys don’t have that much time. There’s only two left. Who’s going to get it?’” he said. “Then we hard-sell for a little bit until those are gone, and then we just repeat that whole thing again with a different product or with that product.”

When viewership of a livestream drops, hosts can make adjustments to their pitch, August told Marketing Brew, like by hosting a flash giveaway on the stream.

“It’s a constant battle of up and down,” he said.

Overall, despite the effort that livestreaming can take, some livestreams have proven to be quite lucrative on TikTok Shop. Pop Mart, the maker of 

 and other blind-box products, notched an 

 85% of its June TikTok Shop sales from livestreamed content, according to e-commerce data firm Charm.io. While TikTok’s future in the US 

, for Iffert Marketing, the platform is more important than ever.

“We fully pivoted to just TikTok and TikTok Shop, so we don’t work on other platforms anymore,” Iffert said.

Gif of TikTok logo on multiple phones turning off and another phone screen turning blue. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photo: Adobe Stock.

TikTok Shop is encouraging sellers to embrace weekend livestreaming

Livestreaming can bring wins for sellers, but it’s a time-intensive process, experts said.

Jennimai Nguyen

Before July 27 of this year, the brand name Skindinavia was mostly known by makeup professionals. But after a business partnership breakup and an Instagram post from founder Allen Goldman, the 20-year-old beauty brand was suddenly introduced to makeup lovers everywhere.

Skindinavia is the maker and patent holder of a setting-spray formula that was previously known as Urban Decay’s cult-favorite All Nighter Setting Spray. Goldman created the signature formula in 2007, promising to preserve makeup in heat and humidity using since-patented temperature-control technology. The setting spray was briefly sold under the Skindinavia brand at Ulta and online, but Goldman said he saw little success; two years later, Goldman teamed up with Urban Decay to rebrand and lean on the larger company’s marketing prowess.

For years, it was a successful partnership: the All Nighter has consistently been one of Urban Decay’s best-selling products. Then, earlier this year, it was all over.

Urban Decay and its parent company L’Oréal 

 a reformulation of the All Nighter, which also marked the end of its relationship with Skindinavia. The reformulated All Nighter promises longer wear time and a new scent, and is being marketed online as an “upgraded” version, which Goldman took issue with. That’s when Goldman posted to Skindinavia’s Instagram, directing fans to acquire the original formulation through “trusted partners” and unofficially marking the brand’s foray into primarily selling the formula directly to consumers for the first time in nearly two decades.

“They launched this new thing, and essentially, the marketing campaign is the old one sucked,” Goldman said. “Why on earth are you confusing the customer as to what you even have? This is a new product that’s not the product we had [together], calling it the same thing, very similar bottle…And oh, by the way, that’s a product I still make.”

L’Oréal did not respond to Marketing Brew’s requests for comment.

After Skindinavia’s partnership with Urban Decay, Goldman said the Skindinavia brand has largely targeted professional makeup artists, while Urban Decay catered to a more general audience.

“My goal with my partner was not to compete with them, not only for ethical reasons, but for business reasons. This is a very saturated category, so to confuse the customer [about] where you can get it, what it is, who you are, who they are, seems crazy,” Goldman said. “And quite frankly, there was no point doing it.”

Over the years, the All Nighter grew popular with beauty influencers and beauty fans, particularly 

 YouTube beauty creators’ videos. In 2019, Urban Decay partnered with then-emerging TikTok creators Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae to promote the product to the audiences on the platform. Plus, the product was being sold in Ulta and Sephora, major beauty retailers that were not carrying Skindinavia products, he said.

Goldman credits the product’s success to Urban Decay’s marketing, including its brand storytelling, its existing following, and the budget that can come with corporate ownership. By ceding broader brand recognition, though, he said he’s now feeling the ramifications.

“To accelerate that distribution model, the partnership that we had did it, but it was at the price of building a great brand, and that’s what left me exposed,” Goldman said.

The new All Nighter product and campaign are part of a larger marketing effort from Urban Decay called “Battle the Bland” that also includes a partnership with content creator Tara Yummy, who is serving as the new face of the reformulated product. But Goldman is focused on reaching customers still interested in the original formulation, which he is doing through outreach on Instagram and TikTok after his initial post brought in a large new audience; he told us his followers nearly doubled after his initial post.

“As small as it sounds, we’re working—all of us—until pretty late, to thank people and…to try to respond to every message,” he said.

Amid the pivot, Goldman has plans to create educational content about his brand and product, host Instagram Lives to answer any questions about his business. But he doesn’t want audiences to buy Skindinavia because they pity him, he told us—that’s not the lasting image he wants customers to associate with his brand moving forward.

Instead, “we gotta get our information out there,” he told us. “We have to engage our customer, and then we have to move on and serve that customer.”

A photo composite of a bottle of Urban Decay All Nighter spray and Skindinavia setting spray, both black spray bottles along with a goodbye message from Skindinavia.

How one Instagram post brought Skindinavia a whole new audience

After a business relationship with Urban Decay came to an end, the beauty brand’s founder’s post unofficially kicked off a new brand era. 

Marketers love to “surprise and delight.” So do consumers.

People are increasingly purchasing items without knowing exactly what product, or which variation of a product, they’re going to get. This year, the phenomenon of blind boxes, or mystery boxes, which originated in Asian markets, took off with US consumers amid the growing popularity of keychain Labubu dolls and Sonny Angel figurines. Pop Mart, the brand behind Labubus and other blind-box brands, made 13.88 billion yuan ($1.93 billion) in the first half of this year 

MGA Entertainment sells blind-box items like LOL Surprise dolls, which first launched in 2016, and CMO Josh Hackbarth said the company is seeing a current “burst” in demand, which he credits in part to nostalgia and to the rise of the “

“A lot of the kids that grew up with our products and maybe some similar surprise unboxing ones now have adult money,” Hackbarth told us.

It’s not just toy brands getting in on the trend. Andy Rebhun, chief marketing and experience officer of fast-casual chain Cava, told us the brand decided to give out blind-box-style pita-chip plushies with the purchase of its Hot Harissa Meal earlier this month after seeing the social media fervor for Pop Mart items.

“The team decided to lean in and place a bet,” Rebhun said. “Sure enough, it was a really good bet for this moment in culture.”

For brands of all kinds, blind boxes can serve to encourage repeat purchases while presenting a marketing opportunity to reach customers of different ages and budgets. Beyond that, the excitement around unboxing mystery items is ripe for social, giving brands a chance to go viral and generate additional brand awareness online.

If there’s one thing that unites people of all ages, it’s a love of opening presents.

“Consumers really like the element of surprise and not knowing,” Rebhun said. “It’s like when you think about the holiday time when people unwrap a gift, it usually evokes a feeling of excitement and joy.”

While LOL Surprise’s main demographic is kids, Hackbarth said the brand has seen more interest from adults, especially among collector audiences, as it’s released lines with throwback IP, like the Powerpuff Girls and Care Bears.

Blind boxes can also provide an opportunity for brands with higher price points to reach customers with smaller budgets. Athleisure brand Set Active, streetwear brand Madhappy, and cookware brand Le Creuset are among the retailers that have used mystery boxes to help clear out 

 at lower price points, and luxury liquidation brands like Heat and Scarce sell mystery boxes filled with 

“[It’s] a very covert, easy way to get [product] out the door,” Noah Eisemann, global managing director of social and influencer at VML, told us.

As inflation and tariffs push up the prices of many everyday products, some consumers may view blind boxes as mini-luxuries or affordable treats, Eisemann said. The Le Creuset Factory to Table sale, for instance, offers consumers the chance to buy a mystery box that costs $50 and promises up to $350 worth of products.

LOL Surprise dolls encourage repeat purchases through a collect-them-all strategy, which sometimes involves interconnecting toys to crack a code or unlock a certain power once a set is complete. However, there are also benefits for brands that lean into the scarcity mindset to drum up product interest. For its activation, Cava set a limit of one plushie per customer across the US, Rebhun said—although he did hear of some people going back for seconds.

“We appreciate that excitement,” he said.

Whether it’s unboxing a Labubu doll or a Le Creuset mystery box, the widespread interest and emotional intrigue of a blind box is ripe for user-generated content.

Unboxing content has long thrived on YouTube, with 10- to 15-minute-long episodes showing off every item detail, but in the last couple of years, Hackbarth has observed an explosion of shorter and snappier creator-led unboxing videos on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts. The #BlindBox tag on TikTok alone has more than 1.3 million posts, and some creators on the platform have built enormous followings from posting unboxing content.

“People want to tell others and show others what they’ve got and create that shared experience,” Hackbarth said.

The influx of social content that comes from blind boxes is what inspired Cava to venture into the space, Rebhun said. In a private Instagram channel with brand superfans, Cava prompted members to share pictures of their plushies once secured, but he said most of the plushie content online has been organic, he said.

“They created videos, they did Instagram static posts,” Rebhun said. “It’s really a pleasure to see that type of reaction to something like this because it’s everything that marketers and brands would want.”

MGA partners with creators to produce unboxing videos, Hackbarth said, and that content has generated hundreds of millions of views, both paid and organic. ASMR-style videos, he noted, are particularly appealing to some viewers.

The company is also experimenting with eventized, live unboxings, which are teased ahead of time to help build excitement and reach both kids and kidults alike.

That all can add to the dopamine hit of the surprise, which users can experience secondhand through the screen.

“It’s that thrill of the chase,” Hackbarth said.

A Labubu, a Le Crueset Dutch Oven and a stuffed plushie pita chip coming out of the top of an open box.

Brands are thinking out of the (blind) box

Labubu, Le Creuset, and Cava are leaning into mystery items to generate excitement online and encourage repeat purchases.

Why brands are thinking out of the (blind) box

 exploring how brands craft standout social media strategies. If you’d like to chat about how your brand is approaching social, Katie Hicks wants to hear about it. Reach out to her at 

“Hi, welcome to Chili’s” is more than just a Vine reference. It’s also the greeting that an increasing number of people might hear as the chain restaurant draws record numbers.

Brinker International, which owns the fast-casual chains Chili’s and Maggiano’s Little Italy, reported 

 earnings last week, bolstered by a 24% increase in sales at Chili’s in the quarter. For 17 consecutive quarters, Chili’s has defied the odds, finding a way to draw customers in at a time when many sit-down chain restaurants are struggling to compete.

The secret, at least on the social side, just might be memes—combined with a few deals here and there. According to Brinker International’s earnings report, Chili’s latest sales growth is a direct result of advertising highlighting the brand’s “industry-leading value” and “[encouraging] guest trial.”

CMO George Felix, who joined Chili’s three years ago, credits much of the brand’s recent success to being very online.

“In the last year to year and a half, we’ve really seen social media being a real driver of our business, and to tangible traffic into our restaurants and sales,” Felix told Marketing Brew.

We spoke with Felix about how the brand is balancing fun and deal-driven content, and drawing in guests of all ages as a result.

Felix, who previously led marketing for brands like Tinder, Pizza Hut, and KFC, said his mission when he joined the company was to “make Chili’s a relevant brand again in pop culture and in the zeitgeist.”

To do it, he turned to social media, and especially TikTok, giving his social team the “green light to move and move quickly.”

He believes that strategy has paid off for the restaurant chain.

“I’m a big believer that as a brand, you’ve got to take a lot of swings,” Felix said. “It’s just like baseball. Every swing you have isn’t going to be a home run, but the more you take, you’re going to get some singles, you’re going to get some doubles; the more [swings] you take, you’re going to hit a few more home runs.”

So long as brand guardrails are in place, he said, social is “the perfect place to experiment” with marketing ideas, something that Chili’s does regularly, whether that’s 

 at TGI Fridays in a comment on X in May, or joking about 

 over international borders, which the brand did in a TikTok video from February.

Felix said he thinks that brands that post less frequently inevitably put more pressure on themselves to bat a thousand while also lessening their chances of actually going viral.

“The worst that can happen is you have something that really doesn’t go anywhere, and then you’ve got another shot the next day,” he said.

Beyond spontaneous social posts, Felix said Chili’s plans “culture pops,” which are “meant to keep Chili’s in the cultural conversation.” The brand’s nostalgia-driven 

 at its new Scranton, Pennsylvania, location, which took off earlier this year, and its collab with Western apparel brand Tecovas on “

,” which dropped in late July, are recent examples; posts about both saw millions of views on TikTok.

Sometimes, a viral opportunity presents itself organically, Felix said—in which case it’s equally important to move fast. Last year, Chili’s Triple Dipper meal deal that offers customers a choice of three types of appetizer took off on TikTok around the same time that Felix said the chain was promoting a new menu item, the Big Smasher Burger. Rather than continue with its regularly scheduled programming, he said, the team decided to pivot and “put gas on the fire” around the Triple Dipper, and the mozzarella sticks in particular.

 and really jumping on that, it was something we couldn’t ignore,” Felix said.

Chili’s asked creators who were previously tasked with posting about burgers to post about triple dipping instead, and the Chili’s culinary team whipped up secret menu items like Nashville hot and honey-chipotle mozzarella sticks. Those efforts, Felix said, led to hundreds of millions of views and engagements on TikTok. Sales of the Triple Dipper, which costs just under $18, have grown 70% year over year and now account for 14% of Chili’s total sales, he said.

“The lesson for me was you have to be willing to let your fans have some control on the things that they love about your brand, and meet them where they are, and then have fun with it,” he said.

For Chili’s, it’s not all cheese pulls and memes. The brand has considerably upped its marketing budget, raising it from $32 million in 2022 to $137 million in 2025, while doubling down on the message that it’s a place where customers can save a few bucks.

Earlier this year, Chili’s hosted a “fast-food financing” 

 next to a Manhattan McDonald’s location, emphasizing rising prices at fast-food chains and the $10.99 price tag on the Chili’s 3 for Me combo meal option. (The restaurant brand also 

 The Big QP, a menu item designed to compete directly with the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder.) Felix said the decision to message around prices came from social listening and seeing videos from frustrated drive-thru customers, which led the marketing team to realize Chili’s had an opportunity to showcase itself as a lower-cost, higher-quality dining experience.

But social posts can only go so far, and the strength of that argument only comes through if diners do have a higher-quality experience. Chili’s has invested in making improvements to its food and restaurant interiors, with Felix acknowledging the importance of presentation. If all goes well, he said, an order from the kitchen could be seen by millions of people online.

“Virality led people to be curious enough to come into Chili’s, and our team members are doing an amazing job delivering a great experience,” he said. “When they have a great experience, they’re more likely to come back and tell all their friends about it.”

As for what the brand’s next viral moment could be? Felix said the culinary and beverage teams are watching social trends and have new items coming in October geared towards fans. He said he’s watching how Gen Z guests seem to love different sauce options and is experimenting with showcasing Triple Dipper “hacks” online, like putting mozzarella sticks on burger bites.

“Fried cheese,” he said, “knows no bounds.”

screenshots from Chili's TikTok posts featuring food and restaurant exteriors on mobile phone screens, with one screen in the middle held by a hand