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Ryan Barwick

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 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

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

How Chili’s continues to drive sales from social media

For 17 consecutive quarters, the restaurant chain has seen sales grow—and CMO George Felix credits that, in part, to its social presence.

Jennimai Nguyen

All Taylor Swift had to do was show off some orange, sparkly text on a podcast preview clip, and the brands ran like the wind.

Swifties far and wide rejoiced when the singer-songwriter herself graced the 

 podcast with her presence, joining hosts and NFL stars Jason and Travis Kelce (the latter of whom Swift is famously dating) to not only make her podcast debut, but to exclusively announce her 12th studio album, 

 more than 1.3 million livestream viewers and 13 million views on YouTube in the first 24 hours, per Variety.

The day before the episode officially dropped on August 13, the show posted a short clip showing Swift with a briefcase emblazoned with “T.S.” in orange, glittery font, where she pulled out the new album cover (which was blurred out to keep the suspense high). That’s all it took for brands to get involved on social media, where it suddenly felt like a race to incorporate the new Taylor lore into posts and branding.

 its products front and center on the forthcoming album cover. Dunkin’s already orange logo got the 

 its own showgirl, longtime presenter Vanna White, in various orange outfits from over the years. Petco 

 pet parents that cats can be Swifties, too.

Applebee’s posted a screenshot of a Swift-inspired menu 

 as a fan waiting for the podcast drop (and ordering snacks). Reese’s, which is a partner on 

Douglas Brundage, CEO and founder of brand studio Kingsland, told us that “brands are a lot freer with their identities these days,” which can give brand marketers space to react and get in on things like the TS12 hype swiftly.

With that said, just because brands can react quickly to a pop culture moment doesn’t always mean it will have tangible, positive effects.

“For a while, just the social proof of, ‘Look, we’re online too, we’ve also reacted to this,’ was all that it took for people to kind of react and [think], ‘Oh, wow, you’re cool, you get it,’” Brundage said. “I don’t think that’s really it anymore. I think you should react to social moments or cultural moments when they make sense for your brand.”

Though the barrage of Taylor-related posts may have led to temporary excitement around participating brands, Brundage believes that kind of engagement isn’t really worth much. Instead, he said that when brands take a day or two to think about what they can add to a cultural moment rather than rushing to react, content is more likely to break through the noise.

And even better? Have a tailored game plan for how to interact with big pop culture moments, he advised.

“You need a playbook about how you handle cultural moments as a brand, and what kind of moments you get involved with, why and how,” Brundage said. “The ‘how’ is actually the most important.”

posts from Tarte Cosmetics (life of a tarte girl), Dunkin' (Dunkin', in sparkly orange letters), and Petco (Life of a showcat: Meredith's version) referencing Taylor Swift's album announcement, Life of a Showgirl.

How brands rushed to get in on Taylor Swift’s album announcement

While it might be tempting to jump in on a pop culture moment like TS12, one brand strategy expert says there’s value in waiting.

A cartoon image of Kristina Monllos created by Morning Brew

Kristina Monllos

Johanna Voss wants to know why redlining is a problem.

Voss, a talent manager, regularly negotiates with brands and agencies on behalf of her influencer clients. In doing so, she’s become accustomed to redlining, or striking out, certain clauses in contracts, often in the terms and conditions section, or the “fine print,” where she says she generally advocates for more creator protections. According to Voss, it’s crucial for talent managers to be able to redline the terms and conditions, and she has often redlined contracts to reflect discussions that were part of the negotiation process she went through with the brand or agency involved.

But what was once a regular course of business is now getting pushback. Instead of being able to redline contracts like usual, Voss said she has recently been sent contracts to review after negotiations, with language that Voss can’t redline.

“The brand gets everything,” Voss told Marketing Brew. “There’s zero protection of the creator. I’ve had about four or five [deals] come over in the past couple of weeks where they send the agreement, they’re like, ‘Oh, FYI, we can’t redline terms and conditions.’”

Voss isn’t alone. In the last 18 months or so, Molly Tracy, CEO and founder of talent management shop Vrai, told us she’s gotten “a lot more pushback” on editing the terms and conditions of a contract, often being told that her agency can only edit the scope of work.

Terms and conditions are “where all this stuff is that needs to have the biggest edits,” she said. “That’s where your indemnifications are. That’s where most of your termination [agreement is], all of your usage clauses—all of that is in the Ts and Cs. That’s the part that we need to edit.”

The rise in agencies and brands limiting redlining comes as the creator economy continues to surge and as influencer marketing deals become more commonplace. Some marketing experts say that limiting redlining could be a simple efficiency play as investment grows and as marketers have more contracts to work through. But talent managers told us it’s causing friction in the negotiation process, all while putting them in a difficult position.

“It’s starting to become really problematic,” Samantha Hicks, managing director at Shine Talent Group, said. “We will agree to specific terms…and then we get the contract, and it’s completely different from what we’ve agreed to, and they won’t accept redlines. That obviously puts us in a tough spot because we can’t accept that.”

Major brands are doubling down on the creator economy—or, in the case of 

, planning to hire 20 times more influencers. Overall spending on influencer marketing in the US is expected to reach $10 billion this year, according to 

 from the World Federation of Advertisers, 54% of brand marketers said they plan to increase their influencer spend this year.

As marketers continue to scale their investment in influencer marketing, there are more contracts to negotiate, and to limit costs, it could make sense to adopt a no-redlining policy, at least in some cases, said Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing shop Village Marketing.

“We have clients where we’re spending $20 million, $30 million a quarter in the influencer space—and we’re not paying any influencer individually, on average, more than $25,000,” Segar told us. “When you do the math on that, we’re doing hundreds of thousands of agreements, invoices, you name it. What doesn’t make sense is when you’re paying a creator $1,000 and you have a back-and-forth legal contract where you’re spending five hours of legal money on redlines. There is a proportionate structure that needs to happen with deals.”

Marketers haven’t always found the ideal process to manage the volume. “When you’re working at scale, the legal hours can really rack up,” Mae Karwowski, founder of influencer marketing shop Obviously said (although she noted that her shop still allows for redlines). “Maybe it’s a cost-savings measure on the part of some of these brands, or they're just saying, ‘Hey, there are enough creators—we know we’ll get someone to actually sign this.’”

It could come down to cost savings alone or perhaps a broader effort at making the process of working with many creators more time-efficient, Jonathan Daly, head of communications strategy for creative agency Johannes Leonardo, said.

“If you’re trying to build out a program that has 50 or 100 influencers…there’s probably an impetus to make that as efficient as possible,” Daly said. “So it’s one standard contract [that] I’m gonna send this out to 200 creators. Hopefully we get enough back, and it’s like, ‘Take it or leave it. These are the terms. This is what we want.’ It’s just about moving at pace.”

Even as marketers manage potential growing pains, talent managers aren’t all sold on the argument and told us that they won’t accept terms or conditions that could put clients in a precarious position.

To manage the pushback on redlining, some talent managers say they are asking agencies and brands for a master service agreement that supersedes the terms and conditions that they’ve been told they’re no longer able to augment.

“I have seen a little bit more this year of a willingness to come up with a master service agreement for agencies that we work with quite often,” Tracy said. “We know that we cannot edit these terms and conditions on every single contract, but can we come to a conclusion on terms and conditions that we find equitable for both of us that we can then use as an MSA, or a master service agreement, across the board for all of our campaigns.”

Hicks has taken a similar approach, offering master service agreements for her clients at Shine. “We do this one time and we agree on the general terms and conditions,” Hicks said. “We call that final. Then we have a scope of work that can be modified, talent to talent, based on what the deliverables are, but then we’re not spending days going back and forth redlining the terms and conditions. I think it is a fair compromise.”

That said, it’s not a fix that will necessarily work across the board. “That only really works if you’re working with that agency a lot,” Tracy said.

A hand holding a red pen crossing out words from a contract.

Limits on contract redlining are growing in creator marketing

Limits on contract redlining are growing as influencer marketing budgets expand, and talent managers say it’s causing friction in the negotiating process.

Talent managers are reading the fine print in creator contracts. They can’t always change it

Jasmine Sheena

This fall, digital creators are officially getting a seat at the table in Washington.

The Congressional Creators Caucus, a group dedicated to giving creators space to discuss public policy, was first announced in June, and is expected to roll out full-steam ahead when lawmakers return to Washington in September.

The caucus was initially facilitated by YouTube creators Matthew and Stephanie Patrick, who are behind the YouTube channel The Game Theorists, as a way to raise issues creators face as small-business operators. The organization, which has support from 

, has bipartisan support: the caucus is headed by Republican US Rep. Beth Van Duyne and Democratic US Rep. Yvette Clarke.

The caucus comes as the creator economy is projected to grow to $480 billion by 2027, according to creator platform Kajabi. Even as the industry grows and adapts, creators, some of whom generate 

 individually, face a number of business challenges, Van Duyne said.

“When you look at these content creators, the majority of them are small businesses,” she said. “They’re not really treated like small businesses. I don’t think a lot of people think of content creators as revenue generators.”

Van Duyne, who sits on the House Committee on Small Business, recalls visiting a $5 million, 80,000-square-foot production facility in February that the YouTuber account Dude Perfect erected in Frisco, Texas, the state she reps. There, she said, she spoke with Dude Perfect employees about the struggles creators face—one of which is the lack of recognition as small businesses.

During the visit, YouTube’s team pitched her on the idea for the caucus, she told us.

 posted to X, Matthew Patrick (who goes by MatPat online) said that the caucus will focus on educating lawmakers on specific issues affecting creators such as responsible use of AI and clearer tax codes for classifying creators, and Van Duyne said the caucus will work on policies ensuring that the US stays ahead in the international AI race while putting “guardrails on without stifling that progress.”

To that end, the caucus will support tax legislation that is representative of creators’ unique financial circumstances, Van Duyne said.

“The income that they’re making ebbs and flows: They can make a ton of money one day, and then they can make nothing for weeks,” Van Duyne said. The caucus “needs to hear these stories…as we are creating laws around this industry.”

The caucus is looking to intake with creators whose perspectives stand to inform its discussions and policies, and Van Duyne said the group is sourcing them through YouTube, as well as through an intake form on Clarke’s site. To evaluate and vet the creators they work with, Van Duyne’s own team considers criteria like subscriber-base size and the amount of time a creator has been active, according to the lawmaker.

She has ambitions for the caucus to be a lively and active group and plans to hold meetings once the session begins.

“A lot of caucuses that we’ve got in Congress, some are very active, and some of them barely ever meet,” she said. “I would like this to be an active caucus, and I want to give content creators a platform directly to lawmakers.”

The Congressional Creators Caucus is taking on Washington this fall

The bipartisan group, backed by YouTube and Patreon, is dedicated to giving creators space to discuss public policy.

As if streaming wasn’t fragmented enough, audiences now have plenty of social media series to tune into, too.

, which portrays a fictional restaurant with all characters played by creator Drew Talbert, are 

 online, and brands seem eager to get in on the action.

 wrapped Season 2 of its weekly TikTok series 

 released Season 4 of its social soap opera 

 hired a writer’s PA from the HBO series 

 to make a sketch comedy series about blush called 

Brands have tried to re-create TV magic before. More than a decade ago, Chipotle released a four-part, 30-minute satirical web series called 

 have attempted to produce their own TV shows (while Zillow is getting front-row treatment in HGTV’s social media-to-TV show 

.) But with minutes-long shows geared toward today’s quick scrollers and vertical screens, this seems to be a new era for organic content, where the lines of advertising and entertainment continue to blur.

Bilt, Pretzelized, and Oatly are among the brands experimenting with the format, and we spoke to marketing execs from each one about what they’ve learned from investing in highly produced, sometimes unbranded social content.

Whether you know it or not, you may have recently watched content from payments and commerce network Bilt. In June, the brand posted the first episode of its series 

, an ultra-short sitcom about young people living in New York that Cyrus Ferguson, senior director of content at Bilt, told us was inspired by 

. The show lives on TikTok and Instagram and has since amassed more than 130,000 followers combined.

Ferguson said the series was created to build brand goodwill and awareness as a purely organic social play. “We had this idea bubbling around more serial, narrative-driven, character-driven content, and how that felt like a really cool opportunity that not a lot of brands were doing,” he said.

The series focuses on renting, which ties to Bilt’s company purpose, but Ferguson said it isn’t meant to promote any specific offering. Rather, 

is aimed at entertaining viewers while complementing Bilt’s “very robust” paid ad strategy, he said. So far, the only mention of Bilt is in the account bio.

Zoe Oz, CMO of Bilt, told us that putting out largely unbranded, humorous organic content is how Bilt aims to catch the attention of savvy, fast-moving TikTok and Reels viewers, many of whom, like Oz, may be ad-avoidant.

“If I see ads, I scroll as fast as I possibly can, because the UIs of these platforms make it very obvious [that] something’s an ad,” she said, noting that “if you can crack that nut and you can really create content people want to see and will go out of their way to watch, they’ll build a much stronger brand affinity.”

How, though, does a brand build affinity if it’s largely hidden? Ferguson said viewers often mention Bilt in the comments and educate each other on what the platform is. Subtle character mentions of the brand and its rewards program are also not off-limits in scripting, Oz said, so long as it’s not “in your face.”

and Ferguson said he and his team are coming up with ideas and shooting episodes every week. They’re thinking through what a season finale and second season might look like, he said, and have begun fielding requests from creators and actors hoping to get involved in future episodes.

“It’s fun to now see that there’s enough appetite from the audience to really treat this like a show,” he said.

This spring, snack brand Pretzelized put out a four-part, vertical-video series, its first digital campaign, called 

 in which two comedians debate the brand’s chip categorization as part pita and part pretzel. The aim of the series, according to Blair Hirak, Pretzelized’s head of digital and social content development, was to help build brand recall.

, and I was like, ‘Well, why don’t we lean into this sketch-comedy approach?’” Hirak told us.

Hirak said she was inspired to make the content episodic after seeing Tower 28’s 

, which was released around the same time. Alex Kalatzis, Tower 28’s director of marketing, told the newsletter Link in Bio that the brand had similarly ventured into scripted comedy as part of a “test and learn” approach.

For Pretzelized, the test paid off. Hirak said the brand, which put about $125,000 in paid behind its series and gained more than 17,000 followers on TikTok, in addition to reaching 9.4 million unique accounts and getting more than 22 million impressions across platforms. Based on the results, she said, the brand is going to continue leaning into comedy, possibly developing a new season of 

or even bringing back the comedians featured as brand ambassadors.

The experience ultimately showed Hirak the importance of not taking social too seriously.

“It’s time to go back to the roots and what social used to be when it first started becoming a thing, which is fun and just throwing stuff against the wall,” she said, adding that it’s important to “[make] sure that that’s entertainment first.”

Dairy-alternative brand Oatly has also recently ventured into the short-series space with 

, a nine-episode series in which Jeremy Mercado, one of the brand’s employees, brings his grandfather Luis to Chicago coffee shops to try drinks he’s never tasted before, like matcha lattes and espresso tonics, and get his unfiltered reaction.

Kevin Warwick, creative producer of Oatly’s global content studio, told us that including Mercado’s grandfather added a naturally comedic element to the series through his banter and outsider perspective. Oatly serves as a “supporting character” in the series, and the oat milk is occasionally used in the drinks or appears in the background, but Warwick said the series isn’t designed to be seen as a commercial. Instead, the spotlight is on the coffee shops featured in the series.

“We’re always looking to show off our expertise in coffee and establish our reverence for the coffee community,” Warwick said.

While the series was mostly unscripted and filmed horizontally for YouTube, Warwick said his team has vertical cuts for TikTok that it’s begun rolling out. If Oatly sees engagement with the series in the Chicago market, he said the brand might film in other cities and continue to build brand reverence by showcasing Oatly’s own employees.

“Within your own walls, there are some real talented personalities that can be in front of a camera and—this sounds incredibly wack—sparkle,” he said. “Giving that talent its own platform can be awesome…and strengthen the brand in the long run.”

Correction 8/19/25: This story has been updated to clarify that Tower 28 hired a writer's PA.

A collage of stills from content series from Bilt, Pretzelized, and Oatly

Brands are producing original series for social. Here’s why

From “Alwayz Bratz” to “Roomies,” brands are seeking to entertain viewers in hopes of building brand affinity and reaching savvy, ad-averse audiences. 

Sylvanian Drama, the social media account beloved by brands and 3.5 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, could soon be back with a different name after its latest brand-deal-related lawsuit was settled.

Since its inception, the account, which is run by creator Thea von Engelbrechten, has featured “Calico Critters” (known as “Sylvanian Family” dolls outside the US and Canada) in R-rated situations. The account recently went dark after the Calico Critter toymaker Epoch filed a 

 alleging copyright and trademark infringement and accusing von Engelbrechten of profiting off Epoch’s intellectual property without its permission.

That suit has now been resolved through a confidential settlement, according to a 

 from Epoch. The company did not respond to Marketing Brew’s request for comment.

It wasn’t the first time Epoch had tried (and backed down from) legal action against von Engelbrechten. In 2023, the company filed a a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice with TikTok, 

 that von Engelbrechten violated fair use laws, which led to a brief shutdown of the Sylvanian Drama TikTok account in 2024 before the platform reinstated it as a parody account, much to fans’ delight.

In the most recent suit, initially filed in April, Epoch focused on Sylvanian Drama’s deeper venture into brand deals, which Joe Lawlor, advertising and IP lawyer at law firm Haynes Boone, told us can strengthen these kinds of cases. According to court documents, Epoch sought up to $150,000 in damages per work infringed, including for sponsored content with brands like Sephora, Away, Marc Jacobs, Kate Spade, Burberry, Netflix, Supergoop, and Taco Bell. (In the lawsuit, Epoch also cited von Engelbrechten’s interview with 

 last year, in which she stated that she had always wanted to work in advertising.)

“What [Epoch was] going for is that this account was really a marketing/advertising device,” Lawlor said. “It’s all about these brand partnerships [and] trying to paint this account as one that’s not really a creative outlet or parody, but instead one to market products.”

Lawlor, who has no connection to the Epoch lawsuit, said he doesn’t think the trademark claims on the dolls’ likeness were based on a particularly strong argument, but it’s possible that a court could have found merit in the claims that von Engelbrechten used Epoch’s IP to generate profit, rather than simply parodying the brand, he said. Von Engelbrechten indicated in a 

 that the Sylvanian Drama name and profile picture will be replaced.

While Epoch’s suit is wrapped, there could still be risks for brands that choose to partner with parody creators.

While there can be reputational risks that come with being named in lawsuits, Lawlor noted that there didn’t appear to be any blowback on Sylvanian Drama or the brands that partnered with the account, but rather on Epoch, at least based on online chatter.

“People [were] just upset that they [were] not seeing the content that they love on TikTok and that all [seemed] to be directed at Epoch and Calico Critters,” he said.

 to have used Calico Critters toys in parody content, and fans of her page 