👨‍❤️‍👨 Have you found the one?

👋What’s growing: Korean skincare. After K-pop and Squid Game, it’s K-beauty that is taking the US over by storm. Driven by social media creators and influencers, it’s all about multi-step skincare routines.

Amazon says the number of Korean beauty brands earning over $100,000 per year has more than doubled since 2022.

A trend to capitalize on, maybe?

🤓 

Trivia

New year, new (temporary) you.

According to Myprotein, over a third of Americans signed up for a gym membership or studio pass in January 2022. But of those who signed up, how many stopped using their membership by the end of the year?

• 25%

• 34%

• 50%

• 55%

Scroll to the bottom to find out!

TACTICS

What Everyone Can Learn From the Liquid Death x E.l.f. collab

Liquid Death doesn’t have to splurge on media buys to win attention.

Instead, they get creative.

The demon-summoning, zombie-fighting, thirst-murdering water brand regularly shakes hands with other brands for collaborations that get people talking.

Enter: e.l.f. Cosmetics and a drop-dead gore-geous “Corpse Paint” line.

Liquid Death’s VP of Creative, Andy Pearson, says brand partnerships have to make sense:

“In the middle of the Venn diagram, there’s usually a really interesting, hilarious opportunity. There tends to be a “right” answer. For a lot of the brands we work with, they get to open up and expand what they would typically do. For us, we get to go into somewhere where we wouldn’t normally be. Both of us are getting different things out of it.” 

This can apply to you, too.

Because you don’t have to be in the thick of pop culture or on the shelves of Sephora to collab successfully.

Why do it?

• Share expertise

• Enter untapped markets

• Give your brand a new look

• See your own business through a new angle

How service providers can find the right brand partner

Martin Bihl says collabs are about taking one brand and the things it represents, and mixing it with another’s. Kind of like a cocktail.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Identify potential partners. Look at their brand values, target audience and market position, using B2B market research tools like:

   1. Semrush (click here to see how)

   2. Google Trends

   3. Social media listening tools (e.g. Sprout Social and Brandwatch)

   4. LinkedIn

   5. Statista

   6. And tap into industry databases and networks

2. Going small works too. Big collabs are always good, but finding smaller partners with the right audience and might be easier to pull off and can work just as well.

3. Plan it out. Explain why you think both parties can benefit from the partnership. Be clear on what you’d bring to the table, v.s. what you’d expect of them.

Collab examples for service providers:

📍 Digital Agencies X Local Businesses: run a hyper-local campaigns leveraging geotargeted ads and region-relevant messaging.

✍️ Creative Studios X Freelance Copywriters: co-develop content packages that merge visuals with copy.

📈 Business Coaches X Project Management Platforms: Providing clients with co-branded workflows, templates and guides for goal tracking and team management.

Final tip: The best partnerships feel authentic, so find a brand that appeals to people you’ll also connect with.

CULTURE

👾 Has the algo had its day?

We’ve all experienced the internet’s obsession with personalization and algorithms that know everything about us.

🎁 For marketers, hyper-personalization is a gift.

🤮 For social media users, it can feel like you’re stuck watching the same stuff every day.

People feel the algos are hard to break free from and are pushing for de-personalized TikTok algorithms.

Meanwhile, YouTube’s new ‘Play Something’ feature helps to bring back pre-algorithm browsing styles. 

The feature has been in testing for a couple of years, letting users discover random videos with one click. When you can’t decide what to watch but want to kill some time, this is for you.

And YouTube isn’t alone in championing spur-of-the-moment content discoveries:

• TikTok and Threads are also leaning on more organic discovery methods

• A website called IMG_0001 spits out random YouTube videos created on iPhones between 2009 and 2012

• Radio is still going strong; it’s survived the internet without using algorithms (online revenue in radio advertising grew 378% in the last decade, says Statista)

Anyone who recalls rolling and clicking a mouse in a dedicated computer room will have distant memories of stumbling across cool, interesting and weird content.

YouTube’s feature hasn’t been fully rolled out yet, and we don’t know if it will take off. (Reddit users aren’t into it.)

Maybe our data obsession has come too far.

We do know it represents nostalgia for simpler times, and a break from the overwhelming, algorithmically curated experiences of modern platforms.

Which we could all use a bit of.

DATA POINT

Programmatic TV ads

The Paris 2024 Olympics was full of surprises.

Swimmer, Ryan Murphy, found out he would be father to a baby girl, just after winning bronze. Snoop Dogg carried the torch and became America’s loudest cheerleader.

But there was more behind the scenes. 

For the first time ever, ads could be purchased programmatically for all 329 medal events.

This made it easier for new advertisers to squeeze in: 70% of advertisers who bought programmatic ads in the Olympics were new this year, generating half a billion dollars all in (The Current).

This could be a sign that TV is set to become more like digital, with NBCUniversal planning to turn TV into a performance marketing channel.

Should you hop on?

According to tvscientific.com’s State of Performance TV:

• 68% of marketers saw an increase in brand awareness since using Performance TV

• 65% of marketers saw more sales when using Performance TV alongside other paid channels like search and social 

Plus, people selling Olympic Games ads, NBCUniversal, say 97% of their content is watched on a big-screen TV. Go big or go home.