Hunter Ellenbarger didn’t teach Logan Lerman how to talk like an internet girlie—but when Lerman uttered the words, “Girlie, that’s a hard no. Mama, no,” during a video shoot to promote the movie Oh, Hi!, Ellenbarger knew he had social marketing gold on his hands.

Ellenbarger is the founder of Star Quality, the design practice and consultancy behind some of the social assets in the online campaign for the Sony Pictures Classics film, a romantic comedy starring Lerman alongside Molly Gordon that premiered in late July. Working alongside Sony’s in-house marketing team, Ellenbarger and his team handled creator partnerships and creative shoots, producing five longform videos for Sony’s YouTube as well as various short-form cuts and paid social ads.

While filming one of these longer interview-based videos, Lerman began speaking in internet, which Ellenbarger identified as a perfect moment to cut into an ad to prompt viewers to buy tickets to the film. That kind of tongue-in-cheek humor, which often hits best with online audiences, brought in more than 350,000 views on a single organic X post; Ellenbarger said the video ended up being one of the film campaign’s better performing pieces of content.

The video is emblematic of Ellenbarger’s approach to marketing, which he describes as balancing the highbrow with the lowbrow.

“[My approach] puts the talent, who are these Hollywood stars that people have grown up with, are seeing on acclaimed TV shows, and it makes them more peer to peer, which is how we consume TikTok creators,” Ellenbarger said.

Continue reading here.—JN

The outdoors aren’t all sunshine and roses. There’s snakes, storms, and vultures—and even deep canyon crevices you could fall into and maybe have to cut off your arm to survive (again).

At least, that’s the story of the outdoors that Columbia Sportswear tells in the company’s latest brand campaign.

The new campaign, called “Engineered for Whatever,” is an “intentional swing” for the brand to portray the unpredictability of the outdoors this way, Columbia Sportswear’s SVP and head of marketing, Matt Sutton, told Marketing Brew. The spot, from adam&eveDDB in London, has been in the works for the last year, Sutton told us, and it’s an effort for the brand to stand out from other outdoor apparel category brands, which often embrace classic outdoor imagery.

“Our brief was a slide with six images from competitors on a slide,” Sutton said. “You block out the logos and they all looked like they were from the same brand: Perfect sunny sweeping vistas, pristine conditions, very serious models. And the insight in our brief was that over the past 20 years, the outdoor category has kind of converged, and all follow each other and do the same thing.”

Read more here.—KM

Foot traffic fell 9% year over year at American Eagle stores for the week that began August 3, marking the second week of traffic declines since the retailer launched its controversial campaign featuring actor Sydney Sweeney, according to data from Pass_by provided exclusively to Retail Brew.

American Eagle launched its campaign, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” on July 23. For the first full week after the campaign, which began on July 27, its foot traffic declined 3.9% YoY. In both of the two full weeks preceding the campaign, its traffic increased over last year, up 5.9% on the week that began July 6 and 4.9% on the week that began July 13.

The latest week (from August 3 through August 9) saw foot-traffic declines among some of the retailer’s direct competitors for younger clothing shoppers, too, though not as steep as American Eagle’s 9% YoY drop. Abercrombie & Fitch experienced lower foot traffic (-3.3%), along with H&M (-4.9%), Gap (-2.8%), and Urban Outfitters (-2.7%), per Pass_by.

Correlation, as ever, is not causation, so there’s no telling if the Sweeney campaign has directly impacted American Eagle’s foot traffic.

Retail Brew asked American Eagle to comment on the foot-traffic data. We asked whether, according to its own data, traffic and sales have increased or decreased since the campaign launched. American Eagle did not respond.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—AAN

The Marketing Brew Summit hits the stage Sept. 10, and tickets are almost gone. With less than 30 days to go, it’s your moment to lock in a front-row seat to bold ideas, big names, and brand storytelling like never before.

Stay up to date without lifting a finger (except the one that presses play). Listen to The Refill, your AI-voiced audio recap of the week’s top Marketing Brew stories. This week’s episode is all about the latest campaigns making a big splash.

Take a look at how one agency is using the highbrow/lowbrow approach to promote indie film Oh, Hi!, find out why Columbia is taking inspiration from its ads from the 80s and 90s, and check out Bud Light’s first NFL campaign of the season with Peyton Manning.

Catch the latest episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your audio media.

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Business Insider wrote about the lack of a monoculture this summer, and why the ultimate theme may end up being “brainrot.”
• Bloomberg wrote about how social algorithmic choices make TikTok trends like Labubus and Dubai chocolate seem increasingly manufactured or even random.
• Fast Company spoke with the man behind the PBS “Everyman” logo on the meaning behind the design and its renewed resonance now that Republicans stripped federal funding for public broadcasting.