Friday bite
A new weekly bitesize Friday version
Wait, why is Josh emailing me on a Friday? The Early Stage Growth newsletter usually lands on a Tuesday?!
We’re trialling something new. It is, in the spirit of growth, an experiment. So please hit reply and send me all of your feedback.
What is it?
A short form, Friday email that contains the latest social and brand trends we’re seeing that week.
The idea is that you’ll learn about rawdogging, have ideas on how to get “gen z to write your marketing script” and see all the interesting brand collabs, before they get so mainstream that your least favourite corporate puts them on their social.
We’ll be sharing an image, a link and a sentence or two of commentary.
What else?
It’s going to arrive just before Friday lunchtime so you can take it away to discuss over your team lunches.
At the moment we’ll keep this under the main newsletter umbrella, but we might break this out in the future.
So without much further ado, here’s this week’s list of Friday bites….
What consistency looks like on social
If you’ve seen an Away social post recently it’s likely been purple. Purple everything. Even purple Moo Deng. The boring way to have done this would have been with a set of predesigned ‘templates’ all branded in the new purple. But Away kept it social-first across seven different formats.
The oddest brand collab of the year so far?
I’m a huge fan of AG1. And despite what its critics may say about efficacy, the brand has always targeted the health and fitness optimiser.
Which begs the question of why partner with Starbucks, whose grande caramel frappuccino contains 60 grams of sugar.
Maybe it’s because I’m a Brit, but it feels like I’m missing something here.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
On TikTok, People are talking through embarrassing memories to Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy. And aping our increasingly tip-loving culture, people are asking for tips for doing anything and everything.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Perhaps an extension to ‘we asked gen z to write this marketing script’ there’s ‘we got our dad to do this dance’. (NB: no, to our social team, I won’t be doing this)
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
And in bigger brand world, Nike continues its rediscovery phase, with its retreat to DTC over the last decade now commonly seen as a failure. On Tuesday in its earning calls, they talked of a forthcoming return to “bigger, bolder brand storytelling.” I thought the “No guts, no gold” campaigns were a real return to form this year.
And finally, for those targeting millennials and looking for a tie-in, Adam Brody is back with a new Netflix show that’s causing a nostalgic look back from those who were there.
Hit reply, and let me know what you think? Hate it? Love it? What can make this better – let me know.
Keen to see the results of the experiment 👀
I personally prefer longer form/essay style, but I get the sense that I’m in the minority 😅