I always feel like these monthly marketing thoughts end up being a weird little record of what my brain has latched onto that month. Not necessarily the biggest campaigns, or the most important industry news, or the things everyone is talking about on LinkedIn. Just the things I keep noticing in normal life and then, unfortunately for everyone around me, turning into marketing thoughts. It’s June, it’s cold, and for those who know me well, you’ll know this month has been a little more chaotic than most – so let’s begin!
contextual targeting is only good when the context is actually right
My favourite thing at the moment, and by favourite I mean something I am now weirdly obsessed with every time it happens, is the ads inside the Weatherzone app. I don’t know when they started popping up because maybe I just didn’t notice them before, but lately every time I open the app to see whether I need to dress for Antarctica or a normal Perth winter day, there’s an ad that is so confidently wrong it actually makes me laugh (I should say, ONCE it was right – I’ll give them that). Last night it was a Coles ad pushing sunscreen sales, and directly underneath it the weather was heavy showers and 16 degrees. Then the other day it was something about cooling off with icy pops, and the weather was possible showers and 15 degrees #facepalm.
And I don’t know how Weatherzone advertising works, so this is not me pretending I understand the back end of it. Maybe there’s a super complex system where it’s meant to trigger certain ads based on temperature, location, weather conditions, time of day, who knows. Maybe Coles booked a general winter campaign and Weatherzone has just shoved it in a placement and there’s no clever weather matching happening at all. But because the copy is SO contextual, because it’s saying “sun’s out” while the app is literally telling me the sun is very much not out, it makes the whole thing feel broken. If the ad was just a normal sunscreen ad, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it for more than half a second. But the second you try to be clever with context, the context 10000% has to hold up.
I actually do love contextual targeting. I think when it’s done well, it’s one of the simplest ways to make an ad feel like it belongs where it is. And it doesn’t have to be overly complicated either. Sometimes it’s as basic as a bus stop ad that says “Hey Bedford” instead of “Hey Perth”, and you know full well it’s not revolutionary, but for a second your brain still goes, oh, that’s where I am. It just feels slightly more considered. Same with weather, location, season, events, suburbs, times of day, whatever it is. A tiny bit of relevance can make something feel less like an ad that’s been blasted everywhere and more like something made for this exact moment.
But I think that’s also why it falls apart so fast when it’s wrong. If you’re going to say “sun’s out”, the sun really does need to be out. If you’re going to reference rain, it should probably be raining. If you’re going to talk to me like you know what’s happening where I am, then you do actually need to know what’s happening where I am. And maybe the safer version is sometimes just less clever. Like, if you can’t guarantee the weather trigger is going to be right, maybe don’t write the copy like you’re standing outside my house with a Bureau of Meteorology certificate and a clipboard. Maybe just say sunscreen is on sale (or you know, just don’t reference Summer weather in Winter).
I feel like context is one of those things marketers can get very excited about because it feels clever. And I do get it. I also get excited about it. But I think the Weatherzone thing is a good reminder that contextual creative doesn’t have to be insanely advanced, it just has to be accurate. You don’t need to build some enormous, scary targeting machine if a simple “show this in summer” and “do not show this when Perth is sopping wet” would solve most of it. The bar is not really that high.
A24 keep choosing quality over quantity and I am obsessed
I feel like if someone asked me right now for a brand to reference in entertainment marketing, I would probably say A24 before they even finished the question. And I know that’s not exactly a hot take because a lot of people love A24, but I think what I really like is that their marketing feels like their films. It’s not just that the movies are different and quirky and interesting, and then the marketing is some standard media plan with a trailer, a few bus shelters, a cast interview on BuzzFeed and a billboard in a shopping centre. The marketing feels like it comes from the same brain as the films, which I think is much harder to do than people make it seem.
The one that made me think about this again this month was Backrooms, which I did accidentally call Backdoor in my notes for a second, and I’m glad I corrected myself because that is a very different campaign. But for Backrooms they’ve been doing these installations with what is basically just blue tape in the shape of a door. That’s it. A few strips of tape on a wall, in different cities, and if you know, you know. If you don’t know, it probably looks like some weird council maintenance thing or maybe a portal you should not walk through. But that’s kind of the point. It’s not a giant billboard yelling MOVIE OUT NOW. It’s a little reference placed into the world for the people who are already tuned into the world of the film.
It’s not trying to make every single person walking past understand the campaign instantly. It’s not trying to get every possible impression out of every possible surface. It’s almost the opposite. It’s for the person who sees it and goes, oh my god, that’s from Backrooms, and then takes a photo, sends it to their friend, posts it, or goes down a little rabbit hole. Which, is so much more valuable for a film like that than a passive “oh yeah I saw a poster” moment. It’s quality over quantity, and that feels very A24. Their whole brand kind of has that same energy. Not everything is for everyone, but the people it is for are usually very, very in.
I loved this with The Drama too, the Zendaya and Robert Pattinson film, where they did the fake engagement announcement in the newspaper. It was such a good extension of the film world because it didn’t feel like an ad trying to look like an ad. It felt like a piece of the story had leaked into real life. And then they also did the Vegas wedding chapel thing (in the most horrible/best designed website ever), which again is so ridiculous and specific and completely unnecessary in the best way. I found The Drama interesting because I don’t think I saw it advertised in the really obvious, mass-market way, but the people who knew about it seemed genuinely excited.
I feel like so much entertainment marketing runs from the same playbook, and to be fair, that playbook probably works a lot of the time. Trailer, posters, cast press, social clips, premiere photos, done. But A24 always seem to find the little angle that makes the marketing feel like part of the thing itself.
And that’s probably why I keep coming back to them as an example. It’s not because every brand should go and tape doors onto walls or take out fake wedding notices in newspapers. But I do think there’s something in the idea of asking whether your marketing actually feels like your brand, or whether it just feels like marketing. Because A24 doesn’t seem to be asking, “How do we reach the most people possible?” every single time. It feels like they’re asking, “How do we make the right people feel like they’ve found something?” And I think that’s a waaaaaay more interesting question.
trust is so easy to chip away at and so hard to get back
There were two consumer trust things I saw this month that sat in the same part of my brain, even though they were quite different. The first was Grill’d and the Tree Day Tuesday thing, where the ACCC has taken legal action over claims around donations for tree planting. The campaign was basically presented as $1 from every Tuesday burger going towards planting trees, but then when you actually looked at what qualified, it was so specific. You had to be a Relish member, dine in, order at the counter, scan your barcode, buy a main item, not use another offer, and another 84 different items. And obviously – it turned out only a small percentage of Tuesday burgers actually qualified (like… 4%).
And I know Grill’d has said it still donated money but I think the issue is that what customers thought they were participating in and what was actually happening were not the same thing. If I buy a burger because I think $1 is going to trees, and then later I find out my burger didn’t count because I ordered at the table using a QR code like a normal person in the year 2026, I would feel pretty annoyed. Even if the brand did technically donate something.
The second one was HiSmile, who paid penalties after the ACCC said some of their social videos made it look like random shoppers were trying their products and giving positive reviews, when they were actually employees. And this one is interesting because, working in social, I can completely see how a brand gets there. You need ads. You need testimonial-style content. Real customers are hard to organise. Talent is expensive. Everyone internally is already there. Someone says, “What if we just film it like a street interview?” and suddenly it feels like a quick, scrappy social solve. But from a consumer point of view, the whole value of that format is that it looks like an unbiased person giving a genuine reaction. That is literally why it works.
And I think social has made this blurrier because so much content is made to look casual and native and spontaneous. On TV, we’re used to the tiny “paid actor” disclaimer or the very obvious ad format. On TikTok and Reels, everything is meant to look like someone just whipped out their phone and captured a real moment. Which is great creatively, but also risky if the entire thing depends on people thinking something is more organic than it really is. If it’s staff, just say it’s staff. If it’s actors, say it’s actors. If the donation only applies under certain conditions, make the conditions actually visible and understandable, not buried in a terms and conditions page.
I really do think trust is one of those things brands talk about wanting to build all the time, and then sometimes accidentally chip away at with tiny decisions. And it’s not even one huge scandal most of the time. It’s just a mismatch between what people believed and what was actually true. The donation wasn’t as broad as they thought. The review wasn’t from who they thought. The result wasn’t as permanent as they thought. The product claim was a little more complicated than the ad made it sound. And people are already SOOO sceptical. They are already assuming brands are maybe exaggerating a bit. So when they find out something wasn’t quite right, it doesn’t take much for them to go, see, I KNEW ITTTT.
And trust never really shows up in big campaign ideas or strategies or even really my own marketing thoughts – because trust is not NEAR as much fun to talk about as a smart activation or a viral reel. But it sits underneath everythingggg. If people trust you, they will give you a lot more room to move. They’ll believe your claims. They’ll tell their friends. They’ll forgive the odd mistake. But if they feel like you’ve been a bit sneaky, even technically sneaky, it is so hard to get that back. And especially now, when people can screenshot, comment, pull apart T&Cs, find old posts and turn something into a whole conversation within about 8 minutes, the risk of being too smart with the fine print just feels so much higher than whatever short-term upside you get from making the claim sound bigger than it really is. TLDR: Not worth it.
hot girl pickles and the pinky ring that somehow makes perfect sense
I have spoken about Hot Girl Pickles before, and I will probably speak about them again because I am very into what they’re doing. If someone asked me who my fav FMCG brand is – they would be right up there. Because pickles are objectively SUCH a basic product. I mean, they are (very tasty) cucumbers in a jar. And somehow Hot Girl Pickles has made them feel like a personality trait, a status symbol, an identity, a thing you would not just buy but want to be seen buying. Which is a very hard thing to do with anything, let alone something that lives next to olives.
So when I saw they had done a jewellery collaboration with SETTE, my first reaction was honestly, wait, what? Why would anyone want a pickle ring? I was trying to picture a literal pickle on a ring and I just couldn’t get there. Then I actually looked at it, and it made so much more sense. SETTE is one of those jewellery brands that does cool, stackable, not-engagement-ring rings. Like, very cool girl rings. So it wasn’t a pickle ring in the novelty sense. It was a green lab-grown diamond pinky ring. Hot Girl Rings meet Hot Girl Pickles, basically. Which is, annoyingly, a very good sentence.
A post shared by SETTE | Designer Fine Jewelry (@settejewelry)
And I think that’s why it works. It’s unexpected, but it’s not random. Both brands have that loud, fun, genuinely desirable thing going on. Hot Girl Pickles is bold in a supermarket aisle. SETTE is doing fine jewellery in a way that feels playful and expressive rather than overly serious. So while on paper “pickles x diamonds” sounds kinda insane, in practice it actually has really clear brand alignment. It’s not like Hot Girl Pickles slapped their logo on a ring and hoped the internet would care. SETTE still made something that feels like SETTE. Hot Girl Pickles just gave it this extra layer of meaning and weirdness and conversation. 11/10 from me.
The other bit I loved about the partnership was that if you bought the ring before a certain date, you got sent a jar of Hot Girl Pickles to get you through while the ring was being made. That is such a tiny detail, but it makes the whole thing feel complete. Like of course you need pickles while you wait for your pickle-adjacent diamond pinky ring. Of course. It’s not the main reason you’d buy it, but it makes the collaboration feel like a proper thing rather than just a product drop.
I think brand collaborations often get talked about like they have to make immediate, logical sense. Like the two products must sit next to each other in a very neat customer journey diagram. But sometimes the best collaborations are the ones that make you pause for a second and go why???? Then you look closer and realise the overlap isn’t product category, it’s audience, tone, energy, personality. That’s what this feels like. It’s not about pickle lovers needing jewellery or jewellery lovers needing pickles. It’s about two brands that understand the same type of person, or at least the same type of internet brain. And when that alignment is strong enough, the product can be weird and it still works.
brittney saunders reminded me that being a good human is still a strategy
This month Brittney Saunders, who founded FAYT, posted about wanting to make content for brands for free while she was in Europe. She was basically saying she was going to be over there, summer vibes, beautiful locations, and she wanted to create some content for small brands and send them finished videos, maybe use her own channels, and do it as a bit of a founder favour. And it went absoluuuuutely bonkers. Thousands and thousands of brands in the comments which is obviously amazing, but also there is no world where one person can make content for 7,500 brands while also being on a European trip.
And I don’t know what she expected to happen. Maybe she knew it would go huge. Maybe she thought a few hundred brands would comment and then it became a whole thing. But either way, I thought it was such a good example of goodwill turning into reach. And I know I’ve spoken before about giving things away for free, especially when I did the International Women’s Day free design thing and saw how much goodwill and connection came from that. So I don’t really want this to be another “free stuff is a good marketing strategy” thought, because that feels too neat and also a bit annoying. You can’t pay rent in goodwill, sadly.
What I found more interesting is that it felt very true to her. Brittney’s whole brand, or at least the way I see her online, is built around transparency, sharing business learnings, showing the behind the scenes, talking about what works and what doesn’t, and genuinely trying to help other business owners. She has the podcast, she shares the messy bits, she teaches things, she makes founder content in a way that feels quite generous. So when she says, “I want to make content for your brand for free,” it doesn’t feel like a hollow PR stunt. It feels like something she would actually do. And I think that’s why people responded so strongly to it. It matched what they already believed about her.
I think there probably more than that – is that being a good human (most of the time) really does pay off. I know this is meant to be marketing thoughts, not a motivational poster in the bathroom, but I keep seeing it play out all around me at the moment. The people and brands that are doing well at the moment are not always the ones with the biggest budgets or the slickest funnels or the most aggressive acquisition strategy. Sometimes they are just the ones people like. The ones people trust. The ones people want to see win. The ones who do favours, share knowledge, make introductions, give back when they can, and don’t make every single interaction feel like there’s a hidden invoice attached.
And I think, especially when budgets are tight and people are being really careful with where they spend money, that stuff matters more. I’m not necessarily the exact FAYT customer. I don’t know that the clothes are always something I’d automatically buy. But would I consider buying from Brittney Saunders because I feel like she’s proven herself to be a good person and a smart business owner? Yes, probably. And I think that’s actually a huge part of brand now. People don’t just want the product. They want to feel okay about who they are giving their money to.
And realistically, being a good person is about as simple a marketing strategy as you can have at the moment.
creative market gives people an actual reason to open their emails
This one is a very executional little thought, but I keep thinking about it, so here we are. Creative Market is a platform where you can buy design assets like fonts, templates, graphics, mockups, stock bits, backgrounds, all that kind of stuff. But the thing I really like from a marketing point of view is their free goods email.
Every week, they send out an email with four free downloads. It might be a font, some wildflower graphics, a pattern, Instagram templates, brushes, whatever. Not everything is relevant to me. Most weeks, if I’m honest, I click through, look at it, and go, no, I do not need a vintage cowboy font today, although who knows when I might (proceeds to download). But the point is, I still open the email. Every single week I’m curious enough to see what the free things are. And then once I’m on the site, there’s the very easy next step of “become a member” and get the full monthly bundle of graphics, templates, fonts etc.
And I think that’s why I like it as an email example. So many brands send emails because they feel like they should send emails. “Shop new arrivals.” “Winter essentials.” “Our founder’s favourites.” And some of those can work, obviously. I am not anti-email. I love email. But a lot of the time there’s no real reason for the customer to open it unless they already happen to be in a buying mood. There’s nothing new enough or useful enough or interesting enough to pull them back. It’s just a brand saying, hey, remember we exist? Which is fine, but not exactly super exciting for anyone.
The Creative Market email works because it gives me a reason to click even when I’m not planning to buy anything. There is curiosity built into it. What are the four free things this week? Is there a font I’ll love? Is there a template I can use? Is there something I should download now just in case future Jordan needs it for a project in 2027? Probably. And even when I don’t download anything, I’ve still opened the email, visited the site, seen the membership offer again, remembered the brand exists, and mentally filed it away for the next time I need something.
And I don’t think the point is that every brand needs to start giving things away for free. It’s more about giving people a real reason to come back. A reason to open. A reason to click. A reason to check what’s new. The question isn’t just “what do we want to send?” It’s “why would someone care enough to open this?” And then, even more importantly, “why would they click through?” Creative Market has made that answer really simple. There are free things. They change every week. Some of them might be useful. And that is apparently enough to get me back on the website over and over again.
