Grimace Takeover and Lettuce Taco 'bout it! | Weekly Digital Marketing Update 6/27

Joe and Kiersten talk about the TikTok sensation: Grimace! These two discuss Mcdonald's and Barbie marketing tactics and how some have been surprising and somewhat horrific. Later, Joe and Jamie take on a Taco Bell lawsuit on "Taco Tuesday" as well as the latest Tiktok trends.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Today on the Record podcast, theBizarre Grimace, TikTok Trend, Barbie's latest
marketing move, and a little bitabout the Taco copyright controversy on this week's
Record. Of Record is a podcastfocus on the marketing and advertising industry from

(00:32):
the perspective of industry expert Joe Clements. Joe Clements is a co founder of
Strategic Digital Services, a digital marketingfirm based in Tallahassee, Florida, and
founded in twenty fourteen. Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the

(00:59):
Record podcast. This actually maybe twoin one week. We had one we
recorded last week but didn't get edited, but it'll be up this week along
with this one. So to twofrom one is you going to holiday weekend?
I'm your host Joe Clements, withco host Kirsten and once again at
the producer switch clicking the buttons producerJamie, Hello, I figured out how

(01:25):
to do my mic this time.That's good, and you're a little a
little bit green. Didn't know totalking to the mic last time. As
long as you push the buttons correctly, that's that's the job. Those are
crickets, nice, They're still right. Yeah, So the big story that

(01:49):
I've seen this week. Everything that'smost interesting. I'm not sure if it's
it's it's the biggest, but it'smost interesting is McDonald's is making a hush
around the character Grimace. And soif you don't know McDonald's back in the
day, and they kind of letoff on this in the late nineties early
two thousands, but there's a wholecast of McDonald's theme characters, not just

(02:14):
Ronald. I mean, do youknow about this, producer, Jamie,
do you know the McDonald's characters?I did not know at all? Okay,
did you? Did you go toMcDonald's and you're a kid? Were
you like I want a happy mail? I did, but I just knew
about Ronald McDonald. Yeah. Uh. So they have Ronald McDonald and then
the Hamburglar and Grimace And here's somecute google what the other ones are gonna

(02:38):
say? I have him right hereif you're yeah, yeah, Grimace,
Hamburglar, Birdie, the early Bird, she was like the breakfast Uncle,
Oh, Grimacey, U, Mayormcchee I remember Mayor mccheese, the Fry
Kids Sunday and Captain Crook. Idon't remember Captain Krook. Yeah, my

(03:00):
kids I have. It's literally they'relike these little um you see, They're
like they're like little like tamagotchi lookingthings. Okay, I don't know,
I don't remember those. I rememberthe Hamburglar, Grimace and um Grimace is
scary. Grimace is like Barney's likedefective but existing way before Barney. But

(03:24):
you know, what you would callthis in the business is some ip arbitrage.
They had this old ip sitting aroundno one remembered. They've been watching
for the last few years as everybodydoes these like retro throwback kicks. McDonald's
was like, hey, we haveretro. In fact, we may be
the definition of retro in marketing.I don't think anything is more associated with

(03:47):
the millennial middle class childhoods than McDonald'sand the associated happy meal and play place.
So they resurface the big purple characterGrimace and Kirsten, like, what's
the product they're they're pushing with this. It is a milkshake. It is
a very like flavored purple milkshake.And the whole theme around it is people

(04:15):
say you can't say something bad aboutthe milkshake, or Grimace comes and gets
you and TikTok and these influencers haveliterally just taken a hard left and are
like making some of the most frighteninghorror tiktoks of themselves getting like waterboarded by
Grimmace. It's like becoming a purplezombie. Yes, like hanging like I

(04:36):
mean, very very grass. Sothey're like literally like they're like like with
like the it's terrible like so uhyeah, it'll be someone like I'm gonna
try this new Grimace milkshake. It'llbe some you know gen z And he's
like gonna try this Grimace milkshake andthen he drinks it in like snap,
he's like dead and there's like youknow, he's dead in a pool of

(05:00):
purple drink. Yeah, so we'llget back to that marketing campaign. A
couple of layers on why McDonald's isdoing this. McDonald's is, you know,
until recently, we've been right upthere, Dan Heuser Bush, You're
like, man, they are someof the best marketers. I mean,
I think overall, and Hair's abush probably still is. They just stepped
on a landmine and blew off theirright leg. McDonald's is intergenerationally great at

(05:29):
marketing. The whole Grimace thing isone not designed to market to kids.
It's designed to market to adults,to the parents. Two, it's you
know, a throwback campaign. Wealready discussed that. And then what seems
to be pushing the most attention isthere isn't associated advertising campaign with a bunch

(05:51):
of like old They have clips ofold Grimace commercials like Happy Birthday Grimace.
Yeah. I was gonna say,can I show you some of these pictures
real quick? Yeah? They totalk about retro. Look how they're doing
these photos. They have like ahigh flash it looks like it's been taken
on Oh it looks like I wastaking in nineteen eighty three. Yeah,
you're at my McDonald's birthday party whenI turned eight. Yeah, Like it's

(06:13):
over exposed, like really yep,taken on an old click flash camera.
They have like the old school likerappers and stuff. Well, actually they
don't not in this. It's notthat yellow rapper that you use that is
weird. So it's, um,what do you call that? Anachronism?
Yeah? And anachronism. And there'sone here where he's holding his looks like
his license that it says California onit. I can't read the rest because

(06:38):
as we've discovered them last week.Kirsten's eyes are poor. So yeah,
in that campaign, that layering ofthe you know, if you were if
you know, you know, ifyou're old enough to remember the McDonald's birthday
party, that's what everybody's pictures lookedlike when you still took the little Fuji
film and dropped it off at Walgreensand they developed it and you got it
back. So there's even a throwbackin the visual, not just the character.

(07:00):
It's a very clever campaign. Peoplethat came up with it geniuses.
Great job at coming up with itand implementing it. So what's happened?
You have this front facing piece ofthe campaign which is designed to tell me,
you know, thirty eight year oldelder millennial with a small child,

(07:20):
like, oh, hey, youremember how cool McDonald's was. Don't you
want to take your kid to McDonald's, Like, hey, let's go to
McDonald's and you can get the you'llprobably not get the purple milkshake, but
you know, you'll talk about it. Sit there like your kid EIDs McDonald's,
remember the pictures? Stuff like that. It's a good you know,
intergenerational effect is what it's called.An advertising I think that you would definitely

(07:44):
get your kid the Grimace drink.It's purple, like bright purple. She
loves purple. Yeah. Now thebackside of that campaign is what you're talking
about on TikTok, which is almostthis like shadow world mirror campaign. And
we were you know, you wereasking earlier Kirston like, oh, why
would McDonald's do that? And Isaid they're probably not. What they probably

(08:05):
did is spent gave an agency amillion dollars and said go spend, go
spread this around on influencers, andwe don't want to know what they're doing
with it. They just have toshow the product. And they've probably started
this weeks ago. It's called memeticiteration. So what they do is the
agency goes out starts doing deals liesinfluencers like hey, you make three pieces

(08:28):
of content about the Grimmace milkshake,we'll pay you five hundred bucks. We'll
pay four hundred bucks. So theygo do it, and then there's watch
so you know, some dude justdrinks it AND's like, oh, yeah,
that's good. You know, somebodydrinks it and gives a you know,
sophisticated review of it, and thenyou have you know, some dude
and he's like, wouldn't it befunny if I drank this and like pretended

(08:50):
Grimma's killed me. And he didthat and it worked, and so they
saw the feedback that that worked,and then the other influencers saw and the
agency sent that to their other influencers. There's an example of what to do.
And so then they created this verybizarre seeming trend on TikTok that's drawing
attention to the product, not becauseanybody came up with that idea. They

(09:13):
spread the money around and they waitedto see what was going to work,
and then they iterated on it.They said, all right, everybody do
a version of this, and that'swhat you're seeing right now. Yeah,
I think that's exactly what's happening,because I was like, who at McDonald's
is like, okay, influencers,like you're all going to act like Gramma's
killed you with his shake. Likeit seemed like a little maybe that did

(09:35):
happen, but it sounds like whatyou said, Like a couple of influencers
got really like pulled it, Likethey got a lot of views for doing
it. People were like, whatthe heck, that's so weird and they're
like, everybody do that right nowexactly, and like, you know,
nobody McDonald said this, and thatwas the genius of it is they funded
it to see what would organically emerge. And this goes back, This goes

(09:56):
this tactic goes back to the beginningof public relations advertising with Edward Burney's who
we've talked about before. He wroteseveral books about this, and one of
his early tactics was to make thingslook like a trend, and you would
just you know, they would doletter writing campaigns back in the twenties and
thirties to try and get people onboard. But this is just the modern

(10:16):
version of that of creating a socialtrend, creating some social proof for it.
Yeah, now somebody's gonna say,ah, but they're making the milkshake
look great or they're making the milkshakelook terrible. But I don't think that
matters in this case, because Idon't think anybody's going to McDonald's is actually

(10:37):
getting the milkshake. The milkshake isreminding them McDonald's, and they're going there
and ordering whatever they were going toorder before. Yeah. Man, I'm
not gonna lie though I've now that. We've talked about that earlier this morning
about it. I've been thinking aboutgetting at shake all day, so we
talked about my theory on that.I believe if you went to McDonald's right
now and order that milkshake, they'dbe like, our milkshake machine is down.

(11:01):
Stephen literally just said he had togo to two of them to find
it. Yeah, so that checks. Yeah. Now maybe a bunch of
you know, gen gen zers aregoing to buy it for the bit.
Yeah. Well, I think itreally works, especially with my generation right
now, because of I don't knowif you guys are aware of like the
horror game and horror movie coming outfive nights at Freddie's if you've Oh,

(11:24):
it's a really big trend right now, and because it's really big in the
gaming world and with my group,um, and it's where like animatronics and
people and stuff suits kill you.Oh. I think that's why, like
we're taking it such a darker likehorror approach, and that's why more people
are like invested in it because horrorwas already something that was this macro trend

(11:46):
and they just kind of blended themacro trend. That makes sense. Yeah,
it's a bull strategy. You know, I think McDonald's has been doing
actually pretty good with a lot oftheir marketing. They've been doing like the
like the Cardi be meal did,like the Sweetie meal, and it's the
same thing, like even right here, the grimmace like birthday meal is.
It's it's what a big mac ora ten piece chicken nugget, which you're

(12:13):
probably the two biggest sellers in theMcDonald's world. So the next thing on
this that the McDonald's pr people willdo, and this is the next move
in the book, is you getit trending on TikTok, or you get
it trending on you know, Instagramwherever. Maybe it's trending on YouTube shorts
who knows. Is then you goto the media and you're like, hey,

(12:33):
you should do a story on thislatest trend. In fact, we've
written the script for you, andhere's the media release. You can talk
about it. And it's timely becauseit's on TikTok and it's weird. I'm
gonna need them to bring back thesnack rap. I cannot say it enough.
Everybody misses it. Everybody liked it, Grammas. No one was asking

(12:58):
for that. I never woke upand was like, God, I wish
I had a grimace right now.I have woken up and said I want
a snack rap right now. Sothis ties into another story that I saw
come out of Bloomberg over the weekend, and it is legacy media network profits
have fallen sixty percent in a decade, so a lot of them are down.

(13:22):
You know, Netflix in twenty thirteenwas a twenty billion dollars in profit
company. Now it's down into ten. It's similar to Disney situation. What
is driving that, I think iswhat you're seeing on social media. The
success of that of that influencer campaignis proving the point of why the legacy

(13:46):
media companies are worth less because asan advertiser, McDonald's will probably realize about
as much value out of that TikTokcampaign as they will from running ads on
TV. The only thing is theypaid, like some kid in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, three hundred dollars to pourmilkshake on himself instead of paying you know,

(14:09):
an ad rap at the TV affiliatethere thirty thousand bucks to run for
the month, or the national TVCBS affiliate or whatever it is to run
the ad in the area or thenational campaign. Plus now TikTok content is
working because people are watching it,which means they're not watching TV. So

(14:31):
I think that's what's actually eating themedia launch here and not what the articles
suggest, which is, oh,it's just mostly more competition. There's not
more competition. It's the same amountof channels for the most part. There's
not the cable fees that are beingspun off as much. But like I
think a lot of it is advertisershave more effective places to go buy ads.

(14:54):
Yeah, and consumers actually don't seemto care about quality that much.
Like if you're on YouTube, you'llwatch you if you like it, you'll
watch some random video on YouTube orstream of videos. Spend the same amount
of time doing that as you wouldjust sitting in a movie theater. Right.
I also think the quality of ads, like we only look for like

(15:16):
a high well produced ad only maybeduring the Super Bowl or during another like
big event, maybe the Olympics orsomething like that. The rest of those
ads I think that catch the mostattention are the ones you don't even recognize
as an AD, when it's justlike an influencer being like, oh my
god, you guys won't believe this. I bought this for my hair and
it totally changed my life. Andthen it's not until it pops up as

(15:39):
sponsored you're like, oh wait,this is an AD and you like move
on from it. And this isthe kind of the backdoor campaign that's being
done on TikTok, which is withthe influencers stuff. And I don't know
what TikTok's rules are exactly. Ijust happen to know. It's how it
works, and the agency goes outhigher, the influencer pays them the rate

(16:03):
to do the piece. It's usuallynot reported as sponsor content. Yeah,
and it needs That's that's a bigthing on TikTok. And a lot of
influencers will get like in not heatnecessarily, Well, look at because interesting,
right McDonald's whatever their prompt was.When you hire an influencer, they
get a prompt. Here's what totalk. Whatever the prompt was. The

(16:25):
prompt wasn't explicitly taught great about this. It was probably used the milkshake in
a fun or creative way telling astory. Yeah, So it wouldn't look
it would be very hard to belike oh yeah, unless you knew what
you were looking for oh, that'san ad. This is something that gets
a lot of influencers in trouble.Though. The biggest one that happened this

(16:49):
year was Michaela on TikTok was promotinga mass scara and she never disclosed it
was a sponsored, paid ad andshe also put face lashes on during it,
and people were not mad that sheeven put the fake lashes on.
It's that she was getting paid foran ad and then was lying. All

(17:11):
right, so here's the other lessonon that. And I think this is
the mistake. That's that's happened.Is you see it there? You see
it maybe with the bud light stuff. The problem is going to hire the
big influencers. People pay attention,they have opinions, they're critical. The
game McDonald's appeared to have played wasprobably not hiring the big name influencers.

(17:33):
It was just like here, influenceragency, here's a million dollars or a
half million dollars, go pay abunch of almost nobody's like four hundred bucks
to go do this. Yeah,and that's what you're seeing. And when
that happens, it looks a lotmore like a trend. It looks more
organic. You know, no onedoes the tiktoksi were showing me. No

(17:56):
one has an opinion on if likesome dude, and you know, I
don't know where Oklahoma is getting paidfour hundred bucks by McDonald's going cares.
Yeah, I'm just checking some ofthese now if they have it disclosed as
an AD or not, because theyusually have to go like hashtag McDonald's partner
yea, or hashtag like ad orsomething like that. But the thing is

(18:22):
is, like TikTok don't even careif people don't do that or not.
It's the viewers or like, Ibelieve you you said the Grammars shake was
good and you never disclose. Ohwhat's interesting? Is there not saying it's
good? I like, and Ithink that's part of the game. Is
there running a product awareness campaign wherethey're not actually talking about the product.

(18:45):
They're assuming you would know what theproduct is, which is very clever.
Assume you know what the product is. You don't need to be told it's
new, it's out, just assumingoh you don't know about this, well
of course you do. Like,assume you know what the product is.
Do something crazy. Yeah, it'sa wild campaign. Look, and maybe
I'm totally wrong. Maybe this isabsolutely all organic and no, I don't

(19:07):
think, but it doesn't feel organicto It feels it feels like, um,
what's a good way to describe it? It is organic, and that
these smaller influences all came up withtheir own idea of what to do.
It is not organic, and thatlike, it's a trend that responded because
some dude decided be funny if Idied after I drank a Grimmace milkshake.

(19:30):
Okay, back, but we wererecording. I had to jump to take
a call that ran into a meeting, which ran into a meeting, which
ran into a meeting. But I'mback, but Kirsten has to prepare for
a shoot tomorrow, so it isjust me and producer Jamie and then there
were two. Yeah, but wedon't exactly remember where I left off.

(19:55):
I think we were talking about thelegacy media its being down, and that
the influencers were doing a really goodjob at selling stuff and creating trends Grimace
without the need of say, abig networks overhead, a building, a

(20:17):
production studio, an ad sales team. They can do that at literally tenths
of a percent of the cost ofrunning a traditional ad and even even really
a digital ad on those platforms,they're probably overall cheaper per impression than doing
that. So that leads me intothe next part of that discussion, which

(20:44):
is what appears to be coming next, is the ability of creators to leverage
And I mean, Jamie, Idon't know how much press you follow,
do you feel like the whole AIthing is becoming cliche? Like every story
is AI. I think it's becominga problem. I think it's getting in

(21:07):
the way of creative abilities. Now. I think the stories about AI are
more of a nuisance, more ofa trouble than AI actually is itself.
True, But I will I willcounter you on saying it's getting in the
way of creativity because I have seenin the last few weeks some downright hilariously

(21:30):
funny in creative content coming out ofthe nascent presidential campaigns. In this out
of e Marketer, politicians are usingAI in election material, politicians read rod
to scantists, Donald Trump incidents likecrawling introtives, like creating deep fakes arrival
candidates could speed up regulation. Sothe first thing I would say is most

(21:55):
of the stuff I've seen is clearlya joke like Michael Scott from the Office
running through the lines but in RHNde Santis's voice YEA, or using a
bunch of celebrity voices where Trump wasmaking fun of De Santis' announcement. A
big one is President's playing minecraft.Oh, it's amazing the President. Now
those aren't campaigns doing that, althoughthey should be. Those are fantastic.

(22:22):
And I think my opinion of thematerial I've seen made by AI so far,
and this is how everything starts onthe Internet, which is as a
joke, is hilarious. It's great. Like the content that's being cut that's
being created from it is funny.Some of it quite sophisticated that you never

(22:45):
that was not possible previously to do. Because you can capture someone's voice,
you can capture someone's image. Now, I think the obvious problem here is,
you know, I guess to someextent that the concern is people can't
tell that it's deep fake. Iactually don't think people being able to tell
it's a deep fake or not isthe problem, because one is, none

(23:07):
of this has really crossed the uncannyvalley. We can still kind of tell
it feels weird, feels off,feels fake. We're still kind of seeing
that even when it's portrayed as beingreal. I think the real issue with
it. To give you an example, one of our one of our coworkers

(23:27):
in the office woke up in wasmad at me because she had a dream
about work that I was in.I guess I was. I was rude
to her in the dream. Shewas mad in me and the dream even
though that is not me, it'sa fascimably of me generated in her brain,
but she still felt mad at metowards it, not seriously, but

(23:52):
you know, joking, Lee.I think what happens with the deep fakes
is when you present somebody has afacsimilar likeness doing something rather very agreeable or
very disagreeable, that emotion gets stuckonto the actual person. So if I
made a deep fake of your mothertelling you you were awful, dumb,

(24:18):
stupid that she was ashamed that shehad you, even though your mom never
said that, but I showed youthat video, your emotional response to it
would be very similar if your motherhad said that to you. Yeah,
I agree with that, and soI think when you do this, the
risk is you're actually siopping the voterinto attributing the emotional weight to something that

(24:45):
the opposing candidate or even your candidatenot saying. So you have the conside
of this is, oh, they'regoing to run you know, deep fakes
of politicians saying egregious things. Ithink the other bit of this you're going
to see is very custom targeted contentwhere that politician, their AI facsimile says
exactly what you want to hear,and it's like, Ah, Jamie,

(25:07):
it's great to see you. Ihope you're going to vote this year.
You know, young people like youwho are into video and audio, you're
the difference makers in the world.And what I'm gonna do when I'm president,
I'm going to give you a tenthousand dollars stipend to spend on equipment.
Woo. Yeah. And it canbe autogenerated and it doesn't matter if
it's true, because that positive sentimentwill already exist and be attached to that

(25:30):
candidate. Right. So that's whereI think we're going on that. It's
been a lot of time since endon a monologue in here. Yeah,
yeah, you did it very well. Maybe I should start kicking people out
and they no, I'm doing theMonologue Today, Solo podcasts, It's just
Joe Solo Podcasts, Joe show Man. Another interesting one. This is a

(25:52):
lawsuit between Taco John's and Taco Belland it's called the Battle of her Taco
Tuesday gets heated. And that isbecause Taco John's marks Taco Tuesday and Taco
Bell is saying, uh, thatis un American. You cannot trademark Taco
Tuesday. It is public domain.It is common language. You're just taking
a day and a noun and puttingthem together. Cannot do that. And

(26:18):
this has become a lawsuit. Wow. Yeah, what do you think Taco
Tuesday should a word like Taco Tuesdayor you know, fun Friday. Should
that be Should that be something thatcan be trademarked by a business? No,
I mean I use Taco Tuesday inmy vocabulary weekly. I feel like
that's just become a household item,a household name. It isn't common parlance

(26:41):
and it has been for a longtime. Yeah, So, I mean,
I don't really know what's next.I'm gonna take wine down Wednesday.
They're coming for all the days,Molly Monday. There's again. I think
there's a couple of layers going ononto this one is this actual legal question

(27:03):
of how much can you trademark?Like, can't just anything be trademark?
Can I just commercialize anything out ofcan I commercialize good afternoon? Good afternoon
trademark Joe clements? And every timeanyone says good afternoon, they have to
pay me like a penny rich befantastic if they're good, or it would
just be the happy birthday problem.Oh do you know about this? Not

(27:26):
really? Okay? Have you everbeen to a restaurant when they seeing happy
Birthday? Have you ever noticed theydon't actually seeing happy birthday? They have
that restaurant variant of happy birthday,like the really awkward clapping offbeat. Yep,
gotcha. Yeah, and that's becausehappy Birthday is trademarked. Wow,
I did not know that. Yeahwow? Or if that could be a

(27:51):
total urban legend that I falled for. But I'm pretty sure that this story
is true. It's it's been trademarked, so you do have that situation from
time to time. I think abig part of this lawsuit is just about
getting attention for the bit, gettingthe coverage, like Taco Bell is defending
the freedom of taco Tuesday and Tacoswell, because people would be like,

(28:11):
yes, Taco Bell, like defendthat taco I love you. The amount
of people that love Taco Bell willprobably they have an army of tacos supporting
them. What is the word forsomebody who loves Taco Bell? Well,
not me because I don't, butTalkies honestly, Well, that's already the
name of a brand, that's theChips brand, Tackies tkas. That's another

(28:33):
lawsuit. Then yeah, then theTaco Bell people get sued by the Chip
company. Last story on a Bloombergand this touches on last week's show,
which will probably have appeared a fewdays ago. For listeners of the Barbie
campaign promotions, favorite topic, Barbie'sMalibu Dreamhouse, Kin's version is back on

(28:56):
Airbnb and you can stay for free. I think that's crazy. Love it
life size recreation of the iconic Dollsdream house this time for free? Is
it actually free? Not free?I think they're just giving away of the
day and it's a co promote betweenBarbie and Airbnb. Wow. So would
you want to stay at the BarbieDreamhouse? Oh? Of course, yeah,

(29:18):
I think any anybody would want tostay there, especially after Oh my
gosh, I'm so excited for themovie. But I saw the Vogue like
house tour, the Barbie house tour, that Vogue game, and if it's
anything remotely close to that, signme up. I think it might be
the same house. Oh is it? Yeah? Oh my gosh. They
just did the co promote with theirairbnb. That's so cool. Would you

(29:44):
So let's say you stayed there,like, do you bring friends or you're
gonna have a party there? Areyou just going in and taking selfies the
whole time? Like what's the youknow, what's the gag your pulling?
If you got it? I feellike it would be a big Barbie sleepover.
I feel like would bring all myfriends and take a ton of pictures.

(30:04):
I heard the cast did that beforethe movie release at the premiere.
They all had a huge Barbie sleepoverin the same house. I would just
do that, and I would inviteall my friends and watch Barbie movies.
Okay, and then like TikTok yourway at a TikTok stardom. Yeah,
and then you're gonna get paid byMcDonald's to do weird stuff with Grimma's milkshakes.
I would love to do that.Yeah, love it. So it

(30:27):
is. Again, the Barbie marketingof that film is genius because whoever gets
this, they're going to be astory in the news cycle. Yeah,
they are going to be all ofthe social media. They are going to
do the interviews with the networks.Although, what if there's like secret mystery
stuff in the house. If themovie comes out and it's actually like a
horror and then they're like, psych, you're going into a horror house.

(30:48):
Oh even better, How amazing wouldthat be? Has like a has like
a just like getting attention right,has Grimace popping out in the closets.
It's like, I'll say that thereseems to be something going on right now
the last month or so this summer. But the marketing promotions that are going
on are like fantastic. Like theBarbie stuff is good. The McDonald's stuff

(31:11):
is good. YEA. Something thatI haven't seen a while is a slate
of things that are new and interesting. Yeah, the Barbie stuff is on
its own universe. I mean evenwith um, the Stanley Cup stuff.
Have you seen that? Which stuffmarketing with the Stanley Cup? Oh,
the boards like around the boards,well, like the Stanley Cup came out,

(31:33):
and then now Hydroflask came out withtheir version of the Stanley Cup,
but it's a hydro Oh I didn'tknow that. And so now everyone's switching
the hydroflask because it's apparently spillproof,and their marketing is insane as well.
What are they doing. They aregetting like shipping out free hydroflasks to influencers

(31:55):
and then having them spillproof and testthe cup, and I guess everyone just
loves hydroflask because they're more durable,original choice. So they're saying kind of
the same thing that Grimace said,where like hydroflask used to be really popular
back when I was just starting highschool or even middle school, and then
I feel like they faded off alittle bit, and now they're like kind
of coming back with like, oh, well we were the ogs, so

(32:16):
like you want to choose us anyway, it's a yetti for white girls.
Yeah, you know, that's that'sthat's a good I don't own one,
though. I do not own ahydro flask or a Stanley cup, but
I just know about it. Butyou could, I like my dupes.

(32:37):
I'm a dupe girl. What doesa dupe A dupe is like the off
brand hydroflask. It's the same thinglike at Walmart when you go to Walmart
and you see like a cool tumblerthat looks exactly like a Starbucks tumbler,
or like okay, yeah, nowa Stanley cup, like I would like
to get those dupe Stanley cup.And it's even called a dupe, like
a duplicate, it's called a dupe. That's amazing. I love my dupes.

(32:59):
Uh. The NHL, you know, did do a great job this
season. They and I almost readthis last week out of ad age,
but the revenue like doubled. Theywere able to sign seven hundred sponsors with
the digital ads they were running.I remember I saw those at the beginning
of the season. I think KirsonI talked about it back in October.

(33:19):
Those digital ads on the boards letyou just run so many more ads.
And then they also had digital patcheson the jerseys, which you know as
a whole other thing, so thatyou know, I think you're going to
see the aar stuff and advertising happenedfirst on TV before you start to see
it in real life. But ingeneral, the NHL did a fantastic job

(33:42):
at upping their sponsorship value more sothan any other league I've seen in a
while. I mean, Baseball hashad the digital boards for a while,
but they're not dynamic like the NHLboards are. Anyway. That is all
for this week's episode. If youliked what you heard, please leave us
a review at your podcast app ofchoice. Until next time, this has
been of Record. Of Record ishosted by me Joe Clements with the assistance

(34:07):
of producer Alex Ranhard. Of Recordis produced at the Trailway Studio in Tallahassee,
Florida. Our theme music is composedand performed by Rob Goki Special thanks
to our entire team here at SDS. You can see more information about the
show on our website, Podcast ofRecord dot com. As always, we'd
appreciate your reviews and ratings in yourpodcast app of choice. These ratings and

(34:30):
reviews help more people discover the show, which helps us keep delivering quality content
each week. Thanks for listening.