SPORTS MARKETING

@mbusa/YouTube, @ouraring/Instagram, Grey Goose

It’s no secret that tennis is a preferred marketing playground for brands in categories like luxury and finance.

The sport and its four annual Grand Slam tournaments have always had a premium feel, but sports sponsorships are attractive to marketers in part because of the reach they offer, including consumers beyond the upper crust. Particularly at the US Open, which has a reputation for being the least buttoned-up of the Slams, even marketers in categories like finance appreciate that the event has been drawing an audience outside of traditional tennis fans.

“It’s the perfect mix of everything,” Chris Weil, founder and co-CEO of Horizon Sports & Experiences, who’s worked with multiple US Open clients, told Marketing Brew. “It’s New York coming out of summer and everybody coming home, it’s a venue that is iconic, it’s competition, and then you add the experience onto it, of this jammed together for two weeks with everything from chicken nuggets with caviar on top to…Honey Deuces and champagne…This is an elevated experience that only happens for these two weeks, and so everybody feels like they have to be there.”

This year, though, the average price for resale tickets to the Open has soared, making the event less accessible to everyday fans, who used to be able to take in matches at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center without completely breaking the bank.

As prices have risen, US Open sponsors, including several in the luxury category, have shifted their activation strategies to focus more on making fans outside the grounds feel like a part of the action.

Continue reading here.—AM

      

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SOCIAL & INFLUENCERS

Christian Rodriguez

The more you scroll, the more likely it is that you’ll come across a branded social series. Count luggage brand Away as another among them.

With its new social series, Actually Away, the brand, which was a darling of the late 2010s DTC boom and has revamped its approach after facing business challenges in 2019, is aiming to create a new destination for travel stories told over multiple episodes and designed to hook the viewer in as a typical TV series would, according to Quynh Dang, Away’s VP of brand.

For Actually Away’s first season, two travelers cross paths at New York City’s Grand Central Station, connecting as they await a dead phone in need of a charge and delayed trains. The plot was inspired by a real travel story, according to the company, and it plans to draw inspiration from customers’ travel stories for the series.

As consumer behavior shifts and social transforms into “the new TV,” Away is looking to regularly show up where people are spending their time with “a seven- to eight-episode storyline that is compelling” enough to “pull people away from a scrolling” and “replacing it with what they might have digested in terms of media on TV and streaming,” Dang told us.

This particular story is one that is probably familiar enough for audiences to relate to it—just about everyone has dealt with travel woes, and just about everyone hopes to meet someone special. There are additional elements that aim to add enough mystery to the plot to keep audiences interested enough to tune back in, Dang said.

Early numbers are promising. As of early September, total impressions were around 1.4 million with an engagement rate of more than 78%, the company shared.

Read more here.—KM

      

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BRAND STRATEGY

Sean Schedit/Washington Post

Consumers have plenty of options for bottled water, but Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario saw an opportunity to make plain water exciting.

Before founding Liquid Death in 2017, Cessario worked in advertising, where he learned how brands could break through the noise. He spent his early days playing guitar in punk and metal bands, where he noticed that most products marketed to the crowds were energy drinks, sodas, and other junk food, according to publicist Jake Tredo.

These insights became Liquid Death, a canned beverage company known for its aggressive branding, irreverent humor, and heavy metal-inspired aesthetic that, according to the company, was valued at $1.4 billion in 2024.

Initially the company’s biggest challenge was creating demand for a product that, while essential to human survival, is difficult to differentiate from brand to brand.

“We came up with the crazy name that felt provocative, and then you start using marketing to, in a funny way, rationalize it,” Cessario told Founder Brew. “Water is the healthiest thing you could drink. Why is it called Liquid Death? And it’s like, ‘Well, because it murders your thirst,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, got it.’ You start finding ways to make the crazy thing all of a sudden actually seem reasonable. That’s where you start creating the brand and the marketing and everything else.”

The company has since expanded its beverage offerings, with iced tea and flavored seltzers available with the same irreverent messaging. “My marketing goal for Liquid Death is like, I want to be the funniest brand in the world,” Cessario admitted.

Cessario views that humor as Liquid Death’s competitive advantage.

“Comedy is really hard, and when something’s hard, it means it’s more rare, and something more rare intrinsically has more value to people,” Cessario said.

Read more on Founder Brew.—JH

      

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