SOCIAL & INFLUENCERS

Screenshots via BetterHelp

Sometimes all it takes is one comment to make a change.

That could be taken as a grand statement about life, but here, it’s a literal one: After posting a comment on a video that went viral last year, BetterHelp’s marketing team has doubled down on the comment section as a growth strategy.

“The team had a breakthrough moment with the Pitch Perfect conversation that was happening online,” Sara Brooks, chief growth officer for BetterHelp, told us, referring to a comment the brand made on the viral post of college students performing a capella from last November. (The film features college a capella groups competing for prizes.) “The team came into the comments section in TikTok and said, ‘Close enough! Welcome back, Treblemakers!’ And it really resonated with the community. Got over 300,000 likes on just one comment. We started to see, ‘Hmm, something is happening here.’”

It can be hard for some marketers to replicate viral success, but for BetterHelp, the move fit into a larger strategic shift to focus on speaking to communities. Since its first outsized response to that TikTok comment, BetterHelp has continued to find different comment sections to be a part of—mostly on TikTok, where BetterHelp has 537,400 followers, and on Instagram, where the brand has more than 635,000 followers.

“What we found is that this is a really repeatable, scalable way to show up in culture,” Brooks said. “Fast forward to today, our follower count on TikTok, our daily new followers has grown a hundredfold. People [are] really resonating with the brand as we’re showing up in these cultural conversations.”

Brands have long shown up in the comments section of viral TikToks and Instagram videos, with some, like Dove and HelloFresh, playing in the space for years with the goal of garnering positive brand sentiment and centering their brands in cultural conversations. Often, that cultural conversation revolves around a fandom of some sort, like a TV show or a franchise.

For BetterHelp, though, the shift is more than just being part of cultural conversation—it’s a growth strategy.

“We’re fortunate in that, for better or worse, mental health is part of the cultural conversation,” she said. “But where there are cultural conversations that your brand can earn the right to be in, add some value and show up, and I think that it could be a great success.”

Continue reading here.—KM

      

Sponsored By Tatari

Marketers could use a clear view of what’s next.

At Forward 2026, the leaders behind some of the fastest-growing platforms and consumer brands reveal what’s driving the future of TV advertising.

You’ll get a look into the real-world playbooks of brands turning cultural moments into awareness, conversions, and revenue. Hear from:

• Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman on Reddit’s evolving role in the advertising landscape and how communities reshape brand discovery
• Cody Plofker, former CEO of Jones Road Beauty, on building a nine-figure brand and what he's learned from building + advising the next generation of consumer companies
• Marketing leaders from Liquid I.V., MANSCAPED, Thorne, and Avocado Green Brands on driving measurable growth from TV moments

The sessions take place on Oct. 29 at The Glasshouse in NYC, with a rooftop happy hour over the Hudson afterward.

It’s free to attend, but capacity is limited. RSVP for a seat.

SPORTS MARKETING

Whoop

When wearable fitness-tracking brand Whoop hired its new CMO in July, it marked a new chapter for both brand and executive.

Whoop was fresh off a $575 million Series G funding round that valued the brand at $10.1 billion, positioning it to potentially go public amid a surge in the global wearables market. DJ van Hameren, who spent more than three decades at Nike before exiting two years ago, was looking for his next act.

“I have always had a growth mindset and love to figure out how we tell stories, we build brands, and we grow businesses,” van Hameren told us. “I felt there was a part of me that really was curious about a number of areas, specifically around sports.” After a conversation with Whoop founder and CEO Will Ahmed and other team members, “it was really, really clear within a matter of minutes or hours that this would be a phenomenal next chapter,” he added.

Van Hameren was the first of many new executive appointments, including a new chief commercial officer, its first-ever chief communications officer, a chief medical officer who oversees Whoop’s consumer health strategy, and a chief accounting officer. The brand’s leadership overhaul comes amid a broadening of its marketing strategy that seeks to diversify its user base and highlight how sport and health connect to daily life, van Hameren told Marketing Brew.

Whoop has traditionally been more associated with an “athletic male American base,” per the Wall Street Journal; it’s now focusing on women users. And it’s looking to target both athletes and everyday consumers through methods including partnerships with major fitness competitors and athletes (some of whom are the company’s investors) as well as through owned media, like its weekly Whoop Podcast.

Whoop, which in July announced it had more than 3 million members worldwide, is looking to grow amid more intense competition in the wearables space. The wearable technology market overall is $103.1 billion in size as of 2026, according to Grand View Research, and is projected to increase to $229.9 billion by 2033.

“People’s health is every day,” van Hameren said. “One of the greatest challenges or opportunities we have as a marketing team is to find those key moments…and at the same time, find ways to be relevant to members every second or every minute of the day without that becoming an over-sensory load of messages, ” he said.

Read more here.—JS

      

BRAND STRATEGY

K18

No, the larger-than-life gigantic hairball rolling through the streets of New York City wasn’t AI.

In a stunt that looked like it could be straight out of Boots Riley’s surrealist comedy I Love Boosters, the hair-care brand K18 rolled a 150-pound ball of real hair through NYC. But the ball of hair, called the Tumblehair, wasn’t a literal manifestation of Keke Palmer’s anxieties and existentialism; rather, it was a way to illustrate the realities of hair loss—and embody all the hair that New Yorkers could potentially retain if they use K18’s newest product.

The activation is part of the brand’s launch of its FutureIQ Biomimetic Hair Longevity Serum, a product that claims to help prevent hair loss. As for the ball itself, it marks the brand’s first effort at such an out-of-this-world activation, which Kleona Mack, CMO of K18 at Unilever Prestige, said was inspired by the product itself.

“We really wanted to do something that broke through and didn’t feel like more of the same, but we also just wanted to get the conversation started,” Mack told us. “I think that really pushed us to take this risk.”

Continue reading here.—JN

      

Sponsored By Tatari

Funnel vision, not tunnel vision. MANSCAPED credits bold, digital-first marketing for its early success, but it needed a new channel to reach broader audiences. Without sacrificing its distinctive voice, the brand partnered with Tatari to expand into TV—which turned into a consistent, scalable growth channel. A pregame spot produced a 52x increase in website traffic within minutes of airing. Read the case study.

french press

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

No drama: Snapchat broke down how its users are watching, talking about, and, in some cases, paying for microdramas.

(Sub)stacking up: A primer on using Substack.

Film buff: How e-commerce companies can leverage video marketing.

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