SOCIAL & INFLUENCERS

Kewpie Americas

At Japanese brand Kewpie, the juice mayo is worth the squeeze.

Over the last three years, Kewpie Americas’ small, in-house marketing team has been building out a brand strategy following the mayo’s surge in popularity that first began five years ago, Jeremy Stoddard, assistant general manager of marketing at Kewpie Americas, told us. One of the brand’s earliest breakthroughs came courtesy of creator Emily Mariko, who featured the product in her viral salmon-bowl post in 2021. In September, Mariko officially partnered with the brand, he said.

While the brand runs a multichannel approach, social has been a large focus area in targeting its key demographic of 20- to 30-year-olds, Stoddard said. The brand also kicked off its first major tour in the US, the I Love Kewpie tour, in Southern California last month with its Kewpie doll mascot front and center. Based on early results, Stoddard said IRL touchpoints will be a major focus of the brand’s community-building strategy next year.

For more from our conversation with Stoddard about the ways Kewpie is looking to break through with American audiences on- and offline, continue reading here.—KH

      

Sponsored By Outreach

Marketing passes leads to sales…and then loses sight of them.

This is usually because sales, marketing, RevOps, and customer success work from disconnected views, so marketing can’t see whether sellers act on their leads or how campaigns move deals forward.

With Outreach, marketing gets a view into what happens after the handoff, so they can see which leads sales takes on to connect campaigns to pipeline.

A Forrester evaluation reported that “Outreach is best suited to organizations seeking industry-leading buyer engagement, conversation intelligence, and increasingly agentic workflows to improve seller productivity, pipeline quality, and forecast outcomes at scale.” It also found that Outreach customers described “large-scale deployments, expanding use cases, and increasing strategic dependence on the platform.”

Learn more about why Outreach was named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Revenue Orchestration Platforms for B2B, Q3 2026.

BRAND STRATEGY

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock

A little over a year ago Rory Stallard, Ulta Beauty’s director of organized retail crime, showed up at Flock Safety’s annual conference, Flock Forward, and talked about the retailer’s use of Flock technology.

“We were looking for technology that would help us bridge the gap and collaborate [with law enforcement],” he said, according to a Flock recap of the 2025 event; the company, he added, “really fit the bill for some of the things that we wanted to be able to do.”

That choice of technology provider is now under scrutiny.

Ulta, along with other retailers like Lowe’s and The Home Depot, have this year faced questions about their use of Flock, which, according to the company, operates a network of tens of thousands of cameras in 49 states. The network of cameras and its vast surveillance capabilities has outraged communities nationwide over concerns about the data’s accuracy as well as the ways in which law enforcement officials may access—and, in some documented cases, misuse—data collected by the cameras.

Those concerns around Flock seem to be coming for retailers that have, until recently, used the company’s tech for the purpose of security and anti-theft measures with little public pushback. In September, the gender justice group Ultraviolet circulated a petition demanding that Ulta end its relationship with Flock; over 10,000 women had signed it as of last month, according to a press release from the group. A Change.org petition that calls on lawmakers in Erie County, Pennsylvania, to remove Flock cameras installed in the county, including those at big-box retailers and a local mall, has more than 1,400 signatories.

Alla Valente, principal analyst, security and risk at Forrester, told Marketing Brew that the situation means retail brands are liable to get swept up in broader conversations around mass surveillance, which could have reputational consequences.

“It’s not something I anticipate dying down,” she said of the backlash. “Just going to do a normal Home Depot run or going to pick up an item at Ulta should not make you exposed to mass surveillance…These customers did not opt in for that type of surveillance.”

For more on the possible reputational risks from using Flock’s tech—and how companies may look to navigate the backlash—read more here.—JS

      

Sponsored By Tremendous

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COWORKING

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Sherry Riad

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Sherry Riad is the founder of Rep & Repeat, a creative representation agency, where she has worked with brands including ESPN, Coca-Cola, Mucinex, H&R Block, and TikTok.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? I connect brands and agencies with talented people who can make cool things happen, and help turn those ideas into reality.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? I recently worked with Creative Director Dawn Dunning from my roster on a Diet Coke x The Devil Wears Prada 2 project with Ogilvy, creating custom “Canny Packs,” belt bags designed specifically to hold a can of Diet Coke.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Ally Bank’s “Manifesting Money” spot. I laughed out loud the first time I saw it.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I volunteer in rabbit rescue. Yes, it’s a thing!

Read more from our interview with Riad here.

      

Sponsored By Bloomreach

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

To-dos: A rundown of daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly social tasks for keeping things on track.

Password, please: Understanding Reddit’s move to make the platform a logged-in experience—and what it could mean for advertisers.

Collect and reflect: Strategies and examples of collecting data from consumers to provide personalized marketing and shopping experiences.

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Jobs

Real jobs, shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

JOINING FORCES

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Stagwell bought the publisher-side ad-tech company Freestar.
• Waterman Capital, a private-equity firm based in New Zealand, purchased a stake in creative agency Special Group.
• IBM re-upped its long-standing deal with the US Open through 2031.
• American Express expanded its sponsorship of the NBA and WNBA globally.
• TikTok announced a global content partnership with the Women’s Tennis Association.
• Geico joined Unrivaled with back-of-kit placements across the league’s eight teams.
• Carvana signed on as the new jersey-patch sponsor of the University of Arizona.
• Whoop brought on LeBron James to serve as a global brand ambassador.
• Sephora tapped Seth Rogen for its holiday campaign.