☕ Come together
Why one brand is building pop-ups for community, not commerce.
Marketing Brew <[email protected]>
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Morning Brew promotes a unique brand strategy by highlighting Tower 28, a beauty brand that created a pop-up experience with no products for sale. The brand's founder and CEO, Amy Liu, aims to focus on community-building rather than commerce. Tower 28's approach includes interactive experiences and limited-edition merch, but no direct sales.
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535 words · about 2 min to read
October 21, 2026
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It’s Wednesday. And The New York Times is running ads in its Instagram Stories, according to a recent report from Semafor. Guess everyone wants to be an influencer these days, huh?
In today’s edition:
More than a sale 🛍️
Up the flag pole 🏈
Can’t do everything 🤖
—Jennimai Nguyen, Alyssa Meyers, Jamila Huxtable
BRAND STRATEGY
Community, not commerce
Collage of images showing the Tower 28 purple and orange storefront, next to a merch wall with tote bags, and an exterior wall with surfboards leaning against it.
Beauty brand pop-ups are nothing new. But a beauty pop-up with no products for sale? That might be.
Tower 28, a beauty brand focused on sensitive skin founded in 2019, brought its brand to life in two back-to-back, notably not-retail-heavy, pop-up experiences this fall. The first, a collaboration with Jell-O called Jell-o-teria spotlighting the brands’ upcoming co-branded lip product, offered visitors Jell-O-inspired frozen yogurt, exclusive merch, a raffled PR box prize, and Jell-O product samples at a stand in Venice, California.
Then, two days later, Tower 28 opened up its first physical storefront—although it aimed to function less like a traditional retail shop than a community center, bringing nearly 2,000 visitors through the doors. Called the Sensitive Club, the pop-up space was designed with the goal of engaging new and existing fans of the brand, Amy Liu, Tower 28’s founder and CEO, told us. At Sensitive Club, visitors could get shade-matched for the brand’s new Swipe Serum Foundation, refill bottles of the brand’s SOS Spray toner, and purchase limited-edition merch. While there were plenty of opportunities to get hands-on with the brand’s products, none were for sale, a tactic that Liu hopes will encourage focus on true community-building.
“This really is not to make money. To be honest with you, I’m pretty certain we will not make money,” she said before the pop-up opened. “I know it sounds silly, but honestly, the intention here is really more love and depth of relationship.”
For more on why Tower28 focused on fostering long-term customer connection in its physical space, continue reading here.—JN
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AI still needs adult supervision
AI can move fast, but marketers leaders face five decisions AI can’t make: autonomy, judgement, legibility, measurement, and ownership.
Autonomy starts with boundaries. If every agent has to propose an action and wait for approval, as 21% do, the approval tax eats efficiency gains. Judgement matters, too. Automation can remove the entry-level work of trained marketers, and 25% of organizations have already replaced some of that hiring with AI.
Then comes brand legibility. With 85% of marketing leaders worried that AI summaries will make brands sound alike, differentiation can’t become beige soup.
Measurement is messy. Only 31% measure answer-engine visibility, while 24% audit brand mentions in agent output. And ownership? Just 4% worry most about it. Which feels adorably optimistic.
The real AI question isn’t what can be automated. It’s what still requires a marketer.
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