☕ Gotta have it
A guide to making brand merch that works.
Marketing Brew <[email protected]>
Morning Brew promotes its newsletter, highlighting brand strategy and merchandising trends. The brand features interviews with executives from companies like Chain and Fishwife, discussing successful merch launches. It explores the qualities that resonate with customers and drive brand loyalty.
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570 words · about 2 min to read
October 05, 2026
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Sponsor Logo: Outreach
It’s Monday. Scarlett Johansson’s beauty brand, The Outset, is winding down operations, joining a long list of celebrity-backed beauty brands to go kaput. Pour one out…set.
In today’s edition:
Fan favorites 🛍️
The state of the CMO, part three 🤖
Scout’s honor 🏀
—Katie Hicks, Kelsey Sutton, Alyssa Meyers
BRAND STRATEGY
Outside the box
Brand merch collage: Pizza Hut checkered bucket hat, Fishwife
Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Chain, Fishwife
When it comes to merch, there’s a fine line between what’s closet-worthy and what’s landfill fodder.
If executed correctly, brand merch can drive media buzz, provide organic marketing, and deepen relationships with creators, customers, and partners alike. So what does it take to create items that people are willing to wear and flaunt their brand loyalty?
We spoke with executives from top consumer and merch brands like Chain, Fishwife, and Chili’s about the qualities resonating with customers today.
More than a logo: A successful merch launch often requires more than just slapping a label on a T-shirt. Steve Milton is the CEO of Chain, a pop-up-turned-lifestyle-brand that was co-founded by actor B.J. Novak in 2021 and has created products ranging from Pizza Hut-branded bucket hats to a Dave & Buster’s claw-machine bag.
He told us that the key to a successful merch drop is tapping into a fandom mentality and creating a product unique to the brand, even if it’s not the most functional.
“The way that we think about it is, what is that brand and/or product truth?” Milton said. “And then how is that expressed through the language of fashion?”
Reminisce carefully: Nostalgia has been a particularly strong force behind Chain’s merch collabs, he said, as evidenced through the bucket hats, which were inspired by the Tiffany-style lamps that once adorned Pizza Hut restaurants.
However, he cautioned against jumping on nostalgia—or any other trend, for that matter—unless it’s something that taps into something consumers naturally love about a brand.
“[Make] sure that you’re thinking about the brand, thinking about the product, [and] what is it about that that connects with the consumer,” he said. “That’s a good way to avoid any missteps.”
Read more here.—KH
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Sponsored By Outreach
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Watch this webinar to learn from experts at Outreach and assess where your team stands today.
THE STATE OF THE CMO
Anx-AI-ety
Collage of a team collaborating around laptops, a blurred woman in motion, and icons for a target, megaphone, and sparkle, on a teal background.
Morning Brew Inc.
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