The Marketer’s Storybook: Oops Goes Viral, Creatives Cash In, and the Olympics Rewrites the Rules
A cookie brand accidentally renamed itself “Ryan” on TikTok. The Olympics sold venue naming rights for the first time. Levi’s is betting on cowboy fashion to add billions. And Meta? Its AI guardrails just snapped. This week’s stories show how fast mistakes, risks, and reinventions can flip into sales spikes, culture wins, or reputational firestorms. Are you ready to dive in?
This Week’s Lineup
- How Sweet Loren’s turned a huge social mistake into a viral win
- Inside Unilever’s creative surge—awards, culture…and growth
- Levi’s goes all-in on cowboy culture to reach $10B
- Meta’s AI policy backlash shows the cost of weak guardrails
- Sydney Sweeney x Bud Light? The rumor—and the reality
- New Zealand’s search for love…for a rare left-spiralling snail
- LA28 rewrites the rules: Olympic venue naming rights
- Le Creuset: how a quiet owner forged commercial gold
- Topshop’s Trafalgar Square reboot: see-now, buy-now (for real)
- Want to partner with Liquid Death? Get in line.
This Week’s Marketing Stories
A curated mix of breaking news, insights, and trends, each with actionable takeaways to inspire your brand storytelling.
1) How Sweet Loren’s turned a huge social mistake into a viral win
Picture this: your social media manager accidentally renames the company TikTok account to her own name—and TikTok won’t let you fix it for seven days. That’s what happened at Sweet Loren’s. Instead of panicking or going dark, the team leaned in. They produced a self-deprecating TikTok series documenting “Ryan’s reign,” spun the blunder into a running gag, and suddenly found themselves with more than a million views, mainstream coverage, and a 46% lift in sales.
The real power here wasn’t the accident, it was how the team treated it like a creator would: authentic, episodic, and human. Viewers didn’t just laugh, they rooted for Ryan, checked back for updates, and shared the saga. In the process, Sweet Loren’s stumbled onto a high-performing content strategy that traditional CPG brands often miss: real-time, human storytelling that embraces imperfection.
Key Takeaway: Build a protocol that doesn’t just “manage” mistakes but monetizes them. Train your teams to own errors transparently, respond in real time, and expand them into multi-part arcs that weave in product organically. A seven-day TikTok lockout became the brand’s most successful campaign of the year, can you believe that? It’s proof that vulnerability, when well-handled, can be more powerful than polish or sticking to your trusty playbook. Read more
2) Inside Unilever’s creative surge—awards, culture…and growth
Unilever just proved creative awards can move beyond Cannes PR to bottom-line growth. The company racked up 41 Lions this year—including Grand Prix wins for Dove and Vaseline—while delivering 3.8% organic sales growth in Q2. Dove grew 8% globally, while Vaseline surged double digits, driven in part by its “Verified” platform that tapped TikTok beauty “hacks” and put them through lab tests.
What’s most striking is the operating model behind the wins: culture-first briefs, social-first campaigns built with hundreds of creators, and weekly AI-driven ROI analysis across 300+ assets. Dove’s decades-long platform shows the power of compounding brand equity, while Vaseline Verified illustrates how creator culture + science authority can fuel both trust and sales.
Key Takeaway: Creativity delivers ROI when it’s systemized. Build enduring brand platforms that evolve with culture, then fuel them with modular creator-led executions and weekly asset-level performance reads. Read more
3) Levi’s goes all-in on cowboy culture to reach $10B
Levi’s, still $3.5B short of its $10B revenue goal, is betting on a very specific growth lever: the blue-collar cowboy. By launching $59 western boot cuts, striking rodeo sponsorships, and doubling distribution in Boot Barn and Cavender’s, Levi’s is targeting working-class men—the segment that once defined its brand but drifted to competitors like Wrangler and Carhartt.
The move isn’t just nostalgia. With 61% of the U.S. labor force considered working-class, Levi’s is rebalancing its portfolio between premium collabs (Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter line) and volume-driving core workwear. It’s a barbell strategy: own culture at the high end while reclaiming credibility with functional affordability at scale.
Key Takeaway: Growth often comes from revisiting the job-to-be-done that built your brand. Don’t just chase cultural trends—reclaim the practical role you play for overlooked but high-volume audiences. Read more
4) Meta’s AI policy backlash shows the cost of weak guardrails
Meta is under fire after internal policies revealed its chatbots could engage in “romantic” conversations with children, generate false medical information, and even reinforce racist stereotypes. The fallout has been swift: bipartisan investigations, public outrage, and reputational damage that calls into question Meta’s $65B AI push.
For marketers, this isn’t just Meta’s problem. It’s a reminder that brand safety in the AI era extends to adjacency. If your ads run next to unsafe AI interactions, you’ll face the backlash too. Expect contracts to tighten around AI governance, with clauses on provenance, teen safety defaults, and human-in-the-loop escalation becoming the norm.
Key Takeaway: Don’t wait for regulators. Bake AI guardrails into your media and tech contracts now, or risk your brand being collateral damage in someone else’s crisis. Read more
5) Sydney Sweeney x Bud Light? The rumor—and the reality
Reports suggest Sydney Sweeney could land a $10M deal to front Bud Light, as the brand claws back from its Dylan Mulvaney backlash. Her recent American Eagle campaign spiked denim sales and stock chatter, proving her commercial pull (note: the earning’s call is on September 3 as this newsletter goes out, so stay tuned for more insights there). But she’s also polarizing: celebrated by some, criticized by others, and politicized by her Republican affiliation.
This isn’t just celebrity casting, it’s a risk-adjusted media bet. Sweeney offers reach, relevance, and resilience, but also the potential for boycott-driven churn. For Bud Light, the real question is whether the endorsement reframes the brand story or simply reopens the wounds.
Key Takeaway: Celebrity is no longer neutral, it’s a cultural accelerant. CMOs must model both upside (reach, SOV, trial) and downside (churn, boycotts) before signing talent in politicized categories. Read more
6) New Zealand’s search for love…for a rare left-spiralling snail
Meet Ned, a rare left-spiraling snail who can’t mate with right-coiled snails. New Zealand Geographic launched a nationwide campaign to find him a mate, turning biology into a whimsical public hunt. Families are now combing gardens with torches, schools are rallying kids, and the story has generated international coverage.
It’s funny, but it’s also smart. By anchoring a biodiversity lesson in one quirky character, the campaign makes conservation tangible, participatory, and newsworthy. It’s brand storytelling for science: simple action (“find a snail”), emotional stakes (love), and a feedback loop that keeps audiences engaged.
Key Takeaway: To make niche stories scale, personify the issue and give people one clear action. A rare snail is teaching marketers what many brands forget: specificity is what makes stories universal. Read more
7) LA28 rewrites the rules: Olympic venue naming rights
The LA28 Olympics just broke a century of tradition by selling naming rights for venues, with the Comcast Squash Center and Honda Center being the first. It’s a structural revenue innovation, creating a new model for how global sponsorships can work.
For sponsors, this goes beyond signage. It’s a chance to integrate naming rights with broadcast activations, shoppable video, and first-party data strategies. For the Olympics, it’s a pathway to fund the Games privately while modernizing commercial rights.
Key Takeaway: Sponsorship is shifting from logo-slapping to full-funnel marketing. If you’re buying rights, negotiate bundles that fuse naming, data, and commerce, not just impressions. Read more
8) Le Creuset: how a quiet owner forged commercial gold
Paul van Zuydam took over Le Creuset in the 1980s when it was debt-ridden. Today, it’s an $850M brand with cult-like devotion. The formula? Color as scarcity, heritage as authority, and storytelling that elevates cookware into lifestyle. Limited drops like Flame orange or Provence lavender are marketed like fashion lines, while heritage roots (“crafted in France since 1925”) provide the trust halo.
Le Creuset didn’t just sell beautiful, luxury cookware, it sold a sense of community. Fans show off collections like sneakers, social tribes drive organic advocacy, and collabs with Disney or Harry Potter deepen the fandom. The result is luxury brand mechanics applied to kitchenware.
Key Takeaway: When function is commoditized, differentiation comes from design, heritage, and storytelling. Make your product a cultural signal, not just a utility. Read more
9) Topshop’s Trafalgar Square reboot: see-now, buy-now (for real)
After seven years off the runway, Topshop staged a comeback in Trafalgar Square with a see-now, buy-now show synced to the relaunch of Topshop.com. Cara Delevingne curated a capsule edit, models were partly street-cast, and the event ended with a city-wide block party.
This wasn’t nostalgia, it was a cleverly curated brand reset and re-launch. So many were disappointed when Topshop went away – it’s an iconic and loved brand in the UK. By blending civic spectacle, instant commerce, and Gen Z-friendly casting, Topshop reintroduced itself as a modern fashion brand and cultural player. It’s a reminder that retail relaunches aren’t about discounts, they’re about bringing something new and exciting to the market – with a dash of drama.
Key Takeaway: Treat relaunches like festivals. Design a moment big enough to command culture, then ensure the path to purchase is frictionless. Shopping at Topshop was a huge memory of mine as I moved to London over ten years ago. Their store on Oxford Street was a treasure trove. I’m rooting for them in this relaunch! Read more
10) Want to partner with Liquid Death? Get in line.
Liquid Death has 7M+ TikTok followers, 7M+ on Instagram, and a backlog of 70+ brands waiting to collaborate. Recent stunts include chainsawed sandwiches with Sheetz, guillotine fantasy leagues with Yahoo Sports, and even a “moshpit diaper” with Depends. The kicker: they generated 30B earned impressions in 2024 on <$2M in production and talent spend.
The brand operates like an entertainment studio: partners cover hard costs and media, while Liquid Death provides the creative and the audience. It’s one of the most efficient brand-collab models in the industry but it’s not easy to make the cut.
Key Takeaway: Don’t treat partnerships as one-off stunts. Build a collab operating system with repeatable formats, guardrails, and metrics like EMV per $1 invested. Read more
Mark Your Calendar
If you’re in the UK (or fancy a trip), my friend Christopher Penn, one of the world’s leading AI experts, is running a hands-on generative AI for B2B marketers workshop in London on October 31. Only 25 seats. Bring your laptop, get your hands dirty with data, walk away with a prompt library, a copy of his book, and practical frameworks to put AI to work inside your company.
👉 Full agenda + registration here
My Stories
The New Rules of Brand Storytelling That Inspire and Connect
I finally wrote up my keynote on The New Rules of Brand Storytelling at DigitalK, Eastern Europe’s leading digital and tech conference. It was my first time on stage in Bulgaria, and the perfect moment to share why stories aren’t just creative flair, they’re 22x more memorable than facts, and neuroscience shows they light up the brain in ways data alone can’t.
From GE’s purpose-driven storytelling to Dunkin’s customer-first campaigns, REI’s “opt outside” ethos, and Smart Car’s real-time wit, the throughline is clear: the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing, it feels like a story worth telling.
Unlock More of My Stories
🌍 Website: JessicaGioglio.com Your one-stop shop for all my books, speaking engagements, and blog posts on marketing and storytelling.
📚 Books:
- The Power of Visual Storytelling: Learn how to shape a visual story around your brand using images, videos, GIFs, infographics, and more. Get your copy here.
- The Laws of Brand Storytelling: The definitive guide to using storytelling to win over customers’ hearts, minds, and loyalty. Grab it here.
📱 Social Media:
Let’s connect and keep the conversation going!
Until Next Time
Thank you for being part of this journey. Whether you’re here for marketing trends, storytelling inspiration, or both, I’m so grateful to have you along for the ride.
Keep telling the stories that matter, Jessica