The holiday marketing exposé
+ the new luxury buying guide, and viral prompts breakdown
Hope everyone had a weekend full of high ROAS and smooth logistics… Today we’re going to go through some of the standout marketing of the last week, break down the latest prompts going viral, and talk about new luxury.
But first…
Today is the last day of our once yearly Cut30 promotion for our bootcamp that starts January 6th. If you’ve ever wanted to start posting short form content, or learn it to better manage creators and social media at your work or company.. you can get Cut30 for $300 off by joining now, and kickoff content with a supportive community and proven formulas for the new year.
A few of our recent grads who’ve been crushing it:
Sam has been discussing the intersection of agriculture, tourism and commerce.
Migo has been going deep on the lore behind… beer.
Dizzy Bee Marketing has been crushing with a signature series.
Ivory Sky has been growing with a wide variety of content for their boot brand.
Shelley has been getting a lot of attention for her bakery with candid reviews, and daily snapshots of her work.
Jimmy has gone viral multiple times with his subway sketches.
If you want to get started or improve on video in the new year… we’re ready for you.
What’s Happening In Black Friday and Holiday Marketing
The social shows continue, this time with a major player. Maybelline is dropping a 5 part holiday microdrama with two Netflix stars. While this is a great, savvy play for a big brand, for a smaller brand you could likely see similar results by pairing up some niche creators for the iPhone version. We have yet to hit peak social show!
I have been talking about this idea of brand as tv for a long time now, if you want my extended overview of a brand planning exercise to think about characters and dramas, its here.
Retail is getting smart about bringing the hype back - Target (and Lowe’s) both launched bundles for the first customers in line for Black Friday.
The age of “craftwerk”. I have a full video coming on this, but in a counter to the increasingly easy world of AI content, brands with budget are using it on craft… and showing it. Stripe did a pretty incredible miniature city, with documentation.
There was a pretty surprising lack of full blown campaigns for Black Friday, but one that did act on it was Set Active, who rolling out this complete boiling point to freezing point drop series with extensive content and did it as well as any brand I”ve seen.
Patagonia stayed on brand by tripling down on their anti-Black Friday campaign, per usual. There’s something to be said in a world of infinite noise to develop some consistency. I like that Pure Sport ran back their influencer anti-gifting campaign encouraging donations, and hope they never stop it. Establish tradition! Even if some years perform better than others.
Skims went ultra-candid on feed, dedicating a number or their 2x a day social posts over the late week to Kim just breaking down items on their sale on her phone in a mirror, no mic or production. Not even as collab posts…. Simple breakdowns from your known influencers, founders or just a charismatic team member.
Merit Beauty launched a card holder as their incentive (a great, low-cost alternative to heavy discounting to encourage purchases), and I enjoyed it was thought through enough that they had the meme carousel a day or so after. Tasteful, effective and on-brand.
AI Workflows
I have been working on a long-form video on exactly what creatives should be worried about and not when it comes to AI, and recreating all the effects and workflows that are becoming popular to understand them.
I made made a video with Leonardo showing everything from outfit transitions to the creator animal pics, to product visualizations. Prompts below if you want to give them a shot.
Prompts list: still images (all in Leonardo using Nano Banana)
1. “put a little mini anime version of the person sitting next to the guy on the bench”
2. “5 very realistic cute puppies in and around the girls, faces and bodies unchanged”
3. “add very realistic angel wings, rest of photo, faces, bodies, unchanged”
Video prompt for outfit transition (in Leonardo using Kling 2.1 Pro) “transition between the two photos with everything staying the same but the outfits which blend into each other” (speedramped after)
Leonard Blueprints used: Tungsten Moon relight, Product Spin Video, Frameflow, Multiview Perspective Change
Get started in Leonardo
New luxury brands to watch
In my latest Youtube I go through new age brands like Beni Rugs, Slowtide, Quince, and many more that are positioning as alternatives to traditional luxury in vastly different ways.