This week: Flamin' Hot jumps product lines, an idea that made Ryan Reynolds jealous, Fortnite helps teach civil rights history and more.
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Apparently, PepsiCo will boldly go where no food has gone before with its line of “Flamin’ Hot” products. The Cheetos original flavor now peppers a whole lineup of the company’s Frito-Lay snack products but last week crossed over into soda territory with the debut of Mtn Dew Flamin’ Hot. The new product, a spicy version of the original, features a fiery packaging design spotlighting Flamin’ Hot’s mascot Sparky, who also stars in a new animated spot announcing the product’s release. Not surprisingly, the drop also includes a line of flame-covered merch.
Canned and eco-conscious water brand Liquid Death is known for its outrageous marketing ideas, which have included macabre plushies, zombie infomercials and even a horror film that just began streaming on Amazon Prime. But things got even more gruesome last week with the brand’s latest promo: skateboards adorned with the blood of Tony Hawk. Liquid Death drew the red stuff from the skating legend and mixed it into the paint used to decorate 100 limited-edition boards. Each was sold for $500, with some of the proceeds going to anti-plastic nonprofit 5 Gyres and Hawk’s own Skatepark Project. According to Liquid Death, the decks sold out within 20 minutes of their release. Brand ambassadorship just hit a whole new level.
As far as B-to-B campaigns go, this is one of the most creative we’ve seen in recent years. Spotify last week called attention to the possibilities of marketing on its platform with a super-targeted push that spoke to major brands’ CMOs—through song. Working with FCB New York, the brand penned an album of tunes spanning a variety of genres, each one celebrating execs from Frito-Lay, CVS, Intuit, Indeed and Kimberly-Clark with whom Spotify has worked over the years.
Ryan Reynolds and fellow actor Rob McElhenney made news when they purchased fifth-tier English soccer club Wrexham WFC. Reynolds’ out-of-the-box marketing tactics promoting other brands led many to suspect that he was behind a massive Hollywood-style sign of the team’s name that recently appeared in its Welsh hometown. It turned out, however, that the Ryan Reynolds-style move was actually a PR stunt from vehicle leasing site Vanarama, which has been the longest-standing sponsor of the U.K. National League in which Wrexham WFC plays. Agency Dark Horses played off the interest around the club generated by Reynolds to help bring attention to its client. Reynolds, meanwhile, admitted he was a bit envious that he didn’t come up with the idea.
I wish I’d thought of that. But if I were to really dig into it, I wish I wasn’t someone who wished they’d thought of that.
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) August 17, 2021
Last year, Time Magazine teamed up with the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Viola Davis on an immersive digital exhibit called “The March,” which aimed to recreate the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The exhibit lives online and will also reopen this month in Chicago at the DuSable Museum of African American History. It will also enter an unlikely venue: Fornite.
The "March Through Time" project, from Time Studios, is the publication’s first-ever gaming experience and expands “The March” project to a new audience through the Epic Games’ battle-royale style title. But it won’t be about fighting. The game transports players to a reimagined Washington D.C., “D.C. 63,” and invites them to hear Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech and play minigames promoting how working together can lead to progress. Time Studios developed the game in Fortnite Creative Mode with Fortnite community creators.
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