Ad Age’s annual list of America’s Hottest Brands features some of the most groundbreaking players in business today--including cannabis brand Cookies, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and country music icon and philanthropist Dolly Parton. 

Despite worldwide shutdowns from the pandemic, these brands were able to deftly navigate an ever-shifting business landscape. At In Depth: America’s Hottest Brands, Ad Age brought together several of the executives behind the brands on the list to discuss how they found success during the unprecedented time. They also shared how they are plugging into pop culture trends, including via limited edition “drops,” and gaining notice, sometimes without the use of paid advertising.

Couldn’t make the event? Watch the stream here.

Here are 5 key takeaways from the sessions:

1. Don't always go for the obvious campaign

When the coronavirus first arrived in the U.S, it seemingly dominated all media, advertisements included. Commercials featuring mask-clad physicians, hands pressed against locked windows, ambulance sirens and hospital beds seemed to overwhelm the airwaves. Still, not every brand was convinced that this approach was the correct one.  Executives from Dick’s Sporting Goods and health care apparel brand Figs said they skipped the maudlin COVID ads in 2020, opting for optimistic, even celebratory campaigns.

“One of the things we saw a lot of people doing were these kind of ‘We’re all in this together,’ soft piano music in the background-type of ad, and it almost made it more depressing,” said Ed Plummer, chief marketing officer at Dick's Sporting Goods. The retailer wanted to put more optimism and inspiration into the marketplace. “So we launched ‘See you out there’ from a brand perspective, which encouraged people to get outdoors.” The strategy paid off, as revenue soared last year—and the growth has continued into the second quarter of this year, the company recently reported.

Figs followed a similar approach, according to Dennis Seydel, who joined the brand earlier this year as chief brand officer. He said Figs “flipped” to pursue the reverse of the “We’re in this together” ads. “We launched one of our biggest brand campaigns in the middle of 2020,” he said.

2. Drop culture is on the rise

Livestream-shopping platform NTWRK takes drop culture to the next level, providing users access to exclusive deals only available on their app. The drops are interactive, personal, blink-and-you’ll-miss-its experiences, offering the customer an activity and a product. NTWRK keeps the idea of interactivity at the core of what they do. 

“We are conditioning the U.S. retail consumer to shop in a different way,” said Jason Brown, who joined NTWRK as chief marketing officer from Foot Locker last month. 

Cookies is also taking advantage of drop-culture buzz, releasing limited-edition strains and merchandise customers line up to get their hands on.

“People like new things, people want to try things that are new, that are limited, that not everybody can have,” said Cookies founder and CEO, a rapper who goes by the name Berner. “As a curator for menus of cannabis, as a cannabis smoker, I want to try the new stuff all the time, so when you do a drop, and you highlight what it is that you’re dropping and you make an event out of it, and it really is truly limited… it really works well.”

3. Leverage your community 

CultureTags founder Eunique Jones Gibson was scrolling Twitter one day when she found herself seamlessly dissecting an extremely long acronym. 

“I immediately knew what it meant with no context and there were hundreds of comments of other people saying things like ‘why do I know what this means?’” said Gibson. 

At that moment, CultureTags was born, a game constructed in no small part by Gibson’s online and in-person communities. Much of the game is pulled from Black Twitter, one thing CultureTags has in common with culture at large. And when it came time for Gibson to raise money for the game, her online community had her back again, launching the game via a viral Twitter thread and earning the initial funding through Kickstarter mere months after the idea was born.

“I don't know if I would be here without Black Twitter,” said Gibson. “Black Twitter is the genesis of genius online.”  

While Gibson’s success was undeniably tied to her community, virtual and otherwise—her kids helped test some of the card prototypes for legibility—she was able use that authentic connection as a launching pad towards something larger, earning a spot on the shelves in Target. 

“Build your community,” she said. “I don’t think that CultureTags would be successful without us having built a community that could easily get behind it.”

4. Combine your skills with passions 

When Matt Kalish, co-founder and president of DraftKings North America, teamed up with his partners to found his company 10 years ago, they were looking for a way to “get skin in the game in the U.S.” 

“Things like season-long fantasy on ESPN were popular, as were maybe like a workplace pool,” he said. Still, Kalish and the DraftKings team were unsatisfied. They decided to make the product they wanted, while taking advantage of the professional skills they already brought to the table. 

“Myself and my partners started DraftKings by basically combining our corporate experience, which was heavily in analytics and direct marketing, with our passions which were skill games, poker, fantasy football,” said Kalish. “We started developing around this concept of ‘What if you could take the best part of fantasy, where you do the draft,’ if you could do that every day.” 

By pioneering so-called daily fantasy, DraftKings gained an upper hand when states began legalizing sports betting. 

5. Don’t force sponsorships 

Consumers are always looking for authenticity from their brands, whether it's passion for the product, strong brand values, or genuine sponsorships. But few brand sponsorships develop as organically as Cookies’ collaboration with former National Basketball Association player Gary Payton, a partnership forged over Instagram live stream. 

“This that 20, this that Gary Payton,” Berner said on a recent Instagram live stream. 

It was an off-hand comment, a nickname for a new strain of cannabis he was showing off to his viewers. But fans ran with it, and eventually a knockoff strain was being marketed as “Gary Payton” cannabis. Payton heard about the product, and the stream, and reached out to Berner. Though Berner wasn’t the one selling the Gary Payton product, he still showed Payton exactly how he would do a collab. 

“I said, ‘Gary, that’s garbage,’” Berner said about the knockoff. “We would never sell nothing like that. Let me show you what I was nicknaming Gary Payton.”

Payton was impressed, and a collaboration was born. Cookies eventually marketed its own Gary Payton strain, released via limited drop to consumers. Instead of a contrived collaboration developed months in advance by executives in a boardroom, it was an authentic connection between brand and collaborator—an authenticity Cookies customers responded to.