Next to Q4 and going into the holidays, February is probably the second most-cluttered time on the marketing landscape. It's a month filled with a variety of celebrations and observances—Black History Month, Lunar New Year, alongside major sales-driven events like Valentine’s Day and the Superbowl—the ultimate advertising spectacle.

For marketers, mastering this landscape demands finesse—a careful juggling act between crafting brand-building stories and promoting sales initiatives. It's all about strategically aligning messages to resonate with the essence of each occasion while also achieving crucial sales targets. In this edition of the BB newsletter, we take a look at how some brands have taken to the task.

The Brief of the Brief

• Sandy Liang’s lesson in authentic cultural connect …

• Getting it right: Loewe’s Lunar New Year Jade Coll …

• Getting it wrong: Target curates Black History Mon …

• Optimizing Omni-Channel: TikTok and The Superbowl

EVENTS AND LAUNCHES

Sandy Liang’s lesson in authentic cultural connection

For Asian-owned label Sandy Liang, connecting her brand with Lunar New Year celebrations is a natural choice. As a native New Yorker raised in Flushing, Queens, and having established a flagship store in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Sandy Liang's brand has always been rooted in her experiences growing up as a Chinese-American in New York City. In 2023, she hosted her inaugural Lunar New Year event at her father’s restaurant, Congee Dim Sum House, to debut a new collection. The event also featured a special capsule release of jewelry as exclusive merchandise.

Drawing from insights gained from last year's event, Sandy relocated her 2024 celebrations to Boom at the summit of The Standard, High Line. Continuing her collaboration with fellow Asian-American, Danny Bowien, numerous guests embraced vibrant red attire, symbolizing good luck for the Lunar New Year, while others chose outfits with Sandy’s signature bows and ballet flats, reflecting the label’s love for playful nostalgia.

While these events offer entertainment, they are not without purpose. Sandy has expressed in previous interviews that the venues she chooses evoke nostalgia, from her father's restaurant where she and her siblings spent their time to the spots she frequented while studying at Parsons. Each event is crafted as an invitation into her life as a Chinese-American, showcasing the traditions she embraces. She hopes that through these experiences, her guests will incorporate elements into their own traditions in the future, and those tuning in from home will be introduced to the traditions that inform Sandy’s designs.

Key takeaways:

• If you’re a brand owner who has built a brand that incorporates your personal story (not all do), then find authentic ways to weave your culture into your initiatives like events and activations.

• Create special collections only when they’re intentional and align with your brand

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Getting it right: Loewe’s Lunar New Year Jade Collection

Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day, and other February celebrations consistently fall in February, providing brands ample opportunity to plan ahead. This year, Loewe demonstrates their foresight with a stunning Lunar New Year collection. Drawing inspiration from the colors and craftsmanship of ancient Chinese jade sculpture, the collection is a nod to the brand's thoughtful planning and attention to detail as it seeks to speak to an audience they’d like to capture and grow.

The 2024 Lunar New Year’s Jade Collection features limited-edition pendants and the Flamenco Purse Mini in six jade-inspired shades: Emerald Green, Dark Brick, Spring Jade, Sugar Yellow, Dark Khaki, and Light Mauve. These hues are sampled from iconic pieces at The Palace Museum, also known as The Forbidden City. Each bag is accompanied by a small keepsake—a jade ring fastened with a leather drawstring.

Completing the collection are keychains featuring legendary creatures from Chinese mythology, including the frog, pig, elephant, and dragon, symbolizing good fortune and adding an element of cuteness.

Getting it wrong: Target curates Black History Month Collection with products that misidentify Black icons

Curating products for an important month of observation and celebration with a year's lead time should signal to brands that they have ample time to get things right. Even with knowing that every February marks Black History Month, this year, Target got it wrong. The "Civil Rights Magnetic Learning Activity" children's activity book was removed from shelves after a teacher on TikTok purchased a copy and discovered errors in identifying W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Carter G. Woodson.

Lots of brands like to keep up with month-long celebrations, special holidays, and other important moments using something called an agile calendar. It's basically about planning ahead and having things ready to go when needed so you don’t miss the dates, and the mark. Doing the proper research to make sure you don’t make these kind of preventable and irresponsible errors will show your customer you actually care, and that it’s not just a virtue signal or tokenization. Bigger multi-brand businesses like Target, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers might use agile calendars to capture as much of multiple audiences as they can, but sometimes, relying too much on just the dates, and not the meaning and responsibility behind them, will cause missing important details that could cause big problems for the brand (and your ethics).

Key Takeaways:

• If you’re going to create something for a culturally connected occasion, do your due diligence and do your research.

• Make sure what you’re creating is actually informed by people from that community.

• Don’t forget: if you’re seeking advice from particular communities, whether that is consultation or co-creation, you’d better compensate them for their time.

STRATEGY DEEP DIVE

Optimizing Omni-Channel: TikTok and The Superbowl

During the Superbowl, many brands bet on Celebrities and TikTok-famous influencers and special TikTok native executions to bridge the TV viewer and internet-native divide to launch new products to a captive audience of millions.

The market price of a Superbowl ad placement during the game has hit a high of 7 million dollars, brands have opted to have their spending go further and maximize their audience by bundling their marketing strategies with placements on TikTok, foregoing partnerships with X FKA Twitter, where live discussion about the game helped expand the audience reached by advertising.

Early this month, CeraVe activated TikTok Famous content creators across the lifestyle and dermatology spaces. In a series of prelaunch videos priming the audience with footage of Michael Cera at a drugstore, signing bottles of CeraVe products, to give the impression that he had founded the well-loved skincare brand. On gameday, they released the TV spot the tied the campaign all together – with TikTok famous dermatologists to back their “made by dermatologists” claim, and flipping the Cera from Michael, to allude to the active ceramides found in their products. A fun concepts with immediate amplification from top influencers, this was a campaign that was a win from the start.

e.l.f. cosmetics for their Superbowl spot has gone all out on cross-generational appeal by enlisting personalities who would be recognizable to at least one person from each generation that watches the Superbowl, from grandparents, millennials, and to the vertical video-obsessed tweens of Gen Alpha getting a head start on TikTok.

Finally, for huge news to get even bigger, Verizon partners with Beyoncé to launch their new 5G product, which promises the user that nothing will ever break the internet, with the launch of Beyoncé’s act II, the long-awaited follow up release to Renaissance (Act 1)

Many brands in our space don’t have the spending power just yet to blow on a spot during the Superbowl, and depending on the brand, they may not even want to. But spectacles like the Superbowl that attract the attention of millions of consumers across demographics may offer valuable insight on tailoring niche content for an intended audience and optimizing the material so that it may engage and entertain the market on the fringes.

Key Takeaways:

• If you’re going to create content (and put heavy production budget into it), think about how you can optimize that both leading up to the big reveal and after

• Use omni-channel distribution to target and reach various demographics, tweaking content formats to suit different channels while still maintaining cohesive creative direction to encapsulate the campaign/initiative

SCHEMA is a Brand Marketing & Creative Agency for brands that want to create impact through creativity, community, and culture. To say hello or work with us, send us a message here. Follow our IG here, and our Tik Tok here. Have a good one!