Spirit Halloween runs on memes:

Memes of the Spirit Halloween banner taking over vacant department stores and of fake, hilarious costumes have taken the internet by storm every fall since around 2019.
Instead of shunning the memes, the company has embraced them, letting them be what every company wants — free, viral, grassroots marketing.

Luxury is coming out of lockdown:

Consumers are now shopping IRL for brand quality and prestige, setting up the US luxury retail market to exceed $75 billion in sales by the end of 2023.

Luxury shopping is as much about the experience as it is about the purchase, which means digital has a larger gap to close.

the expansion of luxury retail proves brand experience (even in the form of brick-and-mortar shops) still attracts big spenders.

Physical will go increasingly upscale and experiential (think: The Sphere) as digital eats the rest.

AI/AR/VR-powered customization and experiences will be the next gen of luxury.

The biggest challenge a marketer at a big company faces is the specter of industrial short-term thinking. Going along with the bean counters might be the worst marketing mistake you can make. Beans aren’t the point of the organization, they’re a side effect.

Seth

TikTok can get people to spend money in the app, but can they get people to shop?

users sent over $250 million in digital gifts to live-streamers in the app in Q3 alone

I’m still skeptical that The Clock App can pull off an everything app style ecomm takeover in the US (maybe anywhere in the west). Trust and ingrained behavior remain the sticking points for me.

TikTok could overtake Temu, but I think Amazon is safe (at least without the help of antitrust regulation).

So Walmart won Black Friday ads, right?

Refer-a-friend programs can make relationships feel like transactions, which isn’t ideal. Transparency might be the answer:

disclosing the referrer reward in the invitation message—a not yet widely adopted method—can promote referring by making the referring action seem more compatible with communal norms and reducing the experienced psychological barrier. They also document the potential of disclosing the referrer reward on increasing acceptance, conversion, and sales.

Routine is a core tenant of cult brands, this tip from [Arvid](Accessibility for Profit — The Bootstrapped Founder 261 https://www.newsblur.com/newsletters/story/9131573:c3dcaa) is the ritual dream:

Lean into anything that people want to do (and should be doing) daily. Embrace their willingness to create a habit and serve them ways to make it easier.

How many companies have been built on this premise?

I am pro blogging (obviously) in part because I think building a brand on someone else’s platform is a fool’s errand.

The big selling point of having a website or blog is that you own it. You aren’t beholden to any algorithmic whims, just your own.

But for as much as you can roll-your-own to truly control your web presence, you still have to renew your domain regularly. Which feels like a philosophical pretzel problem.

If your website is your digital home, should domain fees be thought of as rent or property taxes?

Especially interested in what @manton, author of Indie Microblogging thinks.