As NFL fans gear up for Sunday’s hotly anticipated round 2 matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles, Cowboys’ QB Dak Prescott has teamed up with Maximum Effort and the Colorectal Cancer Alliance’s “Lead From Behind” initiative to dole out some pregame “Sh*t Talk” meant to motivate lifesaving measures. 

In the 84-second-long video, titled Talking Sh*t with Dak Prescott, the 30-year-old athlete—who is considered at risk for colon cancer after losing his mother to the disease—begins with a sincere, empathetic message to fans who have had some choice words about him in the past. 

“As a professional quarterback, I get a lot of sh*t,” he says earnestly into the camera, against a montage of fan grievances, one of whom angrily shouts, “You have more turnovers than a bake sale!”

The affable athlete continued, “And I get it … when you’re not a fan of something … sh*tting on it can make you feel good. But what if I told you that now … it can do some good too?” 

Prescott then goes on to encourage those 45 years or older to talk to their doctors about getting screened and then demonstrates the usage of Cologuard, an at-home screening kit—incentivizing the audience to place stickers of things “they want to sh*t on” to make the process easier and more enjoyable. 

To the hilarious delight of Dallas fans and the chagrin, horror and potential ire of Miami, San Francisco, Cleveland and Philadelphia fans, Prescott’s choice of stickers sets the tone for some brutal burns. 

“Not a fan of marine life?” he says as a dolphin sticker flashes across the screen. “Slap it on!” 

He then adds, “It works on anything … from colors … to large American predatory birds,” reserving his final swipes for the Browns and Eagles, the 2023 NFC championship team (and the other half of this year’s Super Bowl, aka “Kelce Bowl”), before concluding his tutorial. 

“It’s that easy to get screening for colon cancer, and make your feelings abundantly clear,” he deadpans. 

Reynolds then chimes in with a reliably comedic voice-over praising Prescott for doing the PSA despite not being the target age or the “average risk” demo for the screening kit. 

“…He’s so committed to preventing people from getting colon cancer that he agreed to star in this video that we wrote for him without any concern for his safety,” Reynolds says as stickers referencing the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions are revealed as the kit revolves, before stopping on a final image of Reynolds as the smiling, disfigured Deadpool. 

The video is the third from Maximum Effort and The Colorectal Cancer Alliance, but the shortest in length. The previous two, the first starring Reynolds and his Wrexham Football Club partner, Rob McElhenney, and another featuring actor and former footballer Terry Crews in character as Idiocracy President Camacho, followed each as they filmed their colonoscopies. 

“Losing my mother to colon cancer was devastating, and no one should have to go through that,” said Prescott in a statement. “That’s why I started the colon cancer screening and research pillar of my Faith Fight Finish Foundation. Partnering with the Colorectal Cancer Alliance and Lead from Behind is another way I can let people, especially Black Americans who are at greater risk, know that colon cancer is preventable and there are a variety of screening options.” 

Touching down on a touchy subject

With the NFL season attracting a sizeable audience, having the quarterback from one of the league’s most popular and influential teams, who happens to be intimately connected to the cause, is a cunning move to raise awareness of the dangers of colorectal cancer and how preventable it is, with a 90% survival rate with early detection and treatment. 

“I’d like to thank Dak for joining Rob McElhenney, Terry Crews and me in helping raise awareness for dropping your drawers,” Reynolds, Maximum Effort’s co-founder, said in a statement. “This is a highly preventable cancer and the more we advocate for and destigmatize the colorectal screening process, the more real lives are saved.”

While the Lead from Behind initiative has brought some appreciated humor to an issue that is no laughing matter and has raised significant awareness due to “the Reynolds Effect,” there remains a disparity in care among people of color, who are most at risk for the disease. 

“Our research shows that screening access varies greatly among Black and medically underserved populations, which directly impacts the risk of colorectal cancer,” said Kevin Conroy, chairman and CEO of Exact Sciences, in the statement. “We applaud the Colorectal Cancer Alliance for creating a Health Equity Fund and are committed to assisting its efforts to make screening accessible for all.” 

The Alliance hopes videos like these continue to make an impact until there’s no longer a need for them.

“The mission of the Alliance is to end colorectal cancer in our lifetime,” said Michael Sapienza, CEO of the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. “By raising awareness for screening options and prevention through Lead From Behind and decreasing disparities through the Health Equity Fund, we are making significant strides in achieving that mission.” 

She’s a single mom who’s down on her luck. He’s a competitive eater who’s searching for love. What happens when fate brings them together in an ad for Impossible Foods?

It’s a meat cute … get it?

Inspired by the cheesy Hallmark movie cannon and wrapped in a heaping helping of dad jokes, Impossible drops its latest campaign called “Wiener Wonderland.”

In addition to providing a sneak peek of a new product—the plant-based brand’s first hot dog—the work debuts a rom-com trailer that takes its cues from wildly popular cable TV flicks. And to stretch out the purposely corny joke, Impossible has kicked off “12 Days of Holidogs,” a content series that leads up to a full day of product sampling in New York on Dec. 16.

“We started batting the idea of a wiener wonderland around as a joke,” Leslie Sims, the brand’s chief marketing and creative officer, told Adweek. “Because the season is about more of everything—and being completely over the top—we just embraced it.”

Targeting new demos

“12 Days of Holidogs” arrives at least a month before consumers will be able to buy the new hot dogs, with the Silicon Valley-based startup experimenting with the teaser ad concept to help stoke demand.

The campaign’s populist style and tone continue the brand’s attempt to reach beyond the loyalists and break into new demos, per Sims.

“We’re trying to broaden our message out, talk to flexitarians and get more into the mindset of meat eaters,” Sims said.

Impossible’s CEO Peter McGuinness, speaking at Adweek X in Los Angeles this week, said marketing in the category has suffered from “elitism” and “wokeness” that turned off much of the American public.

“We have to almost reboot Impossible and reboot the category,” he said, noting that “it’s a marketing conundrum” in how to best communicate product benefits like zero cholesterol, lower saturated fat and high protein.

The privately held company, which has reported sales increases even as plant-based meat has suffered double-digit sales declines, is focused on increasing its 15% unaided awareness and convincing omnivores to try its soy-based beef, chicken and pork substitutes.

‘Frankly in Love’

“12 Days of Holidogs” and “Wiener Wonderland” come from Impossible’s in-house marketing and creative teams, with collaborators at Avalon, the production arm of agency Argonaut, and director Lee Einhorn. The movie trailer continues a well-worn trope in advertising that has seen brands ranging from Walmart to the U.K.’s National Lottery co-opting the romcom format.

The various content pieces of the campaign include a two-hour Yule log video—with Impossible hot dogs roasting over the flames—memes, recipes, crafts and giveaways of ugly holiday sweaters.

Fans are already offering up suggestions for rom-com titles, including “It’s a BUNderful Life” and “Frankly in Love,” with the description, “He likes his with mustard, she prefers ketchup. Can these two star-crossed lovers ever make it work?”

As the capper to 12 days of social posts and digital ads, Impossible will launch a one-day pop-up in midtown Manhattan to dole out samples with the tagline, “It’s a holiday miracle for your mouth.”

The activation will be located near Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center’s massive Christmas tree, giving the brand an opportunity to poll consumers in real time about the product.

Impossible’s hot dogs will go on sale in 2024, with rollout expected first at restaurant chains, following the brand’s established pattern of starting with food service and then expanding to grocery stores.

Hot dogs, the seventh new product to launch in the last 12 months, had been a priority for the company, according to McGuinness, who called the picnic staple “an undeniably classic part of American culture.”

Maintaining a healthy diet can be a challenge, especially when you’re on the move. However, Tejari has got you covered with its plant-based protein powders that make for healthy and delicious snacks.

As the founder of Tejari, Roma Patel embarked on a quest to find nutrient-rich, tasty and convenient food options that did not include empty calories, sugar or cheap ingredients. Despite extensive searches, she could not find any that met her criteria.

Therefore, she decided to seek advice from registered dietitians, learn from local farmers and collaborate with food scientists to push the boundaries. These efforts resulted in the creation of Tejari, a plant-based, superfood protein that is made with organic, whole ingredients and is packed with fruits and spices.

In this episode of Young Influentials, Adweek digital editor and host Colin Daniels sits down with Patel as she share the unique features of her product, the challenges of finding suitable distributors and the future plans of the company.

Stream the new episode below, or listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or iHeartRadio.

Though Warner Bros. Discovery says Max is the one to watch, the company really hopes you’re watching linear TV too.

In its Q3 earnings call today, the company revealed a 12% decline in advertising, and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels isn’t optimistic about the near future of the TV advertising market.

“The state of the overall linear ad market during the second half of this year has been disappointing,” Wiedenfels said.

Previously, industry insiders had been predicting a second-half recovery in TV ad sales, but Wiedenfels added, “the timing of an ad recovery is currently difficult for any of us to predict with any conviction.”

The ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike is also causing issues for next year.

Though Wiedenfels said there should be “an eventual tailwind from the end of the work stoppage,” there is a “real risk” that the strike impact will extend into 2024.

Of course, the Warner Bros. Discovery execs noted the market will eventually turn around, and Wiedenfels said the company is in “fighting shape” for when that happens.

CEO David Zaslav also made it clear that the company is still fully behind its linear TV business.

“We’re not giving up,” Zaslav said. “We really believe in linear.”

Moving gently down the stream

Streaming-wise, though the company shed overall direct-to-consumer subscribers from 95.8 million to 95.1 million, average revenue per user is up. And Wiedenfels said the streaming advertising market is “robust.”

The company is also noticing increased engagement and reduced churn in its latest news and sports offerings, including the Bleacher Report (B/R) Sports Add-On package and CNN on Max.

Looking at the linear market moving forward, Zaslav pointed to the recent, headline-making Disney and Charter agreement, saying the deal was structured in a way that was “favorable for both parties and favorable for the ecosystem.”

In the Disney and Charter deal, both sides made concessions, with Disney receiving its more than $2 billion in carriage fees and Charter creating a path to offer various Disney streaming services alongside some of its Spectrum cable plans.

“The churn on that will be very low, and the reach will go up and they’ll be able to sell advertising, of course,” Zaslav said, noting that the deal creates and “interesting bridge” to build scale and create linear stability.

Amazon’s Black Friday Game may be weeks away, but the company is already doing its touchdown dance.

Ad inventory for Amazon’s first Black Friday NFL game, a matchup between the Dolphins and the Jets, is sold out, the company has confirmed to Adweek. In addition, the Thursday Night Football games surrounding Black Friday, on 11/16 and 11/30, have also sold out ad inventory.

Danielle Carney, head of NFL ad sales for Amazon, told Adweek the news demonstrates “the overall strength and demand for Prime Video’s NFL programming.” The company also noted the sellouts were the result of strong interest during the upfront market.

“We’re working with brand partners to promote exclusive Black Friday deals running on Amazon,” Carney said. “Viewers will see retail deals through interactive video ads that lead to brand deals on Amazon and custom brand landing pages.”

Amazon previously told Adweek that Columbia Sportswear, Bose and Carnival Cruises would be among the advertisers during its Black Friday NFL telecast, with twice as many interactive video ads airing as compared to a typical Thursday Night Football game.

Interactive video ads were one of Amazon’s innovations for its second season of Thursday Night Football, with the format already resulting in significant viewer engagement, according to the company.

During the game, brands will utilize audience-based creative to reach their audiences with Amazon’s first-party shopping and entertainment signals, and the company will work with partners on ad placement to ensure viewers receive relevant messaging.

“In many ways, Black Friday is the ‘Super Bowl’ for brands, and we’re giving them new opportunities to reach customers at scale with an unprecedented NFL matchup,” Carney said.

Moving forward, Carney said the company is viewing the upcoming game as a learning opportunity, with the company looking to continue to builds its Black Friday game offering and incorporate feedback from partners.

“It’s Year 1, but we’re building Prime Video’s Black Friday Football game into a new NFL tentpole for brands and viewers,” Carney said.

The boom in generative artificial intelligence has brands grappling to benchmark themselves against others and struggling with how to move forward with tangible use cases.  

Staying abreast with the smorgasbord of gen AI tools in the market is one challenge. Brands yet to explore gen AI are confronted with a knowledge gap and uncertainty about where to begin. Those brand marketers who have begun experimenting with this technology are concerned about regulation and governance.

“The promise of these tools being effective and efficient—and finding new business value to provide to customers—is in the scaling of it,” said Ashley Wood, global principal, brand innovation & insights, Ogilvy Consulting. “It’s just as much a change management issue as it is a technology issue [within brands].”

An August survey of 900 marketers, the 2023 State of Marketing AI Report from Marketing AI Institute, found that 78% said their organizations lacked any form of AI-focused education or training. In a June study, WARC found that 64% of marketing organizations are either in the early stages of adopting AI or haven’t started implementing it at all.

According to a Gartner survey conducted during the Summer with 405 marketing leaders, 62% of the respondents said that their current focus on technology and talent demands significant resources, leaving little room to explore emerging technologies like generative AI. To that, 53% of those surveyed expressed feeling overwhelmed by their current technology and project commitments, making it challenging to explore gen AI.  

Running into governance issues

Ogilvy’s brand partners, particularly those in the healthcare sector, have expressed concerns regarding consumer data privacy and IP protection standards related to gen AI. One hospital client’s marketing team was shut down for concerns over compliance after the team tested ChatGPT. The intricate privacy risks associated with open-source gen AI tools like ChatGPT have prompted firms like Samsung to ban staff using the chat tool following leaks of sensitive data, reported Bloomberg in May.

For some brands, the limitations surrounding indemnification and content ownership associated with existing gen AI tools have continued to pose challenges.

“Midjourney is probably the best gen AI image platform,” said Adam Buhler, svp of creative technology at Digitas. “But we can’t use it because its terms and conditions and [master service] agreements do not meet our needs. They don’t allow protection of our work.”

Reams of unstructured data

Brands are realizing the messy nature of their data stores hinders their capacity to fully use gen AI to optimize campaigns.

Brand partners of Digitas have been exploring how to use their data sets with gen AI. Their objectives included gathering campaign insights, making predictions for future campaigns and ultimately, improving conversion rates.

However, “when you get down to execution, you find that much of the data in the repository lacks context and is amorphous,” said Buhler. “We’re finding that to make sense of all the unstructured data, we have to handhold the generative AI so extensively that it’s not worth it.”

Benchmarking clients

Ogilvy Consulting is gathering evidence from clients to better understand their knowledge gaps.

Over the next few weeks, the agency plans to survey all its brand partners to assess where they stand on the AI maturity curve, determine their levels of ambition and understand their budget constraints.

“We found that what clients want the most from us is to share what other clients are doing,” said Carla Hendra, chief executive, Ogilvy Consulting. “If we can set some baseline and learn where various brands are today—and measure that on a regular basis—we will be able to extract insights to drive strategy.”

In the midst of the rapid advancements in generative artificial intelligence, Adweek’s weekly summary provides an overview of the most recent updates, regulatory activities, and business developments in the world of GenAI that marketers need to know.

This week’s news update includes: 

On the policy side

• President Joe Biden signed an ambitious artificial intelligence executive order, the first action of its kind, Monday. For marketers, the most relevant issues from the order revolve around deepfakes (and prevention through watermarking), data privacy protection as AI tools collect more data, and AI in the workplace leading to job loss. These rules are to be implemented by August 2024. Copyright infringement was not included.
  • Some are concerned with the order’s unintended consequences: “If taken too far, unilateral and heavy-handed administrative meddling in AI markets could undermine America’s global competitiveness and even the nation’s geopolitical security,” said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow for the R Street Institute’s technology.

• Holding company IAC, parent to Dotdash Meredith, cautioned the U.S. Copyright Office that the internet will become “unrecognizable,” eroding user trust unless the government takes measures to safeguard publisher-copyrighted content used for training generative AI, per Axios.  

• Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, saw a partial legal triumph against allegations of copyright infringement related to their AI training methods. This is after three artists, such as illustrator Kelly McKernan, sued the AI model in January for copying their original work. On Wednesday, the U.S. district judge dismissed these claims, per AI Business. 

• On Tuesday, News Media Alliance published research finding GenAI models give more credence to articles from certain premium publishers over generic online content. Chatbots often replicated segments of copyrighted articles in their responses, the research found. “It’s an exacerbation of an existing problem,” Danielle Coffey, the president and chief executive of the News Media Alliance told The New York Times. 

On the tech side

• Google brings text-to-image AI capabilities to its Product Studio. This enhancement will let U.S. marketers generate GenAI-driven product images, ranging from basic background visuals to complete scene setups, for free, per TechCrunch. 
• Microsoft puts a price tag on its GenAI offerings. At $30 per month per user, Microsoft launched its 365 Copilot AI assistant to help businesses perform tasks such as summarizing documents, improving Excel analysis, and generating emails. However, its enterprise customers willing to pay the premium price would need to commit at least 300 users to get access to its latest AI product, per The Verge. 

What happens in Vegas, stays on social media—thanks to BravoCon’s new, expanded partnerships for 2023.

With BravoCon’s move to Las Vegas for its Nov. 3-Nov. 5 event at Caesar’s Forum, NBCUniversal will bring in 20 expanded and interactive brand sponsorships and three times as many commercial-led activations, according to the company.

“Brands are absolutely a fabric of the weekend in the storytelling,” Mark Marshall, NBCUniversal’s chairman of ad sales, told Adweek. “When we look back at last BravoCon, you look at all the passion that everyone has for all the Bravolebrities, but also one of the longest lines you had was Jake from State Farm.”

Whether fawning over Real Housewives or Jake from State Farm’s Discount Double Checks, fans will have plenty of opportunities. NBCUniversal told Adweek that around 165 Bravolebrities will attend, and the weekend includes more than 60 live events, with partners accessing NBCU’s One Platform to connect with attendees, expected to reach 30,000 strong.

And for those who can’t attend, on-ground activations will come to life digitally through social channels, Peacock and bravotv.com.

“It’s not just about the 30,000 people that are there. It’s the voyeurism of people wanting to know what’s going on even if they aren’t there,” Marshall said. “What we’re doing socially, as well as on the digital side with Peacock, where we’re going to have our own pregame daily show, so it almost starts to feel like your NFL day.”

Fans in-person and online can also enjoy various shoppable experiences, including the Bravo Bazaar, which features products from Bravo talent-owned brands and emerging businesses, and a new BravoConShoppable Microsite, where brands such as Nexxus can be accessed through QR codes both at the booths and across social, digital, linear and streaming.

Marshall told Adweek that BravoCon had “heavy retention” among partners, with each returning brand expanding its presence, including presenting sponsors State Farm and Lay’s.

State Farm is bringing attendees to the Hamptons with its activation, letting fans create friendship bracelets and captured Instagrammable moments with Summer House-inspired props. The brand is also involved with The BravoCon Morning Show, a daily livestream via Bravo’s TikTok handle, and The Best of BravoCon Recap Show, which streams on Peacock in the days following the event, with special appearances by Bravo talent and even, yes, State Farm’s aforementioned Jake.

Meanwhile, Lay’s is capitalizing on Scandoval, the ever-popular reality TV scandal from Vanderpump Rules (which you can read about here), by bringing in Ariana Madix, along with Katie Maloney, to showcase their sandwich shop, Something About Her. Attendees can enjoy Lay’s-infused food and cocktail recipes, talent appearances and the chance to try an exclusive Lay’s potato chip flavor inspired by Something About Her.

“People want to feel like they’re getting a sneak peek behind the curtain, so the idea that we’re creating a tomato soup and grilled cheese chip that is being launched here goes along with the tone of BravoCon and this idea of being able to look into other people’s lives,” Marshall said. “In this case, you get to look into a restaurant that’s going to pop up that people have been hearing about for multiple seasons.”

Madix previously teased her BravoCon involvement at NBCU’s 2023 TV upfront event. And the list of sponsors just continues.

Saying ‘Bravo!’ to brands

Amazon Freevee will let fans connect with Bravo franchises through scannable onsite QR codes at the Bravoland Museum, Carnival will dock in Las Vegas to deliver cocktails, DoorDash is delivering fans an ultimate Bravopalooza experience, Hilton is giving VIP ticketholders a VIP lounge while Wayfair is bringing the Real Housewives to life with custom-built, interactive areas, including using AR technology to let attendees record their own Housewives tagline.

Beauty brands Juvederm Collection of Fillers, Shark Beauty and Ulta Beauty will all have a presence. Studs is providing a Studs on Wheels trailer for “Earscaping,” and Yoplait is bringing sponsored panels and giveaways.

According to Marshall, NBCUniversal considered everything about the weekend, even down to the restrooms, with Clorox coming in to handle the … messy moments.

“We’ve joked that the only downside anyone can think about for the last BravoCon at the Javits Center were the bathrooms maybe weren’t up to par,” Marshall said. “We’re going into this beautiful new complex with beautiful bathrooms, and Clorox will be part of the brand there. People who are returning are absolutely going to get that joke.”

And since Bravolebrities constantly have beef, Wendy’s is on hand to help everyone chill out.

“They have a tonality that fits perfectly within the show, so the idea of actually having Frosties being delivered daily that are going to show up,” Marshall said. “You know how much fans like free stuff, but I give a lot of credit to Wendy’s. They’ve worked closely, hand-in-hand to make sure we’re giving the fans something unique.”

The brand will also double down on “beefing” during a special episode of BravoCon Live! With Andy Cohen.

Viva Las Vegas

For Marshall, the weekend is all about Bravo fans and brands coming together.

“You know you’ve struck a cultural chord when you’ve outgrown the Javits Center in New York to take this show on the road to one of the bigger spaces in the world in Las Vegas,” Marshall said. “There’s people from all 50 states as well as internationally who will be coming to this, so while the event’s in Vegas, really the fandom is what’s drawing people from every part of the country and around the world.”

And regarding future venues, fans will have to watch what happens—Marshall said it’s still too “early to tell” where future events will take place.

“I think the nice part is we feel like we could put into just about any town and fans would show up for that,” Marshall said. “We’re excited for it to get going.”

This year, an estimated one million people will visit the World of Coca-Cola, the company-funded museum whose 100,000 square feet of exhibits, memorabilia and interactive installations consistently ranks among Atlanta’s most popular tourist attractions. While the bank vault that contains Coke’s purportedly secret recipe is probably the most dramatic offering, a perennial fan favorite hides up on the second level, just past the elevators. It’s called Taste It! and, as the name suggests, it’s a taproom where visitors can sample Coca-Cola products from all over the world. There’s Sprite Cucumber from Romania, for instance, and Korean favorite Minute Maid Joy Apple Lychee.

Oh, and there’s Tab.

Last week on a visit to Atlanta, members of Tab’s largest Facebook fan group were delighted to find the beverage still streaming from the spigots. The sight made them a little wistful, too, because the World of Coca-Cola is, paradoxically enough, the only place left in the world where consumers can sip Tab. On Oct. 16, 2020, Coca-Cola announced that it would cease production of the storied cola in the magenta can, the first major diet soft drink to hit the American market back in 1963.

To say that Tab fans were disappointed would be an understatement. Over the past three years, Tab drinkers have not only scoured store shelves to stock up on the last cans, but they also organized into advocacy groups on Facebook, with Save Tab Soda being the most visible.

Two weeks ago, following repeated appeals to headquarters via written correspondence, the group’s members decided to kick things up a notch.

“We wanted to do our first in-person event, and it coincided with the 60^th anniversary of Tab,” Adam Burbach, Save Tab’s president, told Adweek. “Our plan was to go to lunch and then bring a collection of cards and stories that we’ve been collecting from the Tab group and walk them over to Coca-Cola [headquarters.]” As things turned out, Coca-Cola’s PR department decided to save the group the trip by sending a representative down to meet them.

Hyped up consumers appearing at a brand’s headquarters is nothing new, of course, but the case of Tab fans and Coca-Cola is noteworthy. Despite their grief over having lost their favorite drink, Tab fans aren’t angry with Coke—they’d just like their Tab back. (For their part, Coke’s PR reps who came out were, the group said, “very nice” to them as well.) And while the visit was a demonstration of sorts, it was designed to entertain as well as inform. The former involved Save Tab members dressed in Tab attire—even Tab costumes—as they made their way from the airport. The latter took the form of a bag of letters they brought from across the country imploring Coke to resurrect Tab.

While the odds seem long that Tab will appear on store shelves again, the movement nevertheless raises marketing questions worth pondering well outside the beverage realm. Should a legacy company feel any responsibility toward a brand that, while faded, nonetheless helped it to prosper? Does the hard-nosed wisdom of a financial decision always outweigh the value of keeping fans happy? And even if a product has outlived its usefulness, does goodwill argue for keeping it around—even in a limited run?

When scale isn’t everything

While Tab met its demise as part of what Coke termed “global portfolio refresh,” it was more like portfolio attrition. Coke announced that efforts would center on “category-leading brands with the greatest potential for growth and scale.”

Asked to comment for this story about the future for Tab, Coca-Cola sent Adweek a statement: “We focus on brands that help accelerate our growth strategy, which includes prioritizing those with the potential for greater scale.”

It’s difficult to fault a brand for wanting to pool its resources behind those parts of its portfolio that promise the most growth. Coke is, after all, a public company beholden to Wall Street’s demands, and Tab made up a mere 1% of sales in its final years of production. And though Tab—sweetened with saccharine—was groundbreaking for its day, it also helped create the diet-cola category that eventually eclipsed it with aspartame-sweetened beverages—Diet Coke foremost among them.

At the same time, Tab drinkers contend that Coke owes them a solid for years of faithful patronage. “Our mothers and grandmothers put that drink on the map for you,” as one put it.

In addition, branding history has long demonstrated that even products that generate little at the register can still be valuable parts of a company portfolio. HP’s super-cheap printers, Costco’s rotisserie chicken and even Sony’s PlayStation 5 have been routinely sold at break-even or at-loss rates, simply because they’re good at drawing customers in who’ll spend money on accessories or other items.

Trish Priest, Save Tab’s secretary, also argues that the potential pool of Tab customers could well be larger than Coke realizes.

“Coca-Cola knows their business,” she concedes, “but we know the customer. We’ve done a lot of surveys we’ve included in various communications to both Coca-Cola and the bottlers to help them understand that there’s a large demand for Tab that I don’t think they’re aware of.”

Burbach added that, in his view, the decline of Tab had more to do with Coke’s ignoring it as a product than a lack of interest on the part of the public. “We think there’s an awful lot of people out there that would buy it again,” he said. Based on Save Tab’s own research conducted via social media, Tab devotees reported they would not only pay a higher price for the cola if it returned, 98% would recommend it to their friends.

The lure of nostalgia

The idea that America could be brimming with would-be Tab drinkers feels a little fantastical, but it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. When it comes to legacy products, there’s a standing presumption that their devotees are solely people of a certain age who were around when those products debuted.

But consumption patterns paint a broader picture.

For example, Urban Outfitters has made a small industry out of selling long-forgotten stuff that its core twentysomething customers are too young to remember the first time around, including vinyl albums, Chia pets and lava lamps. Earlier this month, it even began selling refurbished circa 2004 iPods for $350.

And let us not forget Barbie. Statistia figures from July showed that nearly half—48%—of Americans who had seen or planned to see the Warner Bros. summer blockbuster Barbie were between 18 and 29 years old—which means the youngest fan was born nearly a half century after Barbie’s 1959 debut.

Tucked in among the bushel of letters collected by Save Tab are ones by young drinkers. Read one: “Hi. I am 25… I know lots of people 20 something into 30s that love Tab.”

Jack Mackinnon is the senior director of cultural insights for consumer research firm Collage Group. To his mind, while it’s easy to deprecate millennials (and now, Gen-Z) as hipsters, the fact is that they’ve demonstrated that authenticity sells. Younger consumers, he said, have shown a “love of heritage brands going back to a time when things were made for a purpose, built to last, and there was a story behind the craft of it. Tab falls right in the heart of that.”

Some limited-time hype

But the most compelling reason Save Tab can probably make for saving Tab is probably a marketing one.

“There is little to no chance they would bring back Tab simply for the sake of goodwill—that’s a slippery and unprofitable slope,” said Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. At the same time, however, the sales stream generated by new or returning fans plus the PR boost that comes from a well-managed relaunch have driven many companies to give it a try.

“If Coke were to ever bring back Tab,” Stanford continued, “the most likely avenue would be through a nostalgic, limited time offering at retail, or exclusively online. They did it with Surge, for example. And Pepsi has done it with past brands like Crystal Pepsi and Pepsi Blue.”

Indeed they do. In Season 3 of Rick and Morty, when brainiac scientist Rick Sanchez longed for McDonald’s Szechuan dipping sauce—gone from menu boards since 1998—McDonald’s returned the condiment to restaurants for one day. The response was so great that police had to break up a crowd outside one location in Wellington, Fla, that chanted: “We want sauce!”

The Golden Arches has played a similar hand for years with the McRib sandwich, which has had at least four “farewell tours.” The advantages of such enforced scarcity aren’t lost on headquarters. “Bringing it back every so often adds to the excitement,” McDonald’s senior marketing director Marta Fearon told the Associated Press in 2011.

There also seems to be a knock-on effect in the general population when a huge corporation treats its superfans kindly. Were Coke to bring back Tab, it “could certainly tap into nostalgia as well as highlight their responsiveness to their loyal consumers,” said Marisa Mulvihill, partner and head of brand and activation for consultancy Prophet.

“Frito-Lay has done this quite well over the last few years, leaning into their customers to select flavors for Lays and even using user-generated content for Doritos ads,” Mulvihill added. “These marketing tactics signal that they listen and trust their consumers and they are part of the same community.”

And it might well for Coke, too—if it decided on producing even a limited run of Tab. But until then, fans can still enjoy a cup of the stuff at the World of Coke—as much as they like, in fact, after they pay the general admission fee of $19.00.

Disney is saying Hulu to more streaming content.

Today, it was confirmed that Disney will move to acquire the 33% stake in Hulu held by Comcast following the latter’s Nov. 1 exercise of its right under the put/call arrangement between the two companies.

By Dec. 1, Disney is expected to pay NBCU approximately $8.61 billion, which represents NBCU’s percentage of the $27.5 billion guaranteed floor value for Hulu that was set when the companies entered into their agreement in 2019, minus the anticipated outstanding capital call contributions payable by NBCU to Disney.

Though the timing of the appraisal process is uncertain, the deal is anticipated to be completed during 2024.

Disney already owned two-thirds of Hulu, which has around 48 million subscribers.

The news comes from a deal Disney made with Comcast to buy its one-third stake in Hulu in 2019. The companies previously set a deadline for January for a deal, but that moved in September, with a new Disney press release now confirming things are moving ahead.

The acquisition of Comcast’s Hulu stake at fair market value is expected to help Disney further its streaming and OTT objectives. And with Disney doubling down on its streaming efforts and strategy early in 2023, a deal has been long-rumored to be coming.

In May, the company touted a combination of Disney+ and Hulu to increase its opportunity to serve digital ads and grow its advertising business. However, at the time, Disney CEO Bob Iger didn’t give a clear plan about what the future held with Comcast’s stake.

“It’s not really been fully determined what will happen in that regard, except that as we’ve looked more and more in the future of our streaming business … it’s clear that a combination of the content that is on Disney+ with general entertainment is a very strong combination,” Iger said in a May earnings call.

Elsewhere in Disney’s streaming efforts, the company announced in August that its ad-supported plan has added 3.3 million subscribers since launching in December. And according to Iger, 40% of new Disney+ subscribers are choosing an ad-supported product.

The company also cut down on its streaming losses in the most recent quarter, losing $512 million vs. $1.06 billion in the same period last year while improving its direct-to-consumer (DTC) operating income by $1 billion in three quarters, according to Iger.