🍨 The Half-Pint No. 1

Nike, Walmart, Peloton, McDonalds, and Unilever

I’m trying something new! Every Monday you’ll still get my column as scheduled. On Thursdays, you’ll get *drumroll*… The Half-Pint! The Half-Pint is a quick scoop of marketing news with a dash of Stanley’s patented sassy stardust sprinkles on top. Let me know what you think!

1. McDonald’s Tapped Its First Global Chief Customer Officer Over The Summer — CNBC

💰 How you’ll know when you’ve made it: you get so big that you hire a guy who spends all day reminding you that customers exist.

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2. Nike is Teaming Up With Roblox to Create a Virtual World Called Nikeland — CNBC

Users will be able to dress up their avatars in Nike-branded sneakers and apparel.

🤖 And when Chris Misner, president of Roblox asked Nike executives whether offering poorly-drawn 3-D versions of Nike apparel to customers made any sense, Nike’s executives replied, “just do it.”

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3. How Peloton Builds a Community Around Health and Wellness to Craft Its Brand — CNBC

“The reality is when you try to force something, it just doesn’t work,” she said. “So for us, that intentional cultivation of community is really focused on finding where there are organic sparks of connection within our member base, and then kind of pouring fuel on that ... shining a spotlight on those things.” [Emphasis mine]

⏳ I swear I didn’t read this ahead of writing my last column. Pinky-promise.

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4. Major Unilever Investor Says Business Has ‘lost the plot’ With Brand Purpose Focus — Marketing Week

“Unilever seems to be labouring under the weight of a management which is obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business,” he wrote.

“A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot. The Hellmann’s brand has existed since 1913, so we would guess that by now consumers have figured out its purpose (spoiler alert — salads and sandwiches).” [Emphasis mine]

🥇 Gold. Apparently, Unilever gave all its brands a ‘purpose’ in 2018 after finding that purpose-driven brands grew 27% faster than brands who just were just there to have a good time, man.

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5. Walmart Signals Metaverse Plans with Trademark Applications Around Virtual Goods, NFTs — Marketing Dive

🙌 So Walmart plans to create virtual shopping experiences where customers can purchase digital products with cryptocurrency and blockchain technology? I guess it’ll be just like shopping at Walmart but without all the inconvenience of entering or actually buying anything from a Walmart.

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What’d you think!? Let me know in the comments. I promise the jokes will improve, this old brain’s rusty.