Broken Marketing by Anvara - Week 5

Welcome to Broken Marketing

Welcome to the 5th weekly edition of Broken Marketing by Anvara, where we discuss marketing that breaks.

For those of you that are new here, we’re Nick and Andrei, the co-founders of Anvara. We’ve included you here because one way or another we’re connected. We’re happy to have you a part of the Anvara family. 

Glossier Activates in Austin

Glossier, the booming beauty brand that loves real world marketing, is back at it again with an experiential pop-up in Austin, Texas. Last weekend, the DTC beauty brand took over Austin’s South Congress with its “Balm DotWorld” activation, celebrating the launch of its Black Cherry collection. The pop-up transformed a mobile unit into a full-blown Balm Dotcom universe, complete with charm personalization, a photo booth, and plenty of opportunities to slather on samples. Lines stretched for three-and-a-half hours, with die-hard fans showing up before 7 a.m. on both days. That’s right—people woke up at the crack of dawn for lip balm. Good work, Glossier.

Brand activations are a phenomenal way to improve loyalty within your existing customer base, or bring a higher degree of brand credibility to new customers. What seems like the better brand?—the one that posted a few cookie cutter TikToks trying to persuade you to buy, or the one where you saw photos, videos, and news of an in-person, professional brand activation with crowds forming? If you get creative with the real world, you seem more legitimate, you seem more real. Anyone can post TikToks. The best brands never won doing the same thing as everyone else. Do something different, and use the real world as your canvas.

@glossier

Balm Dotworld Austin, we loved hanging with you! 🫶 Thanks so much for coming through to show us your Black Cherry love 🍒 #glossier #austi... See more

Meta is Having a Good Year

Ah, Zuck. After hitting puberty just last year, Mark Zuckerberg’s business is off to the races in 2025. First, with the uncertainty around TikTok given the ban two weeks ago, advertisers are turning planned budgets more heavily to Meta’s platforms along with upping spend on real world marketing like out-of-home and experiential. 

Following the temporary blackout, TikTok’s ad business roared back to life with ~70% of advertisers resuming campaigns almost immediately. Smaller brands, unshackled by the bureaucratic lag of Fortune 1000 companies, jumped back in first, taking advantage of plummeting CPMs (down 29% this week compared to last). Cost-per-action is down a staggering 47%.

This crisis did, however, force brands to rethink their reliance on TikTok. Rivals like Snap and Pinterest took advantage of the downtime, pitching their platforms as more stable alternatives, while Meta aggressively courted TikTok creators and advertisers. Meta stands to gain the most, with the largest user base by far, and the most reliable home base for influencers to build their following.

In other Meta news, Meta will return to the Super Bowl with an ad promoting its Ray-Ban smart glasses, featuring Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt. The campaign will spotlight how the glasses blend digital connectivity with physical presence, showcasing features like live language translation and AI-powered memory, as revealed during Meta's Connect conference. This marks Meta's first Super Bowl ad since 2022, emphasizing its commitment to extended reality technology while building on its partnership with EssilorLuxottica through 2030.

This week’s news

Here’s a brief update on marketing news from this week:

• The NFL is going all-in on creators this Super Bowl, partnering with over 150 influencers—including global stars like Khaby Lame and Druski—to capture content and expand the game’s reach. From flag football livestreams to red carpet takeovers, the league is turning the Big Game into a creator-driven spectacle aimed at younger, international, and casual audiences. With creators from Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and the U.K., the NFL is making football feel less like an American tradition and more like a global phenomenon.

• Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting its ad chief role between two execs—Ryan Gould and Robert Voltaggio—filling the shoes of longtime leader Jon Steinlauf. Gould, heading up go-to-market strategy, and Voltaggio, focusing on platform monetization, will team up to steer WBD’s ad sales amid a rapidly shifting market. 

• WPP is requiring employees to return to the office four days a week. This prompted indie agency Terri & Sandy to launch a campaign encouraging holding company talent to “cut their strings” and join the independent world, complete with a sarcastic puppet named Marion Ette and a landing page touting the perks of being #ProudlyIndie. This is a big working culture debate - will keeping employees in office get the most productivity out of your team? Or will that run the risk of losing top employees to competing firms who give them more freedom? 

• The Super Bowl is this weekend. The infamous 30-second ad slots have been bidded up to $8 million now. Here’s the list of 52 brands we know will be there so far, including 14 first timers: He Gets Us, Little Caesars, Skechers, Stella Artois, Uber Eats, Coffee mate, Dove, Lay’s, Nerds, Squarespace, DoorDash, Meta, Pringles, The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, Coors Light, Doritos, Dunkin’, Poppi, Salesforce, Booking.com, Bud Light, HexClad, Ram, Reese’s, Bosch, Google, Instacart, Mountain Dew, TurboTax, Hellmann’s, Angel Soft, Hims & Hers, Liquid Death, Michelob Ultra, Novartis, Rocket Cos., Tubi, Budweiser, Cirkul, Fetch, NFL, NerdWallet, Homes.com, GoDaddy, MSC Cruises, Taco Bell, Häagen-Dazs, WeatherTech, Duracell, FanDuel, Totino’s Pizza Rolls, Ritz, & Jeep.

That’s all for this week. Happy Wednesday and remember, fortune favors the brave.

What’s Anvara?

Anvara is a first-of-its-kind platform that connects brands with premium real-world advertising opportunities like live event sponsorship, sports marketing, and guerilla marketing. With a focus on innovation, AI, and advanced measurement, Anvara makes it easier for brands to create memorable real-world experiences and measure their ROI. For more information, visit https://www.anvara.com/.

Quote of the week

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.” - David Ogilvy