The Weekly Marketing Report

LEGO approved a fan designed set, submitted through LEGO Ideas and inspired by the duo's Alive 2007 pyramid stage, after holding it for review since October 2025, and announced a wider partnership with "more to come in 2027". Daft Punk's own YouTube broadcast had trailed the reveal the day before. US Google searches for "Daft Punk" went from 10 to 13 the week before to about 65 to 70 on the day, and "LEGO Daft Punk" from 0 to 44. Announced, with no date or price, and invisible in Sweden. Among the week's launches, the one the public went looking for was a product a fan had designed.

Earlier this year the DJ set fire to his Rimowa case on Instagram after his sixth one broke on tour. Away waited, then named him its Chief Destruction Officer and burned an Away case on film: "John Summit tested. Away designed." Its vice president of brand, Quynh Dang: "we didn't want to respond in real time, rush to do something together, and come across in a performative way with a short shelf life". A deliberate, slow reply to a rival's viral failure. On Adweek's list; US searches for "Away luggage" stayed flat.

Phoenix Suns forward Dillon Brooks demonstrates a device that mutes every mention of LeBron James, "one of Brooks' great rivals" in Adweek's words; Kalshi made it a real HDMI plug-in that fans can enter to win. A prediction market building its ad on a feud fans already follow. The only campaign launched in the window on two of the three weekly lists out by Friday; The Drum's list that evening added Barclays. Its YouTube views, 1.4 million in three days for a 30 second spot, are probably paid reach, not spread (our inference).

A hemp drink under "the looming threat of a federal ban" asks buyers of a 12-pack to send their member of Congress a letter and a six-pack, in a pastiche of Reagan's "Morning in America". A brand answering a threat to its own category with a consumer action. One roundup; search did not register.

The New York Knicks showed their championship ring (reported 21 October), and by 23 October New Era, Nepenthes and Angelo Baque with Fanatics, a 100 piece suede varsity jacket at $1,500, had released capsules for the ring ceremony. Planned and licensed, so merchandising rather than culture jacking.

Three social shorts spoofing Psycho and Sinners about email anxiety, such as a one word reply ending in a full stop: a sequel to Yahoo's Halloween work of 2025. A tech brand making the season about its users' small dreads. Muse's Ad of the Week.

A broomstick parking bay outside the Water Lane store in York until 31 October, built on Aldi's own poll in which 28% named York the most haunted place in Britain. A supermarket answering Halloween with a photograph waiting to be taken.

A new visual identity drawn by sound waves in a shallow bath of mineral oil, made with Fred again.. and NEST Acoustics. US searches for "Apple Music logo" rose from 0 or 1 to 8 on launch day: small, but the only campaign this week, apart from LEGO's fan set, that moved its own search at all.

A two year partnership of limited drops, glassware and fan events with her "Angels" fandom, seeded with an "I ♥ Absolut" T-shirt worn backstage and costumes at her Los Angeles shows. A Swedish brand, made in Åhus and owned by Pernod Ricard. Announced, nothing on sale yet, and searches for the pair did not register.

Three launches in three days gave a celebrity a fictional executive role: John Summit as Away's Chief Destruction Officer, Robert Downey Jr. as Snap Specs' "honorary chief customer experience officer", D'Arcy Carden as Target's "Chief Giftologist". The title turns a paid endorsement into a story. Three in a week makes it a format rather than an idea.

A UK pilot on Fire TV that lets people browse pubs by genre like a streaming catalogue, with vouchers for a Heineken or Heineken 0.0 at participating pubs in England. The anti screen idea delivered through a screen, by a brewer that needs people off the sofa.

The grated cheese shaker shrunk to a clip-on bag charm with real cheese inside, handed out from a truck in Los Angeles from 13 October to preview three flavours. Launched just before the window and written up inside it. Packaging as accessory, for the format extension entry.

Saturday Night Live's Please Don't Destroy as sales associates in J.Crew's Bond Street Suit Shop. One of several fashion campaigns casting SNL comedians; J.Crew's CMO Julia Collier: "With Ben, John and Martin, we wanted to bring some personality and humor to that experience." Comedians as the new music.

British Gas's fluffy "Thing" family calling its engineers about a broken boiler (announced 19 October, on air from 15 October), and Barclays' "Good Move" for investing with no monthly fee, a bowling split (21 October). Each was on Creative Salon's Work of the Week and The Drum's Ad of the Day, and The Drum's Ads of the Week, out that Friday evening, names British Gas and is tagged with Barclays, so both pass the two roundup test on weekly lists; British Gas aired before the window.

Liquid I.V.'s first spot with McLaren's Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and INEOS Grenadier's "Grit Stop" with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, both timed to the United States Grand Prix. Neither moved search.

Kohl's brings back Ellie Kemper for a spot premiering in World Series Game 1 on 23 October; Target drops "Kris K.", the Santa who "generated social media chatter for the brand in recent years" (Marketing Dive's words), for 2026 and a Holiday Academy of Giftology; Macy's casts Melissa Joan Hart and Adam Devine. In the UK, Marketing Week's Christmas blog still holds only Debenhams.

Building, its strongest week. For the first time the evidence includes retailers' own premium label figures: Kroger's Private Selection about $2.9bn in 2025 with a $5bn target, Sainsbury's Taste the Difference up more than 6%. ICA rebuilt Gott liv around a claim rather than a price tier. But Swedish grocery's own label share is flat (Axfood 31.4% against 31.5%), so the entry stays at Building until the growth shows in a share.

Substantiated, with a qualification. L'Oréal Luxe grew 6.4% with fragrance its first growth engine, but Puig's Fragrance and Fashion segment grew 3.9% and the licensee Interparfums was flat in dollars, and Circana puts the average price of US prestige fragrance +5% in the first half on flat units. The boom is strongest at the supplier and in the price.

Demoted to Hype, as set. Nothing launched for the fifth week running. In the window: a trade piece on trends for 2027, and L'Oréal naming Kérastase Chronologiste, relaunched in March around longevity, among the drivers of Kérastase's growth, with no product figure. Jennifer Lawrence's mes° (27 October) calls itself "biodesigned", not longevity. The entry reopens on a launch with a sales figure.

A Heineken presentation sent to UK hospitality customers this month advised half pints, low and no alcohol and drinks with small plates, because GLP-1 drugs bring "fullness and fewer serves": in Reuters' words "a rare acknowledgement from a major alcohol maker". In the same story Circana found GLP-1 households spending about 7% less on alcohol than other households after two years, and about 13.5% less on beer. EY-Parthenon's survey puts trial at 21% of US adults.

Opened at Emerging. Kroger says its promotions had become "overly complicated" and moves money into everyday prices; Carrefour cut more than 500 prices by 8% on average and reports its NPS up two points; One Stop cut or held 61 prices. The ONS reports the Food and Drink Federation's view that "retailer resistance to price increases" is delaying food inflation, which held at 1.3%.

No. 42's campaign of the week, rated level 5 for answering a backlash it did not create. Google Trends Explore, working again, shows US searches for Powerade at 6 to 8 on every day from 23 September to 23 October: before its screens went up, during the coverage and after. Novig and Sydney Sweeney are both falling. The ladder should record the move and the audience separately. The watch item is closed.

No fully AI made brand ad was found in the window. Instead, Meta's updated terms, due on 30 October and moved on 23 October to 20 November, make advertisers "solely responsible" for what its AI features create or change, agencies say Meta switches some on by default, and Bookshop.org found an AI illustration added to its human made ad. The counter-current to the anti polish entry has moved from brands choosing AI to platforms applying it by default.

This week's extensions were many: VANSZA's mule and fold-down heel, a skate shoe on a kitten heel, Kraft's Parmesan shaker as a bag charm, Dove's soap bar as a perfume bottle. But Deckers cut the outlook for the most extended cult asset of the last two years, UGG, to low single digit growth for the year, and HOKA's too. Extension may be a response to a maturing core as much as a sign of heat.

Net sales SEK 1,024m, +23.8%; operating profit SEK 58m against SEK 2m; own brands +10.7%; the report credits "successful campaigns and additional stores". The 37th store opens in central Örebro on Black Friday, the first compact "Lyko Store". Rickard Lyko: "Over time, we believe a larger store network can also make customer acquisition more efficient and reduce our need for paid marketing relative to sales." The same night Lyko's marketing director won her category at Resumé's awards.

Retail sales +2.9% against a market +4.0%: Willys +2.1%, below the market, Hemköp +7.1%, volume driven and taking share. Market prices fell 6.8%, mostly because of the VAT cut (about 1.5% without it), so the market grew on volume. Simone Margulies: "Prisvärde och kvalitet är inte motsatser, det är så allt fler handlar." (Value and quality are not opposites; that is how more and more people shop.) No answer to Coop's price cut.

Konsumentverket, with Hungary's competition authority, led the EU dialogue in which Coca-Cola, Nestlé Waters and Danone commit to replace "I am a bottle made from 100% recycled plastic" with "This bottle is 100% recycled. Excluding cap and label". Claim-to-qualification distance in its purest form, led from Sweden. Assessed under existing consumer law after a 2023 BEUC alert, so not yet an EmpCo case.

At Berns, Emelie Överdahl of Volvo Cars won overall; Louise Nobel of Lyko won beauty and health, Sara Spännar of Zalando clothing, Fredrik Kullberg of ICA grocery; Picadeli took the growth prize and Max fast food. Winners are chosen on brand tracking (Xtreme Insight, more than 100,000 interviews a year), not by a creative jury, which makes it closer to evidence than most awards.

A 20 metre receipt totalling SEK 22.9bn, last year's cost of theft to Swedish retail, rolled out at the Riksdag and down the trade body's own facade for Säkerhetsveckan (the release does not give the day). Its store survey the same day: 41% of stores reported theft in the past week, and 58% of those hit did not report it to the police. A retail object as the creative device.

ICA rebuilt Gott liv as one own label range of about 250 products to begin with, in about 20 categories, that qualify on health or sustainability, and is phasing out ICA I love eco gradually. Susanna Liljeblad, head of private label: "Det ska vara enkelt att förstå vad man väljer" (it should be easy to understand what you are choosing). Private label organised around a claim rather than a price tier.

KICKS doubles its Mall of Scandinavia store to about 500 m² as its second statement store, adding Kérastase, KIKO Milano and the K-beauty brand TIRTIR, more niche fragrance (Xerjoff, Mancera, Fugazzi), a fragrance table and a Glow Up Station. Opens on Saturday, so unobserved.

Revenue +10.3%, but gross margin down "mainly due to increased promotional activity", marketing up to 10.0% of revenue and own brands 66.9% of sales. The chief executive, plainly: "traffic in the Nordics fell, with a more pronounced decline in organic channels." The counter case to Lyko, in its own report.

Upheld under article 2: a naked woman, head cropped out, holding a phone case on the mobile version of the brand's site. The defence argued a fashion accessory shown "i ett estetiskt, konstnärligt formspråk" (in an aesthetic, artistic visual language) and male models shot in matching poses; RO judges each ad unit on its own, so the male models did not count, and found the pose sexualised and unconnected to the product. The only ruling newly visible in the window, first noted in No. 42.

Leather Goods and Saddlery +10.8% at constant exchange rates in the third quarter, faster than anything else Hermès sells, "driven by strong desirability of both new models and iconic pieces"; Perfume and Beauty +7.5%; Ready-to-wear and Accessories −2.0%. Group +4.3% in the quarter. Read with Mulberry's +18.1% half year: the bag grew at the top and in accessible luxury.

Kering's revenue −1% comparable, Gucci −6% and its own stores −9%; but "Excluding Gucci, retail sales increased by 2%, driven by continued growth at Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Brioni." Prada's retail was stable organically and Miu Miu's fell 3% against +29% a year earlier. Neither group gives a leather goods figure: the fall is the house, not the bag. Luca de Meo: "The recovery of Gucci remains our defining priority."

€4,176.6m, +6.4% like for like, with fragrance "the primary growth engine"; "blockbuster Prada Paradigme" posted "stellar growth" while Prada's own brand retail grew 1%, and Yves Saint Laurent's Libre and MYSLF "grew in double digits". A fashion name doing better in a licensee's bottle than in its own stores, for Prada at least. No fragrance growth figure is given.

P&G's organic growth of 4% was volume +2.4%, mix +1.1% and pricing +0.4%, with lower pricing named in North American baby care. Nestlé's real internal growth of 2.8% outran pricing of 1.1%, and its European pricing of 0.2% came "in the context of a strong customer and competitor focus on providing value for consumers."

A nationwide wave of price reductions in August on more than 500 products, 8% on average, and French like for like +1.2% in a market "growing both in value and volume", with the NPS up two points. Then the outlook was cut because of unrest and curfews in France.

Dove's first fine fragrance smells like the Original Beauty Bar of 1957, comes in a bottle shaped like the bar with a gold bird cap, costs $19.57, and drops in limited quantity on 27 October after a waitlist opened on 22 October. The fragrance boom reaching a mass brand through scent memory. Announced, not yet on sale.

Read on vans.com the day after launch, five apparel pieces were out of stock and two low, while both redesigned shoes, the fold-down heel Authentic Kickdown ($110) and the heel-less Knu Skool Mule ($115), were still available; StockX listed nothing. The fans bought the artist before the shoe.

A queue outside Regent Street before 09:00, and 606 eBay UK listings within 30 hours (our reading, asking prices), with outerwear and bridal asked above retail and some sequined pieces below it. 21 pieces were still on H&M's UK site the next afternoon. In Sweden the rising searches were for the wedding dress.

The first US sunscreen with bemotrizinol, Anthelios UV Defense SPF 50 at $39.99, after the FDA added the filter this year to its general list of sunscreen actives, the first addition to that list since 1999. Neutrogena and Ultra Violette follow. A product story driven by a regulator rather than a trend.

Adweek's and Creative Salon's weekly lists both carried Sheba's cat programme as new work. It was live by 3 April 2026, when People interviewed Ilia Malinin about it, and Sheba India posted a version on 19 April. The October pieces cover a new market wave. Dated by the brand's own uploads, it is context, not a launch of the week.

Raising a $15m Series A, Mikayla Nogueira's brand says its first week at Sephora beat the retailer's projections by 80%. The figure is the brand's; Sephora has not published one.

Kroger's $5bn through 2029 is described by Grocery Dive as value initiatives for customers, elsewhere as an investment in stores, operations and pricing, and by FoodNavigator as price cuts. Its claim that stores already doing it grew sales by 230 basis points is a paraphrase with no base. Only the targets in its 8-K are on the record.

Glossy reports, in its own words, that L'Oréal's chief executive linked a long hot summer to weaker fragrance sales and stronger sunscreen sales. No transcript was found. If it holds, it is a counter signal for fragrance in the quarter; until then it is a paraphrase.

Marketing Dive reports, without naming its source, that the first episode of Banana Republic's TikTok-first series passed 10 million views and the second 3 million; presumably the brand's figures. The series began before the window, and no third party count was found.

Framed in coverage as a Sephora launch on 23 October, the lip balm duo was already on sale on Glow Recipe's own site, published there on 17 October and in stock at $38 when read. No sell out was found, the fourth week of the food x beauty entry without a sales figure.