#canonical-tie-in

#canonical-tie-in

Menchie's Frozen Yogurt has established itself as the world's largest self-service frozen yogurt brand. CEO Amit Kleinberger expressed confidence in BrandONE, stating, "BrandONE is a thought leader in franchise development, which means being the proper conduit between brands and aspiring entrepreneurs. Their expertise and integrity make them the ideal partner for our growth strategy." This collaboration aims to refine Menchie's growth strategy and attract seasoned franchise operators.

Fashion fans are more visible - and influential - than ever before. The Met Gala - often called fashion's Super Bowl - garnered more engagement across social media and press than the actual American football championship last year, according to Launchmetrics. Just like Swifties, fashion fanatics gather online in communities and comment sections on accounts like Gvishiani's to dissect collections, magazine covers and red carpets.

With the slow death of the search bar, brands can no longer rely on SEO to help how they rank on a search results page, as every interaction, from discovery to purchase, is increasingly filtered through algorithms, making brand story a strategic asset. The shift reflects "a generational change" in consumer behavior, said John Harmon, senior retail and tech analyst at Coresight Research.

They train on it and self-evaluate against it. Yet those AI-driven interfaces increasingly answer questions without sending users to the content source. Google's AI Overviews makes this obvious to many businesses in the form of dwindling search traffic. Many publishers are alarmed, having built their businesses on audience reach, page views, and advertising impressions. When AI systems summarize articles instead of referring readers, the economic model fractures.

Fifty percent of consumers' attention goes towards creators' content, yet only 2% of ad spend goes towards creator marketing. This is the biggest gap today. And while the world's top brands know that creators matter, it's not a coincidence that Unilever's CEO recently said 50% of their budget will move to creators.

Amazon last January launched a Retail Ad Service that allows outside retailers to tap into the e-commerce giant's ad tech to run and manage campaigns while helping advertisers to discover new media networks via Amazon Ads.

The tech was everywhere in the surrounding discourse, just not in the emotional sense of the work. In fact, the term "AI" was mentioned 6,939 times in conversations tied to Super Bowl ads, according to social analytics firm Sprout Social data between Jan. 27 and Feb. 9, with viewers openly debating which spots felt machine-made and what that meant for creativity.

Brand builds long-term awareness, perception, and emotional connection. Performance marketing focuses on immediate, measurable actions and specific behaviors like clicks, sign-ups, purchases, or downloads which drives conversions and business goals. The most successful companies know that true growth happens when these two objectives work in harmony, not in opposition. The evidence is now clear: Brand and performance are not opposing forces; they are multipliers.

Of the $43.9 billion that advertisers in the U.S. are expected to spend on creator marketing in 2026, most of that money - 55% - will go towards ads amplifying the creators' content, not to the actual creation and posting of content by the creators themselves. And that spend is only increasing as creator content becomes a more popular choice for ad creative and paid amplification provides brands with the analytics to be able to more effectively gauge the impact of creators' content.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Super Bowl ads featured one or more celebrity talents this year, according to data from TV measurement company iSpot. Back in 2011, only around a quarter of ads included an A-lister, but a reliance on Hollywood names has been typical of Big Game ads since the start of this decade. It's part of a broader pattern. The "built-in affinity" a top name can bring means it's "an easy place to go," said Mike Hayward, chief creative officer at agency Copacino Fujikado.

I think the critical unlock here is having multi-year partnerships, having relationships that endure as opposed to just kind of the one-off partnership,