episode description: sonia and kaleigh break down why traditional marketing is dying and what’s replacing it. they cover timothée chalamet’s $250 jacket sellout, apple tv’s continued failure to market good shows, hulu’s genius grocery store hack, lionsgate listening to fans for hunger games casting, shopify’s president crowdsourcing black friday recs, and why a luxury brand just said “fuck ai” with their new website.

main thesis: communities beat celebrities, craft beats slop, and giving your audience a voice beats shouting at them with ads.

key topics:

• timothée’s marty supreme marketing turning movie promo into cultural participation

• apple tv fumbling pluribus marketing despite vince gilligan attachment

• hulu’s qr code apples for abbott elementary (physical media comeback)

• elle fanning hunger games casting as fan service done right

• shopify president’s black friday thread strategy (crowdsourced recommendations)

• miu miu’s handcrafted anti-ai website aesthetic

• lionsgate hiring tiktok creators for in-house fan cams

• the shift from brand awareness to community buy-in

• why netflix/hulu finally stopped dmca-ing fan content

• advent calendar quality wars (sephora losing, amazon winning with korean skincare)

guest: kaleigh moore – freelance seo/aeo content writer for saas companies, retail contributor at forbes (@kaleighf on twitter/x, kaleighmoore.com)

guest perspective: kaleigh brings software/saas marketing lens throughout—talks surprise-and-delight moments, secret handshake marketing, first-mover advantage, crowdsourcing content strategy. she’s obsessed with pluribus, advocates hard for fandom-first approaches, and makes the case that production houses need to treat audiences like content partners not consumers.

marketing takeaways:

1. novel placement beats ad spend (apples in grocery stores beat billboards)

2. listen to your audience but don’t let the loudest voices pivot your whole product

3. executives as community builders not just figureheads

4. unscalable = memorable when everything else looks like ai slop

5. fan involvement creates buy-in (casting, merchandise, experiences)

6. physical/tactile marketing cuts through digital fatigue

• timothée chalamet’s marty supreme marketing (merch pop-up, $250 jackets) – 0:00-3:33

• apple tv’s pluribus marketing struggles – 3:33-6:33

• hulu’s abbott elementary apple sticker campaign – 7:16-15:44

• lionsgates’s elle fanning hunger games casting (fan involvement) – 15:47-24:17

• shopify president’s black friday thread strategy – 34:36-42:01

• miu miu’s anti-ai website design – 43:12-53:05

• marketing takeaways roundup – 53:51-1:03:13