Café Dior in Chengdu. Carhartt Coffee in London. Santander Work Café in Brooklyn.

Around the world, brands ranging from luxury fashion houses to workwear to banks are opening up coffee shops.

The phenomenon of retailers hosting coffee shops isn’t exactly new, as anyone who’s ever been to a Starbucks inside of a Target can tell you. But the number of brand-owned and -operated coffee shops seems to be creeping up. Ralph’s Coffee, owned by Ralph Lauren, opened in Manhattan in 2014, and is now neighbored by the Blue Box Café at Tiffany & Co., a Capital One Café, and a Uniqlo Coffee around its Fifth Avenue location. (And that’s not even including the brand restaurants.)

Post-Covid, there’s been a resurgence of interest in preserving or even establishing “third places,” which refers to places to spend time outside of home and work, at the same time that brands are seeking to broaden their customer bases on- and offline by investing in customer experiences. Coffee shops, it seems, are working to satisfy both sides.

“It’s a great branding proposition for us,” said Nicolas Cessot, head of marketing for Uniqlo North America, which opened up its first North American coffee shop at its store on Fifth Avenue earlier this year. “It is a global flagship, so for us, it’s a global opportunity to continue to spread our brand [awareness] to customers from all over the world.”

Continue reading here.—KH

FC Barcelona sits atop the La Liga rankings. And Spotify sits atop FC Barcelona—or at least on the team’s jerseys and facilities.

For the past three seasons, the audio company has been the Spanish soccer club’s main partner as part of a long-term deal that includes a front-of-kit sponsorship and stadium naming rights, among other assets.

But it’s not always the Spotify brand that appears on the Barça jerseys.

When the partnership debuted, Alex Norström, the company’s co-president and chief business officer, hinted in a statement at the time that Spotify was considering using the jersey real estate to highlight various artists and their brands. Since then, Spotify has swapped its own branding out on the jerseys for logos associated with major artists, like Drake’s company October’s Very Own and Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack brand.

Though Spotify occasionally removes itself from the Barça kits, VP of Marketing and Partnerships Marketing Marc Hazan said the sponsorship has proven invaluable for driving buzz for the brand.

“If I wanted to create cultural noise like we do with some of these things that we do, like Travis Scott, could you even do that without this [jersey asset]? I don’t think you could,” Hazan told Marketing Brew at Cannes Lions. “If you were trying to do that yourself, it would be very difficult and probably very expensive…So to us, it’s an unbelievable, unique platform for artists to showcase their work that can’t really be done anywhere else.”

Read more here.—AM

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Christopher Carl is US head of marketing for AliExpress, where he has worked since 2023. He’s also worked at agencies like Pulse Advertising and BBDO Worldwide, and he co-founded the men’s skin-care line HeTime.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? One of my favorite campaigns to work on was our summer collaboration with the UEFA Euro 2024. As a German, I was particularly excited about leveraging soccer—the de facto national sport of Germany—to help grow the AliExpress brand in the US. It was especially rewarding to see how our campaign capitalized on the rising popularity of soccer in North America, reflected in the record-breaking Fox ratings for this year’s Euro, especially among the 18–34 demographic. One of the standout features was the real-time participation we offered fans through in-app sweepstakes during each Euro game. By shaking their phones right after a goal was scored, millions of our shoppers had the chance to win prizes worth millions of dollars. This initiative not only captured the excitement of the tournament but also exemplified how we’re redefining the shopping experience.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? The 2010 Old Spice campaign, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The campaign was not just iconic, but it was one of the first truly viral ad campaigns. It redefined how brands engage with their audience by merging traditional and digital media in an innovative way. The commercial was not just witty, unexpected, and visually appealing; it was also a fun, carefully crafted piece of content designed to be shared a million times over. It broke free from the traditional advertising playbook within the men’s grooming space, showing a more lighthearted and engaging side of the category that appealed to both male and female audiences. This ad was a major source of inspiration for me personally when I went on to co-found a men’s grooming brand in 2019.

Continue reading here.

Big results, small team? Yes, really. Learn how AI helps agencies and marketers punch above their weight, from increasing campaign quality to improving client confidence. Join us July 17 to get practical takeaways you can put into play right away.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Netflix and NASA are teaming up to livestream content including rocket launches, spacewalks, and footage of Earth from the International Space Station.
• Subway also partnered with Netflix to offer a Happy Gilmore Meal promotion ahead of Happy Gilmore 2’s release later this month.
• Vital Farms announced a partnership with The Bear that kicked off in time for the release of Season 4 in June.
• Blue Moon tapped Colin Jost as its first celebrity spokesperson.
• Skai and Pentaleap, two ad-tech companies, inked a retail media partnership.