Brian J. Gill

Marketing, Advertising, Brand Strategy, and Crab Meat topped with avocado and special sauce

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Disney spent $500K-$1M building this water billboard, and the customer they had in mind was your phone camera.

A 3D anamorphic stunt install with a real water rig stacks fabrication, location lease, permits, and the water recirculation system. Standard Sunset Boulevard placements clear about 700K monthly impressions. At face value, that pencils out to roughly $1.50 per physical eyeball on a single board.

The actual return runs through your phone.

Stunt installs at this tier seed somewhere between 50M and 200M earned impressions over a 4-6 week run. Phone clips, TikTok edits, Reels, news pickups, marketing Twitter breakdowns. Every reshare is unpaid distribution Disney didn't have to buy.

Run the math backwards. $1M divided by 70M earned impressions equals a $0.014 effective CPM. The cheapest paid channel that actually converts to Disney+ subscribers (Meta video) sits around $25. The stunt billboard is roughly 1,800x more efficient per impression than the next best alternative Disney could buy.

Spider-Verse pulled the 3D pop-out. Mortal Kombat staged a live fight at the same intersection. Barbie wrapped half of Hollywood in pink. Same playbook every time. What Disney bought with that $1M is the video footage of people filming a prop.

The moment TikTok and X start classifying "billboard reaction video" as branded content and throttle the reach accordingly, this asymmetry dies. Until then, a plywood frame, a water pump, and a few lighting rigs is the most efficient line item in the studio marketing budget.

[Christina Garnett @ThatChristinaG]

2025 has truly been the year of rage bait and Machiavellian marketing, and we are better than this.

In my latest for @CampaignLiveUS, I discuss why this is detrimental for brand trust and why, in 2026, we need to stop courting attention at all costs.

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

Blanding

[🜲 Shivam | Leader Slnm @shivam_mishra]

@SandyofCthulhu Somewhere along the way, uniqueness was traded for uniformity. Every redesign looks safer, but also less human.

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

@hnshah @brydisanto undeniable indeed

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

Massive hard-earned lesson for new dads (and really all parents). Invest the time in finding your balance. It's unique to you. And when you do, protect it relentlessly.

[Nick Shackelford @iamshackelford]

My day working right now a lot of things moving + a 1 year old:
I'm probably 5-6 out of 7 days right now with this

- 4:30 AM - Bulletproof coffee / Dogs out

- 5:30 AM - Workout

- 7:15 AM Kingsley's up, father-son time while my wife gets to wake up/enjoy some alone time

- 8:30 AM - First deep work block. Two hours of complete business focus

- 11:00 AM - Intentional break to see Kingsley, phone is OFF or in the other room

- 11:30 AM - Back to work for another focused block

- 1:30 PM - Alternating work blocks with Kingsley breaks every couple hours

- 7:00 PM - Work shutdown. Non-negotiable (most days)

- 8:30 PM - Give Kingsley his final bottle and put him down for the night

Can't be half present. It's something I learned the hard way.
Most founders/new parents in general won’t admit how hard this balance is. They’ll post about scaling businesses but not the reality of scaling their attention between the businesses AND the family they’re building.
I tried splitting my attention when we first brought Kingsley home. It doesn’t work.

Now I get his morning, he gets my breaks, and I get his final bottle at night. Between those moments I’m all in on work.
No half measures. No half presence. Just whole commitment to whatever's in front of me at that moment.

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

Great articulation of what many of us are feeling. This is packed with one-liners to keep in full view every day.

"But at a certain point, if every campaign is designed to be foolproof, none of them will be interesting enough to matter."

[ADWEEK @Adweek]

VOICE | "Maybe we need to let campaigns breathe—to actually feel like they could fail, because that’s what makes them exciting in the first place. And sure, brand safety matters, but a flop won’t kill you. Being forgettable will," writes Mia Rocco. https://t.co/kvh3Z1BnNQ

[Julian Cole - Strategy Tips @juliancole]

Love these Monopoly ads.

Not only do they riff off a good insight,

They also nail the comms strategy.

With comms strategy we ask ourselves,

How can the media placement enhance the idea?

The solution,

Hasbro put the billboards on the actual streets which were in the Dutch Monopoly.

The insight was ‘Monopoly might be the only board game that isn’t always fun and games ~

And life’s like that, making children learn life-changing lessons from what might seem like a casual game night.’

👉 I’ll be doing a free workshop on how you get to a great comms strategy next week: https://t.co/6MKCxwInvq

#advertising
#brand
#strategy
#brandstrategy

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

@CDCarter13 @Rotobahn Alternative Stats

[Neil Horowitz @njh287]

First period of the NHL 'Big City Greens Classic' is complete, check out some gameplay.
More notes:
- They should intersperse replays/clips from the real game to expose kids watching (even tho it breaks kayfabe)
- Get kids on the broadcast (players' kids, famous kids, youth hockey players; NFL x Nick does this a bit more)
- Is 'kid-ifying' a traditional broadcast the right route or should the paradigm be re-thought (more Manningcast-like, less pxp?). Should there be interactive second screen elements kids can do on their tablets?

- The enhanced angles this year are dope and some of the cartoon touches (hen laying 'pucks') are nice
- Color commentator Kevin Weekes sounds muffled (VR headset causing that?)
- Tutorials are good, but the live commentary by the broadcasters could be replaced by pre-produced w/ characters explaining
- More direct content collaboration with the league/teams would be beneficial

Enough notes for now, share your thoughts if you're watching! And marvel at how this real-time animated show comes together

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

A good lesson in thinking outside the specs

[Barry Hott ☄️ @binghott]

KANYE DID NOT SPEND $7 MILLION TO RUN THIS SUPER BOWL AD.

Regardless, this plan was genius, and here's why:

1. It was a local ad, not national and he paid waaaaaay less than $7M national price to air.

2. He shot an authentic ugly $0 ad. It stood out immediately and had a good call to action. It was chaotic and everyone who didn't see wants to see it.

3. He mentioned how expensive it was to run the ad, making people assume he paid the full $7M.

4. He's getting the same amount of free publicity as if he had actually spent the full $7M. Probably getting hundreds of millions of views across the internet.

5. The ROI of this strategy is waaaay better than whatever anyone's calculated based on the $7M because he probably spent closer to $1M. (He even got me to tweet about it 🙃)

Say what you want about Kanye, but overall, this was a brilliant plan and execution.

Also, anyone reporting the $7M amount is a terrible reporter, gullible, wants to believe it's true, and/or is being outright paid to make you believe so.

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

And we wonder why marketing campaigns can feel like a sea of sameness.

[Jerry Daykin @jdaykin]

A lot of people quite liked the Snoop Dog ‘smokeless’ social stunt last year for Solo Stove. Not their Board, who fired their CEO after it didn’t drive sales.

Maybe we celebrate the wrong things? But maybe they’re also wrong to judge an equity campaign on short term sales. 🤷‍♂️

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

TFW I interrupt my wife to show her a tweet

[Guy Sie @GuySie]

😂😂😂

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

Awesome recap on coming changes to creator compliance guidelines. Thanks for this @RobertFreundLaw !

[Rob Freund @RobertFreundLaw]

Today, the FTC announced updates to its Endorsement Guides (the rules about disclosing connections between creators and brands).

I will go through the new additions in more detail in another thread, but here are a few specific Q&A examples from the FTC that jumped out at me: 🧵

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

The capitalistic concept of consumers "voting with their wallets" breaks down when they don't intentionally cast those attention ballots.

[roberto daniel @roberto15157184]

The Attention Economy is Making Us Stupid by @profgalloway https://t.co/MuQKlpUywU

[Luc Benyon @HanburySt]

Dream Job Alert!
Brand and Marketing Director for... Bluey!
https://t.co/RglxdDJ5lQ

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

"AI can do the shit stuff better."

Of all the #ai takes, this one takes the cake.

https://t.co/Rq12wNKxYA

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

ICYMI: The biggest news from Apple this week

https://t.co/NgtBMcHuzy

[Brian J. Gill @bgill09]

Another platform drifting from "user enjoyment" mode into "control everything" mode.
IMO Penny smart dollar foolish.

[Zach Bussey 🇨🇦 @zachbussey]

Twitch has new Branded Content Guidelines.

- On-stream logos are limited to 3% of screen size.
- Burned-in video Ads are NOT allowed.
- Burned-in Display Ads are NOT allowed.
- Burned-in Audio Ads are NOT allowed.

#TwitchNews #TOSgg

[Michael J. Miraflor @michaelmiraflor]

I'd estimate that >40% of all paid IG Stories lack the fundamental components of an effective ad, because they try to collapse the purchase funnel into a single exposure.

The number of times I've looked at an ad and asked out loud "What was that even for?" is way too many.

Ex:

[Katelyn Bourgoin 🧠 @KateBour]

People don’t buy products because of who they are

They buy because of *who they want to become*

When you start selling what people really want... they’ll start buying

CC: @UserOnboard