This month’s campaigns had one throughline: brands milking every part of their production.

Whether it was a content hosting platform taking back the creator economy, a Scandinavian outerwear label making the ordinary camp, or a beauty brand giving the pen to comedians, everyone who won did it by committing hard to a distinctly resourceful content plan.

Below are this month’s standout campaigns — with expanded research, collaborators, and cultural context for each.

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Here's what caught my eye in November:

Patreon is revisiting its core story this month - the idea that the creator economy isn’t about viral hits or algorithmic boosts, but sustainable relationships and independent creative voices. Their Instagram bio motto “Make art, not ‘content’” signals a repositioning: the brand invites its community not just to use Patreon, but to own the creator model. The original paywalled content throne-holder is taking it’s seat back this month by welcoming newsletters to it’s suite of content and introducing it’s discovery feature.

While everyone else rushes to make video work on theirs, Patreon’s product has the infrastructure to scale it, along with a lot of other tools that help creators make more money on the platform. Their campaign launching the new discovery feature and push to add more newsletters to the platform includes custom motion carousels for popular letters they’ve added that feel like zines - the campaign seems focused on highlighting the creatives on the platform in an entertaining way rather than positioning every letter like a highbrow newspaper.

Behind the scenes, the campaign taps into an under-celebrated collaborator group: the creator-entrepreneurs who run Patreon pages, the designers of tier-reward systems, the platform’s product marketers building new bundling and engagement features. For brands thinking beyond transactional relationships, this reminds us that the “platform brand” can become the culture layer - a hub for the artists, not just a conduit. A good look for a two sided marketplace!

Check out the newsletters they're promoting this week

Danish outerwear label RAINS has always hovered between function and fashion: waterproof textiles with a minimalist urban aesthetic. This social concept they keep returning to with gloved figures in the “RAINS lab” is one I always double tap because it’s an excellently executed low concept x high production project that shows off their products in a unique way.

This particular social bit - their custom Guess Who game, the magazine of crosswords and a sticker book to launch their AW collection - is another way they’re standing out as a brand. They bring playfulness to recreation gear and tell a technology focused story versus a heritage driven one. This is where they can set themselves apart: by putting their own spin on the tactile “craft” brief that everyone in the fashion world has been executing on in the same way.

In short: the campaign isn’t just about gear — it’s about social play, physicality in a digital age, and functional fashion getting conceptual.

🔗 Their latest lab Instagram post

Beauty brand Merit stepped into celebrity-directed territory this month with a short spot featuring former SNL cast-mates Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner. The spot, titled The Five Minute Face-Off, is a short game show with an omniscient voice upping the anti for the two friends with a challenge all too familiar for women today: do your makeup in five minutes amidst a myriad of distractions.

For a product promise that has always been ease of use and simplicity, the bit was a perfect fit for Merit. The casting delivered this promise too, by letting the work (the spot was written and concepted by Ego and Heidi) speak to their full lives, focusing on their huge talent before their immense beauty. “Stars, they’re just like us” feels like it could have been the headline of this pitch meeting.

Merit was also one of the first brands to start getting attention for sharing their product development moodboards as part of their launch campaigns, centering the BTS as equally important as the finished product presents their whole team as craftspeople.

What stands out: using collaborators who are not just talent in front of the camera, but co-creators behind it. That gives the work authenticity at scale.

Watch the BTS & Final Product

Blackbird, the app that helps you earn rewards at restaurants across the country, announced Season 2 of their Burger League this week - a NYC burger passport you prepay for on the app to stamp up with 12 of the city’s best burgers - and they pulled off a very simple Goodfellas reference that delighted me and the people in the comments on launch day.

Note to readers: someone walking you somewhere is a good hook.

Every piece of content they’ve put out about the League has a sweet easter egg for food lovers in movies and tv - first the goodfellas nod and then their sample league pass post has Tina Belcher from Bob’s Burgers’ name on it. I’m excited to see more coverage of the pass experience and try to catch what other references they make to culture.

If you’re one of the lucky few that got a League Pass - how are you pitching yourself as a UGC creator to the Blackbird team for an easy check at every stop on the tour?

Cava launched new merch and tapped the internet’s favorite car food reviewers to star in the campaign. All of those food creators’ audiences flocking to one video on Cava’s page at the same moment? The perfect distribution storm.

My favorite part of the campaign is how many elements their marketing team managed to get out of a one day shoot. They didn’t just engineer one big moment out of the crossover - the asset list included a BTS teaser concept, tiny mic interviews on set with the creators, car mukbangs with all of them wearing the merch, a well executed product photography carousel, and a hero shot with the group in a cute class photo.

Cava’s Creative Director Andrew Downing worked with their frequent collaborator Rachel Karten and Very Online Agency on the open loop storytelling concept.

Watch the crossover episode

This month we’re giving The Deep Breath Participation 🏆 to our Creator Plan launch video written and directed by Kareem Rahma.
We brought the BTS to the feed by making the table read for the campaign…the actual campaign.

🔗 Watch the spot

Want more inspo and creative ephemera? We've got 10 campaigns in our monthly moodboard.

These campaigns collectively tell us to do more with less.

Whether it’s the extra BTS posts from Merit, the deliverable diversity in Cava’s launch, the simplicity of the Goodfellas reference from Blackbird, making something physical out of an existing digital asset like the RAINS team did with their board game, or Patreon using their creators’ existing visual branding to hook in different niche audiences to the platform - there are many ways to play on social that can get more eyes on a campaign.

Thanks for reading — we’re already scouting next month’s breakthroughs. Hit me up if your team is cooking something up that we should look out for!

See you then,

Lou

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