If you're not putting oddly branded products on Amazon and selling out of them in hours, are you even in a marketer in 2020?
OK so maybe the tactic hasn't become quite that mainstream yet, but it's certainly getting there. More and more, grocery brands and players from a few other categories are using Amazon as a quick and convenient place to debut and offload limited-edition products in no time flat.
It's like Supreme, but with literally none of the coolness.
We last saw this when Philadelphia Cream Cheese and agency David Miami created a "Bagel That" machine that could punch a hole in most anything, turning it into a bagel-esque item you were justified in slathering in cream cheese. (I still have one in my closet. Name your price, cream cheese heads.)
Today, it was Gif, the limited-edition peanut butter jar created by Jif and Publicis agency PSOne in partnership with Giphy. It's basically a normal jar of Jif and even labeled as such, until you turn it around to see the "HARD g" label—sadly a pronunciation reference and not Jif's new rap battle name.
The special edition was quickly snatched up by peanut butter and animated image enthusiasts, including myself. (Be sure to follow along at @Griner on Twitter and @DavidGriner on Instagram for the dramatic unboxing when my...peanut butter jar arrives. Does the excitement ever end in the life of an influencer? Hahah not for one minute.)
In all seriousness, this is a tactic more marketers should be thinking about. If you have a brand so powerful you can mess with the name or slap it on weirdly adjacent products, that's a benefit you should put into action. But as Jif and Publicis show in reigniting the "how to pronounce GIF" debate, it's worth waiting until you have the right idea that will attract both die-hard fans and the culturally curious.
Waiting for the UPS guy with two slices of animated bread,
David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
David.Griner@Adweek.com
