As Sir Mix-a-Lot famously said, “I like big brands, and I cannot lie … but I don’t have a big budget.”

I just got back from Atlanta, where this year’s Brandweek was hosted. And although most of the presenters were from big brands — like, really big brands with really big budgets — there were two things I wanted to share with you right away. You can incorporate them into your next campaign, no big bucks required.   

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When Dove (famous for body washes) and Crumbl (famous for cookies) formed a partnership last year, it may not have seemed like an obvious match made in heaven.

But Crumbl has huge Gen Z appeal, and Dove has a long history as a trusted brand (though, as Dove head of PR and influence Dana Paolucci put it, “to Gen Z, Dove was still in the friend zone”). So Dove developed a limited edition co-branded body wash in sugary-sweet scents — think confetti cake-scented deodorant and strawberry crumb cake-scented hand wash.

Most of us don’t have Dove-sized advertising budgets. But we do have the ability to respond to existing user behaviors, and that’s exactly what Dove did. Crumbl’s Gen Z fandom spends 24 hours a day on TikTok (that’s my rough estimate, at least), so Dove started a slow leak campaign to drum up excitement that spread like wildfire across For You Pages.

Crumbl diehards live for Mondays — I’m glad somebody does — when new flavors drop. So naturally Dove used Mondays for announcements and product launches, tapping into those existing behaviors.

Read more about the campaign, which was Dove’s most successful product launch ever.

Catalyst Brands’ portfolio includes American classics Brooks Brothers and Eddie Bauer. With Eddie Bauer struggling, the team decided to shift the brand from focusing on technical wear to more of a lifestyle brand — “we needed to literally take this brand off the mountain,” said Marisa Thalberg, Catalyst’s chief marketing and customer officer.

As they widened their target audience, they lived by this mantra: “Not just for the outdoors, but also the outdoorsy.”

The takeaway, according to Thalberg? “Try not to fire your existing customers while flirting with new ones.”