This week's marketing winners, losers and newsmakers

Winners

Hasbro: The toy giant is typically in competition with rival Mattel, but the companies joined forces this past spring on a multi-year licensing agreement to create co-branded games and products for certain brands. One of those items is Monopoly: Barbie Edition, in which Mattel’s Barbie brand plasters its signature pink on the Hasbro board game with famous Barbie dream world locations and DreamHouses. Available for purchase on Oct. 1, the game gives Hasbro a slice of the Barbie pie, which is currently enjoying skyrocketing popularity thanks to its blockbuster film. 

Read more about 'Barbie' here

For Mattel’s part, the toymaker is selling a Transformers-branded UNO game—however, the $61 million domestic opening weekend box office of June’s “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” film didn’t come close to the $162 million “Barbie” raked in during its opening weekend last week. As for UNO, it is hiring a Chief UNO Player to promote its new UNO Quatro game. The job pays $4,444 a week for four weeks (get it?), with responsibilities including creating and starring in social content. UNO is asking people to apply on TikTok.

Chedraui: The Mexican grocery chain and department store topped the National Retail Federation’s annual list of Hot 25 Retailers, ranked by how fast each company is growing. Chedraui, which acquired grocery chain Smart & Final last year, saw sales grow 137.3% from 2021 to 2022. Owner of Fiesta Mart and El Super, Chedraui is primarily located in the Southwest, with retail outposts in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada in addition to Mexico. Raley’s Supermarkets, with 73.5% growth last year, came in second.

Fritos: The PepsiCo corn chip brand has jumped on the mullet trend—yes, the haircuts are back, like it or not. Fritos is giving away 1,000 free mullet cuts in partnership with Floyd's 99 Barbershop to celebrate the USA Mullet Championships. Those interested can reserve online their appointment at Floyd’s for a Fritos Flow Mullet cut, conducted every Friday through Aug. 25. Fritos is asking people to share a photo on social media for a chance to win a year's supply of Fritos. 

It all amounts to a pretty low-investment move by the brand, with a chance to gain some free social buzz. “Mullets are back! We've been seeing an uptick in the number of customers requesting them, and we want to embrace that,” Patrick Butler, senior director of creative and technical education at Floyd's Barbershop, said in a statement.

Losers

Fox Sports: The U.S. women’s soccer team's underwhelming performance at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand spells bad news for Fox Sports, which broadcasts the matches. The team will be relegated to playing times in the middle of the night, U.S. time because it failed to win its group in the opening round, as pointed out by Front Office Sports.

Trader Joe’s: The grocery chain recalled three products in one week, including cookies, soup and falafel that could contain insects or rocks. In a statement on its site, the California-based company said it was alerted to the contaminants by vendors and that “all potentially affected product has been removed from sale and destroyed.” A Vox story about the grocer’s woes highlighted the problems with food safety regulation. Indeed, Trader Joe’s issues come on the heels of a recent Businessweek feature about Daily Harvest’s 2022 lentils scandal, which allegedly resulted in gallbladder removal surgery for dozens of customers.

Pac-12: The West Coast college athletic conference—which is losing UCLA, USC and now Colorado—could be on the verge of a total collapse, with remaining members including Arizona exploring options (including the Big 12) as the conference struggles to put together a satisfactory media deal. Commissioner George Kliavkoff has reportedly been in talks with Apple for a streaming deal, but members still thirst for linear TV coverage.

Social post of the week

Number of the week

23.5 mph: The average speed of traffic in the Chicago area between I-290 between I-90 and I-94, also known as the Eisenhower Expressway, which makes it the most congested U.S. road, according to a new study from Oppizi, a firm specializing in offline advertising. While that is bad news for Windy City commuters, it is good news for billboard advertisers—or at least that is Oppizi’s spin on its congested road ranking, which puts I-495 in Queens, New York in second. “The slower the traffic in these areas, the more time drivers can spend taking in their surroundings, making these roads the place where businesses can get the best return for their investment if they advertise there,” Oppizi states.

Quote of the week

“Paw Patrol has managed to do what few franchises have done and it’s creating staying power 10 years strong.”—Jeremy Tucker, executive VP and global chief marketing officer of Spin Master, which owns Paw Patrol, on a recent episode of the Marketer’s Brief podcast discussing the brand’s upcoming movie.

On the move

Thomas Ranese joined Chobani as chief marketing officer. Ranese joins the Greek yogurt brand from Abbott and previously held marketing leadership roles at Uber and Google. Ranese steps into a position that was vacated in early 2023 by Meredith Madden, who left Chiobani to be the U.S. general manager for plant-based foods company NotCo.

Premier League football team Crystal Palace hired Kenny Annan-Jonathan as its first creative director, leading fashion partnerships and apparel collections. He also operates his own sports marketing agency The MailRoom.

Sponsorship consultancy SponsorUnited has hired Eric Mastalir as senior VP of brand partnerships. He previously worked for Amazon and Nike.