Amazon’s recently concluded Fall Prime Day was a surprise hit for sellers.

According to Adobe data, October’s preseason discounts lured shoppers into holiday mode ahead of schedule. During Amazon’s second Prime Day, Oct. 7–8, consumers spent $9.1 billion across US retailers, a jump of 7.3% YoY, and discounts hit 18% off listed prices.

Two Amazon merchants told Retail Brew that consumers are looking for deals and willing to shop earlier rather than wait for November’s traditional sales events. And with shoppers chasing deals, retailers plan to keep the discounts rolling through the holiday season.

“We had a number of clients that exceeded fall Prime Day of 2024,” Katya Constantine, CEO of agency Digishopgirl Media, told Retail Brew. “I will say that we did see deeper discounting this time around. Some brands [were] going as deep as 40% but overall, really strong performance.”

Among Constantine’s clients, sales were up 10%–15% on average, and she had a couple of outliers that were significantly higher in the food and kids categories.

Keep reading here.—VC

What does it take for a small business to succeed in the current economy? Good products, good prices, and…terrific marketing, it seems.

Per new data from email marketing firm Constant Contact, which analyzed more than 12,000 campaigns sent between June 1 and July 11, authentic, community-oriented messaging outperformed both big-brand and urgency-driven promotions.

Campaigns that included phrases like “shop small” or “shop small business” saw average open rates of about 45%, while more conventional hooks like “exclusive sales” and “early access” still performed well, drawing open rates of 45.3% and 42.3%, respectively.

Even Amazon couldn’t quite top the trend.

Keep reading here.—JS

Baseball fans can be superstitious, and Seattle Mariners supporters are no exception. Some eat dirt, others down drinks, and at least one hired a witch in the hopes of helping the team win.

Rick Rizzs, a longtime broadcaster for the team, eats Cheetos.

During this year’s American League Division Series (ALDS), Rizzs had his snacking superstition brand-approved. After the Cheetos team caught wind of his snack of choice, they inked a short-term partnership with the Mariners for the series—and the Mariners made it through, leaving the Detroit Tigers in the (Cheeto) dust to advance to the American League Championship Series (ALCS).

If the Mariners are able to win the series against the Toronto Blue Jays (the teams head into Game 3 Wednesday night), they’d be off to their first-ever World Series appearance.

While sports deals are common for some other brands in the PepsiCo portfolio, Cheetos had never previously ventured into official team or league deals, Chris Bellinger, chief creative officer of PepsiCo Foods US, said.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—AM

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