It’s hard to make people happy. But in today’s attention economy, some brands are getting good at making people very, very mad.

This year, The Ordinary, Skims, e.l.f., Nyx Cosmetics, and, perhaps most famously, American Eagle, have faced accusations of ragebaiting, or the practice of generating anger-fueled online engagement, in various marketing campaigns and product announcements that seemed tailor-made to evoke a response. At the same time, creators like Winta Zesu and Louisa Melcher have built followings in the hundreds of thousands on social platforms by riling up audiences with fake stories and scenarios. Some creators have even found success in fanning the flames of brand campaign dramas as a way to drive their own growth.

In the attention economy, views are currency, and marketers told us that many brands are feeling the pressure to stand out and go viral at just about any cost. But all press may not be good press, and controversy, whether intentional or not, doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to long-term marketing success for brands, experts told us.

“The short-term bump in attention is not really worth the trade-off of damaging brand equity,” Lia Haberman, a social and influencer marketing consultant and author of the ICYMI newsletter, said.

Some marketers may realize the risks of riling up various corners of the internet, but in a time of intense polarization online, social experts said keeping brands out of any heated discourse requires diligence and awareness of bad-faith campaign interpretations that could pull them in.

“We are in a sloppy era,” Haberman said. “I think it’s less about ragebait or outrage marketing, and really [about] carelessness or sloppiness in not thinking about who your audience is, how your messages have come across, [or] the choices of the creators or the talent that you’re using.”

Continue reading here.—KH, KM

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 4 tonight), they’ll 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. But between the specific superstition and general excitement around baseball, Bellinger said it was an opportunity he simply couldn’t pass up.

“When you have something like a superstition come up, I mean, between us and Etsy witches, of course we want to be a part of that,” Bellinger told Marketing Brew. “October baseball is special, and so being able to play along with that is huge.”

Read more here.—AM

Mastercard has officially joined the retail media race with the launch of Mastercard Commerce Media, a network built on 160 billion annual transactions with direct access to 25,000 merchants and 500 million consumers.

The financial services provider has entered a crowded landscape to pitch itself as a bridge between retailers, advertisers, and consumers with smarter targeting, cleaner attribution, and real return on investment. While most retail media networks only see what happens inside their own stores, Mastercard sees where and how people actually spend.

Mastercard’s first-party data (from card transactions and purchase history) could give its Commerce Media network an edge, but whether it’s enough to attract advertisers remains to be seen. First-party data allows Mastercard to see what consumers actually buy, not just what they click on, giving advertisers a clearer picture of real-world behavior. With its card-linking technology, Mastercard can track and close the loop between ad impressions and sales, whether purchases happen in-store or online, while also measuring incrementality, or the lift that ads add beyond what would have happened organically.

This kind of closed-loop measurement addresses a core challenge in retail media: advertisers often struggle to know whether their campaigns truly drive sales or just generate clicks. But even the most precise measurement can’t guarantee success—retail media networks still need to prove they can turn insights into actionable campaigns that actually influence consumer behavior and justify advertising spend.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—VC

On the latest episode of Marketing Brew Weekly, our newsletter team discusses LeBron James’ controversial Hennessy ad and the risk of building campaigns around celebrity “fake-outs,” why Friend AI failed to make friends with its NYC OOH campaign, and other top marketing stories from the week. Listen now.

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• Director, Marketing Operations at Stanford Health Care (in person)
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Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Washington Post analyzed the TikTok habits of more than 800 people to try to determine what makes its algorithm so addictive.
• Bloomberg wrote about how AmEx and Chase are fighting to win over “America’s richest shoppers” with perks, gifts, and…higher fees.
• The Hollywood Reporter dug into YouTube CEO Neal Mohan’s ambitions to transform the video-sharing platform into something resembling cable TV.