Marketing Leaders Discuss Media Envy Phenomenon, How Brands Can Create Distinct Presence

What is media envy?

Is it the annoyance of being less creative than other advertisers, the moment of seeing the ineffectiveness of your business’s media placement or is it realizing your brand may just not be original enough? It’s actually a universal feeling that can fuel ideas and help brands reach more consumers.

“Media envy is something that, as marketers, we’ve all felt before. It’s a tinge of jealousy you feel watching an amazing campaign,” says Carly Zipp, global director of brand marketing at Amazon Ads.

“It’s a healthy sense of envy that sparks our own drive for greater innovation and greater creativity,” says Emily Maxey, FILA’s SVP of marketing.

As marketing and advertising are creative communities, Maxey argues that the feeling of media envy can “turn into motivation to keep innovating, keep creating and keep pushing forward. “Experimentation and creativity are everything, particularly in a field like marketing, where you’re storytelling,” she adds. “Media envy is a continued motivator to experiment and push creativity — not just how we create, but where we create, with whom we create, and then ultimately, on which platform that it will live.”

Media envy can also spark competitive spirit that creates more productivity and better quality of products. “It’s fun to have this powerful ability be at the forefront of culture and see consistent wins,” says Poppi co-founder and chief brand officer Allison Ellsworth, who notes that competition is beneficial. “I love being in a world where we can have multiple players building a category. At the end of the day, we’re all kind of winning, especially when it comes to advertising.”

Inspiring media envy requires not just developing a creative idea, but also knowing your brand and utilizing innovative media placements to scale that idea. “If you want to go from experiencing media envy to making envy-inducing campaigns, start with a great idea,” Zipp advises. “Once you have the creative idea, you can think about how to scale it, how to use signals to measure it and how to reach audiences where they are.”

Zipp points to Poppi’s first national commercial, a 60-second spot titled “The Future of Soda Is Now,” as a prime example. “It was a great ad that made you think about soda, not as a bad word, but in a good way, in a different way, and something unique and fun,” Zipp says. “The great power of [live programming] advertising is that you put yourself on the scene, but you have to follow it up with surround sound of advertising. I love that Poppi utilized Prime Day, one of our biggest tentpoles at Amazon, and used Amazon Live, which is our shoppable live streaming network to get the word out about their product and offering.”

Since Poppi started in Ellsworth’s home kitchen and was launched in March 2020, the prebiotic soda company continues to disrupt the soda industry with Gen Z/millennial-friendly marketing. “We are such a social-first brand, and we’re constantly online understanding and meeting the consumer where they are,” Ellsworth says. “At the end of the day, when we’re showing up on your feed, on your computer or in store, it’s really hard to ignore us.”

To remain ever-present, brands have to retain growth and cultural relevance. Zipp praises FILA’s recent “Bellissimo” campaign and 100-second commercial centered on the dreamy Bellissimo Country Club, a seaside haven for the sporty and stylish. “There’s no one who could watch that FILA ad and not be excited to see them back on the scene,” says Zipp, who also commends the legacy brand for adapting to modern media. “I was thrilled to see that they utilized our video ad space within Prime Video, a premium opportunity to reach people when they’re watching their favorite shows.”

For the Fall/Winter 2024 collection, the sportswear company, founded in 1911, sought to reignite brand love with existing customers and attract new generations of shoppers. “We’re at an interesting place on our journey as a 113-year-old brand,” Maxey says. “Reintroducing ourselves to particular audiences across different consumer segments was incredibly important. Amazon’s data set and platform capabilities gave us the opportunity to be hypersurgical in terms of who we’re talking to.”

As audience viewing behavior shifts, Zipp touts streaming TV as a “very powerful platform for brands to be able to reach their consumers where they are,” adding that brands, like FILA, “have the opportunity to drive actions through an interactive TV ad.”

Businesses can be at the right place at the right time to the right consumers across Amazon Ads’ media channels. “We can help businesses go from experiencing media envy to overcoming and creating media envy through a full offering of channels, signals and abilities to reach audiences at scale,” Zipp says.

“That is the power of Amazon Ads and utilizing great creative to make media envy.”

Amazon Ads can “take a brand and cascade it across all our assets, across our Amazon properties,” Zipp explains. “Then what’s better is using our billions of signals to measure that and reach audiences where they are in an effective way.”

Media envy is not just the feeling of jealousy marketers and businesses feel when they see great work by a competitor. In advertising, media envy can be wonder and respect. It can drive intensity to innovate, keep brands on their toes, and ultimately, give businesses a marketplace advantage.