Brand New World

In a culture obsessed with overnight virality, some brands are winning by moving slower—and smarter. In this panel, you’ll hear from marketing execs from Austin-based favorites Yeti and Huckberry about the power of patience in brand building. Rather than chasing trends or gaming algorithms, both companies have invested in community, storytelling, and product integrity—earning loyalty the old-fashioned way. You’ll learn how sometimes the boldest strategy to stand out isn’t to move fast—it’s to build something worth sticking with.

First things first—Brand New World is going from one episode per month to two! One episode will be hosted by Jeff Beer with his Fast Company colleague and Gen Z wizard Grace Snelling, for what we call "The Old Man and the Z." And the second episode each month will feature an interview with a brand, marketing, or advertising executive on work that we’re excited about.

 

This week’s episode is the newest edition of “The Old Man and the Z.” We break down some of our favorite brand work of the past few weeks, including why Burger King is asking people to call its president, Tom Curtis, and let him know what they think of all things BK.

 

And because BK is putting Curtis out in public as a face of the brand, we try to put this in the context of what we should call the Colonel Sanders Memorial Executive Brand Spokesperson Pantheon. Does Curtis have what it takes to someday join Steve Jobs, Rihanna, or even Victor Kiam? It will take a hell of a lot of phone calls to get there.

This month’s episode is all about the big game – but it’s got nothing to do with football. That’s right, it’s the most magical time of year for brands, that rare and brief three-or-so hour moment when people actually want to see commercials. Every marketer’s Xanadu.  Yep, it’s the Super Bowl.

Fast Company reporter – and Brand New World's Gen Z consigliere – Grace Snelling is here to breakdown picks for the Pregame Brand Power Rankings. Jeff and Grace trade favorites of who had the best teasers, what ads we think will be talked about most, and more. 

Then, we wanted to get a behind-the-scenes look at Super Bowl season from some folks who are up to their eyeballs in it. So Jeff is joined by Mark Gross and Chad Broude, co-founders and co-chief creative officers of Chicago-based independent ad agency Highdive. They have hundreds of Super Bowl ads between them – including ads for Jeep and Lay’s this year – so we talked about the role the big game plays in advertising right now, how it’s evolved most, and more. 

And finally, Grace will return with another esteemed Fast Company colleague, staff editor David Salazar, to draft their All-Time Best Super Bowl Ads.

Hot route! Red seven! Hut hut hut!

Since George Felix joined Chili’s as chief marketing officer in 2022, the brand’s marketing budget has gone from $32 million in FY 2022 to $137 million in 2025. As a result of that investment, Chili’s has gone viral on TikTok thanks to videos showing off the stretchiness of its mozzarella sticks, pulling in more than 200 million views on that platform, and selling more than 29 million of its Triple Dipper appetizers. The Office tie-in to the Scranton restaurant opening earlier this year was a massive hit, and the NASCAR-focused work around its Presidente margarita – “Ride the ‘Dente” – kept the momentum going. It all led to Felix being named one of Fast Company’s CMOs of the Year in our annual Brands That Matter issue. 

 

On this episode of Brand New World, senior staff editor Jeff Beer talks to Felix about the Chili’s brand resurgence, the influence of his early successes at Old Spice and KFC, and where it all goes from here. 

 

But first, it’s another edition of Old Man & the Z, and Fast Company’s Grace Snelling joins us to talk about the brand partnerships aiming to cash in on the final season of Stranger Things.

Brands spend billions on trying to attract and retain audiences—they pay for the data about certain types of people, then pay more to create work for all these different audiences. 

 

Data is big business for marketers, but what is it and what’s it all for? Demographic data, psychographic data, behavioral data, transactional data, geographic data . . . all of these are meant to parse and categorize any and all types of people in order to figure out how best to get their attention and persuade them to buy something. 

 

It’s used for personalization, of course, but also segmentation, predictive analysis—what people (?) are likely to do, to optimize current ad campaigns, and to measure their return on investment. 

 

So here at Brand New World, we wanted to reflect on the perspective from one of the most sought-after, valuable—but admittedly broad—demographics on the planet: Gen Z. 

 

In this episode, Fast Company’s Grace Snelling—a proud Gen Zer—joins host Jeff Beer to talk about a few of their favorite pieces of brand work from the past month.