Lessons from America's Hottest Brands

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ad Age Marketer’s Brief – Lessons from America’s Hottest Brands

Date: July 22, 2026
Hosts: E.J. Schultz (A), Adrianne Pasquarelli (B)
Theme: Decoding the success of the 2026 list of America’s Hottest Brands and the actionable marketing tactics behind their momentum.

---

Episode Overview

This episode focuses on the annual Ad Age Hottest Brands list and dives into the marketing strategies that propelled these brands to standout status. E.J. Schultz and Adrianne Pasquarelli dissect the key lessons marketers can take away from this year’s winners—ranging from food startups and legacy labels to surprising entries like NASA and the New York Knicks. The conversation spotlights practical insights relevant for brands of any size or industry.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Listen to Feedback—With Real Action

Timestamps: 02:13–05:20

• Neato (Squishy Toy Brand):

  • Despite being a decade old, Neato exploded in popularity due to viral ASMR-driven TikTok content, causing surges in demand and supply issues.
  • The team responded to overwhelming customer feedback by hiring staff solely to process fan mail (including old-fashioned letters), which directly informs supply and new product releases.
    • Notable Quote (B, 04:01):
      “They had a few people just going through like actual letters... going through all the comments on social media, and that’s informing how they’re doing marketing and kind of understanding how much to buy.”

• Pink (Victoria’s Secret’s Gen Z-focused line):

  • Launched the “marshmallow bra” after consistent customer requests for a comfortable, all-day bra.
  • Customers felt directly involved in product development, resulting in boosted loyalty.
    • Quote (B, 05:20):
      “People are excited because they feel like they are directly responsible for creating this product... that gives them a little bit more ownership and more loyalty with the brand.”

---

2. Collaboration—Pick the Right Partners and Say No to the Wrong Ones

Timestamps: 05:58–09:19

• Pink x Love Shack Fancy:

  • Chose to partner with a brand that aligns aesthetically but appeals to different price points, aiming to acquire new customers.
  • The collab led to “15% new customers” and sell-out merchandise.

• Grillo’s Pickles:

  • Known for witty, unusual collaborations (e.g., pickle-flavored Burt’s Bees chapstick, pickle smoothies).
  • Maintains brand integrity by turning down mismatched partnerships.
    • Quotes:
      • (B, 08:03): “I actually want to try [the chapstick] because I do love pickle flavoring, but it’s not something I think you or I would have ever, like, dreamed up.”
      • (B, 08:38): “If a partnership doesn’t make sense... they’ll just say no. And they say no all the time.”

---

3. Remove Organizational Silos

Timestamps: 09:19–11:44

• Nuuly (Subscription Clothing Rental from Urban Outfitters):

  • Empowers customer service teams to resolve issues independently—crucial in a word-of-mouth-driven business.
  • Customer service and marketing collaborate, monitoring social media and proactively fixing public-facing issues.
    • Quote (B, 09:35):
      “They’re constantly checking Reddit... talking to people and publicly fixing problems that customers might have.”

• Depop (Resale Platform):

  • Rides the wave of sustainability and secondhand culture, expanding collaborations and sponsoring events to keep the platform culturally relevant.

---

4. Tap into Fan Passions—The Power of Fandom

Timestamps: 11:44–13:55

• Dutch Bros (Coffee Chain):
  • Developed a devoted community around personalized customer experiences—baristas (“broistas”) encourage wild drink customizations and build relationships.
  • Limited-edition merchandise (stickers, cups, totes) galvanizes fans to trade and showcase their affinity, especially in online groups.
    • Quote (B, 13:29):
      “They don’t mind if you come up with some crazy, like Matcha strawberry raspberry drink... they really lean into that kind of behavior from their customers.”

---

5. Additional Brand Highlights & Honorable Mentions

Timestamps: 13:55–16:09

• Coach (Fashion):

  • Seeing a resurgence by tuning into Gen Z’s wants and offering circular, sustainable options—including appeal on resale platforms like Depop.
  • Quote (B, 14:05):
    “Coach is a great case of a brand that’s seeing a resurgence... really getting in touch with what Gen Z wants.”

• Smash Kitchen (Pantry Brand co-founded by Glen Powell):

  • Differentiated by “stripped down,” natural ingredient grocery items and leveraging celebrity backing to gain attention.

• Costco:

  • Defies convention with no advertising, instead relying on low prices and membership loyalty. Social media “budget finds” postings spark further interest.
    • Quote (B, 15:35):
      “They rely on the low prices and their membership model... Customers keep coming back.”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Listening to Feedback:
  B, 04:01: “They had a few people just going through like actual letters... and that’s informing how they’re doing marketing and kind of understanding how much to buy.”

• On Collaboration Discipline:
  B, 08:38: “If a partnership doesn’t make sense... they’ll just say no. And they say no all the time.”

• On Organizational Silos:
  B, 09:35: “They’re constantly checking Reddit... and publicly fixing problems that customers might have.”

• On Fandom:
  B, 13:29: “They don’t mind if you come up with some crazy, like Matcha strawberry raspberry drink.”

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:08 – Episode theme and intro to this year’s Hottest Brands list
• 02:13 – Lesson 1: Listening to feedback (Neato, Pink)
• 05:58 – Lesson 2: Collaborations (Pink x Love Shack Fancy, Grillo’s Pickles)
• 09:19 – Lesson 3: Remove silos (Nuuly, Depop)
• 11:44 – Lesson 4: Tap into fandom (Dutch Bros)
• 13:55 – More brand highlights (Coach, Smash Kitchen, Costco)

---

Takeaways for Marketers

• Proactive, genuine engagement and listening to consumer feedback yields not only better products but stronger loyalty.
• Purposeful collaborations can drive customer acquisition and keep brand partnerships on-brand—saying “no” can be as powerful as saying “yes.”
• Busting organizational silos ensures seamless customer experiences and strengthens word-of-mouth.
• Brands building and fueling passionate communities set themselves up for viral moments and sustained relevance.
• Legacy brands are thriving by adapting to modern tastes, sustainability concerns, and the resale economy.

---

Explore the full list of 2026’s hottest brands at adage.com.

Transcript

[A]

What does it take to be one of America's hottest brands? Hello, My name is E.J. schultz, News Editor at Ad Age, and we will answer that question on this edition of the Marketer's Brief Podcast. Hottest Brands is an annual Ad Age feature published every summer, looking at the brands that are having a moment. And this is often as a result of smart marketing that has allowed them to break through the noise. And let's face it, there is plenty of noise these days. This year's list includes brands from across the spectrum. There is Cava, the Mediterranean fashion casual brand, and Canva, the design platform. We also have Pickles, Grillo's, Crack the List, and Ketchup, which is one of the food sold by Smash Kitchen, the pantry brand co founded by actor Glen Powell. Our hottest list also includes NASA and NATO. And New Yorkers will be happy that the Knicks made it. You can check out all 20 of the [e-mail] but for today's podcast, I want to focus on some of the marketing lessons we can take away from this year's crop of winners. And to help me do that, I want to welcome Ad Age Senior editor Adrian Pascarelli, who helped put the list. Hello, Adrian.

[B]

Hi, E.J.

[A]

so over the next 15 minutes or so, we're going to review what some of the brands that made our list did, right? And there are plenty of lessons that are applicable, I think no matter how big your brand is or what industry you might play in. You wrote about some of these lessons at Adage. We published the story last Friday. So let's just kind of go through some of the, some of your takeaways, and I'm going to start with the first one, which is listen to Feedback. Now, that sounds like sort of obvious advice, but I think the way that some of our brands are listening to the consumers, they're doing it in some really interesting and compelling ways. And you highlighted a couple of those in your story. Do you want to talk about them?

[B]

Yeah. Thanks for having me, E.J. so I'd love to talk about Neato, which I think you're probably familiar with because you have a daughter and I have two daughters, too. And it's that squishy toy that really went viral earlier this year. Were you familiar with it before this list?

[A]

You know, maybe my daughter, maybe here in Chicago. It wasn't as hot as in New York, but I definitely am familiar with it now for sure.

[B]

So it's been crazy. They are actually a 10 year old brand, but because people started using these squishy toys, like doing ASMR with them on social media and documenting it on TikTok. Then it started this flywheel of people looking for to buy these neato, these squishies. And then they were selling out because the brand just had never seen such demand for it before. So there was like all this demand for it, all these things selling out. And they started receiving all this fan mail and they had some inventory issues and all this stuff. And so they were talking to me about how they were handling that situation. And it really came down to, like you said, listening to feedback from customers and also customers like consumers, but also their wholesale accounts, like independent toy stores and that kind of thing. They said they've received so much fan mail that they had to hire employees just to go through all these letters. That was like just this year they told me that a lot of that is informing how they're thinking about product drops in the future and kind of how much inventory they're budgeting for. So it's like informing marketing and merchandise.

[A]

And I think you said in your story the response was so overwhelming, the, the feedback they're getting. They actually hired people to sing, to just do this, just to listen.

[B]

Right, right. So they, they had a few people just going through like actual letters that they're getting. I mean, I think because maybe because they sell to children as well as, as teens and adults. Like, let's be, let's be clear, a lot of the people posting on TikTok are not child age, but they're getting actual fan mail, like snail mail. So they have people kind of going through that and going through all the comments on social media and all that as well. And that's informing how they're doing marketing and kind of understanding how much to buy. So they just released these Advent calendars like this week or last week, July for Christmas, and that's way earlier than last year. And they ordered double the amount just because they knew how many people would be, you know, they're hoping that they finally found a balance to avoid selling out again, which they did last year.

[A]

I think this speaks really to what we've been noticing now for a while and just such the importance of community building. If you're a brand and if you're a consumer, you want to know, you want to feel like you're being heard. Right. If you make a suggestion about a new product, if you're complaining about a product, I mean, people have been giving this feedback forever. Right. It's nothing new. But brands have so much technology and tools and ways to listen and respond. There's almost no excuse not to these days.

[B]

And I think customers want to, like you said, they want to be heard. So at Pink, the Gen Z focused clothing brand, it's actually owned by Victoria's Secret, they heard from all their customers that they wanted this comfortable bra. They wanted something to last them all day. And so they started, they released this marshmallow bra as a direct result of those asks from customers. And people are excited because they feel like they are directly responsible for creating this product like that. They had a hand in it and that gives them a little bit more ownership and gives them a little more. More loyalty with the brand.

[A]

Exactly. There's plenty of other examples like that on our list. But I want to move on to the next piece of advice, which is find the right collab partner and say no to the wrong one. Again, collaborations are nothing new. Right. We've been writing about them at Ad Age for, for many years and they just are constant. But I think you picked out a couple examples again from our winners here. That kind of are some best in class ways to do that.

[B]

Well, speaking of Pink, they had a big collaboration with Love Shack Fancy last year. Love Shack Fancy is very similar. It's kind of a similar aesthetic to Pink in that they both love pink. They do ruffles. It's like kind of girly girl aesthetic. So a collaboration, but the price points are very different. So a collaboration like that made pictures sense from Pink's perspective, especially because they went into it with one goal and that was to get new customers. And they did. I think they got like 15% new customers along with like lines around the block, sell out merchandise, that kind of thing. So that really made sense because they both, both partners approached it from a perspective of gaining new, new customers. And the collaboration made sense because they had so many synergies.

[A]

Now, one of my favorite brands on the list and I'm so happy they made it is Grillo's Pickles. Because you and I also put together our marketing Winners and Losers column every Friday on nh. Grillos has made that thing several times. It feels like they're constantly like doing fun and interesting things and it's a pickle brand. But haven't they also done a lot of collaborations?

[B]

Yeah, they've done a lot of collaborations. Some I wasn't even aware of. They have this like, wacky personality. So some of the collaborations really feed into it. Pun intended. They're like super random and they have that like, unhinged aspect. And one of those that doesn't, you know, isn't something you would think of is chapstick. Pickle flavored chapstick. Burt's Bees.

[A]

Right. They did something.

[B]

Burt's Bees. Yeah. And I don't. I actually want to try it because I do love pickle flavoring, but it's not something I think you or I would have ever, like, dreamed up. And they had, like, a smoothie collaboration too. Again, like, really doubling down on the pickles. But one thing they told me was that if a partnership doesn't make sense to them, if they don't see it, like, following in that wacky personality or like, it doesn't make sense from a similar perspective to what Pink told me, they'll just say no. And they say no all the time.

[A]

Yeah, I've heard that in the past. And reporting on similar things like this. Right. It's just that ability to not say yes to everything, I think is almost one of the most important things you can do in marketing and figuring out what makes sense for your brand. I think if you're a pickle brand, though, it's. They have a little bit of a license to have some fun. Right. It's not a serious. Necessarily a serious product.

[B]

Pickles are very serious. What are you talking about?

[A]

You take your pickles.

[B]

They've really elevated the humble pickle. I think we use that one, and I love it.

[A]

Well, it's a whole other lesson we won't get into in this episode. But they do a great job with experiential too. Right? They do a lot of stuff in New York.

[B]

Yeah. They have this activation that only seems to grow and grow every year.

[A]

So we'll save that for another conversation, but I want to move on the next lesson. Remove organizational silos. Again, another thing we hear over and over in multiple contexts, but in the context of hottest brands, who do you think is doing this? Right?

[B]

So one of the brands on our list was Nuuly, and they are the subscription clothing rental brand owned by Urban Outlet Outfitters. And they're only a few years old, but they've really grown and are really changing consumer behavior in terms of making it normal to rent clothing. And they've become very popular. And they were telling me that a lot of their marketing is really word of mouth. So if you screw up on the back end with poor customer service, you're kind of done with a customer because they're like, well, that didn't work out. I'm not gonna continue with this brand. So it's very important that the customer Service does a good job. And so to make sure that happens, they've empowered customer service. They're able to really make their own decisions of settling customer issues, fixing problems. And they've also integrated them with marketing. They're constantly checking Reddit and social media and talking to people and publicly fixing problems that customers might have. Like, you know, a clothing order didn't arrive or something was damaged or anything like that.

[A]

You know, one of the things I love about America's hottest brands is it really kind of speaks to kind of the year we're having, not just in marketing, but just sort of overall. And I found it interesting that we had another brand that is a little similar to Nuuly playing in a similar space, and that's Depop and. Right. Which is the resale platform as well. So this speaks to kind of people wanting, you know, maybe a little bit of economic angle here. Can you. Can you just quickly talk about Depop and why they made it?

[B]

Yeah, the sustainability aspect of this circular fashion, the resale platforms. Depop is interesting. They've been successful with that. They've also had, speaking of brand partners, they're kind of everywhere sponsoring things. Often they just had some stuff going on with Live Nation, and they have a very compelling platform for people looking to buy or sell secondhand of all things, not just clothing, but accessories and other goods as well.

[A]

In fact, we had actually four brands on the list that sort of are related to fashion. Coach was also on there, and we already talked about Pink. So again, you can check all those out on the full list. But moving on to one of our final lessons we're going to talk about on this episode, and that is tapping into fan passions. You know, one of the buzzwords of marketing, I feel like in 2026 is fandom. Everyone's kind of throwing that word around. Right. But I think that one of the brands we isolated when it comes to successfully tapping into fan passions is Dutch Brothers, the coffee chain. Can you talk about what they did? Right.

[B]

So this coffee chain was interesting to me because they aren't in New York, so I've never actually been to one. But after talking to them, I feel like I'm a lot more familiar. And they're brewista baristas, which are like, the people who work there have super high energy. They really love to customize drinks for people, which kind of speaks into that fandom. And they also do a lot of these merchandise drops with stickers and cups and tote bags. And this has been a trend we've seen with Lots of brands, we've written about this a lot before, where people who are fans of a brand want to show, they want to demonstrate their fandom publicly, like in what they're wearing and what they're showing up with. And Dutch Brothers said that there's these communities out there on Facebook and on social media that are like trading places for the stickers and things like that. And so they really lean into that kind of behavior from their customers.

[A]

And these Broistas you mentioned, you interviewed, I believe, Debbie Biswanger, who is the senior VP of brand marketing, Dutch Brothers. And she told me that they quote, welcome whatever crazy drink you'll throw at them. So it also kind of speaks to this customization phase as well. Right?

[B]

Yeah. And that is also, you know, building relationships with the customer. So you feel like these workers are your friends, that they, they don't mind if you come up with some crazy, like Matcha strawberry raspberry drink. Whereas I feel like some other chains might be a little more limited or not might not be as welcoming with, with such wacky customization, off menu kind of ideas.

[A]

All right, before we go, Adrienne, I already mentioned what I might think is my favorite brand on the list. Grillo's. What were some other brands that caught your eye that you really liked writing about this time?

[B]

Oh, I mean, I think. Well, you mentioned Coach. I mean, Coach is a great case of a brand that's seeing a resurgence. A brand that's been around for a long time, has seen its share of ups and downs and has really revitalized its marketing through many things. And they have a circular, you know, sustainability option as well. They're really getting in touch with what Gen Z wants. I mean, my 15 year old wants all the Coach bags, which is great for her, but not so not so great because they are not, you know, very inexpensive.

[A]

Not great for your bank account.

[B]

But you. I believe she did buy a bag off Depop, a Coach bag. So there you go. Kind of.

[A]

Maybe she wants to stick to Neat House. A little more budget friendly for you.

[B]

I don't know. Neato can get expensive too, especially if you buy it secondhand. People will sell those for so much more money than they cost originally. It's kind of crazy. But some of the other brands on the list were also interesting. We talked about, you talked about Smash Kitchen, which is like that stripped down version of condiments and kind of this everyday grocery items, but with natural ingredients. And I think they're really being elevated through the celebrity backer and Glen Powell

[A]

It'll be worth watching. I mean, Heinz has been doing such great marketing lately and obviously a giant. It'll be interesting to see if Smash Kitchen can kind of make a dent into the Heinz market share too. And they sell more than condiments too. I think they recently got into snacks as well. But interesting celebrity brand, right? Sometimes they come and go. We'll see what kind of staying power this one has.

[B]

And one last thing about speaking of staying power, one of my favorites on the list also is Costco, which has been around for decades and does like no advertising. They rely on the low prices and their membership model and that's like they're seeing tons of loyalty. Customers keep coming back. They really are embracing. Like, people will post about how they had these like budget fines on Costco, they'll post about it on social media and then it's really creating a lot of strong sales for them.

[A]

Another one that perhaps speaks to the the economy as well, but we'll have to leave it there. I think we ticked off nearly all the brands on our list, but if you want to see the full list again, remind you to check it [e-mail] thank you, Adrian for your time. Great work on this package. Again. This is E.J. schultz, news editor, Ad Age. Before I leave, I want to give a special thanks to our producer, Lauren Giardio and invite you to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite channel. We will catch you next time.