Good morning all!
I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July. As grateful as I am about being an American and living in this beautiful country, it’s been tough for my family and me to see these Colorado wildfires taking place.
My wife grew up in Beulah and Rye, CO, where the Aspen Acres Wildfires started. Those towns, and others, are on mandatory evacuation orders.
Her childhood home may… or may not be standing. At the writing of this (Friday), we just don’t know. Homes of families. Local businesses. Friends we’ve made over the years. All could be changing.
Oh, and for Christmas, we bought our kids concert tickets to see Ed Sheeran at Mile High. The irony of seeing a British pop star play during the 4th of July isn’t overlooked at all.
So, for us, the 4th of July is special. An amazing celebration of 250 years of independence. And, a time of uncertainty for our family.
I don’t share this for sympathy. Rather, to show that we all struggle on this journey we call life.
Now… back to our regularly scheduled program.
I have truly enjoyed a lot of the marketing around the World Cup so far. I mean, it’s been brilliant.
adidas had the 5-minute film.
Nike came back with its own version.
A lot of brands are clearly trying to have their moment.
But my favorite one has not even been close.
It was Levi's.
FIFA basically told stadium sponsors, “Thanks for the building. Now, please disappear.”
And Levi's, instead of whining about it, did something much funnier. They threw a thin white tarp over the logo at Levi's Stadium.
That was it.
Still the same shape. Still obviously Levi's. Still impossible to miss.
Petty. Hilarious. Genius.
And then they kept going.
They changed their social profile image. Black, with the white tarp outline. I mean… it looks bad. Unless you know what they were doing. They covered store logos in major cities… the same way. They turned the whole thing into a bit.
They even dropped a black tee with the white-covered logo on it. But the timing was even better. USA vs Bosnia and Herzegovina. Levi’s Stadium. MILLIONS of viewers on TV and at the stadium. Employees rocking the black tee. Social is doing its thing.
That is what I love about this.
They did not treat the moment like an inconvenience. They treated it like material.
That is the lesson.
A lot of companies look at constraints and immediately go defensive. They complain. They freeze. They wait for perfect conditions. They explain why they cannot do the thing they wanted to do.
The better brands ask a different question… “How do we make this work for us?”
That is exactly what Levi's did.
And the market rewarded them for it.
People were calling it a branding masterclass. They were joking that the tarp should have been denim. They were saying Levi's got free attention that official sponsors would have loved to buy, but couldn’t afford.
With how expensive attention is today, this essentially was FREE.
Because good marketing is not just what you put out. It is what people do with it after.
Levi's gave the audience something easy to notice, easy to repeat, and easy to joke about. That is a very strong place to be.
Where this gets interesting for B2B teams is that the principle still holds. No, you are probably not wrapping a stadium in the middle of the World Cup. But you do have constraints. Every company does.
Smaller budget.
Longer sales cycle.
Category noise.
A stronger incumbent.
A product that the market misunderstands.
Internal approvals that slow everything down.
A founder who wants to say seventeen things at once.
That is real life. The question is whether those constraints make you more forgettable or more creative.
So… in true Javy fashion, I decided to build a framework you can take from Levi's brilliant marketing move.
Keep in mind. Constraint is not the enemy. Indifference is.
Levi's did not win because they had a tarp. They won because the brand was already distinctive enough that the tarp made the joke better.
That's what most B2B companies need to understand.
If your positioning is mushy, if your message sounds like everybody else, if your brand has no clear edge, then you cannot pull off a move like this because there is nothing memorable underneath it.
The first job is not visibility. It is distinctiveness.
Can the market recognize you from the shape of the idea? Not just the logo. The idea. The angle. The tone. The point of view.
And remember… speed multiplies the value of creativity. You can’t “run things by legal” and expect to capitalize on these opportunities. Sometimes you just gotta move.
Levi's did not sit in a conference room for six weeks writing a memo about brand suppression.
They moved.
The tarp went up.
The profile changed.
The stores followed.
The merch followed.
The joke spread.
That is how you turn a moment into momentum.
Too many B2B teams are slow in exactly the moments where speed is the advantage. By the time they approve the post, write the blog, clean up the copy, and get everyone comfortable, the market has already moved on.
Sometimes the edge is not the size of the campaign. It is how fast you can turn an observation into a story.
And, listening is part of the creative process.
One of the things I like most about this is that Levi's did not stop at the first execution. They watched what people responded to and kept the bit going.
That is what smart brands do.
They pay attention to comments.
They notice what people are screenshotting.
They watch what gets repeated.
They see where the audience is leaning in.
Then they build from there.
A lot of companies say they listen to customers, but what they really mean is they run a survey twice a year and call it insight.
Real listening is messier than that. It is reading the comments. It is hearing the language people use. It is noticing what people latch onto without being prompted. It is watching for the joke, the frustration, the comparison, the curiosity.
That is where better marketing usually starts. And, pushing the envelope changes how the brand gets perceived.
In my opinion, this is the part that a lot of B2B companies are too scared to embrace.
They want attention. But they want it in a way that is completely safe, totally polished, and impossible for anyone to misread.
That usually produces nothing. Not because the work is wrong. Because nobody cares.
Levi's was willing to be a little cheeky. A little petty. A little borderline. Not reckless. Just alive.
And that changed how the brand was perceived in the moment. It made them feel sharper. Smarter. More culturally aware. More human.
Trust me… that’s more of a big deal than you think
In B2B, we should take that seriously.
I am not saying go manufacture controversy. I am saying stop sanding every good idea down until it sounds like it came out of legal, HR, and a committee that hates joy.
Sometimes the move is to say the sharper thing. To make the more obvious joke. To take the angle the market is already thinking, but nobody is saying out loud.
That is often what gets remembered. Look at things happening FOR you, not TO you.
This might be the biggest takeaway of all. FIFA created the problem. Levi's created the opportunity.
Same event. Different posture. That is a useful lens for any company.
A noisy market can be a chance to stand out.
A dominant competitor can be a chance to position differently.
A strange customer objection can be the beginning of better messaging.
A category constraint can become the reason people finally notice you.
A lot of the best marketing starts when somebody refuses to see the situation the same way everybody else does.
So if I were translating this into a B2B playbook, it would look like this:
Find the constraint. What is the thing happening around you that everybody else is treating as a limitation?
Find the joke, tension, or truth inside it. Where is the angle that makes people instantly get it?
Move faster than is comfortable. Not recklessly. Just fast enough to still be relevant.
Watch the reaction closely. The comments, replies, shares, and screenshots will usually tell you what to do next.
Extend the moment. Do not stop at one post if the market is clearly leaning in. Turn it into a sequence. A story. A mini-campaign. A point of view.
That is how attention compounds. And that is why I keep coming back to this Levi's example.
Yea, it was funny. It was OBVIOUSLY petty. Of course, it was a little ridiculous.
But underneath that, it was a serious reminder that the brands people remember are usually the ones willing to use the moment better than everyone else.
Not louder. Not bigger. Just sharper.
If your marketing feels flat right now, do not just ask how to create more content. Ask what constraint you are sitting on that could become the angle.
Feel free to reply to this email if you want help finding yours.
See you next week.
P.S. — Is there a topic or strategy that you’d like me to unpack? Drop me a line. Let me know what you’re thinking of. And, I’ll get it queued up for an upcoming newsletter.
Guest Podcast Appearance: Feel the Boot
I recently joined Lance Cottrell on Feel the Boot to talk about a pattern I see all the time: founders and leadership teams try to do too much marketing at once instead of building one GTM motion the market can actually understand, trust, and repeat.
We got into why focus creates leverage, how better positioning sharpens the whole customer journey, and why being known for one clear thing usually beats trying to be everywhere at once. That is part of what makes the Levi's example so strong too. It was one clean idea, executed quickly, and extended well.
If your company is doing a little bit of everything but not standing out for anything, this one is worth your time.
Read the full summary here.
Watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Playbook: Repeatable GTM
A lot of companies think repeatable growth comes from doing more. More channels, more campaigns, more tactics, more activity.
Usually it comes from getting much clearer on what your market should know you for, what motion actually works, and how to build around that before piling on more noise.
That is why this playbook matters. It is about creating a cleaner, more repeatable GTM motion that the market can understand and your team can execute consistently. In other words, the exact opposite of random acts of marketing.
