Millennial Digital Opps: Charlotte's Web promotes CMO amid spend declines (Score 53)

Charlotte's Web (CW) promoted Colin Glaum to CMO, effective January 2022. Glaum initially joined CW in 2018 as creative director before stepping away from the company in 2019. He then returned as executive creative directer in 2020. Glaum brings CMO experience from his time as The Stashbox's marketing leader. We recently informed you that the company brought all creative, media planning and buying in-house. 

According to Pathmatics, CW earned 129.3m impressions in 2021 through desktop display ads (61%), Instagram ads (18%), Facebook ads (13%) and mobile display ads (7%). It placed the majority (97%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as muscleandfitness.com, instagram.com, facebook.com, popsugar.com and theinertia.com. It placed the remainder (3%) indirectly through The Trade Desk and Google AdX+AdSense onto sites such as fandom.com, foxnews.com, ebay.com, nytimes.com and reddit.com. It spent approximately $1.5m on digital display ads in 2021, just 43% of the $3.5m spent in this channel during 2020. It spent about $22.6k YTD, a drastic decrease from $282k spent during the same time period of 2021. 

Magellan reports CW placed about 15 podcast ads over the last 365 days. 

Sellers-- I believe CW primarily targets millennials. The company had been utilizing digital display ads for the past couple of years, but it has been decreasing spend to focus on mass reach channels such as connected TV, print, streaming radio and digital OOH ads. I do not expect Glaum to make any radical changes, considering he was promoted internally, and not an external hire. However, now that he has more control over the company's strategy. Sellers should reach out for more information to see what types of ad space you can offer. 

Agency & martech readers-- CW is not currently working with any agency partners because it recently started taking care of media and creative work in-house. I recommend offering digital or social media assistance to the new CMO for the best chance of picking up any of CW's business. You can also try offering project-based services.