The Met Gala returns tonight—and with it, a tidal wave of global attention.

This year’s theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” explores the intersection of African and European fashion traditions through the lens of dandyism. It’s a bold narrative with cultural weight—and a powerful backdrop for brand storytelling.

For luxury marketers—or anyone whose brand connects to culture—it’s a relationship moment. The Met Gala audience is leaning in: way in. Last year, Vogue’s livestream peaked at 812,800 concurrent viewers. Met Gala content hit 2.1 billion views in a week. 2025 is set to break records, with Pharrell, A$AP Rocky, and LeBron James as co-chairs.

All of this makes the Met more than a red-carpet moment. It’s an energy shift where style, status, and spectacle converge—and brands have a rare chance to show up where culture lives loudest.

As the conversation unfolds, here’s what smart brands are asking: How do we meet the moment—and turn cultural cachet into commercial upside?

You don’t need to be on the steps of the Met to be in the room. You just need to show up with intention, and have a fresh take on what’s obsessing your audience.

Be where the moment lives

If your brand touches fashion, beauty, or cultural lifestyle, you already have carte blanche to enter the chat. What matters is how.

Emma Chamberlain’s red carpet interviews show how participation builds presence. She’s not selling — she’s shaping the moment. That’s the move.

Content should match the energy of the event: fast, visual, and on-theme. Use the Gala’s lens — this year, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” — to create work that adds to the conversation.

Relevance over reach

Luxury brands win when they stay in character. Look at Moncler’s pre-Gala event: a live Miley Cyrus debut at Casa Cipriani. No pitch. Just presence.

That’s the difference between showing up and standing out. In our own campaigns, post-event content often outperforms same-day posts — especially when it has a point of view.

Live Tweet or Post

Be part of the real-time conversation using trending hashtags like #MetGala, #MetGala2025, and theme-specific tags. Early engagement = broader reach.

Own your editorial voice

Newsletters and blog content don’t need to recap the event. They should extend its life. Curate reactions. Spotlight your own team’s take. Drop a visual edit that reflects the vibe — not just the news.

Versace and Moda Operandi nailed this by using the Gala as launch context for a rooftop capsule reveal. It didn’t feel attached — it felt inevitable.

Make it matter

We advise clients often: don’t chase the moment. Interpret it.

“Black dandyism” isn’t just a moodboard — it’s a deep design lineage. If your brand plays in heritage or identity, this is the time to say something real.

The most resonant content is often the most specific. Not trend coverage — cultural contribution.

Show up in search

Terms like “best Met Gala looks” and “Met Gala afterparty 2025” spike every year. Optimize your content accordingly. Schema, titles, image search — it all counts.

Brands like Luar and Laura Mercier built visibility by aligning products to the Gala’s aesthetic without being literal. The result: relevance that felt earned.

The takeaway

Show up for the culture and your audience will show up for you. The brands that engage with taste, timing, and clarity get more than attention — they get invited back.

Don’t force the sell. Join the scene.

If you want to make your next cultural moment count, you know where to find us.

The post Red Carpet Relevance appeared first on acronym.

It’s not just about doing something for Earth Day. It’s about doing it right. 

The risk? Greenwashing, or worse: coming off as opportunistic. When a campaign feels like self-promotion disguised as purpose, audiences tune out. Or call it out. Done well, Earth Day activations can become long-term signals of brand values — not just one-off content plays. 

Here’s what that takes: 

1. It has to be authentic to your brand, mission, and values. 

2. It has to deliver real, positive impact — not just perform optics. 

3. It has to create a meaningful bond with your audience, not just check a box. 

Below are three Earth Day initiatives that worked — and why. 

1. ASICS: Turning Movement into Action 

What they did: ASICS launched a tree-planting tracker tied to user activity on Strava, rewarding real-world movement with real-world environmental impact. 

Why it works: It aligns with ASICS’ core identity — physical movement — while giving users a clear, low-friction way to contribute. It’s also measurable, actionable, and inherently personal. 

Making it work for you: Consider how your product or platform already encourages individual action. Is there a way to turn that behavior into a measurable environmental impact? Start with what your audience is already doing — and build around it. 

2. Impossible Foods: A Creative Take on Behavior Change 

What they did: Impossible Foods and Deloitte Digital launched the “Mini Impact Kitchen,” a social campaign using miniature food content to promote plant-based eating as a simple, everyday environmental choice. 

Why it works: Impossible is a brand built around transforming the food system. This campaign brings that mission to life in a way that’s visually engaging and easy to grasp. It ties product to purpose through content that feels fresh, not forced. 

Making it work for you: Don’t try to say everything at once. Focus on one behavior or benefit that connects to your product — and find a format that matches your brand voice. If your audience responds to playful or experiential creative, lean into that. 

3. Kiehl’s: Art That Speaks for the Brand 

What they did: Kiehl’s installed an eco-activist art experience on the High Line in NYC — a bold visual statement tied to their Earth Day campaign. 

Why it works: Kiehl’s is rooted in physical retail and brand heritage. The High Line installation combined visual storytelling with public visibility, reinforcing their commitment to sustainability in a format that felt curated, not commercial. It was designed by eco-activist artist Zaria Forman and tied to a refillable packaging push — bringing product, purpose, and presence together. 

Making it work for you: Use your brand’s natural visual or physical strengths to activate. Whether it’s a physical retail space, a community presence, or even packaging — Earth Day doesn’t have to live online to land well. 

The takeaway 
If you’re going to make a sustainability play, make it true to your brand. Make it visible. And make sure the media strategy supports the message — not just amplifies it. 

That’s how you avoid greenwashing. And more importantly, that’s how you make the impact stick. 

Ready to make your next Earth Day campaign count? 
Whether you’re planning a one-day activation or building a long-term sustainability message, we can help make sure your media strategy supports your mission — and your audience sees the impact. 

Let’s talk about how to turn purpose into performance. 

The post Walk the Talk: 3 Earth Day Activations That Got It Right  appeared first on acronym.

• The new features include campaign-level brand exclusions, page feeds, and easier video creation.
• Additionally, new reporting and insights enable advertisers to see conversions, conversion value, cost, and other metrics at the asset group level.

Our experts explain the impact each soon-to-be-available feature has for advertisers.

Acronym’s Recommendations on Google’s New PMAX Features:

PMax Campaign Types and automated technology are the future of advertising on Google. Objections from advertisers / agencies have centered around lack of visibility and control, so we are glad to see Google offering new products which advance those capabilities. Video Creation appears to be available now, but there is no official word on the roll-out timing of the other features. 

Campaign-level Brand Exclusions:

• While we found a loophole for this in the past, we strongly recommend using this feature to minimize serving on competitive brand queries.
• Allow your branded traffic to flow to your Search campaigns and utilize PMax for non-branded queries, while the AI finds and serves users across the platforms it covers.

Additional Reporting:

• At last! Although optimization levers are limited, visibility into performance at the asset group level will help advertisers strategize and focus creative efforts on the inputs driving results. We hope this is the first step to more granular reporting to come.
• We recommend budget forecasts to understand the PMax opportunity.

Page Feeds:

• We believe this will help advertisers as it allows more control over where traffic is directed on your sites. Some marketers may have already performed valuable on-site CRO and know which pages work best  in driving traffic.
• The ability to restrict matching to specific pages will be helpful to advertisers who share a website across varying locations, etc..

Video Creation:

• We don’t recommend using Google’s video creation. We strongly suggest all clients have well designed and meaningful video content for users across all aspects of the conversion funnel.

If you need assistance with your digital marketing campaigns, please contact us today. We’re here to help.

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How Does This Impact Me?  

This news might seem like it only impacts UX testing teams, but the effect extends beyond those teams.   

Analytics teams should ensure any new testing tools can be reported against and integrated into your current process. This means that you’ll need a team dedicated to building a strategy to anticipate any roadblocks that may arise when transitioning a testing program from one solution to another.  

Paid media teams will also feel the ripple of this change, considering there is no other testing tool available at this time that communicates as efficiently and effortlessly as Google Optimize does with Google Ads. Of course, all testing solutions can be integrated with Google Ads and Google Analytics but keeping all ad data and testing data within a single solution will no longer be an option.  

How Can I Be Ready? 

In a case like this, an analytics team comprised of UX and CRO strategists, digital analysts and a UX and CRO engineer will want to assess:

• your testing program goals
• the current testing velocity
• the complexity of the concluded tests and upcoming tests
• and the ensuring that the testing roadmap can be scaled up if velocity increases.

A CRO Engineer and CRO Strategist will then assess which tools are compatible with your testing program and will consider:

• Will the new tool integrate seamlessly?
• Will test reports be robust enough to inform a marketing strategy?
• Will the tool accommodate for any website nuances that require additional coding to effectively run a test or personalization?
• How will the new tool perform when multiple tests are running at the same time? 

Do I Really Need to Test? 

It can be extremely detrimental to paid media teams to take a testing hiatus.

Testing strategists and CRO engineers work closely with paid media managers to test ads and landing pages. After all, paid media managers strive to send as much traffic as possible to dedicated landing pages, and without testing on these landing pages, it’s nearly impossible to determine which optimizations will generate the highest on-page conversion rates, aka, the most “bang for your buck.”

This is why testing is imperative to build a healthy and successful marketing strategy. Through testing and the learnings we get from testing, paid media teams can ensure that new and existing landing pages are performing at their best.  

If your team used either the free or paid version of Google Optimize, you need to start the process to identify a new tool now.  

For more on testing for CRO and UX and how it relates to paid media, please read this article, which includes tips for success.

What About My Data?  

Although many are not surprised by the news, the question around historical data remains.

Google is encouraging all their users to download and export their data from within Google Optimize before the cutoff date at the end of September. Additionally, you can continue to run any tests or personalizations within the tool until September 30^th, but any experiments that are still active on that date will be deactivated automatically.   

Where Do We Go from Here?  

If your testing team is impacted by this change, we can help. Now is the perfect time to begin exploring a new solution, but it’s imperative to begin understanding your current usage of the tool and your testing goals before you begin to compare your options.

There are a plethora of other testing and optimization solutions available on the market and most of them will integrate with your Google Analytics data… but finding the right one isn’t as easy as it may seem.   

In fact, this forced change can lead to improved digital experiences for your users and testing capabilities for your teams. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of choices or need a little guidance in locking in a new tool, reach out to us so we can help you identify your goals and your best next steps.   

Plan Ahead  

As analytics strategists, here is what we advise:   

• Determine what you liked, and didn’t like, about Google Optimize.  
• How did it help you and your team achieve your testing and optimization goals?  
• Which Optimize feature is absolutely a must for your next tool? What could you do without?  
• Who do I need on my team to make this happen? 

Next, identify your team’s short-term and long-term goals. This could be testing velocity or personalization opportunities, for example.  

Finally, narrow down the tools that you think could work for you. Will it integrate with the rest of your stack? Will its usability impact your workflow? Does it provide the functionalities your team needs?  

Let Us Help  

Although our beloved tools within the Google stack like Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics will remain, the future of testing within the Google stack is uncertain. This means that planning ahead is critical, and here at Acronym we have already begun to consult with our clients on what actions are needed for them to ensure minimal disruption to their testing programs.  

If you need assistance identifying the right solution(s), please contact us today. We’re here to help.

POV by Maria Vera, Manager, CRO & UX, Acronym

The post Google Optimize Sunsets in September – What You Need to Know appeared first on acronym.

What is CRO, and what is UX? 

Testing different versions of web pages to improve conversions by deploying the “winning” version is known as as Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), also known as A/B or Multivariate testing and website optimization. Most people are familiar with the term “A/B testing” which refers to tests that compare a variation to a control. Multivariate testing goes beyond that, testing multiple variations at a given time. Both A/B and multivariate testing allows CRO strategists to find optimization opportunities backed by user behavior data. 

On the other hand, the term UX stands for User Experience, meaning how a user interacts with and emotionally responds to a website. UX is an important component of any optimization process because improving lead generation starts with improving the user’s experience on the site.

All of this may sound extensive, but a CRO team can deliver testing ideas, optimization opportunities, and friction points on your site in a digestible way. CRO teams can put together robust UX and data audits or smaller outlines detailing the next steps needed to get your site to where you need it to be.

How can you leverage a CRO/UX team? 

CRO teams help companies save time and money. This is especially valuable to teams who operate on budgets, such as paid media teams, because CRO and testing do not require any additional paid media efforts. CRO teams can help to improve ROI since UX reduces user friction and thus wasted spend. Marketing teams spend time and money to drive users to their websites, so having an optimal website experience is imperative. 

This optimal user experience isn’t limited to certain pages on a website either. UX optimization extends to landing pages and even emails. This is why it’s so important for CRO teams to work closely with paid media teams, because paid media strategists are constantly monitoring their spend and looking to increase their ad click rates to send the user to a dedicated landing page. Once the user lands on that landing page, their experience with that page matters. If they encounter too much friction, they will leave… which ultimately creates wasted spend for the paid media team.

Some of the more common KPIs (key performance indicators) that a CRO strategist may target for paid media landing page tests include improving:

• Bounce rate (time on page)
• Scroll depth, clicks on buttons
• Completion of forms and more.

Moreover, CRO strategists can focus on improving UX without a measurable KPI (key performance indicator), meaning they focus on improving the overall experience of the user on the website or landing page with an aim to gain trust, build brand authority, create returning visitors and for a generally pleasant session experience.

These factors may not fall under “measurable” KPIs but they do affect business KPIs albeit indirectly.

CRO strategists work closely with digital analysts to find opportunities by dissecting the page performance and user behavior data. This data feeds into web analytics platforms such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics among others.

So how do CRO strategists know what kind of improvement a page needs? Or what the industry standards are for user experience? One of the many responsibilities of a CRO strategist is to stay up to date with industry standards and to have an “always learning” mentality. This allows the strategist to not only look for relevant opportunities but also to back up any of their ideas with industry baselines and tested data.

Let’s Get Started

By this point, you’re probably wondering what you can do right now to kick start your optimizations. Well, you’re in luck, because Acronym’s CRO team is ready to share paid media landing page best practices.

1. Keep landing pages short. Because the audience for paid media may be visiting from their phone, on the go, and they may even be unsure if they’re interested in your product at all, you want to keep the page short and sweet and straight to the point. Scroll depth – no more than 2x the initial height – Maria include as general statement. 

2. Add important buttons and forms above the fold. Ensure that your CTA (call-to-action) buttons are prominently placed above the fold. These CTAs will capture the users attention when they first land on the page, and even if they do not interact with it on the first pass, they will know its placement and are more likely to scroll back up to click. You may also consider making your CTA “sticky” where it follows the user as s/he scrolls on the page.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “the fold” it simply refers to the area of the page that is visible on the first load without any scrolling. The space “below the fold” is what can be seen after the user starts to scroll down. This goes for desktop, mobile and tablet views.

3. Keep your copy concise, but don’t divulge too much information. This one can become a tricky balancing act. For paid media landing pages it’s best to give the user valuable information without losing their interest. This means that you’ll want to give just enough information to peak their interest and motivate them to become a lead to find out more information. Including keywords to match whatever leads them to landing page – ad copy – consistent with what was in the ad.

4. Don’t forget about the hero image. The hero image or hero banner can be used to set the tone for the entire landing page. Do you want to target a certain audience? Find an image that reflects that audience to create a connection. Do you want to highlight an incentive? Make sure you include it in your hero image space. The same goes for creating brand authority. Hero image and/or banner space can be used to showcase brand colors, brand logos and other valuable marketing assets that reinforce user trust and brand awareness.

We’re here to help.

Your website should be constantly growing, improving, and changing to meet your users’ needs.

By analyzing user behavior on your website or landing pages, you’ll begin to detect patterns that help you better understand these needs. However, understanding their needs and meeting them are two very different things. Establishing a solid analytics foundation/set up is the key to success. You can’t measure anything if the analytics platform is broken. Optimization is about continuous feedback, build out test, learn from it, build out future tests from the learnings.

Thankfully, a CRO and UX team can both analyze your users’ behaviors, identify the patterns and address their needs, all while testing different ideas to hone in on what works and what doesn’t. Furthermore, an objective UX/CRO team can work with any development and design team to optimize your site based on their findings. Let us do an audit for you today so you can increase your conversion rates and meet or surpass your company KPIs.

The post How UX and CRO Work Together to Help Brands Meet KPIs appeared first on acronym.

So, what is CRO?  

Testing different versions of web pages to improve conversions and deploying the “winning” version is referred to as  Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), also known as A/B or Multivariate testing and website optimization.  

Most people are familiar with the term “A/B testing” which refers to tests that compare a variation to a control, but multivariate testing examines multiple variations at a given time. Both A/B and multivariate testing allow CRO strategists to find optimization opportunities that are backed by user behavior data. In other words, it’s statistically sound without any guesswork.  

How does it work? 

A CRO strategist will collect your website performance data and user feedback/behavior to form a hypothesis to test. In tandem with data analysis, a web page variation is created based on the hypothesis that this new variation will improve the web page’s performance. By testing against a control or against recorded data, the CRO strategist can attribute any measurable change in performance to the test. 

CRO teams help companies save time and money. This is especially valuable for companies that operate on budgets, such as paid media teams, because CRO and testing do not require any additional paid media efforts. CRO teams can help to improve ROI since UX reduces user friction and subsequent wasted spend. Marketing teams spend time and money to drive users to their websites, so having an optimal website experience is imperative.  

Why is CRO important?  

It’s also important to note that a CRO team’s job is never done. Websites will never be fully “optimized” due to the ever-changing digital landscape and evolving industry best practices. A CRO team must follow the optimization process:  

What about UX?  

The term UX stands for user experience, meaning how a user interacts and emotionally responds to a website. But how does UX play a role in the world of a CRO team? UX is an important component of any optimization process because improving lead generation starts with improving the user’s experience on the site. 

Think of it this way: Let’s say your website needs to have 100 sign-ups by the end of the month. Your buyer persona has a high-quality rate – meaning s/he is more likely to become a lead - but you notice halfway through the month that you’re not going to meet your sign-up minimum. What’s going on? Why aren’t your users signing up? 

This is a great example of how the user’s experience directly impacts the conversion rate which, in this example, is the rate at which site traffic converts to a lead by signing up. Even with a good product or a great offer, the user is less likely to become a customer if they are left feeling frustrated after interacting with your site.   

How you can leverage a CRO team?  

If you’re interested in learning more about CRO and are considering adding a CRO strategist to your team, contact us today and our team of CRO strategists, UX experts and analytics leaders can outline the best approach to achieve your goals.  

And please stay tuned to our blog because we will release a whitepaper on CRO and UX in the new year.   

POV By Maria Vera, CRO Strategist, Analytics 

The post CRO and UX Will Take Center Stage in 2022 appeared first on acronym.

Retailers across industries are facing many of the same challenges marketing their business during economic uncertainty. Now is the time to hit reset. The retailers that are and will be the most successful are transforming their traditional business models and leveraging digital practices to focus on brand and message, eCommerce, driving web traffic and embracing new technology to serve their customers.

In partnership with Reed Exhibition and MadConNYC, Mike Grehan, CMO and Managing Director at Acronym, led a candid discussion with experts across these three industries.
Watch to learn more…

Please welcome Dan Tratensek of North American Retail Hardware Association and representing the National Hardware Show, Trudi Charest of 4ECPS and representing Vision Expo and Sherry Smith of Edge Retail Academy and representing Jewelers International Showcase and Luxury JCK Events.

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