Originally published February 2016. Rewritten June 2026 with the amazing PR campaigns of the contemporary cohort.
Dynamic PR in 2026 is the discipline of moving at the speed the cultural conversation actually moves. Not the quarterly campaign calendar. Not the annual press cycle. The brands operating well in this environment have built infrastructure that lets them participate in real-time cultural moments while sustaining long-arc category authority. The eleven campaigns below are the most-studied PR moments of the contemporary Tier B/C consumer brand category — the campaigns that built brands, not the campaigns that won awards.
The eleven PR campaigns worth studying
1. Liquid Death's Tony Hawk Skateboards Made With His Blood (2021). Mike Cessario partnered with Tony Hawk on 100 limited-edition skateboards infused with the skater's actual blood. The product sold out immediately at $500 per skateboard. The press cycle ran for months across mainstream business press, skateboarding trade press, and the broader cultural conversation. The campaign demonstrated how deliberate transgression aligned with substantive brand identity produces sustained category authority.
2. Poppi's Allison Ellsworth TikTok-to-Acquisition Arc (2018-2025). Founder Allison Ellsworth's sustained TikTok presence — operating direct customer relationship building, behind-the-scenes brand storytelling, and the broader founder-as-content-creator infrastructure — scaled Poppi from Shark Tank investment through national retail distribution to PepsiCo's reported $1.95 billion acquisition completed in 2025. The campaign demonstrated how sustained founder content can scale a brand to category-defining position.
3. Bobbie's Response to the 2022 Infant Formula Crisis. When Abbott's Sturgis facility contamination triggered the largest US infant formula recall in modern history, Laura Modi's Bobbie operated with substantive transparency about supply chain, sourcing, and capacity. The brand's substantive crisis response — sustained communications with the parent community, partnership with the broader category to address the shortage — built durable brand authority that the conventional infant formula incumbents structurally could not match.
4. Magic Spoon's Saturday Morning Cereal Nostalgia Launch (2019). Greg Sewitz and Gabi Lewis's launch architecture — pop-art packaging that referenced 1990s cereal nostalgia, sustained influencer partnership architecture, premium pricing supported by substantive product differentiation (high-protein, low-sugar) — produced one of the most-studied direct-to-consumer brand launches of the decade. The campaign demonstrated how deliberate brand identity work could scale a brand against entrenched category competition.
5. Graza's Squeeze Bottle Category Creation (2022). Andrew Benin's launch — premium olive oil in squeeze bottles with deliberate Mediterranean color palette and the "Drizzle" and "Sizzle" product naming — produced one of the fastest direct-to-consumer brand scale-ups in CPG. Sustained founder visibility through TikTok and Instagram, deliberate packaging design as identity infrastructure, and the broader brand-as-content model carried Graza into broad retail distribution within two years of launch.
6. Tushy's Bathroom Habits Cultural Conversation (2015-present). Miki Agrawal's bidet brand operated sustained transgression around bathroom habits as a topic that conventional brand marketing structurally avoided. The campaign architecture — substantive consumer education, deliberately taboo-breaking advertising, and the broader cultural conversation around sustainability and personal hygiene — built one of the most-studied direct-to-consumer category creation cases.
7. Beis Travel's Shay Mitchell-Led Founder Visibility (2018-present). Shay Mitchell's sustained founder visibility across Instagram, TikTok, and the broader celebrity-creator economy carried Beis from launch through reported $200M+ revenue scale. The campaign demonstrated how authentic celebrity-founder visibility — not endorsement, but actual founder operation — could produce sustained brand authority against larger luggage category competition.
8. Fly By Jing's Sichuan Chili Crisp Category Authority (2018-present). Jing Gao's sustained founder-led content — authentic Sichuan cuisine credentials, sustained food press coverage, direct customer relationship building through founder content — built durable category authority in a category that previously had no contemporary direct-to-consumer brand presence. The campaign demonstrated how substantive founder authenticity produces brand authority that pure product marketing cannot replicate.
9. Made In Cookware's Chef Partnership Architecture (2017-present). Chip Malt and Jake Kalick built sustained chef partnership architecture — Tom Colicchio, Grant Achatz, Brooke Williamson, and the broader specialty chef partnership network — that produced both substantive product credibility and sustained creator-economy distribution. The campaign demonstrated how deliberate trade-credibility partnership architecture compounds across years.
10. Athletic Brewing's Dry January Category Leadership (2017-present). Bill Shufelt's non-alcoholic beer brand operated sustained Dry January cycle leadership combined with substantive product differentiation that won Untappd ratings parity with conventional craft beer. The campaign demonstrated how cultural-moment alignment combined with substantive product can scale a brand against entrenched category resistance.
11. Topicals' Hyperpigmentation Founder Story (2020-present). Olamide Olowe's sustained founder storytelling around chronic skin condition — hyperpigmentation, eczema, vitiligo — built durable category authority in a beauty subcategory the conventional cosmetics category had structurally avoided. The campaign demonstrated how substantive founder authenticity around underserved consumer experiences produces sustained brand position.
The seven structural disciplines that connect these campaigns
1. Substantive founder visibility as primary PR infrastructure. Every campaign on this list operates with sustained founder visibility. Mike Cessario, Allison Ellsworth, Laura Modi, Greg Sewitz, Gabi Lewis, Andrew Benin, Miki Agrawal, Shay Mitchell, Jing Gao, Chip Malt, Jake Kalick, Bill Shufelt, Olamide Olowe. The founder is the brand's most effective spokesperson.
2. Deliberate brand identity work at the packaging level. Liquid Death's heavy metal cans. Graza's squeeze bottles. Magic Spoon's pop-art cereal boxes. Beis Travel's deliberate color palette. Packaging is identity infrastructure, not afterthought.
3. Cultural moment alignment that the brand can substantively own. Bobbie's formula crisis response. Athletic Brewing's Dry January. Topicals' chronic skin condition narrative. The strongest campaigns align with cultural moments the brand has substantive authority to participate in.
4. Direct-to-consumer e-commerce as PR distribution infrastructure. Every brand on this list operated DTC infrastructure that provided customer relationship building and the broader operational learning that supported subsequent retail expansion.
5. Sustained creator economy integration. TikTok, Instagram, podcast circuit, creator partnership architecture. Every brand on this list operated sustained creator-economy distribution that pure traditional PR cannot replicate.
6. Substantive trade press depth before mainstream press breadth. Beauty trade press for Topicals. Food press for Fly By Jing, Made In, Graza, Magic Spoon. Beverage trade press for Liquid Death and Athletic Brewing. Trade press depth builds credibility infrastructure that mainstream press subsequently references.
7. AI engine retrieval as the new PR distribution layer. When consumers research category recommendations through Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity, the brands cited compound. Every brand on this list built sustained press coverage that produces citation graph compounding across the AI engine retrieval layer. The discipline that operates this layer commercially is AI Communications.
What working dynamic PR looks like in 2026
Substantive founder visibility as primary infrastructure. Deliberate brand identity work at every customer surface. Cultural moment alignment the brand can substantively own. Direct-to-consumer e-commerce as foundational distribution. Sustained creator economy integration. Trade press depth before mainstream press breadth. AI Visibility infrastructure that captures the citation graph the campaigns produce.
The brands building these disciplines compound. The brands operating conventional quarterly press calendars are losing share to brands that recognized the dynamic-PR shift early.
Founder operators: Founder Patterns: Liquid Death, Olipop, Magic Spoon, Graza, Fly By Jing · How to Earn Free Press Coverage
Brand identity and risky advertising: The Liquid Death Case Study in Deliberate Risk
The AI Communications discipline: What Is PR?
