mornin’ merrymakers 💅👀🔗🎯🪩
sponsored content is pretty broken.
random logo drops. copy-paste ads that have nothing to do with what you just read. product placements that make no sense. brands paying for attention to only get ignored.
i’ve decided i’m not interested in doing that in our merry corner of the internet.
because i know there’s a better way.
aligned brand partnerships actually make the content better.
last year i discovered it’s extremely satisfying to work with a brand that’s doing something genuinely interesting and figuring out how to turn what they’ve built into something useful, insightful, and honestly just fun for you to read on a monday.
something that feels like it belongs here
in 2026, i’ll be growing this side of merry makery in a very specific way.
i’m talking a small, curated group of partners. brands you probably already know, already love, or at the very least… should know about
so instead of trying to explain what i mean, i want to show you exactly what this looks like in practice.if you were reading this time last year, you might remember seeing tracksuit showing up in your inbox several times.
this is the full story of how we worked together in 2025
& how i want to work with partners in 2026!
in today’s letter, you'll learn:
→ how tracksuit got their best research in front of 61k retail operators without a single generic ad
how i worked with tracksuit to turn research into reach
when tracksuit came to merry makery, they weren't starting from zero. their research was genuinely some of the best in the business. reports on entertainment-first brand building, marketing in economic downturns, how to speak cfo, how the realreal turned a fake store into real revenue, and more.
as a forever data nerd, i was fascinated.
i also knew that this was the kind of data that would help retail operators make smarter decisions about their stores, but also how they think about brand awareness, which is tracksuit specialty.
they nailed the research,
but they needed more reach.
getting high-quality data in front of a niche, hard-to-find audience requires more than a standard ad buy. plus this new zealand based company had way too much personality so running a generic sponsorship would not be on brand for them.
tracksuit needed their work to land like editorial, not advertising.
they needed a retail audience that was already bought in.
& that’s when they came to me.
results from the partnership
we started with one sponsorship in march 2025. over the next five months, we built a content partnership that flourished by...
writing fully custom newsletter copy for each tracksuit report, tying their data & findings into that week's retail story instead of dropping a templated ad at the bottom of the page.
turning their data into editorial hooks that gave merry makers a genuine reason to click, not just a logo to scroll past.
amplifying every newsletter sponsorship with a companion linkedin post, extending tracksuit's reach beyond the inbox and into the retail professional community.
reaching over 61,000 combined impressions across 5 newsletters and 5 linkedin posts, including one viral post with 18K impressions (pictured above).
sparking real engagement on linkedin, generating 300+ combined reactions and comments across 5 posts from real people, not ai slop nor bots.
building a partnership tracksuit kept renewing, starting with a single sponsorship in march and returning every month through july
a brand awareness company running a sponsorship that nobody engaged with would have been the ultimate irony. instead, tracksuit's research found exactly the audience it deserved.
this is what happens when you find content-audience fit.
want to collab?
i’m looking to partner with a small number of brands this year. brands that:
have something genuinely valuable to share
want to reach retail founders, operators, & leaders
care about how their message shows up, not just that it does
this isn’t about dropping a logo into a newsletter.
it’s about building something that people actually read, save, and act on.
if this is you (or someone you know), i'd love to talk. my readers are the best so i know the best partners will come from y’all too.
if interested, please click the link below and i’ll followup personally this week 💖
are you interested in a merry makery partnership?
here's to more merry collabs in 2026!
p.s. i believe in referral karma, yours won’t go unrewarded🎁