Finding New Relevance for a Legacy Brand: Victoria Lozano’s Crayola Journey
Victoria Lozano, former CMO of Crayola, spoke on the Marketing Vanguard podcast at Brandweek about keeping an iconic brand fresh by marrying nostalgia with current cultural trends. She highlighted that 57 % of Crayola sales now come from adults without children, prompting a pivot toward wellness‑focused coloring experiences. Lozano detailed a segmented‑messaging framework that tailors promises for kids, parents, teachers and adult consumers. The discussion framed the CMO’s role as a cultural advocate and emphasized ecosystem thinking over siloed business‑unit goals.
ADWEEK Brand Advantage: CMO Guard Change Reveals the New Growth Mandate
In March, three high‑profile chief marketing officers announced departures: DoorDash’s Kofi Amoo‑Gottfried after seven years, Suntory Beverage and Food Europe’s François Bazini after more than a decade, and Delta Air Lines’ Alicia Tillman after three years. These exits come amid...
Godiva’s CMO Reveals How to Pull Off a 100th Anniversary While Staying Fresh
Godiva’s chief marketing officer unveiled a centennial campaign that forgoes traditional vintage reels in favor of an animated short tracing the chocolatier’s evolution. The 100‑year celebration features hidden Easter‑egg details and a cameo by actress Leighton Meester, blending heritage with contemporary...
EDO Strikes Back Against iSpot By Offering TV Intelligence Data For Free
EDO, recently ordered to pay $18.3 million to rival iSpot, is fighting back by offering its basic TV‑ad intelligence for free through an AI chatbot called ChatEDO. The free data spans 375 million linear‑TV airings from 120 national networks and 2.6 million ads...
WPP Restructures Commerce Expertise Into One Team
WPP has launched WPP Commerce, an integrated unit that consolidates its commerce expertise across media, creative, enterprise solutions, and production. Brent Taylor, former CEO of Barrows, was appointed global CEO of the new division. The move is the first major step...
Inside Coachella’s Off-Site Events That Are Rewriting the Festival’s Landscape
Coachella’s 2024 desert edition saw a surge of brand‑driven experiences staged outside the official festival grounds. These off‑site activations ranged from pop‑up lounges to full‑day destination events, giving sponsors creative latitude and exclusive atmospheres. Brands like Rhode transformed product drops...
Marketers Need to Stop Chasing Data and Start Harnessing Audience Signals
Marketers are urged to move beyond hoarding raw data and instead build a social‑intelligence loop that converts audience conversations into actionable insights. Hennessy outlined a five‑stage framework—conversation, detection, interpretation, activation, outcome—that feeds back into the data pool for faster response....
Consumers Are Taking a New Purchase Journey on Social
SMW 2026 research reveals that 82% of traditional search queries are fact‑seeking, while social search taps community advice to shape purchase decisions. The study highlights a "critical gap" where brands focus on factual answers but miss the emotional and comparative dialogue...
If Comments Are the New Frontline, How Is Your Brand Showing Up?
AI is becoming the frontline of social media engagement, with brands like Warner Bros. Discovery deploying AI to filter low‑value comments and beauty and CPG leaders using AI to discover where conversations happen. Teams aim to answer comments and DMs within 24 hours,...
Social Media Marketing Enters Its AI Intelligence Era
Viral Nation, a leading social media agency, has leveraged its 11‑year archive of 1.4 million video hours and 34 million posts to build AI tools that automate creator discovery, community management, and ROI measurement. Its creator‑discovery engine scans a database of over...
What Social Media Success Looks Like in a Post-Follower World
Free People achieved triple‑digit social media growth by abandoning follower counts and prioritizing views, shares, and a holistic Total Social Impact (TSI) metric. The brand’s organic and paid teams now operate in a unified structure, sharing insights and balancing content...
EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Deck Reveals StackAdapt’s Playbook for ChatGPT Ads
StackAdapt is launching a limited pilot that places ads inside OpenAI’s ChatGPT, offering CPM rates as low as $15 and reduced platform fees. The leaked pitch deck positions the program as early access to a new “discovery layer” where users...
6 Coachella Brand Activations That Were Actually Worth Waiting in Line For
Coachella’s 2024 brand activation lineup featured six experiences that drew crowds willing to wait in line, signaling a shift toward immersive, utility‑focused marketing. Highlights included Wavytalk’s free professional hairstyling station, which turned a routine service into a festival‑centric attraction. Other...
Jellyfish Wants You to Use Large Language Models to Plan Your Ad Buys
Jellyfish is marketing its “Share of Model” service, which uses large language models to gauge how often AI assistants mention a brand versus competitors and turns those insights into targeting cues for Google Performance Max campaigns. The agency applied the...
Expedia Courts Non-Travel Brands With New Adtech Deal
Expedia Group has partnered with ad‑tech platform Magnite to monetize its vast first‑party data set. The deal gives brands and agencies access to roughly 200 petabytes of traveler data for targeting across streaming TV, video, display and audio. Expedia’s travel media...
How AI Is Democratizing Content and Creating Today’s ‘Access Era’
Higgsfield AI, described as an AI studio built by creators for creators, is democratizing multimedia content creation with a drag‑and‑drop platform that handles images, audio and video. Co‑founder Mahi de Silva highlighted a case where Eight Sleep reduced a three‑week, $30,000...
YouTuber Jesser Launches Parent Company, Preps Business Expansion
Jesse “Jesser” Riedel has created JesserCo, a parent company that will house his existing ventures, including Jesser Media and the basketball‑lifestyle apparel brand Bucketsquad. The 27‑year‑old will stay founder while Zach Miller, former Bucketsquad president, becomes JesserCo’s president. Jesser Media...
Marketers on the Move: Hires and Exits at Babylist, OpenAI, McDonald’s, and More
A wave of marketing leadership changes swept the industry this week. OpenAI’s chief marketing officer Kate Rouch stepped down to focus on health, while Babylist hired veteran Jill Cress as its first CMO after a 45% revenue surge to $750 million. Other...
Mastercard and PayPal Veteran Jill Cress Is Babylist’s First CMO
Babylist, the online baby‑registry platform, reported $750 million in revenue and 45% year‑over‑year growth, prompting the hire of veteran marketer Jill Cress as its first chief marketing officer. Cress, who previously led consumer strategy at Mastercard and marketing at National Geographic, PayPal,...
Real-Time AI Video Is Nvidia’s New Pitch to Agencies—And It’s Turning Creatives Into Curators
Nvidia is positioning its latest computing platform as a real‑time AI video engine for advertising and entertainment agencies. At Runway’s AI Summit, the chipmaker demonstrated how its hardware can power Runway’s models to generate and modify video scenes instantly, turning...
How Bayer Uses AI to Avoid Sending Customers to Its Competition
Bayer has deployed an AI‑powered platform from CreativeX to manage and localize its consumer‑health advertising across 80 countries. The tool automatically adapts creative assets into multiple languages, formats and lengths while preserving brand guidelines. By centralising oversight, Bayer ensures consistent...
YouTube Reveals Upfront Event Details, Including Trevor Noah and Chappell Roan
YouTube announced its Brandcast 2026 upfront event for May 13 at 5:30 p.m., hosted at Lincoln Center in New York City. Comedian Trevor Noah will serve as host while singer‑songwriter Chappell Roan headlines the musical segment. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and Google Americas president...
2026 NFL Draft Ad Looks to Smash Expectations With 2 Steelers Legends
The NFL announced that the 2026 Draft will take place in Pittsburgh from April 23‑25, unveiling a new ad featuring Steelers icons Cam Heyward and Jerome Bettis wielding a sledgehammer to “smash the glass.” The campaign emphasizes the city’s deep...
Move Over, Sabrina Carpenter: Pringles Has a New Chip-Made Love Interest
Pringles has launched a new 60‑second commercial titled “Pringlelina: A Love Story,” a sequel to its Super Bowl ad featuring Sabrina Carpenter. The spot follows a male protagonist who assembles a female partner entirely from Pringles chips, continuing the brand’s...
EXCLUSIVE: Spotify Debuts Carousel Ads and Branded Playlist Takeovers
Spotify is introducing interactive carousel ads that let brands display up to six swipeable product cards within the Now Playing screen, with Priceline and GNC among early testers. The service also launches branded playlist takeovers on high‑traffic lists such as...
E.l.f. Beauty Says AI Answer Engines Are Already Changing How People Shop
At Shoptalk 2026, e.l.f. Beauty highlighted how AI answer engines are reshaping product discovery and purchase intent. ReFiBuy co‑founder and CEO Scot Wingo projected that 10% of commerce will be fully agentic by 2030, while retail‑media analyst Andrew Lipsman dismissed the notion as...
Uproxx Makes Play for TV Ad Spend With TikTok-Ready Shows
Uproxx TV debuted at NewFronts, positioning itself as a top‑10 entertainment property on connected TV with over 160 million monthly viewers, more than half of whom watch on traditional TV screens. The company is launching creator‑driven shows like “Love, Songs,” leveraging...
How an Air Force Stint in South Korea Helped Make Chuck Norris a Uniquely American Brand
Chuck Norris’s six‑year Air Force service in South Korea forged his martial‑arts expertise and introduced a disciplined, patriotic image that later defined his public persona. The experience gave him a black belt and authentic combat credibility, which propelled his transition...
Week of March 9 Evening News Ratings: Networks Have Week-to-Week Declines
All three major network evening newscasts posted week‑to‑week declines for the week of March 9, 2026. ABC World News Tonight remained the top‑rated program with 8.48 million total viewers, though down 5% from the prior week. NBC Nightly News held second place...
Elyse Myers on Why Making ‘Something Cool’ Is Better Than Going Viral
Elyse Myers, a TikTok creator with 7.1 million followers, emphasizes authenticity over curated personas, even as she sets strict personal boundaries around family content. She selects brand partnerships based on creative control, using a simple metric—whether she’s proud enough to show...
Women’s Sports Are Booming and Adtech Must Keep Pace
Women’s sports are experiencing a surge, highlighted by the U.S. women’s hockey team’s overtime gold medal and WNBA star Caitlin Clark’s measurable “halo effect” on ticket sales and merchandise. The growth creates unpredictable inventory spikes that demand scalable adtech, prompting...
EXCLUSIVE: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Butts Heads With Former FTC CTO Over AI Regulation
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt debated AI regulation with former FTC CTO Latanya Sweeney at the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate. Schmidt warned that emergent AI behaviors are unpredictable, limiting pre‑emptive safety controls, while urging tolerance for ongoing development. Sweeney countered...
The Design Playbook Keeping Glenfiddich on Top of the Single-Malt Scotch Market
When William Grant & Sons launched Glenfiddich in the United States in 1963, it introduced a premium single‑malt whisky to a market dominated by blended scotches. Over six decades later the brand remains the top‑selling single‑malt in America, thanks to...
Walmart and Target Are Battling to Show Up in AI Shopping Tools. Here’s How Their Strategies Compare
Walmart and Target are racing to embed artificial intelligence in the shopping journey, but their tactics diverge sharply. Walmart is building four proprietary AI "super agents" to power consumer assistance, supplier operations, and internal workflows, leveraging its massive transaction data....
Gen Z Fave Dua Lipa Joins George Clooney as Nespresso’s Global Ambassador
Nespresso has appointed pop star Dua Lipa as its new global ambassador alongside longtime face George Clooney. The partnership will launch on April 14 with the “Vertuo World” campaign, signaling a creative shift aimed at attracting Gen Z coffee drinkers. Nespresso’s...
Stephanie Ruhle Moves to Mornings in Major Programming Reshuffle at MS NOW
MS NOW announced a sweeping programming overhaul set for June, aimed at capitalizing on double‑digit viewership gains and positioning the network for the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential race. Late‑night anchor Stephanie Ruhle will leave her 11 p.m. slot to host...
New Report ‘Brings the Receipts’ on ROI of Women’s Sports Ads
WPP Media’s new “Women’s Sports Playbook” report shows rapid growth in advertising within women’s sports. Ad impressions rose 79% year‑over‑year and overall spend reached about $127 million, up roughly 70% YoY. Brands such as Ally Financial saw 85% higher engagement on...
Costco Adds Adtech Firm Moloco to Scale Retail Media Network
Costco has teamed up with ad‑tech firm Moloco Commerce Media to enhance the relevance of ads on its e‑commerce platform. The partnership will be rolled out as a beta program in Q2, coinciding with the launch of Costco Velocity, the...
In a Play for Profitability, Kraft-Heinz Kicks Off Five-Year Alliance with the NFL
Kraft Heinz announced a five‑year deal to become the NFL's official condiment partner, giving roughly 20 of its brands high‑visibility placements at games and related events. The agreement arrives as the company has paused a planned split into two publicly...
Ugg Brings Back the Fluff Yeah Sandal With a Sci-Fi-Inspired Twist
UGG has revived its popular Fluff Yeah fluffy sandal for a limited Spring 2026 run after strong fan demand. The brand launched a sci‑fi‑inspired campaign starring comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, featuring a hand‑crafted miniature Los Angeles set and a Venice Beach pop‑up on...
Uber Emboldens St Patrick’s Day Partygoers to ‘Irish Exit’ with a Quick Getaway
Uber has launched the "IrishXit" campaign for St. Patrick’s Day, urging partygoers to leave safely via UberX. The initiative features Love Island star Maura Higgins in a meta‑creative spot that dramatizes an "Irish exit" from a party. Partnering with Mother New York,...
7 Cinematic Ads From the 2026 Oscars
During the 98th Academy Awards, advertisers turned the commercial break into a showcase of cinematic storytelling, with brands such as Coinbase, Burger King, Mazda, Disney Cruise Line, Credit One Bank, Panera Bread and L’Oréal unveiling high‑production spots. The ads leaned...
EXCLUSIVE: Dow Jones Bolsters Brand Team By Hiring Former Droga5 Chief Andrew Essex
Dow Jones has appointed former Droga5 chief Andrew Essex as its brand director in residence and veteran Delwyn Gray to head events. Essex will oversee brand strategy across Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal assets, managing consumer and B2B campaigns...
OpenAI Is Testing An Ads Manager, As Its New Ads Business Fights Growing Pains
OpenAI has begun piloting an Ads Manager dashboard with a select group of partners, allowing real‑time creation, monitoring, and optimization of ChatGPT‑powered ad campaigns. Early testers receive weekly CSV reports detailing clicks, impressions, and spend. The program requires a minimum...
Ticker: Former MSNBC Head Rashida Jones to Lead Piers Morgan’s Uncensored
Rashida Jones, former head of MSNBC, has been appointed CEO of Piers Morgan’s digital‑first news venture, Uncensored. The outlet announced a new funding round backed by Raine Ventures, Antenna Group and the Reuben Brothers, bolstering its growth capital. Jones, who...
EXCLUSIVE: NewsGuard Taps Startup Pangram to Identify AI-Generated News and Misinformation
NewsGuard has launched an AI content farm detection tool built with Pangram Labs’ proprietary models to spot sites that mass‑produce AI‑generated news without disclosure. In its first rollout, the system helped flag roughly 3,000 AI farms, more than double the...
2026 NCAA Men’s Tournament Ad Sales Seeing ‘Tremendous Demand’
CBS Sports and TNT Sports announced that ad demand for the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is "tremendous," though they withheld specific pricing or inventory numbers. Executives emphasized that live sports continue to cut through the clutter, driving revenue across...
The Growth Paradox: Jeff Greenspoon of Kantar on Brand Power
Jeff Greenspoon, Kantar’s Americas CEO, explained on Adweek’s Adspeak how brand tension fuels growth through the “Meaningful and Different” framework. He argued that cutting brand spend during budget squeezes can forfeit three to five years of growth, while sustained investment...
How Time Turned Events Into Its Biggest Revenue Driver
Time has transformed from a legacy news brand into an events powerhouse, with event revenue projected to account for half of its total earnings in 2025, up from 28% in 2023. The company hosted 11 events in 2022 and will...
Women in Advertising Are Closing Every Gap They Can. The Pay Gap Persists Anyway
A new study of 900+ U.S. advertising professionals finds women earn about 5% less than men, rising to 8% for mothers, even after adjusting for education, experience, hours, geography and agency type. The research, led by Jess Watts with UCLA...