With the New York City Marathon on Sunday, pavement-pounding is set to reach a high throughout the city. But during weekend mornings in major cities around the country, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid crowds of runners getting their steps in together.

“If I’m in San Francisco any weekend morning, I cannot believe the number of running clubs that I’m seeing,” said Brooke Donberg, director of partnerships and activation at Clif Bar, which has sponsored multiple running events this year.

The rising popularity of run clubs has helped transform the sport, once seen as a solitary act, into a social and social-media-ready activity. There are run clubs for dating, run clubs hosted by DJs like Diplo and John Summit, and run clubs specifically for marathons; Carey Pinkowski, executive race director of the Chicago Marathon, said he saw “hundreds of runners” out and about on weekend mornings in the lead-up to the race earlier this month.

As online and IRL communities continue to crop up around running, marketers are taking note, looking for ways to lace up their own metaphorical sneakers and hit the ground, well, running.

“I think a lot of brands are seeing the opportunity, certainly the bigger ones, of ways that they can tap into quite a diverse group of people in terms of both runners and spectators,” Charlie Wade, chief content officer at VML Live and a runner himself who’s done work for clients around several races, told Marketing Brew.

Continue reading here.—AM

Between Drive to Survive and this summer’s F1: The Movie starring Brad Pitt, there are a lot of new Formula 1 fans around the world. Some of them, particularly fans of the movie, which follows a fictional F1 team, might not yet be loyal to a team in real life.

In that regard, it’s a pretty good time to be joining the grid—and the US-based Cadillac F1 team is doing just that in 2026. Instead of trying to convert diehard fans of an existing team into Cadillac supporters, team CEO Dan Towriss is focused on building the brand among newer fans of the sport by making them feel connected to the action.

“We’re competing against stick-and-ball sports for the attention of fans,” Towriss told Marketing Brew at the Autosport Business Exchange, an industry conference in New York, earlier this month. “How do we make you feel plugged into Formula 1 when 21 races are outside the United States? There are going to be things that we’re going to be doing that are going to draw you into that, and [make] you really feel like you’re part of this team.”

Towriss said he wants Cadillac to be known as the “approachable, optimistic” team in the paddock. The team is also leaning into its American ties, he said, setting up its headquarters and car manufacturing base in Fishers, Indiana, near Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport.

“It’s going to [be] almost like a modern ballpark entertainment district,” Towriss said. “You don’t have to drive 45 minutes out of the city to see what a Formula 1 team is doing. You might live next door to it in a condo. You might drive by it…on your way to the office.”

Read more here.—AM

Consumers aren’t feeling quite so jolly about this holiday shopping season.

According to a new Deloitte Holiday Retail survey published this week, 57% of consumers believe that the economy will weaken in the next year. That’s the most negative economic sentiment since Deloitte began tracking it in 1997, surpassing the 54% who said so amid the 2008 recession.

Consumers’ average planned holiday spend is down 10% year over year to $1,595, per Deloitte. Largely due to higher cost of living, 27% plan to spend less on retail categories, with planned spend on retail products declining nearly 14% after two years of growth. Average spend on non-gifts (like clothing and decor) is set to decline 22%, compared to a 6% drop for gifts. And some consumers are whittling down their shopping lists; the average number of gifts consumers plan to buy has dropped from nine to eight this year.

Gen Z and millennials are anticipating the biggest YoY dip in spend—down 34% and 13%, respectively—though the percentage of consumers who said their financial situation is worse than last year increased across most generations since last year, though it stayed steady for baby boomers.

Spending is expected to drop across all surveyed income groups after two years of growth in anticipated holiday spend, with those making less than $50K dropping spend by 24% (and 22% on retail goods) and those making $200K+ pulling back 11% (and an even bigger 18% drop on retail goods). More consumers (47% versus 39% in 2024) are opting to gift experiences. While average holiday spend on retail goods has been flat since 2021, experiences have risen 7%.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—EC

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Stories we’re jealous of.

• Bloomberg wrote about the viral success of the Onitsuka Tiger sneaker among Gen Z consumers.
• Bloomberg also wrote about the rise of GLP-1s and its potential influence on the increasing popularity of food-scented products.
• The New York Times wrote about Season 2 of Netflix’s Nobody Wants This and its seemingly “overt” product placements.