Pickleball, a sport originally associated with an older crowd, is now a favorite pastime among players of all ages. It’s also quickly become a priority for brands, from startups to some of the biggest companies in the world.

More than 150 brands tied up with various pickleball properties from April 2022 to April 2023, according to sports and entertainment intelligence platform SponsorUnited. Major League Pickleball (MLP), which was founded in 2021, has 17 sponsors—a number that has quadrupled since the end of last year.

The PPA Tour, pickleball’s global governing body and bracket-based pro tour, has about 60 sponsors, a roughly fivefold increase compared to last year, according to PPA President Bryce Morgan. Almost all of them are returning for 2024, he said. The association got its start in early 2020, and by the end of that year, its sponsorship contact form “kind of started to go crazy,” he said.

“Up until that point, that was our third-smallest bucket of revenue, and now it’s by far our biggest,” Morgan told Marketing Brew. The PPA, which recently agreed to merge with MLP, also generates revenue via registrations and ticket sales.

That rapid growth is good for the leagues and the sport, but it presents something of a dilemma for sponsors: They might have to work harder to stand out as brands continue to flood the space.

Read more here.—AM

It’s that special time of year again. You probably know it all too well. Fierce competition. Countless hours spent fine-tuning messaging and poring over consumer data. ’Tis the season, so that means you need to have strategies in place.

Luckily for you, we teamed up with Intuit Mailchimp to give you an interactive toolkit with solutions to help curb those age-old holiday season marketing headaches. We’re talkin’ actionable strategies backed by stats and research.

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• use segments to better reach your audience
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Say goodbye to seasonal slog.*

Adobe is rolling out an icon that denotes AI-generated content, it announced during its Adobe Max conference on Tuesday.

The watermark, called Content Credentials, consists of a small icon embedded in a piece of content’s metadata. It features the letters “CR,” and, when hovered over, displays a dropdown menu that details information about the content, like who created it and which AI tools were used. Adobe compared it to the “nutrition labels” on food and beverages.

Adobe said some blue-chip brands have already signed on to use the symbol, including Microsoft, which will incorporate it into Bing Image Creator. Some in the ad industry have agreed to use it as well; Publicis adopted it for client work across its agencies.

“We see a future where consumers will see the icon…and habitually check for Content Credentials just like they look for nutrition labels on food,” Andy Parsons, senior director of the Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe, said in a blog post.

Continue reading here.—JS

Each week, Marketing Brew recaps what people are talking about on social media, the trends that took over our feeds, and how marketers are responding.

Hey, Kendall…err, Billie?: People are talking about Meta’s new AI chatbots, which use celebrity likenesses to personify different characters. (No, that’s not Tom Brady. That’s Bru, “your favorite wisecracking sports fan who loves a good debate.”) Meta reportedly paid millions to the famous participants, ranging from Brady to Kendall Jenner to MrBeast. So far, people seem pretty creeped out by the concept, with some worrying about things like data collection and others comparing it to an episode of Black Mirror.

Sitting, so hot right now: Actor and comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez nabbed the first brand deal for his character T.J. Mack with skin-care brand The Ordinary and is now selling merch to go along with Mack’s viral song, “Sitting.” It’s been a big few weeks for Alvarez, who has also been profiled by outlets like Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Vulture, and is churning out other bangers like “Pickle in the Fridge.”

“Clean girl” to “mean girl”?: An influencer who seems to be having a rougher go of it is Matilda Djerf, who became famous for her minimalist fashion sense and curtain bangs on Pinterest and Instagram and, in turn, started her own brand, Djerf Avenue. Now, she’s being called out online by microinfluencers alleging that Djerf’s team reported posts featuring dupes of Djerf Avenue items as copyright infringement. Given that some have pointed out that Djerf Avenue’s pieces take inspiration from other brand items Djerf wore before founding her own clothing line, it seems, as The Cut put it, “ironic to then turn around and try to take down others for the same act.”

Well, that’s just a commercial: We’ve never heard of this show, but this is perhaps the longest brand integration we’ve ever seen. Eos got its money’s worth.—KH

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Cost transparency: The founder of tea company Leaves of Leisure broke down the costs behind starting the business, including marketing and packaging.

Input wanted: How to participate in the 2023 Wordpress survey and weigh in on potential platform changes.

Influence me: A guide to TikTok influencer marketing.

Seasonal strategy: Don’t lose subscribers this holiday season. Use data to help create more meaningful experiences that can keep customers engaged. How to do it? Check out our collab with Intuit Mailchimp for the deets.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Stories we’re jealous of.

1. The New York Times wrote about how the days of people liking brand humor online may be over.
2. The Atlantic looked into the deterioration of clothing quality over the years, as exemplified by the iconic sweater worn by Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally.
3. The New Yorker analyzed why the internet feels less fun now.

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