SPORTS MARKETING

Morning Brew Inc., Photos: The Gist

It’s never a bad time to join the sports fandom bandwagon, but the men’s World Cup this summer has created a particularly big entry point for many newly minted fans. (Who knew there could be so many honorary Norwegians and Scots?)

The Gist, a sports media company that focuses on covering men’s and women’s sports in equal measure, wants to make sure those fans feel welcomed into the sports community—a task that has historically been easier said than done when it comes to women fans of men’s sports.

That’s why The Gist’s inaugural brand campaign, “Fandom Belongs to Everyone,” was meant to make all types of fans, from the die-hards to the newly initiated, feel on top of their game during the World Cup—ideally, of course, by keeping up with The Gist’s content.

“‘Fandom Belongs to Everyone’ is really our ode to the underserved fans, the overlooked fans, who love sports, even when sports culture hasn’t necessarily loved them back,” McKenzie Bolden, senior marketing manager at The Gist, told Marketing Brew. “Traditionally, people consider a typical sports fan to be a man, and so we really wanted to take this opportunity to challenge that narrative.”

Continue reading here.—AM

      

Sponsored By Lob

Whether or not they read it is a different story. That means they need to see value from the first line.

Lob is a direct mail delivery engine and automation platform for creating, personalizing, and delivering direct mail at scale. Their latest e-book includes over 30 creative techniques to earn attention in the mailbox, drawn from internal analysis of over 1 billion mail sends.

Readers can expect real-world examples and ready-to-use templates that help spotlight value, reduce decision friction, and get recipients to act faster. Plus, discover the design and copy principles behind high-performing mail.

To get all the insights delivered, download the full e-book here. No postage required.

TV & STREAMING

Adobe Stock

Streamers have been trying to make CTV shopping look desirable for years, whether we’re talking about Peacock’s Virtual Concessions introduced ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, or Hulu’s rollout of pause ads in 2018 that paved the way for shoppable ad units.

Despite the developments, ad buyers remain concerned about CTV’s effectiveness, according to the IAB’s 2026 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report, which pairs survey data from 400 digital video ad buyers with billing and market data from intelligence firm Guideline. More than a third (39%) of buyers surveyed indicated a dearth of interactive offerings as a limitation to the channel’s effectiveness, while nearly the same amount (38%) said the requirement of a second device to complete further shopping-related actions posed a challenge.

“An industry-wide trust problem persists across the streaming programmatic ecosystem spanning all activation methods,” the report read.

Overall, the segment experienced a decrease in growth. The report noted that the decline was not due to a “loss of channel confidence,” but rather that advertisers were “exercising budget discipline amid rising media costs.” The number of “small spenders,” aka media buyers with smaller budgets, spending on the channel has increased from 60% in 2024 to 85% this year, “with self-serve platforms lowering the entry barrier,” according to the report.

“CTV’s continued momentum is driven by live events, ‘Hollywood-produced’ content and, perhaps most importantly, a strengthening track record of delivering measurable business outcomes,” the report read.

With that said, there was some slowdown in channel confidence: While 61% of buyers described CTV/OTT as a “must-buy,” that was down from 68% last year, per the report.

Read more here.—JS

      

BRAND STRATEGY

Blair Pfander

Blair Pfander, VP of creative at the infant formula brand Bobbie, is set to speak at the upcoming Marketing Brew Summit on September 30. Ahead of the event, we caught up with her about prioritizing raw, emotionally driven content when the legacy playbook said soft lighting and smiling babies would perform best.

Where do you see the biggest gap between how marketers think audiences behave and how they actually behave?

Marketers love to build these pristine, perfectly segmented consumer personas like “The Millennial Working Mom” who takes yoga and buys Erewhon. In reality, audiences are messy, if not downright contradictory. That exact same mom might be crying in her car in a Target parking lot at 9p.m. and eating handfuls of stale Goldfish. Consumers, specifically parents in year one, who we’re thinking about every day at Bobbie, are often just trying to get through the day.

If your brand doesn’t meet people in the beautiful, chaotic reality of their actual life, it won’t resonate.

Continue reading here.

      

Sponsored By bolt.new

De-dev your queue. When you need a landing page, dashboard, or microsite, you need it now. Stop waiting on the dev team. Instead, explain your idea to Bolt, and it will execute it in minutes rather than days. Start building the tools and sites you need on Bolt.new, free with code MB26.

EVENTS

Morning Brew Inc.

Remember when you only had to impress Google? Simpler times. Join Marketing Brew and Webflow to learn how Answer Engine Optimization, AI search, and smarter content workflows can help your brand stay visible in an internet that’s increasingly read by machines.

french press

Morning Brew

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

Time after time: An analysis of the best times to post on TikTok.

Long and the short of it: A handful of best practices for aligning YouTube Shorts content with audience interests from YouTube’s culture and entertainment editor.

Something to snack on: Guidance from TikTok’s head of food on how food brands are showing up on the app and what products and content perform best on the platform.

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

PODCAST

Dive into the dos and don’ts of affordability marketing. It’s not for all brands, but some have figured out the ways to keep customers with long-term strategies, while others are opting for a quick, catchy moment. How do you make consumers feel valued and savvy, while still providing a good deal? Listen to this episode of Marketing Brew Weekly to find out.

Jobs

Real jobs, shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

JOINING FORCES

Francis Scialabba

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• TikTok announced a multiyear global content partnership with the NBA and the WNBA that includes creator access to live-game content and events.
• Albert, a personal finance app, is the new jersey-patch sponsor of the Los Angeles Lakers.
• Snapchat partnered with Dick’s Sporting Goods to provide data insights into how campaigns on the platform affect sales.
• Stripe and Advent International, a private-equity firm, recently approached PayPal with a takeover deal that would value the company at around $53 billion.