When entertainment enthusiasts tune into TV and movie awards shows, there’s no way to tell who might take home the biggest prizes of the night. But during this year’s Golden Globes red-carpet preshow, hosted by Variety, Timothée Chalamet’s best actor award was essentially spoiled hours before the official Timmy win was announced. Other categories, like Best Original Song and the newly added Best Podcast, also got the spoiler treatment on the official broadcast before the hardware was handed over.

It was all thanks to Polymarket, the prediction market platform whose partnership with the Globes manifested as onscreen graphics displaying real-time odds from the platform for several awards categories throughout the night. In most cases (26 out of 28, to be exact), the odds correctly predicted the eventual winner.

That was just the beginning for prediction market brands’ push into the entertainment and media world. Since the Globes, Polymarket has shown up at South by Southwest as part of an event for Hulu and Alex Cooper’s beverage brand Unwell and has established partnerships with Substack, Dow Jones, and various pro sports leagues. Meanwhile, its competitor, Kalshi, has inked deals with CNN, CNBC, and Fox to show up as part of news coverage. These arrangements could mean a boost for media brands’ engagement as it also legitimizes the prediction platforms’ own brands—but it could also present more existential dilemmas, according to Olivier Toubia, Glaubinger Professor of Business, marketing division, at Columbia Business School.

“In terms of public events and political events, I think it becomes a bit scary, and there also is maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Toubia told Marketing Brew. “The prediction becomes the leading carrier of the truth, and then these markets, instead of just creating events, they actually influence events.”

Continue reading here.—JN

Sports and snacks go hand in hand, and Mondelēz International has a wealth of experience with both. For the World Cup this summer, the food and beverage giant is leveraging its portfolio of products and its athlete partners to get people snacking.

Sports fans are no stranger to Mondelēz snacks: It has flexed brands like Oreo and Ritz Crackers during major American sporting events including the Super Bowl and March Madness, typically tapping high-profile athletes and celebrities as spokespeople.

While the World Cup is a standout event given its global scale, Mondelēz’s “Summer of Soccer” campaign will stick to that same strategy of talent-focused marketing to drive sales and brand equity, according to Nick Rogers, director of portfolio marketing at Mondelēz International.

“With the World Cup being in the US and it being the biggest sporting event on the planet, we needed to really show up big as a brand,” Rogers told Marketing Brew. “Mondelēz has a rich heritage—whether that be [with] athletes, male and female, and, in addition to that, sporting teams and sporting federations—so I feel we can really show up in a really confident way this summer.”

Read more here.—AM

Movie awards season may be over, but marketing awards season has just begun—and this year’s Webby Award winners are hot off the presses.

Now in its 30th year, the Webbys seek to honor the best of the internet across more than 100 categories in nine main media types, which include websites and mobile sites; video and film; advertising, media, and PR; apps and software; social; podcasts; games; creators; and a new category this year: AI. Winners are decided via two versions of the awards: People’s Choice, via online votes, and the Webby via jury selection, chosen by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, which boasts members like Joanne Jang, GM of OpenAI Labs; Kim Larson, global managing director and head of creators at YouTube; and actor and filmmaker Walton Goggins.

This year, Marketing Brew is exclusively announcing the winners for advertising, media, and PR—plus, we got some insight from Jesse Feister, executive director of Webby Media Group, about what these winners might signal about the industry.

Notable winners include Duolingo’s death of Duo campaign, the Severance Grand Central activation, and Dr Pepper’s creator-led jingle.

Continue reading here.—JN

Algorithms change. Your strategy doesn’t have to. Terri Yowe will share how Anthropologie builds social approaches that are rooted in durable principles, not fleeting trends. Learn how to adapt without starting over and create a strategy that holds up no matter what platform shift comes next.

Some brands are eyeing prediction markets as a way to juice engagement and keep consumers interested. But there are brand risks and considerations to evaluate, which we’re digging into this week—along with asking, just because we can bet on the outcomes of societal and cultural events, should we?

Creators played a bigger role in this year’s Super Bowl campaigns, appearing in ads and powering influencer trips. Here’s how brands are weaving influencers into tentpole marketing moments.