For years, malls have been on the verge of death. Could online fatigue change that?

Older generations grew up watching many facets of life shift from IRL to online, including shopping. But as younger generations search for places outside of home and school to hang out and watch as creators encourage them to visit stores in person, it’s possible that a reversal could be taking place. A survey from retail consultancy MG2 Advisory recently found that 73% of Gen Alpha prefers good ol’ fashioned brick-and-mortar shopping to buying online.

“Teenage life now looks a lot different than it did for previous generations,” Beni Brown, global director of strategy at creator agency Buttermilk, told Marketing Brew, adding that “it’s really interesting to see how they maximize their time in these third spaces because they don’t have a lot of other places to congregate safely amongst themselves.”

While the “Sephora tween” phenomenon in 2024 sparked some concerns around the potential challenges that come with teenagers loitering in retail spaces, Brown noted that many brands (including Sephora) have since come around on the subject.

“Brands are starting to really understand that to future-proof their business, they have to speak to these audiences younger and younger because they set their affinities way younger than we did in previous generations,” Brown said.

As a result, many retail brands are investing in in-store experiences and creator strategies to draw young shoppers in and offer them the chance to stay a while.

Continue reading here.—KH

What would you do for a pair of World Cup tickets? Put on a ridiculous outfit and ask someone out on a date, the marketing team at Axe is hoping.

The men’s grooming brand, owned by FIFA sponsor Unilever, is activating against the tournament with a campaign encouraging soccer fans to don their wildest World Cup-themed outfits and record a video of themselves asking someone out, Dolores Assalini, head of Axe US, shared exclusively with Marketing Brew. As part of the sweepstakes, Axe is giving away 82 tickets total, including two suite tickets to the quarterfinal in Miami.

Sounds crazy? Getting sports fans to go all-out on their outfits is hardly extreme, Assalini said.

“We know that guys do this for all sporting events, especially the World Cup,” she told Marketing Brew. “We know that they don’t always look their best when they’re doing that, but we as Axe can make sure that they’re smelling their best when they’re looking their craziest.”

Soccer isn’t exactly a typical lane for Axe to play in, Assalini said, but given the massive cultural relevance of the World Cup this year, the tournament is all but essential for a brand that’s long sought to connect with young men.

Read more here.—AM

Don’t understand how the AI models running ads for your brand work? That could be cause for concern, according to Bob Lord, president of Horizon Media Holdings and interim CEO of Horizon Global.

“There are going to be models that are using AI agents and communicating with one another. I would say to a marketer, don’t trust those models,” he said onstage at the Advertising Research Foundation’s (ARF) AudiencexScience conference in New York in March. “Just don’t give Mark Zuckerberg $100 million and let him do what he wants with it.”

It’s not just Lord who’s emphasizing the importance of transparency in the age of AI. As AI continues to transform marketing, increasing transparency into how the tech works will be key, according to several marketers who appeared onstage.

Sharing is caring: Open-source tech, whether that’s in the world of AI or ad tech, can offer a way to promote transparency through collaboration, Lord said onstage. He noted that those who don’t know how to code but have ideas are now able to “vibecode” using tools like Claude. The increased collaboration going on today stands in contrast to an earlier era, when “software companies in particular would go to the open-source world, take code out, and create a business around it, and then create a proprietary model, and they [would] never give code back into that open-source world,” Lord said.

“The problem with that is, you’re only as good as what your company is,” Lord said. “Your proprietary technology, or your proprietary answer, will only last for a period of time because you’re not tapping into the global innovations that are happening.”

Continue reading here.—JS

Executive moves across the industry.

• Unwell, podcaster Alex Cooper’s media brand, brought on Joanne Bradford full-time as president. Bradford has worked with Unwell as a strategic advisor since last year.
• Netflix chair and co-founder Reed Hastings is exiting the board in June.
• Tinuiti tapped Dentsu alum Abbey Klaassen as CEO.