When the marketers at Figs first started planning their Winter Olympics campaign, the story of alpine skiing legend Lindsey Vonn jumped out.

The mission behind the scrubs and medical apparel brand, which is the official outfitter of Team USA’s medical staff, is about supporting healthcare professionals, CMO Bené Eaton told us, and Vonn is certainly familiar with the medical space. The World Cup champion and Olympic gold medalist came out of retirement in 2024 after a partial knee replacement and then tore her ACL about a week before Milano Cortina, but announced her intention to race anyway.

To kick off the Olympics, Figs started running a campaign tied to Vonn’s return to the slopes with messaging centered on how medical professionals help athletes achieve their dreams. Then, the unthinkable happened: Vonn suffered a crash while attempting to reclaim a gold medal during the women’s downhill event, resulting in a fractured leg and several surgeries—not to mention a total shift in the narrative around her comeback.

Figs could have pulled its campaign entirely. Instead, Eaton and her team adjusted, working quickly to shift the creative and social strategy to address the changing circumstances, while leaning further into the message they had already been working to elevate.

“High-profile sporting events like the Olympics always come with unpredictability, but…our campaign wasn’t dependent on podium outcomes,” Eaton told Marketing Brew. “When Lindsey was injured, what became visible was the team of healthcare professionals working around the clock to support her, and that was the story that we were already telling.”

Continue reading here.—AM

Remember that movie Her, where a man falls in love with an AI operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson? Yeah, that movie was ahead of its time. Nearly half of Gen Z reported creating a meaningful relationship with AI, according to new research from WPP agency VML’s Intelligence unit.

In 2026, following a year that saw the continued adoption of AI, global uncertainty and upheaval, and a “dysoptimistic” outlook, many are craving change and connection, according to the agency’s annual report, released earlier this month. Through surveying almost 16,000 adults in 16 markets across the world from September 24–November 3 2025, through VML research practice SONAR, the report presents insights for brands on what’s making consumers tick.

“Even as people lean in to blended realities, the desire for human connection remains unmistakable,” the report reads. “This human impulse is shaping brand strategies.”

Shifting AI sentiment: AI has been hyped as able to democratize creativity. The report cited a September poll conducted by Adobe and The Harris Poll that found that 81% of creators said AI assisted them in making content they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to produce.

However, consumers were more receptive to AI use in certain mediums than others, the report found. Around half of them (56%) said finding out that an ad was made with mostly AI wouldn’t impact how they felt about the output, which was a more positive response than if they knew music was created primarily through AI (44%).

Read more here.—JS

Retail media took a backseat at NRF 2026, with only three sessions related to the topic across the three-day conference. However, those giant digital screens with ads—often referred to as in-store retail media—kept coming up when retail executives talked shop.

In particular, consumer electronics retailer Best Buy said its in-store media offering, dubbed “takeover packages,” announced in 2025, are nearly booked for the entire year because of strong demand from advertisers including Ikea, Meta, and more.

To be sure, takeover packages let advertisers control multiple Best Buy touchpoints, from window displays and entrances to checkout counters, TV walls, PC monitors, and interactive screens throughout its stores. At NRF, Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads, said in-store takeover packages have been the “biggest driver of demand” from advertisers during a panel called “How retail media is navigating its first economic crisis.”

Sold out: “Our goal was to sell them by month,” Valentino said. “We’re nearly sold out for the year. The creative work that goes into [takeover packages], that’s not a programmatic offering; that’s really about thinking about how we galvanize creative and creative storytelling in a different way.”

While most retail media ads—whether on retailers’ sites or third-party platforms—are bought programmatically, the automatic buying and selling of digital ad space through software and algorithms, Valentino noted that takeover packages don’t follow that model.

Continue reading here.—VC

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• Event Sales & Services Manager at Delano
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• Industry Marketing Manager - State and Local Government at Esri
• Customer Marketing, Assistant Vice President at Morgan Stanley

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Bloomberg wrote about Gen Alpha influencer Salish Matter and how her team is marketing to and reaching younger consumers online.
• The New York Times wrote about Netflix’s venture into podcasting and how it’s challenging norms of the medium.
• The Verge wrote about Big Tech’s seemingly sluggish efforts to address concerns around AI slop and deepfakes.