Romance isn’t dead, but for some of the brands marketing around Valentine’s Day this year, it got something of a reality check.

DoorDash created a “Bad Boyfriend Bootcamp” ad where low-effort partners were instructed on how to order flowers. Sweethearts Candies updated the phrases on its heart-shaped candy with realisms like “split rent” and “cook for 2” to be relevant “for love in this economy.” Just a few days after Valentine’s, Reformation debuted a new collection with divorce attorney to the stars Laura Wasser, complete with a “Dump Him” sweatshirt. And JCPenney held an “Ex-Change,” with attendees able to swap jewelry from past relationships for something new.

Romance is still very much in, with brands creating short-form dating series on social media and shows like Heated Rivalry breaking through the stratosphere. But some marketers are looking to create counter-programming in an effort to reflect the feelings of anyone who isn’t in the mood for love. It’s not an entirely new idea—remember the viral Vogue essay questioning if having a boyfriend is embarrassing?—but some brand marketers are finding power in exploring the fact that some romantic expectations don’t always match up to reality. (There’s a great scene in the oft-misunderstood rom-com 500 Days of Summer using splitscreen to demonstrate as much.)

“What’s happening in culture today is that [romantic] relationships are continuing to get more and more openly examined,” Megha Parikh, executive strategy director at VML, told us, adding that some brands are choosing to reflect that.

“In order to draft off the pop-culture fun of Valentine’s Day,” she said, “you can’t fake it.”

Continue reading here.—KM

In a year that’s being defined by AI and global sporting events, it’s only getting harder for marketers to make some noise. One of the ways brands stand out is with sound—but some are leveraging audio assets more effectively than others, according to new data from amp.

In the seventh edition of its Best Audio Brands report, the sonic branding agency gave letter grades to more than 150 brands from around the world based on their sonic strategies, evaluating factors like their use of sonic logos and music in campaigns and other content in the past year.

Many of the brands that received an “A” grade consistently use both sonic logos and custom music, as opposed to relying on stock music, according to Bjorn Thorleifsson, amp’s director of research and insights. On average, about 30% of the music used by these brands is owned, according to amp. Of the brands with both A and B grades, 80% are “actively using” owned music, the company found.

The best-performing brands, which included Mastercard, insurance company Swiss Re, Shell, AutoZone, and Lenovo, use custom sounds consistently, Thorleifsson said, while the lower-scoring companies don’t have unique sonic strategies. While that might save them money in the short term, he said, it could ultimately negatively impact brand-building in the long run.

“It’s more about the immediate equity of a campaign, instead of the long-term equity of the brand,” Michele Arnese, amp’s founder and CEO, told Marketing Brew.

Read more here.—AM

A screenshot buried in the comment section of a Marc Benioff LinkedIn post around a year ago gave Salesforce’s Bernard Slowey a jolt. It showed the then-new Agentforce help portal directing the customer to a Salesforce competitor.

“I was literally like, ‘Oh my god, what has happened here? This is not good. My job is going to be gone tomorrow,’” Slowey, who is—spoiler alert—still Salesforce’s SVP of digital customer success, told us.

You may have heard the now-infamous stat that 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots fail before they reach production. Or maybe you have some thoughts on why that MIT report’s methodology was flawed. In any case, abundant data show that a sizable chunk of AI prototypes don’t go as planned—and ROI is questionable.

We wanted to talk with companies about how they’ve dealt with unexpected AI complications or projects that just didn’t work out—what they learned and how they subsequently recalibrated. Some of them told us that three-plus years of experimentation with unpredictable and fast-changing generative AI have reshaped how they build things and make decisions.

In Salesforce’s case, Slowey traced the issue using an observability feature. The AI had learned from the content in Salesforce’s help portal on migrating from another platform. The team then wrote a strict guardrail to forbid talk about competitors. But that caused more headaches when customers would ask about, for instance, a Microsoft Teams integration.

The “eureka learning moment” came when they decided to adjust Agentforce’s system prompt to treat it more like a digital employee.

“I can remember the words we wrote. We said, ‘You are an employee of Salesforce. You’re a customer service representative of Salesforce. Put the best interest of Salesforce in everything you do.’ And we deleted that guardrail,” Slowey said.

Continue reading on CFO Brew.—PK

Executive moves across the industry.

• OpenAI tapped Instagram vet Charles Porch to serve as its first-ever VP of global creative partnerships.
• Roku hired Snap alum Patrick Harris as SVP of global media revenue.
• Taboola brought on board Krishan Bhatia, who has held advertising roles at Amazon and NBCUniversal, as its chief business officer.
• Zitcha, a retail media platform, appointed former Meta retail media head Steve Biddle as chief commercial officer.