Several days a week, the women of Unrivaled—the player-founded, 3-on-3 basketball league—sweat it out in intense competition on the court. As is the way of pro athletes, they manage to do it while looking totally put together, in part thanks to Unrivaled sponsor Sephora’s glam room at the league’s headquarters in Miami, Florida.

Starting today, TNT Sports, Unrivaled’s multiyear media rights partner and an equity partner in the league, teamed up with Sephora to take the glam room on the road, the media company shared exclusively with Marketing Brew.

The experience, dubbed the Sephora Glam Bus Tour, expands Sephora’s already multifaceted partnership with Unrivaled, while also promoting TNT Sports’ coverage of the rest of the Unrivaled season.

“One of the things that TNT Sports has continually strived to do is take a creative approach with our marketing partners,” said Stefanie Rapp, SVP of sports strategy at TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. “The beauty of this is taking the idea of beauty, fashion, [and] culture, and weaving it into basketball…It’s a first to market.”

Continue reading here.—AM

Two companies, similar stories: Carhartt was founded in Detroit in 1889. Fourteen years later, so was Ford. Carhartt has made apparel for Ford factory workers for over a century.

Today, the two companies both call Dearborn, Michigan, home. They cater to similar segments of the workforce: Skilled trades workers make up the core customer base for Carhartt’s workwear, and Ford’s commercial business is the quiet profit engine of the company, booking $2 billion in earnings in Q3 2025.

Beyond these affinities, what drew the two together for a recently unveiled multiyear brand partnership was a mutual focus on workforce development. The collaboration “explores the intersection of heritage workwear and automotive craftsmanship, uncovering shared values of durability, innovation, and local pride,” according to a news release.

Both Ford and Carhartt have a vested interest in solving a nagging problem: the fact that the US could have as many as 1.4 million unfilled trades jobs by the end of the decade.

“Workforce development was something that we absolutely aligned on—really that opportunity to educate [and] recruit for the skilled trades,” Susan Hennike, Carhartt’s chief brand officer, told Morning Brew.

The collaboration kicks off this year with a soon-to-be released Carhartt edition of Ford’s Super Duty pickup truck, co-branded apparel, a commitment by Ford to support training for auto technicians, and an initiative to bring free access to tools to the Detroit community via ToolBank USA—with more to come in the future.

And on Feb. 2 at the National Automobile Dealers Association Show in Las Vegas, the companies unveiled a collaboration wherein Carhartt will create new uniforms for Ford dealership service technicians and specialists. Uniform and cleaning supply company Cintas will deliver the workwear via both rental and purchase options and offer services like cleaning, inspection, and repairs. Carhartt cited research it commissioned that suggests providing employees with free workwear boosts recruitment and retention.

Read more here.—JG

Dan Gardner is the co-founder of Code and Theory, a digital-first agency that will be featured at Marketing Brew’s upcoming event, The Art and Science of AI in Marketing, on February 25.

Ahead of the event, we caught up with him over email to hear how he and his teams use AI.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How are you and your teams using AI today? AI is now the baseline infrastructure for knowledge work. Writing, research, prototyping, summarizing, coding. That’s individual leverage. It makes people faster. The more profound shift is collective leverage.

The real opportunity, where teams earn their edge, is in collaborative intelligence. AI should elevate realignment, not replace it…AI can surface context, pressure-test ideas, synthesize inputs, and map dependencies, but humans still decide what matters.

The companies pulling ahead are thinking better together. They’re using AI to widen perspective and expose blind spots, not just eliminate effort.

Continue reading here.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• EBay is buying secondhand marketplace Depop from Etsy.
• OpenAI inked multiyear deals with consultancies including Accenture and McKinsey & Co.
• Meta announced a multiyear strategic partnership with Nvidia tied to AI and its data centers.
• Major League Baseball is expanding its partnership with TikTok and will up its presence on the platform as part of a multiyear agreement.
• Mountain Dew Baja Blast will serve as the official soft drink of MLB this season.
• Dairy Queen, a former MLB sponsor, is partnering with the Savannah Bananas.
• Chime inked a multiyear sponsorship with Major League Soccer.
• CVS Pharmacy became the official health and wellness sponsor of the National Women’s Soccer League.