Anthony Davis deals with dandruff. Paige Bueckers is focused on keeping her scalp healthy. Athletes…They’re just like us.

Unlike the rest of us, though, both Davis and Bueckers appeared in CeraVe’s “Head of CeraVe” campaign this year, which imagines the basketball stars as execs for the brand and incorporates dermatologists with humor. The campaign performed so well that the brand inked a league-wide deal with the NBA, becoming its official skin-care and hair-care partner in early October, Jasteena Gill, SVP of marketing for CeraVe US, said.

“Our CeraVe fan base of users, and also the NBA fanbase, were engaging so well with this campaign and were really enthused by the interaction of that combination of the NBA with the dermatologists in our campaign,” Gill told Marketing Brew. “We really took that as an impetus for us to further pursue this.”

The NBA has quickly become a high-priority partnership for the brand, and Gill said her team is focused on breaking the traditional sponsorship mold with a digital-first campaign that also seeks to educate fans about skin care and entertain them during the first season of the multiyear deal.

Read more here.—AM

Some say television’s audience reinvigorated when color came onto the scene. Oura is looking for a Pleasantville moment of its own.

The wearable fitness tech company recently debuted the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic, which is available in four new colors and made from zirconia ceramic, a departure from the brand’s existing metal-forward colors. The product drop also comes alongside new multi-ring support capabilities, along with a new charging case, and additional health features.

To announce it all to the world, Oura rolled out a campaign across social media, traditional TV and CTV, and OOH activations in New York, LA, London, Berlin, and Helsinki, along with a series of “vignettes” called “Ring True to You” that focus on a message of self-expression. It’s all aimed at grabbing Gen Z and millennial consumers, which Oura CMO Doug Sweeny says marks a pivot from the brand’s previous focus on men and older customers.

“We wanted to get out of the clichés of ‘young people doing yoga’ and [avoid] the tropes,” Sweeny told Marketing Brew. “We wanted to broaden it up and talk about really living your best life.”

Read more here.—JN

America’s booze cruise has entered choppy waters, with only 54% of Americans in July telling Gallup they consume alcohol—the lowest since Gallup began tracking drinking behaviors in 1939.

But it’s decidedly smoother sailing for cannabis-infused beverages, with sales expected to increase from $1.1 billion in 2024 to $1.38 billion this year, and to more than triple by 2032, to $4.19 billion, according to a report by Whitney Economics, a cannabis business consultancy.

Now 1906—the 10-year-old cannabis brand—is introducing its first beverage. But unlike popular canned flavored beverages like Cann, the company is introducing 1906 Spirits, a neutral cannabis spirit meant for mixed drinks like cosmos that it’s calling “the vodka of cannabis.”

It’s the first beverage for 1906, which specializes in THC tablets that contain plant extracts and claim specific effects, with product names like Bliss, Chill, and Genius.

Peter Barsoom, founder and CEO of 1906, said he’d been hoping to introduce a beverage since the brand launched in 2015.

“If you think about the three legal intoxicants or psychoactive substances that we have—nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol—two out of those three are in something that we could drink,” Barsoom said. “We are used to consuming psychoactive substances in a liquid format, and so the evolution into THC-based spirits is consistent with market and consumer demand.”

Read more on Retail Brew.—AAN

Executive moves across the industry.

• NPR tapped PepsiCo and Girl Scouts of the USA alum Mishka Pitter-Armand to serve as CMO.
• Eli Lilly and Company promoted its chief corporate brand officer, Lina Polimeni, to SVP and CMO, consumer.
• Okta, an identity management company, hired Asana CMO Shannon Duffy to serve in the same role.
• Amy Campbell, CMO of Showtime, MTV Entertainment Studios, and Paramount Media Networks, is leaving the role in the coming weeks, Adweek reported.