About a year ago, New York Life called an audible on its sports marketing.

The insurance and financial services brand wasn’t new to the sports sponsorship space, having experience with college basketball and understanding the power of a live sports audience, but CMO Amy Hu said she wanted to shift the focus from ads to more ambitious storytelling and experiences.

“We wanted to move away from spots and dots,” Hu told Marketing Brew. “It’s not just about the media coverage. We really wanted to use sports marketing as a metaphor for how we do business.”

Part of the reason for the pivot is that audiences have become “way too savvy to just take a commercial at face value,” Hu said. So New York Life inked deals with both Major League Baseball and the US Soccer Federation, opening the door for the company to engage audiences down to the youth and local levels. Hu said she hopes the efforts will help New York Life stand out in a crowded field.

Continue reading here.—AM

A Madison Avenue heavyweight is about to hang up his hat.

Accenture Song CEO David Droga is leaving the role on Sept. 1, when he will become vice chair at Accenture, the company announced yesterday.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Droga attributed his exit to wanting to focus on his foundation and other companies he is involved in, as well as wanting to take a break. He will be replaced by Ndidi Oteh, who currently serves as head of Americas at Accenture Song.

“After 30-plus years of leaping, I am ready to catch my breath,” Droga said in a press release announcing the move. “I am also excited to spend more time suffixing: thinking, daydreaming, advising, investing, giving, mentoring, exploring, learning, playing, appreciating, family-ing, sleeping-in-ing.”

Read more here.—JS

Airbnb is going out of home—but not in its advertising.

The company known for its short-term home rentals is adding two new(ish) bespoke travel services, it announced at its Summer Release event earlier this month. Fittingly called Experiences and Services, the additional offerings will allow travelers to book entertainment activities hosted by local guides and services like hair appointments and personal chefs before or during their vacations, bringing the Airbnb travel experience a little bit closer to one that might be found at a hotel.

The company also unveiled a new app design, and it will air a new ad spot promoting the new options on streaming, TV, and online, plus 10 social-only films highlighting specific destinations and experiences on TikTok and Instagram.

“Most people, 70% to 80% of people, once they find a booking, the thing that they want to do is look for things to do in a new city,” Hiroki Asai, global head of marketing, told Marketing Brew. “We also know that one of the major reasons why people still choose hotels over Airbnbs is that they feel like they get these services at hotels that they can’t get [at an Airbnb]. So we’re super excited to launch these two new lines of business together.”

Found it on the FYP: To market the new offerings, Airbnb is using traditional paid advertising channels, but it’s also paying particular attention to social, where travelers increasingly seek out recommendations and ideas for future travel. According to research from Data Axle, a data-based marketing solutions firm, two-thirds of Gen Z uses platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest to find travel inspo; Airbnb is looking to meet these travelers while they’re still searching from home.

Asai explained the travel process as a journey of four stages: dreaming, planning, booking, and actually traveling. Social media, he said, is prime for the dreaming phase, a time when people are feeling most positive about the travel process.

“More and more, we know that they’re using social at a rate that’s incredibly fast, and I personally think it’ll eclipse traditional search fairly soon,” Asai said. “It’s a visual platform. If you’re dreaming about traveling, why wouldn’t you just start searching?”

Continue reading here.—JN

Tune in to this week’s episode of The Refill, the AI-voiced audio recap of the Marketing Brew stories that drive your marketing career forward. In the latest episode, hear why marketing budgets are stagnant (and how CMOs feel about it), where brands stand on the issue of AI content on social media, and why Bic razors sponsored a pro volleyball championship.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your audio media every Thursday.

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Vulture wrote about the challenges facing Hollywood publicists as they aim to cut through the noise and navigate new media.
• The Wall Street Journal looked into AI use in public relations and whether it will “create endless seas of spam.”
• Intelligencer tech columnist John Herrman wrote about how Google’s AI search results are “burying the web alive.”