Heard at Advertising Week 2023

Advertising Week New York: We came, we saw, we conquered survived.

The four-day conference last week was chock-full of, well, everything, including panels and keynotes from brands like Mattel and Netflix and topics ranging from women’s sports to the importance of food delivery. And in addition to some extremely long lines, we saw some surprisingly candid conversations about the realities of the business.

In no particular order, here are some things we heard onstage at the conference that had our ears perking up.

On Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce

“People think maybe we may have had something to do with it. Absolutely not. We knew nothing. We knew what you guys knew.”—Marissa Solis, SVP of global brand and consumer marketing for the NFL, on a panel about Gen Z and sports

On Barbie and Barbie

“There were pressure points where I might have gotten a few extra gray hairs and lost some sleep. The first was having lunch with the president of marketing at Warner Bros. when he pitched me the marketing handle for the teaser campaign: ‘If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.’ That immediately took me aback. As a brand steward, why would I put the word ‘hate’ out there? It was really uncomfortable. But we agreed that we wanted to reach a broad audience and get people that had maybe not been associated with the brand for a while to re-engage. We had to be self-aware.”—Lisa McKnight, EVP and chief brand officer, Mattel, in a conversation about the brand’s evolution

On influencers

“Clorox reached out, and I was like, well, that’s not our jam. We don’t really use Clorox…and they gave me an offer that was insane. I have never been offered this amount. It was $38,000 to do a campaign with them. I’m like, ‘Holy shit, that’s so much money!’ But I’m like, I’m not doing it because it doesn’t feel authentic to us…I’m represented by Whalar, and they reached out an hour later, and usually when they approach me, they’ve negotiated at the highest dollar. And so they reached out, and they’re like, ‘[Clorox is] really flexible, and they want to give you $58,000.’ I’m like, ‘I’m dousing myself in Clorox as we speak.’”—José Rolón, content creator on TikTok and Instagram as @nycgaydad, on a panel about the creator economy

“Before we technically called them creators, I had the experience of starting my career at MTV—where I quickly learned if you just said the word ‘Snooki,’ you could do 10x traffic.”—Nicole Sia, senior director of content and social marketing, DoorDash, on a panel about investing in influencer marketing

On sports marketing

“I’ve been told I need to put money in a swear jar if I say ‘authenticity.’”—Jesse Perl, VP of brand marketing, Major League Soccer, on a panel about brands tapping into soccer

“With NIL, not gonna lie, wish I was back in college right now.”—Minnesota Lynx forward Aerial Powers, during a panel about women’s sports and performance marketing

“I hope we get to a point where we just call it ‘sports,’ and we don’t have to call it ‘women’s sports.’”—Andrea Brimmer, chief marketing and PR officer, Ally Financial, on a panel about women’s sports

“At Adidas, looking at the demographics of the folks that work in soccer versus some other sports, we’re probably really the only team that has women in sports marketing, versus our one person that works on the WNBA side. [Soccer] is very much more inclusive. I maybe wouldn’t have been able to break into another area at Adidas.”—Kelsey Hough, soccer sports marketing manager, Adidas, during a panel about brands tapping into soccer

On TV ad buying

“We’re a little stuck in between the future and the legacy side of it. So a lot of times we’ll have conversations with brands, and it’s all about audience and they need to find the audiences. And then we’ll get an RFP from them and they’ll say, ‘We want to reach [in-market] car shoppers, but we don’t want any news.’ So all of a sudden, you’ve now just restricted the pool of people you want to reach, assuming that no one [watching the] news is going to buy a new car.”—Mark Marshall, chairman of NBCU’s global advertising and partnerships division, during a conversation about the TV industry’s transformation

On the golden arches

“There’s a lot of two-for-five and two-for-six offers out there, and there’s someone that is mostly yellow that advertises a lot more than us. So the risk is we run an ad and people go there instead of us…At the end of the day, I love the creative, but it’s all about selling cheeseburgers. So we’ve got to make sure we do that.”—Carl Loredo, global CMO, Wendy’s, in a conversation about the brand’s approach

On the New England Patriots

“I hate when my football team loses. I’m a Giants fan, and so I’m in pain. So I used to pick seven to 10 teams [to root for]...Never the Patriots, though.”—Dany Garcia, founder CEO, and chairwoman, The Garcia Companies, during a panel about on-demand sports fans