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Kelsey Sutton

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 Dispatch from CES: Fear and loathing (the metaverse) in Las Vegas

The agenda-setting week featured a “tentativeness” to invest, some marketers say. 

Dispatch from CES: Fear and loathing (the metaverse) in Las Vegas

Katie Hicks

Jennifer Healan, VP of US marketing and brand and content engagement at McDonald’s, and Brandon Pracht, managing director of McDonald’s Global at Wieden+Kennedy, on stage at Marketing Brew's The Brief in 2022

Top marketers from McDonald’s, American Eagle, and more discussed the challenges and opportunities in the industry today.

Debriefing The Brief: our takeaways from Marketing Brew’s first annual summit

Three women speaking on stage at Marketing Brew's The Brief marketing event

Events

Jasmine Sheena

Brands talk a lot about evolving marketing to keep up with the speed of culture, but how are they updating their measurement capabilities?

For Lindsay Vogelman, NBCUniversal’s SVP of strategic partnerships and partner marketing, platform distribution and partnerships, measuring impact and navigating growth is central to her work helping to boost streamer Peacock along with partner brands. Ahead of Vogelman’s participation in a panel at the 

 on September 10, she shared more about her approach and how there’s still room for improvement in the measurement world.

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

What trends have you noticed in recent years in regards to the fragmentation of content, especially in the streaming landscape, or changing consumer behavior that may be affecting measurement?

Viewers are no longer just watching—they’re engaging, dual-screening, shopping, and sharing in real time. The act of viewing has become layered, with audiences moving between screens, platforms, and conversations. The value of content is no longer only measured by who tunes in, but also by the actions their tune-in sparks. The real challenge is capturing this broader definition of engagement across an increasingly fragmented landscape.

How is NBCUniversal leaning into these trends?

 We’re evolving our approach to meet audiences where they are. 

 on Peacock is a great example of a cultural moment that drives appointment viewing and invites fans to actively participate. Our Megan Thee Stallion partnership was seamlessly integrated with a viral in-show appearance that sparked online conversation, making the show shoppable and drastically extending the life of the episode.

Our success metrics have also shifted accordingly. We’re focused on both qualitative and quantitative measurements, including daily usage, share of time on platform, and community and fan engagement.

For us, it’s about building daily habits, giving fans more of what they’re already doing, and finding ways to participate in those activities on our platform.

What core KPIs are you using to measure impact? Any new KPIs you’ve focused more on in recent years?

 We’ve expanded our KPI framework to reflect both business outcomes and audience behavior. Some of our key focus areas include incremental acquisition, churn reduction, daily active users, and time spent, as well as community impact by building fandoms around our IP through a qualitative lens. Revenue performance remains at the core of how we evaluate success.

What further evolution would you like to see in the measurement landscape?

 We’re seeing major strides in measuring paid media, especially when it comes to incrementality, but we still see room for improvement around how all our marketing works together to drive performance and are increasingly focused on the relationship between paid and earned media across our partner ecosystems.

How NBCU’s Lindsay Vogelman focuses on marketing metrics that matter

“The real challenge is capturing this broader definition of engagement across an increasingly fragmented landscape,” Vogelman, who will be speaking at the Marketing Brew Summit, told us.

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If we did a push-up every time someone said “engagement” at Marketing Brew’s The Sports Marketing Playbook: Mastering Fan Engagement and Experiences event in New York on Tuesday, we wouldn’t have any arm strength left to type this story.

At the event, marketers from brands and organizations including Apple, ESPN, the NFL, State Farm, Olipop, and Unrivaled came together to talk about all things sports marketing and fandom. Below are some of the biggest takeaways from the conversations that happened onstage.

 A holistic marketing plan that incorporates local touchpoints to reach fans is a central part of the marketing behind MLS Season Pass, a streaming service that is available on Apple TV as part of a partnership between the tech giant and Major League Soccer, Emeka Ofodile, global head of sports marketing at Apple, said onstage. To help engage local clubs and fans during MLS’s 

 season, Apple and MLS coordinated with the 30 MLS clubs to design specific Apple logos for each club.

“Apple can tell a story on a global level, but the clubs and the league are also trying to tell a story in-market that’s relevant to their fans,” Ofodile said.

Shelby Williams, head of integrated sports marketing at Amazon Web Services, took note of the varying viewing preferences of fans of the German soccer league Bundesliga, whose games can be watched on Prime Video. “Enabling localization of content: watching the game that we want, the plans that we want, and the way that we want to consume it” is a key priority, she said.

 of the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league Unrivaled, which just wrapped up its 

, was a “no-brainer,” according to Patty Morris, State Farm’s head of brand.

“When a new league is formed, this doesn’t happen very often, especially in women’s sports, and [with] the expansion that was going to happen there, we got really excited,” she said.

Financing could be another way to engage fans in the future, Jon Stidd, CMO at sports finance outfit DealMaker.

“This next wave of fan participation, whether that’s watching your favorite athlete in some behind-the-scenes content that you get access to, or owning shares in their company, unlocks a new level of participation that is engaging,” he said.

 Brands can lean on athletes’ personalities and what they stand for as a way to connect with consumers, particularly amid the rise of NIL deals, Emily Sisson, SVP of sponsorships and athlete and partner marketing at OneTeam Partners, said. The WNBA, she noted, could offer a particularly timely opportunity: the WNBA draft is next week, and its season kicks off in mid-May.

Radhika Duggal, SVP and CMO at MLS, emphasized the programming that Apple and MLS have teamed up on, including the documentary 

, to help support viewership of MLS Season Pass and grow excitement around clubs and the league.

“Our goal is to grow fandom,” she said. “The single, simplest way to do that is to connect a potential fan with a player.”

State Farm marketing, head of brand Patty Morris and and Unrivaled chief brand officer Kirby Porter speak to Marketing Brew senior reporter Alyssa Meyers onstage

Takeaways from Marketing Brew’s Sports Marketing Playbook

Execs from State Farm, Apple, and more convened in New York to talk fan engagement and athlete-led storytelling. 

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Hartbeat, the entertainment company created by comedian Kevin Hart, may be in the business of comedy, but representation is one thing it doesn’t take lightly.

“We are diverse by design. We are a Black-owned company,” Janina Lundy, EVP and global head of marketing and brand strategy at Hartbeat, told Marketing Brew. “We have that in our DNA every day of the year.”

, where she will be speaking on a panel about equity and representation in creator and creative spaces, about the state of the industry.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I lead marketing and brand partnerships, so all of Hartbeat’s brand strategy, PR, social, and any of our general marketing campaigns, as well as our work with brands, infusing them into content that we’re creating or directly developing content for them. We’re working with talent and creators across that entire ecosystem in film, TV, audio—both radio and podcasts—and then, there’s all the talent and creators that we work with for brands, which can be large-scale, long-form content, or digital or social series.

As you recruit for campaigns, what do you do to make sure that there is equal and diverse creator or talent representation?

It’s important as we’re thinking about the creators, but it’s also important as we’re thinking about my team internally and the team that we’re working with to create that content, whether that’s the writers or the directors or the crew. We’re making sure that the people who are working on our campaigns, and the people who are in front of and behind the camera, represent the audiences that are out in the world.

What has your team been working on recently?

We worked with Venus razors on what they called a “pubic service announcement.” They wanted people to feel more comfortable talking about pubes…so we did a campaign for their female grooming line that was very inclusive, with all women working behind the camera and women of color in front of the camera, including talent that was deaf.

Based on your experience in the industry, where do you see inequity and underrepresentation happening the most among creator marketers?

There are a lot of conversations about pay equity when it comes to creators. I think there’s been a shift in more recent years with brands thinking about the importance of representation and the importance of reflecting the world, so there’s a lot of improvement that’s happening there with brands and having diverse creators that are ultimately going to influence culture.

Do you think that there’s progress being made in pay equity?

I think that there’s more awareness, and it’s part of our responsibility as we’re working with partners across the industry to make sure that we are speaking up for creators…so that’s something that we would push for on our side as well.

If brands are only activating with diverse creators around moments like Black History Month or Pride Month, they might face criticism. Do you feel like brands are doing a better job of activating year-round?

There are definitely some brands doing it better than others. That’s a conversation that I’ve personally been having for a really long time. Having come from other organizations before this, there were a lot of conversations that I had very frankly with teams around, “Sure, Black History Month is important to activate around. However, Black audiences are Black every day of the year, and Black creators are Black every day of the year.” Something that I often say is, “Black audiences don’t wake up and say, ’Oh my goodness, it’s February. Time for me to watch content that looks like me or represents my background or my culture.’” That’s the feeling every day.

Oftentimes, those months are much more about educating audiences that may not be from that background versus the specific audience, so I think what’s valuable for brands that really get it, and ultimately are going to have better relationships with their audiences, is to think about that year-round.

Where do you see the most room for improvement in the industry right now?

There’s room for improvement across the board, right? There’s definitely been growth and progress, but everyone can continue to do better. Talking about the cultural months, like heritage months, there’s definitely opportunity for people to continue to expand to more of an always-on approach there. I think there’s often this idea that content that features Black talent or Black creators, or diverse creators in general, is only meant for those audiences, and there’s an opportunity to expand the thinking there about reaching large, broad audiences with diverse talent and diverse storytelling.

Do you often feel like part of the reason why brands are more inclined to work with some creators over others is because they’re not willing to take a risk and support people who are up-and-coming? How much does that contribute to existing issues?

Yeah, I think people often try to go to the same well over and over again. But I also think part of the issue—and you find this whether it’s with talent and creators or with hiring, it’s kind of across the board—is people hire people that look like them, that they know, that are within their network, that they’re aware of. That’s why we do the stand-up showcase; it gives additional visibility to talent that folks might not be familiar with. And, again, it goes back to why it’s important to have a diverse team. Because often my team is mentioning people that I haven’t heard of, and we’re constantly forwarding each other things that we’re seeing on social media or articles that we’re reading. In our Slack channel, we’re constantly talking about what we’re seeing out in the world, and that happens because we have a team who’s seeing all sorts of different things.

What can marketers do today to make the industry better?

Some of that is about familiarizing yourself and going beyond your world and your network, and seeing what else is out there…It’s taking a look around and not being scared to be vocal about the fact that the creators or talent that you’re working with aren’t necessarily diverse, or you’re noticing that you’re going back to the same well. I think there’s an opportunity to speak up and mention that.

A Q&A with the head of Hartbeat’s marketing

Janina Lundy talks creator representation and equity ahead of the Marketing Brew Summit.

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