Ad Age Marketer's Brief

New Balance Global Brand President and CMO Chris Davis talks about how fashion partnerships with Sezane and Miu Miu and sports partnerships with the Australian Open and Josh Allen have helped New Balance resonate with everyone from "supermodels in London to dads in Ohio." He also discusses why the brand keeps returning to its 'We' Got Now' brand platform with VML. And he talks about how the sneaker brand's 120-year-history helps New Balance operate like a challenger brand focused on the future.

Retail media is moving beyond scale, and Roundel wants marketers to rethink what performance really means. In this sponsored episode of Marketer's Brief, Ad Age's contributing editor, Natalie Zfat, sits down with Matt Drzewicki, senior vice president and general manager of Roundel, Target's retail media network, to discuss how guest-centric strategies, responsible AI and deeper partnerships are reshaping the retail media landscape. Drawing insights from CES and early results from Roundel's new Precision Plus offering, Drzewicki explains why relevance is outperforming repetition, how first-party data and closed-loop measurement are helping brands prove incrementality, and why discovery increasingly happens offsite through creators, video and social platforms. Tune in to hear how AI-powered optimization is improving efficiency across the funnel, the role of storytelling in an always-on shopper journey, and what marketers should prioritize as signal loss and fragmentation accelerate.

In December, Vineet Mehra formally added growth officer to his chief marketer remit. He's spent much time thinking about how CMOs can maintain relevance by adding a broader business focus to their role. He joins the Marketer's Brief podcast to discuss these thoughts and offer marketers advice, as the rest of the industry wonders if the CMO role will even still matter by 2030. He also discusses opportunities for brands to meet growing financial anxiety among consumers, and new agentic media opportunities.

Clear consumer targeting and aggressive pricing are helping Outlaw carve out space in a troubled category

Mike Zeman talks about how marketing is fueling the brand's evolution into a "family super app"

Byron Sharp, author of "How Brands Grow," and director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science, espouses an approach that flies in the face of much modern marketing wisdom about the importance of media targeting, personalization and incentivizing customer loyalty. He explains his views, including why he thinks brands with the most "physical availability" (i.e. broadest retail distribution) and "mental availability" (top-of-mind awareness) will win.

Former Mediahub CEO John Moore and former BMW CMO Trudy Hardy on how clients and agencies can work better together, including why CMOs should take some control back from their procurement departments. Hardy and Moore, now both with marketing and agency consultancy Harmonium also weigh in on the Omnicom-IPG merger and share their perspective on what agencies can deliver to clients when it comes to AI.

In today's fragmented sports and entertainment economy, brands face unprecedented competition for cultural relevance and authentic fan connection. In this episode, Lou Kovacs, President of Marketing, North America at Octagon, shares how the agency's insight-powered creative approach helps brands break through, shape culture, and unlock new markets around the world. Lou dives into Octagon's evolution as a creative powerhouse, spotlighting how the agency's integrated Creative, Digital, and Branded Content teams work together to deliver ideas rooted in fan behavior. He also highlights Octagon's industry-leading momentum, including recent recognition from Cannes Lions, Sports Business Journal and The Clios, showcasing how creativity has become a core driver of value in sponsorship and brand storytelling. The Custom Marketer's Brief episode features a look at Nutrafol's first-ever sports partnership, a category-first campaign with MLB, and a breakthrough example of how Octagon blends creative concepting with high-stakes strategic negotiation. We also explore the agency's influential role in the rise of women's sports.from creative programs like Delta's "Power Forward" docu-series in partnership with the WNBA, to major sponsorships for brands including NYX and Mastercard, as well as the agency's representation of iconic athletes and personalities such as Simone Biles, Trinity Rodman, Aly Raisman, Hannah Storm, among many others. For marketers seeking to stay ahead of culture, fandom, and global market opportunity as we prepare for 2026, tune into this episode for a fresh, creative point of view that is redefining what brand impact looks like today.

Susan Coghill, who has been overseeing Australia's tourism marketing since 2019, on how the Come and Say G'day campaign localizes is marketing for the U.S., U.K., China and other countries, including by using local talent. She also updates us on broader tourism trends and how her organization views more people using AI to make travel plans. Plus, how Australia is leveraging wildlife conservationist and "Dancing with the Stars" star Robert Irwin.

Avery Akkineni, VaynerX's chief marketing officer, has tips for CMOs riding the social media lightning, and she tells us why VaynerMedia has not followed the whole industry into an AI rebranding.

Local advertising is one of the most effective methods for brands of all sizes to reach the audiences that matter most, and platforms like Locality's LocalX are becoming industry leaders by enabling advertisers to plan, buy and measure local broadcast and streaming in one intelligent workflow. LocalX was purpose-built for local advertising, and by using real-time insights and unified data, the platform empowers agencies and partners to maximize impact with confidence." At the end of the day, the reason we're targeting local is to drive a better outcome for our brand in a local community or local space," said Zach Mullins, chief strategy officer at Locality, on a special edition of Ad Age's Marketer's Brief podcast. "By creating unification at scale, we can do that much more effectively in local markets." Tune in to hear more about how LocalX works to combat the increasing complexity and fragmentation within local markets, advance the local ad-buying ecosystem, and the future the company sees for the local media market.

Debbie Woloshin talks about the brand's generative AI-powered styling tool

Linh Peters, now CMO at science-backed hair care brand Seen, talks about marketing as a growth engine

Chris Curtin arrived as chief marketing officer of Sam's Club in May just after the retailer, little sibling of Walmart, finished an agency review. But the veteran of Bank of America was familiar with his new agency, Publicis Groupe, from his old job. And he hit the ground running by overseeing a new holiday campaign starring Chris Pratt. Here, Curtin talks about what it's like coming in right after an agency review and just before Sam's Club's biggest season in retail, as well as how he's bringing finance and fintech experience to retail.

Blumhouse CMO Karen Barragan gives tips and tricks for Halloween marketing as well as the value of seasonal fans for expanding Blumhouses reach. She discusses the increasing mainstream attention on horror, beginning with Warner Bros. 2017 "It" campaign, and how brands can lean in. Plus, behind the scenes of the creation of the "Black Phone 2" and "Five Nights at Freddy's 2" marketing campaigns, and lessons from "Megan 2.0's" box office flop.

Zelle has tweaked its marketing strategy as it has looked to embrace being an emotionally resonant brand. Last month, it worked with its creative and strategic agency of record Pereira O'Dell to launch "When It Counts," a new brand platform that positions everyday payments as acts of care. It also marks a new level of maturity for the brand, which in 2014 saw Americans send more than $1 trillion across 3.6 billion transactions. Andrea Gilman, chief marketing officer at Zelle and Paze network operator Early Warning Services, discusses this change, Gen Z behavioral changes she's observed this year and Early Warning's AI approach, including how it used the tech in Zelle's latest campaign.

Athena Kasvikis is managing iRobot amid a turnaround more than 18 months after regulators nixed its acquisition by Amazon. But she's also been an entrepreneur who led Behave Bras to success on "Shark Tank." She brings classical Procter & Gamble marketer training to bear on Roomba, arguably the most iconic brand in robots, as interest in robotics and AI soars, in part thanks to Elon Musk. Here she talks on those things plus her outlook on CTV, data-based targeting, agency relations and how that "I, Robot" movie wasn't named after the company, or vice versa.

Meta's top marketer discusses the latest strategies digital advertisers need to know from search engines to social media. And he weighs in on agencies, automation and AI, in an industry worried about its future.

Spectrum Reach shows how having the right data can drive performance, brand safety and advertiser confidence.

How the owner of Lunazul tequila, Deep Eddy vodka and a high-end bourbon and whiskey portfolio is tapping into fast moving social media and food trends without losing sight of its roots. Blevins also discusses new agency relationships with Mono and Assembly.