BRAND STRATEGY

Juansvisuals for TelevisaUnivision

No dance floor is complete without a makeup bar—at least, not at PJ Fest.

At upfronts earlier this year, TelevisaUnivision announced the expansion of Premios Juventud, its flagship youth music awards show, into PJ Fest, a six-day, multi-city festival experience bringing together brand activations and exclusive concerts for onsite attendees and streaming audiences via YouTube, Facebook, and TelevisaUnivision-owned streaming service ViX. The festival popped up in Miami, Los Angeles, and Houston before culminating with the awards show in Marbella, Spain, on September 3—marking the first time TelevisaUnivision has taken the show to Europe.

But before the show could go on, PJ Fest’s Miami kickoff party, in collaboration with the touring party experience Bresh and powered by NYX Professional Makeup, set the scene.

Abril Reiss, VP of brand partnerships at TelevisaUnivision, told us that the event’s theme, “Prep, Set, Perreo,” offered a natural entry point for the beauty brand. Perreo, a sensual style of dancing tied to reggaeton music, was the focus of the dance floor, but when partiers wanted to make sure their glam continued looking good throughout, they could visit NYX’s activation, which featured a professional makeup artist applying the brand’s Buttermelt Blush product and included product giveaways.

For NYX, PJ Fest marked the latest way the makeup brand has aimed to deepen its connection to Latina and Hispanic audiences, according to Ana McMahon, GM for NYX Professional Makeup USA at L’Oréal.

“Knowing that our vision and mission is not to show up at one-off events, but to show up year-long with our Latina baddies, as we say, [PJ Fest] was already on the radar,” McMahon said.

Continue reading here.—JN

      

Sponsored By The Ibotta Performance Network

Gone are the days of wandering the grocery aisles for an hour and coming home with stuff that wasn’t on your list.

According to a recent survey from Ibotta, 70% of US consumers have a preferred grocery delivery service, which means their shopping journey is less inspired by the efforts of merchandising and shelf placement and more defined by habits and repeat purchasing.

Saved baskets, “buy again” buttons, and subscriptions all create a frictionless experience that is certainly convenient. But brands depend on consumers’ willingness to try new things.

Discovery just isn’t the same anymore. Luckily, cash-back offers + promotions still make consumers pause and reconsider what they were going to buy.

Ibotta’s research shows that more than half of shoppers seek out promotions. And 9 in 10 shoppers say promotions influence their decision-making.

Old habits die hard…but a good deal helps.

SPORTS MARKETING

Morning Brew Inc.

It’s been quite the summer for Major League Soccer—and for CMO Radhika Duggal.

Duggal was less than two years into the role, her first in the sports industry entirely, when the FIFA World Cup, featuring several top MLS players, kicked off. Prior to joining MLS, Duggal worked at Deloitte consulting for Fortune 500 companies, and she held marketing leadership roles at major pharmaceutical and financial brands, including Pfizer and Chase.

Her background led her to take a fairly data-driven approach to the league’s marketing strategy, which lines up with broader efforts across soccer and other sports to capitalize on fan intelligence. But data isn’t everything, and she told us modern marketers should place just as much emphasis on creativity as they should on metrics and measurement.

“Marketers feel like they still have to be, ‘I’m the artist,’ or ‘I’m the scientist.’ I care about data, or I care about creativity,” Duggal said. “In 2026, a CMO has to be both.”

It’s a philosophy that Duggal carried into MLS’s marketing work surrounding the World Cup: The league’s kickoff campaign for its 31st season in mid-February was hyperfocused on humanity, with emphasis on players and celebrities, including team owners.

“People fall in love with other people,” Duggal told us at the time.

More recently, coming out of the World Cup, Duggal and her team doubled down on the athletes, working to highlight the 45 MLS players who competed in the World Cup. The campaign, which started running July 13, is so far driving the results Duggal said she was hoping to see.

Duggal is set to speak at the Marketing Brew Summit on September 30, and we recently sat down with her to chat about lessons from the World Cup, her career outside of sports, and more. Watch our full conversation here.—AM

      

Sponsored By Strava

Out with the old. Traditional advertising just doesn’t connect with customers anymore, so why are marketers still betting on the same old campaigns that don’t deliver? We teamed up with Strava for Business to learn how marketers + customers alike are changing their approach to today’s ads. Here’s what we learned.

BRAND STRATEGY

Baltimore Ravens

Move over logos and stadium signage. Under Armour and the Baltimore Ravens are taking their hometown relationship into its next era.

The Baltimore-based athleticwear brand and NFL team recently extended their partnership for another 10 years, with plans that include an exclusive Ravens x Under Armour collection, an expanded hospitality presence at M&T Bank Stadium, and continued investment in youth football.

For Under Armour, the extension reflects how sports sponsorships have increasingly become broader consumer and retail platforms.

“It’s been more of a strategic partnership together versus transactional,” Ryan Collins, Under Armour’s senior director of sports marketing, told Retail Brew. “It used to be that something was just some signage that has turned into a much wider and more expansive relationship than before.”

One of the biggest additions is an exclusive collection sold at the team’s Flock Shop at M&T Bank Stadium. But instead of releasing the products all at once, Under Armour is planning multiple drops throughout the season, allowing the product to shift alongside the weather and consumer demand.

The partnership is also increasingly experiential. Under Armour has naming rights to the new Under Armour Landing hospitality area, located above the stadium store, creating what Collins described as an opportunity to extend the brand experience from shopping into game-day hospitality.

Read more on Retail Brew.—JS

      

Sponsored By Wistia

Understand your stats. After pouring time + budget into webinars, marketers still aren’t getting an accurate read on performance. Did attendance flop? How many RSVPs are enough? Wistia’s benchmarks report pulls insights from 900+ marketers and every webinar hosted on Wistia in 2025. Learn how your brand measures up.

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There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Booksmart: A guide to running Facebook ads.

Second best: Advice from small agency execs on building a client roster that works.

Crunching the numbers: Understanding the value of different kinds of social media data, plus tips on organizing it and making decisions based on it.

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Jobs

Real jobs shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

• Digital Strategy Consultant at Semrush Inc.
• Public Relations Specialist at Allegis Global Solutions
• Associate Director, Digital Execution at BeOne Medicines
• Senior Director for Global Media Relations at Carnegie Mellon University
• Digital Content & Social Media Strategist at Warner Music Group

WISH WE WROTE THIS

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Vulture dug into Nielsen’s new faster streaming TV ratings turnaround time, which will, according to the measurement company’s senior VP of product strategy, put streaming and linear TV ratings “on a much more level playing field.”
• The New York Times broke down the backlash to Sydney Sweeney’s controversial ad for the sports betting site Novig, especially from women athletes.
• The New York Times also explained the European Union’s Kids Act, a proposal that aims to restrict children’s use of platforms like TikTok and Instagram.