Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have long dominated the sports space, inking deals with athletes, leagues, stadiums—even the Super Bowl halftime show. Olipop, the prebiotic soda backed by investors including ​​Gwyneth Paltrow and former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, is getting in the game, too.

Olipop took a swing at Big Soda about two years ago, when the brand ran a streaming campaign targeting sports fans and cola drinkers that mocked Pepsi Zero Sugar. On the sponsorship front, it’s been knocking on the doors of major sports teams, according to Steven Vigilante, its director of growth and talent partnerships. At first, though, they weren’t exactly receptive.

“I just kept running into the same issue, whether it was Coke or Pepsi contracts or massive, multi-seven-figure annual deals, and so I just sort of back-burnered it,” he told Marketing Brew. “Then everything changed.”

Vigilante met Allison Howard, president of the Kansas City Current and former VP of corporate partnerships for the Lakers, while the NWSL team was in the middle of constructing a new stadium set to open next year.

Both were interested in teaming up, and a deal was inked. In mid-April, the Current announced Olipop as its first soda brand partner. The deal is worth six figures and lasts through the 2023 season, according to Vigilante.

Continue reading here.—AM

Audio has grown up since its mid-2000s adolescence (same, tbh). It’s moved past the phase of being a reach medium and graduated to impacting every stage of the purchase funnel.

Don’t believe us? If you think audio is still a one-trick pony, just take a look at Audacy’s State of Audio report. It lays out how audio converts compare to other channels like social media, TV, and video ads.

The numbers don’t lie: Audio outperformed every channel during the consideration, conversion, and loyalty phases. In fact, it drove 45% of consumers to buy and try products. That’s 27% better than social media and 42% better than video ads.

Don’t miss out on opportunities in audio. Download Audacy’s full report to learn how to leverage it and reach full-funnel results.

Marketing Brew held The Brief, our second-ever in-person summit, in New York City last week. We had cheese, wine, and nearly eight hours of the industry’s practitioners getting their hands in the metaphorical mud, breaking down the marketing magic they do day in and day out.

If you couldn’t make it, here are just a few of our favorite quotes from the event.

So, are clients still asking about the metaverse? “No, because they’re all talking about generative AI. They’re like, ‘Meta-what? What was that?’” Solange Claudio, president of creative agency Formerly Known As, joked. “I think it was just a little too early.”

But don’t close the book just yet—the metaverse might just need another couple of years in the oven, Greg Hahn, co-founder and CCO at Mischief @ No Fixed Address, explained.

“Everyone was so eager to jump on it, and we got a bad version of it,” he said. “I think in about six years, maybe, when the people who were born into it have gotten jobs, we’ll see a different metaverse.”

“Nice. New. Nonstop.” Those are the three words Breeze Airways used to introduce itself to travelers, no easy feat for a low-cost airline that didn’t start flying until the middle of a global pandemic.

Keeping messaging succinct is something Angela Vargo, Breeze Airways’s VP of marketing, communications, and product experience, imparted to marketers during a workshop.

“If you had to define your brand and company in three words and one image, what would that be? Because if you can’t, you might be a little bit too cluttered,” she said. “Every time you’re writing, every time you’re doing copy, anytime you’re communicating, if [you] can’t say it in three words or less, then maybe it’s just too much, because we have very short attention spans these days; everyone’s just scrolling and clicking and scrolling.”

Read more here.—RB

Super Bowl LVIII is coming to Univision.

TelevisaUnivision, which operates the country’s largest TV network for Hispanic audiences, brokered a deal with the NFL and CBS to present a Spanish-language broadcast of that other football game on Univision in 2024, it announced during its annual upfronts presentation to advertisers Tuesday. The company has also secured Spanish-language rights to next year’s Copa América football tournament.

The sports rights announcements capped off an upfront presentation more than a year removed from the nearly $5 billion merger combining Univision and Televisa into one of the world’s largest Spanish-language media companies. The presentation, held Tuesday at Pier 36 in Manhattan, heavily emphasized the growth and buying power of Hispanic audiences.

The most important stat: TelevisaUnivision is the No. 1 network for Gen Z, regardless of language, Nacho Mayer, president of Univision’s US networks, said. “We have always known that our community is a sleeping giant. Well, guess what? We’re awake, and the world is finally ready for us,” he said.

Read the full story here.—RB

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

Resources: TikTok has announced new mental health initiatives, including “donating over $2 million in ad credits to organizations working on supporting mental well-being.”

Dare to be different: A look at how SSPs are trying to differentiate from one another.

Something to talk about: A guide to managing your brand’s reputation on social media.

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Stat: The Messenger, a new media startup, published 27 stories over the course of an hour on Monday morning, or “one every 133 seconds,” according to NiemanLab.

Quote: “Black creators often set the standard and the trend on any app. A lot of apps either one, fail to recognize that or two, they recognize it and don’t want to give Black creators recognition.”—Cheyenne Wilder, who has more than 50,000 followers on TikTok, speaking with Digiday about why Black creators’ relationships with social platform are often strained

Read: “Microsoft says new AI shows signs of human reasoning” (the New York Times)

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Could the advertising chops of Twitter’s new CEO turn revenues around?
• Podcast ad revenue growth slowed last year but still outpaced digital advertising overall
• Days after leadership shakeup, NBCU pitches Peacock originals, SNL strength to marketers