Bay FC had a lot to get done in the months since being announced as one of two expansion teams to join the National Women’s Soccer League this season. Beyond team practices and getting ready for the season, the club got to work building a fanbase from the ground up.

“When you’re looking at your inaugural season, you’re starting from ground zero,” Emily Raimondi, the team’s VP of brand marketing, told Marketing Brew. “There’s so many directions you can go, there’s so much you can say, and at the core of it, we wanted to build that anticipation.”

To do it, the team, which is based out of San José, California, hired a local creative agency to put together an ad campaign, which started running across platforms on Jan. 16, exactly two months before the start of the regular season. The goal: To build brand awareness and connections with the community, and, of course, sell tickets, Raimondi said.

Goooaaallls: The inaugural ad campaign, called “B Legendary,” was designed to make people “feel connected to the brand, see themselves within it, and be inspired by it,” Raimondi said. Beyond that, the team wanted to establish a visual identity tied to the Bay Area, explain its value proposition, make its mark on the Bay’s already “very elite sports market,” and generate excitement for the season, according to Raimondi.

• To get it done, Bay FC tapped California-based creative agency Partners in Crime by way of referral from a previous agency client, according to Stephen Goldblatt, Partners in Crime’s founder and creative director.

The resulting spot, set to music by Bay Area artist LiTTiE, is running on social, digital, linear, and over-the-top platforms, Raimondi said, as well as an out-of-home component with still images on billboards located at transportation hubs. When the team starts playing at PayPal Park next month, the ad will be shown there, too; it’s set to run through the NWSL season.

Continue reading here.—AM

When you’re building a business or charting your own path in your career, it can be difficult to discern when roadblocks are challenges to push you further…or redirections that are begging you to go down a different path.

In this episode of BOSSY, Tara and Katie break down the most masterful business comebacks, accelerating out of stagnant career slumps, and when it’s time to rebrand “quitting” to “pivoting.”

In 2023, the American workforce probably saw more slashes than A Nightmare on Elm Street, with several sectors, including the tech industry, laying off scores of workers as part of widespread cost-cutting measures.

Over in ad land, major agency holding companies felt the squeeze, too. Several holding companies reported a pullback in ad spend from tech clients in the fourth quarter and FY2023 earnings.

WPP: The holding company’s integrated creative agencies were hit particularly hard by the tech ad spend pullback, according to its FY2023 earnings call, where it described a “broad-based weakness in technology client spend” at those agencies. In particular, agencies AKQA, Wunderman Thompson, and VMLY&R reported “lower spend from US tech clients and delays in technology-related projects,” the company shared in its earnings presentation.

It’s not all bad news: WPP won business from tech and telecom clients like Chime, Verizon, and Adobe last year, and it is also continuing its generative AI partnership with Nvidia, which reported a 265% YoY surge in revenue during its earnings call last week. WPP execs said they are optimistic about the tech sector despite the recent bumpiness.

“It’s too early to call it a recovery of the tech sector, but certainly it feels like that’s stabilizing,” WPP CFO Joanne Wilson told investors.

Read more here.—JS

Melissa Waters is the chief marketing officer of Upwork. She joined Marketing Brew earlier today at our event, The Marketer’s (Early) Guide to AI.

Ahead of the event, we had Waters tell us a little bit about how she and Upwork are using AI, and what her thoughts are on the possibilities of the tech.

Does your company have policies around using AI? If so, what are the main tenets? We have a company policy and reference materials for both new AI tools that team members want to bring into the company and for those who want to use existing tools. We also have a guiding set of AI principles that take a human-centered approach to developing and deploying AI. The main tenets are: empowering people to achieve their goals; prioritizing equity and avoiding unintentional bias; and handling data safely and responsibly. We also have an AI review use case board so that any new tools being used not only support our company goals but are also being used safely and securely by team members.

What AI tools are you currently using? In what capacity are you using them? The content marketing team is using tools like ChatGPT to boost productivity and expand our online content library. Our enterprise marketing team has been using Regie.ai, a generative AI tool, to help customize content to engage prospects and customers. And our creative team is looking at how to bring other AI tools into the fold for creative concepting and video production.

What is the best real-life application of AI that you have seen in the marketing world so far? There was a Carvana campaign that used generative AI to create over one million unique video spots. Every video had a specialized message that was unique to the customer who had purchased a car from Carvana. It stands out as an example of how we can use AI to deliver hyper-personalized, relevant marketing campaigns at scale.

Continue reading here.

Your guide to a cookieless world. The long-awaited phaseout of third-party cookies is finally upon us. In this new landscape, how can you reach your target audience without relying on user data? We partnered with StackAdapt to find out. Check out our three-step guide to marketing without cookies. Spoiler: AI plays a big role.