Longtime viewers of influencer Emma Chamberlain’s YouTube channel know she loves her coffee. So when talent agency UTA was looking to build its next talent-led brand five years ago, Chamberlain Coffee was something of a no-brainer.

“You have to have a product that is true to the talent for it to really cut through,” Jeumana Jaber, interim CMO and employee No. 1 at Chamberlain Coffee, who also works for UTA, told us.

Since its inception in 2019, the brand, which began selling coffee beans and drink accessories, has expanded into flavored matcha and ready-to-drink canned coffee. In the past year, Chamberlain Coffee has also branched out from its own e-commerce platform to other retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

“We’re trying to get as many cans in hands as possible,” said CEO Chris Gallant, who told us that “a big chunk” of the brand’s revenue this year will come from sales of its ready-to-drink beverages.

To date, the brand’s focus has been primarily on Gen Z, Chamberlain’s primary audience, who generally prefer cold beverages like cold brew. But as Chamberlain Coffee grows its product lineup and expands into retail, the brand is aiming to appeal to a broader demographic, as well as build brand awareness outside of Chamberlain’s nearly 30 million online followers.

“A big challenge with this brand is, ‘How do we age up the brand with [Chamberlain] and with our audiences as they grow?’” Jaber said. “And in general, how do we become more relevant to millennials and Gen X, since we are going into retail?”

Continue reading here.—KH

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CBS Sports and TNT Sports are “basically sold out” of ad inventory for this year’s men’s March Madness tournament, according to Jon Diament, EVP of ad sales at Warner Bros. Discovery.

“This will be the best revenue tournament we’ve ever had,” Diament said, speaking at a virtual press conference on Wednesday. “We’re setting revenue records here.”

The champs: Brands that are part of the NCAA’s official corporate partnership program account for almost half the tournament’s revenue, including new partners like Geico and Home Depot, John Bogusz, Paramount Advertising’s outgoing EVP of CBS Sports sales, said during the press conference.

• Capital One, Coca-Cola, and AT&T (which also had a major presence at NBA All-Star Weekend) represent the official NCAA corporate champions.
• Geico and Home Depot are joined by brands including Marriott Bonvoy, Unilever, and Reese’s in the official partners tier.
• Auto brands Buick and Nissan, quick-service and fast-food restaurant chains Buffalo Wild Wings, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s, and financial services companies Intuit and Invesco are also official partners.

Those are all “significantly healthy” categories for the tournament, Diament said.

In addition to Geico’s sponsorship, the insurance category is also “very robust” in terms of its March Madness ad spend, Bogusz said. Sports betting companies, though, are locked out of the tournament, he said.

Keep reading here.—AM

Churn rates on streaming services are up, big time.

Since 2019, overall churn rates have nearly tripled, according to the research firm Antenna. In December 2023, 5.5% of premium streaming subscriptions were canceled, up nearly one percentage point from the previous year, Antenna found.

Here’s the potentially good news: Customers who have been subscribed to a service for over a year are less likely to cancel than those who more recently subscribed, Antenna found. Churn that occurs among subscribers in their first year is about twice as high as those in their second year, Rameez Tase, Antenna’s co-founder and president, recently wrote in a LinkedIn post. Of those consumers who do cancel a service, one in three sign up again within six months, Antenna reported.

After focusing for years on growing their user bases, streaming video platforms are now grappling with a more complex subscriber landscape. On recent earnings calls, execs cited a litany of factors that affected their respective streamers’ subscriber growth and retention, including paid sharing, price hikes, live sports, the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes, and bundling.

The price is right? Netflix reported “better than forecasted churn,” co-CEO Greg Peters said on the company’s most recent earnings call, which came despite price increases and a password-sharing crackdown, which has included charging users more in order to share accounts outside of their household. However, over at Disney, a subscription price increase contributed to a “temporary uptick in churn” for Disney+, CFO Hugh Johnston told investors.

Continue reading here.—JS

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Executive moves across the industry.

• John Bogusz, Paramount Advertising’s longtime EVP of CBS Sports sales, is retiring.
• CrossFit has a new CMO: Jenna Hauca, a Barry’s marketing alum.
• At Under Armour, something old is new again: Kevin Plank, the brand’s founder and former CEO, is returning to the position after just a few years away.