There’s a new Olympic medal this year, and it’s sweeter than the rest.

As part of its official sponsorship of Team USA, The Hershey Company is dropping a limited-edition Reese’s in the shape of a medal. And since the classic cups are legendary, Reese’s tapped two Olympic and Paralympic legends and two up-and-comers for its Paris 2024 ad campaign.

“We had this insight that that’s part of what’s great about the Olympics—you’re rooting for the people that have been there, and you’re also super excited to meet the new star,” Ryan Riess, VP of creative development and brand strategy for Hershey, told Marketing Brew. “We love Reese’s cups, obviously, but we’re also excited for something new. That’s a perfect parallel to what happens at the Olympics.”

The two-phase “Legend v. Newcomer” campaign, which kicked off earlier this month, comes on the heels of the brand’s Super Bowl ad and is similarly designed to keep Reese’s products—both new and iconic—top of mind for consumers by leveraging major cultural moments.

Legendary: Unlike Reese’s Super Bowl ad, which, unlike most other Super Bowl ads this year, did not feature a lineup of celebrities, its campaign for Paris 2024 has plenty of stars, including Olympians and Paralympians alike, given Hershey’s partnership with Team USA encompasses both games.

Alex Morgan, captain of the NWSL team San Diego Wave FC and longtime USWNT star forward, and Sophia Smith, a forward on Portland Thorns FC and Morgan’s teammate on the national team, make up the Olympic duo for the brand. They’ll show up in TV spots currently running on linear, streaming, YouTube, and social platforms.

Continue reading here.—AM

Don’t let lackluster personalization drag your email and SMS strategy down. Crank things up a notch with hyperpersonalization.

Attend Thread World Tour to hear Attentive dish out the insights, advice, and strategies you need to add the “hyper” to your personalized email and SMS marketing.

Attend IRL in New York City on May 15 to learn successful strategies from the brightest minds in marketing. You can expect sessions on topics like:

• the latest AI innovations driving personalization and performance
• best practices for engaging customers and driving more revenue with SMS and email
• success stories from real Attentive customers

There will be plenty of time to network and brainstorm with your fellow peers and leaders. And if you can’t make it to NYC, you can stream the entire event on demand.

Mark your calendar and save your spot for Thread World Tour.

Not even Zuck’s swagged-out rebrand could get Meta investors hyped for the future.

Despite exceeding expectations and reporting $36.5 billion in revenue this quarter—27% up YoY due largely to a 20% jump in ad impressions and a 6% increase in price per ad—the company lost $200 billion in value after releasing its Q1 earnings.

The reason for the dip? Meta reported that it expects future growth to slow and expenditures to be higher than anticipated this year due to its increased investments in AI, which could take “several years” to pay off.

Betting on AI: On Meta’s earnings call Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that Meta has “historically seen a lot of volatility” in its stock price during product-building phases, comparing its AI investments to those it put into Reels and Stories.

“Once our new AI services reach scale, we have a strong track record of monetizing them effectively,” he told investors on the call.

Zuckerberg shared ideas for monetization that included “introducing ads or paid content into AI interactions.” The Wall Street Journal noted that Meta has already benefited from using AI in ad targeting, helping it to “overcome challenges posed by privacy changes implemented by Apple that erased $10 billion of revenue for the social media company in 2022.”

But not every AI idea is a guaranteed winner. Last week, Meta added its AI assistant into Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp search bars—which is so far not to everyone’s liking, it seems, given how some users are looking for ways to bypass it or turn it off.

Keep reading here.—KH

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Erika White is VP of marketing and communications at Affirm. Prior to Affirm, she held marketing and communications positions at Pandora and Visa.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? I loved our holiday spot in 2021, “Little Director.” The little girl in it was so fun, so committed, so perfectly cast. It’s the feel-good holiday ad that also makes you laugh.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Last year, my friend David Corns at Opendoor did an outstanding spot that was set in space. If I wasn’t in marketing and comms, I’d want to be an astronaut, so it spoke to me personally, but, in all seriousness, it’s incredibly difficult to catch attention, do product education, and make someone smile in 30 seconds. This ad does it.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’ve worked at a lot of big brands and established enterprises, but I love being scrappy. I value speed alongside precision, and I think an entrepreneurial mindset is so important for marketing in tech. If things stay too stagnant, you’re inevitably getting stale, so I probably have a lot more startup attributes than people may assume.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I’m excited about what AI can do for speed to market and quantity. I strongly believe that creative judgment is not something we’ll lean on AI for any time soon, but will it make marketing more efficient? For sure. I’m a pretty eternal optimist, so not much I’m very negative on.

Read more here.

How are your TV ads doing? “Who knows?” says 63% of television advertisers. According to a new report by Marketing Architects, TV is so difficult to measure that nearly half of the 300 marketers surveyed have opted to invest less in the channel. But answers are out there. Get the playbook for creating accountable, measurable TV campaigns.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Estée Lauder is expanding its relationship with Microsoft with a deal that will see the beauty giant using Microsoft’s AI tech to help with global ad campaigns.
• Stella Artois partnered with Hot Ones to become the official beer of the YouTube series.
• Warner Bros. Discovery is introducing a first-party data tool called Olli, and IPG Media Brands is set to start testing it later this year.

You’ve heard the news. Google was set to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome this year, but they pushed the deadline again—this time to 2025. EMARKETER will cover this latest delay and what it means for advertisers in a panel on first-party data strategies at this week’s EMARKETER Summit.

Join EMARKETER on Friday, May 3, for exclusive insights on thriving post-cookie, mastering retail media networks, leveraging Al in marketing, and more.

Register here.