The Golden State Valkyries are gearing up to ride into battle.

Like any expansion team, the Valkyries had a lot to accomplish after they were named as the 13th team in the league last year, not the least of which was introducing their brand to budding fans.

“We had one chance to do this the right way, and it was really important for us to represent what this team means to the Bay Area, to our fans, to the league,” Kimberly Veale, SVP of marketing and communications for the Valkyries, told Marketing Brew. “Of course, everything that’s going on in and around women’s sports right now is historic, and we wanted to keep our foot on the gas pedal with the momentum that we’re seeing.”

The Valkyries have yet to play their first game or draft their first player, and won’t start competing until May 2025, but the women warriors are already making waves, from breaking season ticket records to selling out of merch.

We spoke to Veale about the mechanics behind creating and marketing the Valkyries brand ahead of the team’s first season in the W.

Read more here.—AM

Feeling down in the dumps? Heading to the movies may improve your mood—and a good mood just might mean a higher propensity to purchase, according to a new report from trade group the Video Advertising Bureau.

As more users report experiencing negative emotional side effects stemming from their use of social media (and in some cases decrease their use of those platforms), they’re looking to IRL experiences, the report said. Enter movie theaters, which saw an increase in attendees across various age demographics in H1 2024 over 2021: Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2 notched 19.6 million and 12 million estimated adult attendees in their opening weekends, respectively, per the report.

If attendees experience an elevation in mood while watching content, that can contribute to them looking at brands more favorably, the VAB report found—something that may help boost the case for cinema advertising, which advertisers have already been spending more on this year, Marketing Brew has previously reported. (It’s worth noting here that several providers of cinema advertising, including Screenvision Media and Spotlight Cinema Networks, are among the VAB’s members.)

Cloud nine: As consumers move away from social media, they’ve been leaning into “real-life” experiences, which includes movie-going.

• More than 60% of 18- to 24-year-olds attended a movie in the last six months, compared to 44% in 2021.

Continue reading here.—JS

Meta Founder Mark Zuckerberg swears by generative AI and its impact on how brands advertise on Facebook and Instagram.

And it seems generative AI is working for Meta’s ad unit. For Q2, Meta reported total revenue of $39.07 billion, and 98% of it ($38.3 billion) came from selling ads.

One of the products advertisers are spending money on is Meta’s AI-powered Advantage+ umbrella of tools. “Advertiser adoption of these tools continues to expand, and we’re adding new capabilities to make them even more useful,” Meta CFO Susan Li said on the Q2 earnings call.

This holiday season, Meta is once again making a pitch for its AI tools, citing use cases and ways brands can make ads faster and reach the right target audience.

For instance, Meta has launched promo codes in ads—including offers for first-time buyers—so brands can highlight discounts to enable faster checkout. Meta has also tweaked its reminder ads to include seasonal sales.

This fall, Meta will also begin testing the ability for advertisers to show ads to users most likely to shop in-store and highlight nearby locations to them. All these features can be clubbed with Meta’s AI-enabled Advantage+ shopping campaigns. The idea is to give advertisers more options for ad formats in their campaigns, Meta said, so they can implement a creative diversification strategy on the ad manager.

Retail Brew sat down with Meta’s head of industry, Karin Tracy, who oversees retail, fashion, and luxury practices across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, to learn more about creative diversification and Meta’s ad strategy going into the holidays.

Read more on Retail Brew.—VC