It’s hard to overstate the role of leagues like the NFL and NBA in American culture, but a few other sports have been giving them a run for their money: Soccer is on the rise, MLB had one of its most exciting postseasons in recent history, and Formula 1 has never been more popular stateside.

Jim Beam, the American whiskey company that leans into its Kentucky roots, has sponsorships across all three of those sports. Despite the company’s American heritage, Regan Clarke, VP of American whiskey at Jim Beam parent company Suntory Global Spirits, said the brand’s sports marketing efforts are designed to grow its audience globally as much as locally.

“There’s room for both,” Clarke told Marketing Brew. “I think global, national, and hyper-local [sponsorships] can all live together in harmony. It’s about having the right tailored message to the consumers at the right time, in the right place, and meeting them where they are.”

Study abroad: Like many liquor brands, Jim Beam isn’t exactly new to the sports scene—the brand aired a regional Super Bowl spot in 2019, for instance—but it has ramped up its major partnerships in the past couple of years, including announcing a deal with the Cadillac F1 team in September.

Though F1 is a global sport, the Cadillac team is headquartered in Indiana and is anchoring its branding in being one of the only American teams in the paddock. Cadillac and Jim Beam’s status as “iconic American brands,” Clarke said, is part of what makes the sponsorship work stateside.

And while global perceptions of the United States have plummeted this year, she said she believes focusing on the brand’s American roots will be effective among an international audience considering the role the US and its sports often play in trendsetting.

“I do think coming into the global F1 stage as these American icons together will be really interesting for a global audience,” Clarke said. “Yes, it’s a global sport, but the US base of F1 fandom continues to grow, and so I do think there’s a role for…our story.”

Continue reading here.—AM

Whether you’ve got your eyes on the latest pair of Meta Ray-Ban shades, a cozy sweater from The Row, or a Ms. Rachel stuffed plushie, shopping may look a little different this holiday season.

While consumers aren’t entirely relying on AI to handle their shopping this gift-giving season, some brands are working to make themselves visible to AI and agentic AI tools that could drive purchases when consumers use them to make purchasing decisions, Amanda Bailey, chief client officer at VML, said.

“Agentic commerce fundamentally changes the timeline for peak shopping events. That frenzied human behavior of people rushing or standing in line is really going to be replaced by pre-programmed AI agents that monitor deals for weeks or months in advance,” Bailey told Marketing Brew. “To be chosen and recommended versus discovered will be a new thematic…It’s not just about keywords; it’s about speaking the language of algorithms.”

Read more here.—JS

Rebekah Pagis is president, North America, at WPP’s Design Bridge and Partners. She was previously chief growth officer at WPP North America, and she has also worked at agencies including MullenLowe US, Venables Bell and Partners, Razorfish, and mcgarrybowen.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? One of my recent favorites has been our work with Suntory Spirits on Hardin’s Creek. Many brands immediately jump to an ad campaign when they’re facing a challenge, but packaging is often one of the most powerful tools in the brand toolkit. The logic is simple: pack shapes perception, perception shapes brand, and brand shapes business. In this case, the whiskey category had been struggling to connect with younger drinkers, so we transformed the packaging into a kind of map. The pack itself became an invitation into a world of discovery—almost like a gamified gateway where the whiskey comes to life.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I really love the work for CoorDown, both “Assume That I Can” and “No Decision Without Us.” They carry such an important message around inclusion and celebrating the rights of people with Down syndrome and other disabilities—and are so well-produced and thoughtfully crafted.

Continue reading here.

Real jobs, shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Omnicom plans to cut about 4,000 jobs and sunset the FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe brands as part of its acquisition of IPG.
• American Eagle kicked off a collaboration with Martha Stewart as part of its “Give Great Jeans” campaign for the holidays, a follow-up to its controversial work with Sydney Sweeney.
• Aquaphor inked a deal to become the official skin-care partner of UConn Basketball. We’re noticing a trend…
• Adobe extended its global partnership with Real Madrid.