This week's marketing winners losers and newsmakers

Winners

Barilla: The pasta maker’s endorsement deal with tennis star Coco Gauff is looking like a brilliant move after the 19-year-old’s win at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati last week. The week prior, she won her first American title at the Mubadala Citi DC Open, adding to the momentum she has heading into US Open next week, for which she had already inked a deal with Barilla. 

Barilla will be giving away pasta meal kits to promote its chickpea and red lentil pastas. Fans can visit BarillaServingLove.com from Aug. 23 to 30 to enter for a chance to win a meal kit, recipe cards and a grocery delivery gift card. The giveaway, which features a grand prize of a year’s worth of free groceries for one winner, will be advertised on Barilla and Gauff’s Instagram accounts.

This isn’t Barilla’s first sports partnership. In March, it made a limited-edition 87-shaped pasta for skier Mikaela Shiffrin’s 87th World Cup victory. Last August, Barilla helped set up a tennis match with Roger Federer and up-and-coming player Izyan Ahmad.

Lego: The toymaker debuted a line of its trademark bricks that incorporates Braille in a move to be more accessible to the low-vision community. The collection, which comes weeks before World Blindness Month in October, is meant for children age 6 and up and “has been designed so that anyone who is curious about Braille, be they blind, partially-sighted or sighted, can have fun getting to know the Braille system,” according to a Lego press release. Lego is one of several marketers that are working to make their products more accessible to those with disabilities.

Modelo: The Constellation Brands-owned Mexican import has made more permanent gains on struggling Bud Light, surpassing the Anheuser-Bush InBev brew as the nation’s top-selling beer in the year-to-date period ending Aug. 12, when measured by in-store dollar sales, according to Nielsen data cited by Beer Marketer’s Insights. It caps a remarkable fall for Bud Light, which for years held what had seemed to be an insurmountable lead—until a consumer backlash over its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney (which included a bungled PR response) sent the brew into a tailspin. 

Also see: Bud Light has a new NFL season campaign

In related news, Kid Rock—who fueled the conservative backlash with a video in April showing him gunning down packages of Bud Light—was spotted drinking Bud Light at a concert in Nashville. “Maybe Kid Rock had a change of heart -- or maybe he just realized there's much bigger things to worry about,” reported TMZ. 

Losers

T-Mobile: The carrier is under scrutiny by the National Advertising Division of BBB National Programs for claiming customers can watch Major League Baseball games through the league’s app. NAD suggests T-Mobile permanently modify the claim, which is misleading in that customers may believe they can watch every baseball game live or on demand. AT&T Services Inc. first challenged the claim. T-Mobile said it plans to comply with NAD’s recommendations. T-Mobile also this week announced it is laying off 7% of staff, or 5,000 positions, as it tries to tamp down on rising costs to recruit new subscribers.

Retailers: Stores are going to need all the back-to-school spending they can get amid what appears to be a grim retail backdrop. This week, chains including Kohl’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Macy’s reported sluggish quarterly results. Dick’s cited an increase in theft of products and its profit fell. Macy’s issued a very conservative sales outlook for the coming months as shoppers pull back on spending, and Kohl’s reported a 5% drop in sales.

NBA: A former employee went rogue on the league’s Facebook page in a grievance-filled post that alleged the NBA underpays and overworks its social media staff. The post was deleted after about 20 minutes, according to Front Office Sports. But it lasted long enough to generate plenty of negative media coverage. 

Social post of the week

Quote of the week

“Pumpkin spice lattes have weirdly become kind of a cultural icon of their own. Unlike a lot of products, honestly. They're kind of inextricably linked with fall, whether you love them or you love to hate them.” –Brynna Aylward, executive creative director at Gut Toronto, on the enduring appeal of PSL.

Number of the week

63%: Percentage of passive-aggressive emails coming from those in the advertising and media industry, per a recent report on passive-aggressive communication from Preply, an online language site. It found that “Per my last email” is the most passive-aggressive email phrase.

On the move

Falcon’s Beyond Global, an entertainment company, hired Toni Caracciolo as executive VP of marketing and branding, a newly created position. She had been VP of global marketing at Visit Orlando.

Rothy’s hired Shaheen Mufti as VP of retail. She was most recently VP of retail at Reformation. 

Einride, a mobility company, hired Corinne Aaron as chief marketing officer. She was most recently CMO at Lynk & Co.

Contributing: Erika Wheless