This week's marketing winners, losers and newsmakers.

Winners

Pepsi: With the Super Bowl in Los Angeles—the entertainment capital of America—the pressure was on the NFL and halftime show sponsor Pepsi to lure a big-name act. The soda brand and league more than met that standard with this week’s announcement that Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar will headline the show. Playing a key role was Roc Nation, which curated the show as part of its role as NFL advisor.

Flashback: Eminem’s most famous connection to the Super Bowl is as the star of the award-winning “Born of Fire” ad from Chrysler in 2011, which introduced America to the “Imported from Detroit” tagline. 

Popeyes: The chicken chain won the Grand Effie for, you guessed it, its #ChickenWars” campaign that came from GSD&M with support from Alison Brod Marketing and Communications. The effort started with the simple “Y’all Good?” tweet. The business results were more than good: It led to $87 million worth of media along with 13% same-store sales growth and $1 billion system-wide sales the year after it launched, according to the Effie Awards, which recognize ad effectiveness.

Dapper Labs: If the company wasn’t already a powerhouse in the burgeoning NFT sector it is now, after landing a deal with the NFL to create non-fungible tokens of digital-video highlights from games. It already has a pact with the NBA for its Top Shot NFTs.

Losers

Ozy Media: To say it’s been a bad week for the startup digital media company would be an understatement. The fallout has been swift since a Sunday report in the New York Times that included allegations that its chief operating officer, Samir Rao, impersonated a YouTube exec during a call with Goldman Sachs. Rao has been suspended and, as New York magazine puts it, “amid the fallout, Ozy is facing increased scrutiny for its opaque treatment of web traffic since its founding in 2013.” On Friday afternoon, the Times reported Ozy would shut down. For the numbers behind the scandal, check out this week’s Datacenter Weekly.

NWSL: The women’s pro soccer league—which had been drawing headlines for luring sponsors such as Nationwide—is now in the news for all the wrong reasons, after canceling this weekend’s games in wake of the firing of the coach of the North Carolina Courage team over allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct. “I am so sorry for the pain so many are feeling,” NWSL Commissioner Lisa Baird said in a statement, according to Bloomberg News. “Recognizing that trauma, we have decided not to take the field this weekend to give everyone some space to reflect.”

Bed Bath & Beyond: COVID challenges and supply chain concerns led to disappointing quarterly results for the home goods retailer, which cut its fiscal 2021 outlook.

Tweet of the week

Number of the week

$7 billion: How much Ford Motor Co. is spending in Tennessee and Kentucky to build plants to make electric vehicles and batteries.

Quote of the week

“The work that Cliff Freeman put out into the world was like a bat signal for weirdos.”—Cliff Freeman & Partners alum Ian Reichenthal on the legacy of the creative director and copywriter behind iconic campaigns such as “Where’s the Beef?,” who died on Sept. 5.

On the move

ADT hired DeLu Jackson as chief marketing officer. He formerly worked for Conagra Brands, Kellogg Company and McDonald’s.

Lemon Perfect, a lemon water brand, hired Michael Smith as CMO. He was most recently senior director of marketing communication for PepsiCo’s Water+ brand portfolio.

Sesame Workshop announced the promotion of Samantha Maltin to executive VP, in charge of strategic communications, events and archives. She remains CMO.

Safety service company Life360 hired its first-ever CMO, Carrie Cronkey. She was most recently CMO of Care.com.

Contributing: Adrianne Pasquarelli