Marketing winners and losers of the week

This week’s marketing winners, losers and newsmakers. Winners Prime: The Logan Paul-backed sports and energy drink brand has landed another A-list endorser. NBA star Kevin Durant will back Prime’s Hydration variety, a sports drink it introduced in 2022. Durant joins other big-name athlete Prime endorsers Aaron Judge, Patrick Mahomes, Auston Matthews, Tyreek Hill and Erling Haaland. Durant’s responsibilities will include social media, special events and more. Prime showed off a special Durant-branded bottle in an Instagram post that drew more than 500,000 likes in two days. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Eli Lilly: The pharma giant might have a weight loss winner in Zepbound, the name of a variation of its diabetes drug Mounjaro marketed for weight loss. A new study published this week in the JAMA Internal Medicine showed that the drug used by Eli Lilly, tirzepatide, was more effective than semaglutide, which is what is used in Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy weight loss offering. USA Today noted that Novo Nordisk disputed the study’s conclusion. Retailers: Inflation was on the wane in June as the Consumer Price Index fell 0.1% from May, and the annual rate of inflation dropped to 3% from 3.3%, a sign that could herald good news for retail spending. Already, several brands are debuting back-to-school marketing campaigns in an effort to capture dollars. Agency Review Tracker Stay up to date with the latest account reviews Click here Losers Tractor Supply Co.: The rural lifestyle retailer continues to get some backlash for its announcement last month that it would pull back on its diversity and sustainability initiatives in response to attacks from some conservatives. The National Black Farmers Association is calling for the resignation of CEO Hal Lawton. “They’re sending the wrong signal to America at the wrong time in history,” John Boyd, the president of the organization, told CNN, which also noted that Joe Montello, a Tractor Supply store manager in upstate New York who is gay, has resigned. “I felt that they betrayed not only their employees, but also a large part of their customers,” Montello told the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Read more: Tractor Supply Company eliminates DEI roles Fifth Third Bank: The bank agreed to pay a $20 million fee after a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau investigation found it had been engaging in illegal auto insurance activities. According to the investigation, Fifth Third had created fake customer accounts and was charging customers needlessly for auto insurance policies. “The CFPB has caught Fifth Third Bank illegally loading up auto loan bills with excessive charges, with almost 1,000 families losing their cars to repossession,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra in a statement. It’s not the bank’s first run-in with the bureau: A decade ago, it was found guilty by the CFPB of discriminating in its auto loan pricing against Black and Hispanic customers. Versa: Nissan is expected to ditch the subcompact car after the 2025 model year, reports Automotive News, in yet another sign of the weakened market for sedans, which have lost share to SUVs and crossovers. Quote of the week “I’d love to see fewer pharma ads involving highly choreographed, musical ensembles. The scope, scale and frequency of these productions are relentless and have forced me to spend my weekends singing jingles about plaque psoriasis when what I should really be focused on is my underperforming professional sports teams.” —Tom Hamlin, founder and chief creative officer at Nashville agency The Mayor, one of 37 ad execs predicting 2024 second half trends. 40 under 40 entries are open The final deadline for nominations is Aug. 2 Enter here Social post of the week The Whataburger app works as a power outage tracker, handy since the electric company doesn't show a map.Still nearly 1.9 million power outages. pic.twitter.com/d8srWmw1oV— BBQ Bryan (@BBQBryan) July 9, 2024 Whataburger responded: Well there’s a use for our app we didn’t think of! We hope you and everyone else are okay!Can you DM us a good mailing address? We’d love to send you something for using the app so creatively!— Whataburger® (@Whataburger) July 9, 2024 Number of the week 70.4%: Percentage of parents of Gen Alpha children who say their kids, ranging in age from 7 to 14, ask them to purchase items they’ve seen online at least once a week; 28% of these parents said the requests come daily, according to a study on Gen Alpha online shopping behavior from Hosting Advice, a web hosting site. On the move U.S. Soccer named Catherine Newman chief marketing officer. She had been executive VP of marketing for the WWE. Liquid I.V. promoted Stacey Andrade-Wells to chief marketing officer from VP of marketing. Nielsen hired Akhil Parekh as chief solutions officer of digital product. He had been executive VP, managing director at Publicis Groupe. 40 under 40 entries are open The final deadline for nominations is Aug. 2 Enter here

Marketing winners and losers of the week

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