Good morning. Today, we’ve got more from the CMO Council Summit, from C-suite relations to the hard-won wisdom of founders. Plus: third spaces for the wealthy now offer hyperbaric chambers, and a retailer’s  “adjacency” strategy doesn’t come close to its goals.

CMOs don’t always seem to command the full attention of the C-suite, but Gap Global Chief Marketing Officer Faby Torres said CEO Richard Dickson’s focus was part of the reason she joined.

“He's a brand-first person,” Torres told Katie Deighton on day two of the CMO Council Summit. “....When they called me and when they hired me, it was the most interesting part.”

Asked whether a CEO that cares is a blessing or a curse for her own vision, Torres showed no insecurity. “That’s a blessing,” she said, while noting that “we have brand presidents that let us do what we know how to do.”

About that Katseye “clapback”: Gap’s viral “Better in Denim” ad featuring an assertive performance by the girl group Katseye seemed to some like a counterpoint to American Eagle’s immediately preceding “Great Jeans” campaign. But the cultural moment was just luck, according to Torres, saying Gap spent close to six months planning its effort.

Watch the full conversation here.

Chatbots’ unsolicited sycophancy can make it hard for me to trust their takes. ChatGPT recently lost me when it volunteered, for example, “That sounds like a stylish shirt.” (Don’t ask.) So I like this idea from the summit:

AI’s most effective role in the creative process right now may be a “sparring partner,” Microsoft Chief Communications Officer Frank X. Shaw said.

“You can say, ‘Hey, I'm making this news around something. Act as my competitor, act as a skeptical journalist. Pretend you are with the BBC and blow as many holes into this as you possibly can,” Shaw said during a conversation with the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Wendy Bounds.

You might also ask AI to summarize your work as a gut-check; if it spits out something your team didn’t intend, that’s a red flag.

“We use Copilot and we say, ‘What are the top 3 points from this PDF or this white paper?’ and then you're like, ‘That’s not it at all.’ If your agent doesn’t capture it, then the chance of anybody else catching it is just zero,” Shaw said.

One more takeaway on AI:

• “It’s a black box,” Shaw said. “It's gonna make us more creative, more productive, take our jobs, you know, pick your poison, but it’s this thing. And what it really is, it’s a set of tools....You have to get people to start thinking about this as a set of tools, and they’re all going to use it slightly differently and you have to encourage that.”

Katie Deighton pointed something out after a day and a half of main-stage interviews, hallway conversations and interactive exchange sessions at the CMO Council Summit—and she posed a question:

Unlike other marketing conferences this year, AI did not dominate every single conversation.

Has the novelty faded into the new normal? Or are fears around corporate reputation and brand crises more pressing to CMOs right now?

Now I’m curious; hit reply if you have thoughts.

The CMO Council Summit delivered the goods for marketers in the room on Wednesday, but now everybody can watch:

Full Sessions:

Balancing Risk and Creativity with Gap Global Chief Marketing Officer Faby Torres

Making the Ordinary Feel Special with Instacart CMO Laura Jones

Storytelling in the Age of AI with Microsoft Chief Communications Officer Frank X. Shaw

Founders’ Perspectives on Entrepreneurship with Jaclyn Johnson of Create & Cultivate and Cherub, Katie Sturino of Megababe and Gwen Whiting of The Laundress and The Fill

Reinvention, Resilience, and Courage with Bobbi Brown

Keeping Legacy Brands Iconic with Delta CMO Alicia Tillman

Don’t-Miss Clips:

Bobbi Brown Tells the Story of ‘Foundation Gate’

How Microsoft Leverages AI for Rapid Crisis Response

Beyond Margin: How Instacart Drives Impact with Community Relief Efforts

Private wellness clubs are popping up all over the country, built for the era of self-optimization, sober curiosity and reliable affluent spending, Sara Ashley O’Brien reports.

They go further than their forebears that emphasized socializing, networking and third-space coworking. These clubs pitch themselves as one-stop shops for workouts, recovery and healthy fun.

Membership runs from hundreds to thousands of dollars a month, however—assuming you make it through the application process.

In New York, the lifestyle brand Kith is opening a members-only padel and wellness club in Greenwich Village called Kith Ivy, featuring a fitness center, a Giorgio Armani luxury spa and a “tonic bar” from Erewhon.

At New York’s Continuum, where membership starts at $40,000 a year, new members go through an onboarding process that includes “performance-based bloodwork.”

To be clear: Most of these clubs don’t request blood samples.

Bath & Body Works will stop carrying products in some recently added categories such as hair care and men’s grooming, instead focusing on developing new and better offerings in its core competencies, Suzanne Kapner writes.

The retailer on Thursday reported a drop in sales and earnings and slashed its forecast for the year, partly blaming a difficult economic environment.

But the real culprit was a strategy pursued by former management that neglected its most-popular categories in pursuit of new avenues of growth, according to Daniel Heaf, the CEO since May.

Heaf called the expansion into new categories a distraction from core competencies like body care and home fragrances.

“Adjacencies are never quite as adjacent as people think they are,” he said.

Major League Baseball has completed new three-year media-rights agreements with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix. [WSJ]

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the commission will review the power dynamics and contractual terms between broadcast TV networks and their local affiliates. [Deadline] 

A new TikTok feature is designed to let users control how much AI-generated content they see. [Tubefilter] 

Disney plans to expand dynamic pricing from tests at Disneyland Paris to parks worldwide. [Inside the Magic]

T.J. Maxx parent TJX Cos. said it expects a strong holiday season as the off-price retailer continues to win over inflation-weary shoppers with its value and deals. [WSJ] 

Kroger supermarkets started an AI-generated weekly insights report for brands. [Modern Retail]

Mondelez brand Ritz is coming back to the Super Bowl ad roster after a 2025 debut featuring Bad Bunny, who’s playing the upcoming game’s halftime show. Ritz declined to comment on creative plans including any possible return by the star. [Ad Age]