Good morning. Today, advertisers might get another crack at TV audiences once thought lost; a luxury brand makes a scene for the customers it already has; and another brand reports progress with charging full price.

Digital media vastly undermined advertisers’ ability to reach massive, simultaneous audiences on TV outside the NFL. Now one of the greatest digital disruptors is putting scale back together again—in its own hands.

That’s one early takeaway from Netflix’s announcement this morning that it reached a deal to buy Warner Bros. for $72 billion after the Warner Bros. Discovery empire assembled under CEO David Zaslav disassembles itself (under CEO David Zaslav).

The new reach won’t look like the “M*A*S*H” finale in 1983, when 77% of screens in use played the same piece of content at once (including commercials for Chevrolet, Xerox and Atari).

But if the deal goes through:

Subscribers on any given night might eventually be watching Netflix hits like “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game,” “KPop Demon Hunters” or whatever comes next as well as Warner Bros. and HBO properties including the upcoming “Harry Potter” series, entries from James Gunn’s DC reboot, the “Game of Thrones” universe or “Euphoria”—not to mention both companies’ extensive catalogs of long-tail shows that can add up to a lot.

Marketers will be able to buy into the ad breaks across them, wherever their targets might be found on any given night.

There’s an ad-free option that “M*A*S*H” viewers didn’t have, sure, but don’t expect that to get any cheaper as Netflix vastly expands its offering with brand-name IP. Netflix will instead have incentive to widen the price gap between the tiers, driving even more people to welcome commercials back into their homes.

One more note: Netflix has already been experimenting with staggering the release of episodes for big series like “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things,” whose series finale is being held back alone until Dec. 31. Maybe an injection of DNA from HBO, which still streams some shows on a weekly schedule, will encourage more single-episode drops—and the real return of national event TV.

Chanel’s runway show in a New York City subway station is getting all the headlines you’d hope for when you choose that kind of venue, both in fashion outlets and beyond.

But one detail that comes through in Chavie Lieber’s report for The Journal is the brand’s focus on existing customers—above luring new ones.

The front row in the subway station on Tuesday included rapper A$AP Rocky, actress Margaret Qualley—and Chanel client Jenn Smith, 49, of Boca Raton, Fla. She said the brand put her up at a five-star hotel and took her and a group of fellow customers to “The Nutcracker” the night before.

Recruiting new clients “is not an obsession at Chanel,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel fashion.

As we’ve seen at companies from Apple to Costco, holding customers tight doesn’t mean no growth.

To sell more clothes, which have been overshadowed by its quilted leather handbags, Chanel will spend the next five years better integrating its ready-to-wear with accessories and shoes at retail.

“I’m not trying to push and to become a bag company,” Pavlovsky said. “We are a fashion company.”

The Journal’s Annie Gasparro writes:

Chief marketing officers’ job is to walk a fine line, many attendees agreed during the latest CMO Council dinner, hosted Dec. 3 in Chicago by The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute.

They are ideally the contrarians in the C-Suite, change agents to move brands forward. But they can't go so far as to alienate the brand's core supporters. “You want to get close to getting fired,” one executive said, “but don't get fired.”

The event brought together 20 top executives from industries including consumer products, technology, energy, consulting and higher education to share ideas on the evolution of marketing.

AI is at a pivotal point right now, attendees said: It represents the greatest opportunity for their businesses, but inflated expectations or misuse of the tool could push it toward the trough of disillusionment. And employees need to know how to use AI to help a brand and business. Otherwise, “a fool with a tool is still a fool,” one attendee said.

Continuing the discounts discussion from yesterday’s newsletter:

Victoria’s Secret logged its highest quarterly sales growth in more than four years after the chain throttled down promotions and sold more products at full price, Kelly Cloonan and Suzanne Kapner report.

CEO Hillary Super said the company’s sales rose 9.2% in the third quarter as the company offered fewer discounts and raised prices on some items such as certain bras.

While some companies are embracing discounts and promotional offers to ease anxious consumers to the cash register, others are holding the line or trying to roll discounts back, arguing that they weaken a brand’s ability to command good prices without losing customers.

Related: How Burger King’s CMO plans to win back families while keeping most of its focus on its “full-margin, full-priced” menu. [Ad Age] 

The community where marketing leaders drop the corporate speak and share what’s actually happening. The WSJ CMO Council unites leaders from the world’s most influential brands including Adobe, Audi, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Taco Bell, P&G and Verizon.

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The New York Times sued generative-AI startup Perplexity for copyright infringement, expanding its legal fight against artificial-intelligence companies that it says steal and then profit off its content. [WSJ] 

Kroger is cutting costs across its operations to help lower prices for cash-strapped shoppers. [WSJ] 

How smaller startups are trying to maintain a profile as bigger advertisers flood podcasts, a territory they once had to themselves. [Modern Retail]

IPG employees are unhappy with the benefits they’re discovering at new employer Omnicom. [Adweek]

Gucci named Maserati Global Chief Marketing Officer Giovanni Perosino as senior vice president marketing. [WWD]

Bad luck for Bon Iver’s official Pantone color, fABLE Salmon: Pantone said its official color of 2026 is ‘Cloud Dancer.’ [NYT]

CNBC revealed its new, Peacock-free logo. [NCS]