Good morning. Today, sports’ standing as one of the very few remaining pillars of monoculture leads to a big acquisition in marketing.

Publicis Groupe is acquiring the sports-marketing agency 160over90 from talent firm WME Group as sports becomes an increasingly essential channel for brands seeking mass reach, Katie Deighton reported this morning for the WSJ Leadership Institute.

The French advertising group will pay more than $500 million for the company, according to people familiar with the transaction, and absorb its 670 employees into a unit called Publicis Sports.

WME, which was known as Endeavor until going private last year, bought 160over90 in 2018 for approximately $200 million.

I asked Katie to put the deal in context for the newsletter.

You've covered sports marketing extensively for CMO Today, including the disastrous brand launch of the new women's soccer team in Boston and the migration of consumer-goods CMOs to lead marketing for teams and leagues. What stands out to you about this news?

Katie: The price—half a billion dollars is nothing to be sniffed at. But also the fact that WME is selling what everybody tells me is such a hot commodity right now: the position to broker deals between sports and brands. For a while I’ve been predicting that talent firms will start buying agencies from holding companies, not selling the ones they have, to take advantage of the rampant interest in connecting commerce to mass entertainment.

But the news made more sense when I delved past the headline transaction. The deal sets up a wider partnership between Publicis and WME, meaning celebrities will in theory get a faster track to big brand deals and big brands will get a faster track to celebrity endorsements. Publicis gets a crucial piece of the sports-marketing puzzle and WME in divesting 160over90 gets to focus on the cutthroat business of looking after its IP and talent, not managing the egos of CMOs.

Also—I started my career in the 2010s reporting on experiential marketing. So 160over90 is an agency that’s weirdly close to my heart.

More sports: The National Women’s Soccer League named Brian Kelly as chief commercial officer and Rachel Epstein as chief marketing officer. [Athletic]

Starbucks’ latest grab for the spotlight is a sponsorship deal with this month’s Coachella music festival in California.

In addition to offering its usual iced coffee and matcha lattes on site, the chain will bring back its colorful Unicorn Frappuccinos for the festival only.

Starbucks offered the Unicorn drink for five days in April 2017 as part of a wider, social media-fueled trend of unicorn-themed food. It predictably slayed on Instagram but—possibly equally predictably—irritated baristas who had to assemble its complicated, sticky recipe. A Washington Post reviewer said it tasted like “Jolly Ranchers, and shame.”

But Starbucks’ turnaround plan under CEO Brian Niccol calls for more marketing than in the recent past—so Coachella and viral menu items are on the lineup.

Meanwhile, in “real food” marketing: First PepsiCo made sure consumers saw potatoes every time they saw a package of Lays chips. Now Tostitos bags are getting prominent pictures of corn. [Fast Company]

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.

Tap into the connections and WSJ intelligence that move careers forward and separate the prepared from the scrambling.

Request Information

State Farm’s “good neighbor” slogan took a hit this week when President Trump offered a different take on the company, pegged to its handling of claims after the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires: “absolutely horrible” and “not there to help!” [WSJ]  

April Fools’ Day is journalists’ least favorite holiday, but now that it’s done I can handle this list of the best brand pranks this year. [Adweek] 

General Motors hired Uber marketing executive David Mogensen to be the new CMO at Cadillac. [Ad Age]

OpenAI has brought on Smartly, the ad-tech firm led by ad industry veteran Laura Desmond, to help marketers improve their ads in ChatGPT—with an eye toward developing conversational ads that talk with users like ChatGPT itself. [BI] 

A TikToker whose “I have been Regina Georged” video drew attention to a lawsuit against David Protein is up with a new video, this time about a “Mean Girls” themed care package from David. [Babytunechii on TikTok]

How dry shampoo brand Batiste turned a creator’s viral TikTok comment about Jen Affleck’s hair on “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” into a marketing partnership in five days. [Glossy]