The WSJ Leadership Institute’s Patrick Coffee writes for the newsletter:

If you think the upcoming World Cup could use a little more Ted Lasso, Nike has you covered.

The brand’s new World Cup campaign is built around a very crowded six-minute hero spot from longtime agency Wieden+Kennedy that fits in celebrities including Kim Kardashian, LeBron James, K-pop star Lisa, rapper Travis Scott and Jason Sudeikis, in character as the aforementioned fictional soccer coach. Of course, it also includes some soccer stars.

But the film, epic as it may be, is a relatively small part of an all-out World Cup marketing blitz as Nike looks to establish its own so-called football universe, said Helena Thornton, the company’s vice president of global brand management, at a press event in New York this week.

The next twelve weeks will see a nonstop drip-drip of social media content, product drops and even new music from the ad’s stars and the brand itself in what Thornton described as a shift away from past World Cup campaigns that focused more exclusively on big-budget ads.

“Yes, we have a film, but we also actually have over 185 other pieces of content,” she said.

Nike’s goal, according to Thornton, is for the football universe to operate year-round so the brand can establish a more permanent presence among soccer fans around the world.

“Maybe at times we've been too focused on moments, and that's just not true of the game,” she said.

Nike has in recent months, for example, invested heavily in its street ball brand Toma el Juego, or “Take the Game.” The Toma league produced young player Mateo, whose futile race for the ball concludes the ad.

Beyond the world’s many passionate fans, Nike also wants to capture the attention of people who just “want to be entertained by the spectacle that's happening this summer,” said Thornton. But the ad’s all-star lineup isn’t just an algorithmic collection of personalities, since they all have some connection to soccer, she said.

Kim Kardashian is “the ultimate soccer mom,” for example, whose son wears a Paris Saint-Germain jersey in the ad.

Nike’s press event also showcased two new versions of its Mercurial soccer cleat and ensembles tied to seven national soccer federations with which it has partnerships.

Nike does, however, face something of a challenge in reaching a hometown audience whose uneven interest in soccer has so far been overwhelmed by politics, basketball and the data center debate, among many other things.

The news that Shakira will headline the first-ever “halftime show” during the series’ July finale has gotten nearly five times as many social-media mentions as the failures of Italy and Denmark to qualify for the World Cup, according to social-media marketing agency Samy. As the agency puts it, Americans are focused on “anything but soccer.”

Anthropic and OpenAI continue to chart their own paths in their messaging about AI.

Claude maker Anthropic on Thursday called for top AI labs to weigh slowing the pace of development or even instituting a worldwide pause, Bradley Olson and Sam Schechner report for The Wall Street Journal.

AI systems are advancing so rapidly that they may soon be able to improve themselves without human intervention in ways that could pose significant societal risks, a company co-founder and the head of Anthropic’s internal research institute wrote in a blog post.

“We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable,” they said. “But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for.”

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has also expressed concern about potentially catastrophic effects from the tech it’s building, alongside suggestions that it could lead to a space colony or the discovery of “all of physics.”

But the company in the meantime is running a retro-vibes ad campaign pitching AI as a tool for low-tech, big-feeling projects, The New York Times observes.

TV commercials say ChatGPT can help you find the best pasta recipe to impress your crush or assist with planning a road trip for siblings driving a beat-up old Volvo. A “restful” billboard image shows a couple guys “sitting in front of a cluttered garage, apparently taking a break from their start-up project.” Nobody’s looking at a screen.

Here’s The Times:

What’s the effect when even the creators of the new technology are so vocally conflicted about it, both internally and between each other?

I’d love to hear from you on what this dissonance is doing.

Walmart is getting into the restaurant-delivery business.

The chain said it will offer customers the option to order 30-minute delivery from 1,400 Subway locations inside its stores by this summer, the next stage of its plan to use its driver network to go toe-to-toe with food-delivery companies such as Uber and DoorDash, Sarah Nassauer writes.

Walmart already ships items from its website to homes, and about 95% of U.S. households can get same-day delivery of a more limited, mostly store-based assortment. Now when shoppers choose Express delivery—one-hour delivery for an added fee—they can also include Subway orders in locations with the restaurant, said executives.

The company’s delivery ambitions don’t end there. Walmart is also considering how to deliver meals from restaurants located near its stores, executives said.

Related: Walmart is “cracking down on redundant or inefficient uses of AI internally, knowing the technology has a price tag.” [Modern Retail]

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When Apple stages its annual developer conference next week, the big reveal is expected to be a modern version of Siri that will look more like ChatGPT. [WSJ] 

Around 60 fans who got World Cup tickets for free because of a website error have seven days to pay after all or have their seats revoked. [Sky News]

Coca-Cola’s “José vs. Mourinho” social-media campaign for the World Cup will star not the real José Mourinho, returning manager of Real Madrid, but an AI clone. [Digiday]

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into whether Celsius Holdings knowingly marketed energy drinks toward children and teenagers. [WSJ] 

Louis Vuitton has sued Maryland Live! Casino for allegedly mimicking its LV logo on branded bags and backpacks. [Creative Bloq] 

Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” attempted to calm the waters Thursday after a chaotic week. He told staff that Maria Gavrilovic, one of Scott Pelley’s producers before his firing, had been named senior producer of the program and would be one of the people he will learn from. [WSJ]