Good morning. Today, we have takeaways, videos and key quotes from the opening night of the CMO Council Summit, which resumes this morning. TikTok’s ascent meanwhile gives Meta an antitrust escape hatch and a globe-spanning beer brewer hopes to reunite with young consumers over some colorful spiked punch.

American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers told the CMO Council Summit on Tuesday night how he experienced the swirl of debate, politics and coordinated bot activity that followed the Sydney Sweeney jeans campaign.

“I sat down on my couch at home on Sunday morning, opened up LinkedIn—which until that very moment had been basically high fives from the crème de la crème of the CMO and marketing community—to read some very nasty comments directed to me and the campaign, and I was taken aback,” Brommers said in conversation with The Journal’s Suzanne Vranica.

“….Literally a couple of hours later, our high school junior daughter walks down and goes, ‘Dad, do you know that you’re being canceled on TikTok right now?’”

Brommers criticized news coverage of the campaign as well as the standard advice from crisis PR pros, saying the real-time data on the campaign’s reception was encouraging.

“I really think that the crisis communications industrial complex has set up this crisis comms plan that says you have to get out there and you have to talk about it,” Brommers added. “You actually have to take a moment and really understand what is real, what is happening, and then take action.”

Three key takeaways from Brommers:

• “You really do have to assess where your risk tolerance is now, because if you are OK on a scale of 1 to 10 to go up to 7,8, 9, maybe even 10, you know that. If you, your company, your board, your C-suite is really in the 3, 4, 5 range, you should know that.”
• “Number two, and this is true, you will be attacked….You really should scenario-plan out what could happen to you if it’s politicians, if it’s bots, if it’s culture, if it’s whatever it is, and understand what you’re prepared to do or not do.”
• The number three thing I've learned, at least in our situation: Don’t blink. Because I really believed if we had blinked in this particular situation—even with all the positive information that I had to know that this campaign was actually effective in building the brand and driving our business—we would have been eviscerated.”

Moving at the speed of culture is “a strategic advantage in a huge way for brands,” said Ryan Reynolds, the actor, producer and co-founder of production agency Maximum Effort, at the CMO Council Summit.

Reynolds and Maximum Effort this year helped the tech firm Astronomer after its Coldplay concert kiss-cam scandal, quickly shooting an ad starring Gwyneth Paltrow, the former wife of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

But “too much time and too much money will murder creativity,” Reynolds told Maryam Banikarim, chair of the CMO Council, on Tuesday night.

Typically ponderous processes also make it harder for CMOs to prove their worth in the infamously short time they often get at any given company.

“I have a better understanding now of the red tape that so many CMOs face, and it’s a reason that that job is one of the hardest jobs in any sector,” Reynolds said. “....It’s a two, what is it, an average two-year run rate at most companies. That's insane…How do you get anything done? How do you get your feet wet in that amount of time?”

A U.S. district judge dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s claims that Meta Platforms has an illegal monopoly in social media, dealing a blow to one of the government’s marquee antitrust lawsuits against big technology companies, Dave Michaels and Meghan Bobrowsky report.

Judge James Boasberg nixed the FTC’s claims that Meta has monopoly power through its acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.

The FTC had argued that monopoly remains today because Meta’s products, which have focused on connecting friends and families, don’t compete with entertainment apps such as TikTok and YouTube.

“Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past … the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now,” Boasberg wrote. “The court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so.”

Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said TikTok today “holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival.”

Beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev is in talks to buy the buzzy, boxed-alcohol punch maker BeatBox, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal would value BeatBox at around $700 million, Laura Cooper, Ben Dummett and Lauren Thomas report.

BeatBox has gained traction with younger drinkers since its founding in 2011, aided by its brightly colored Tetra-Pak packaging with screwcaps, presence at music festivals, $4 or $5 price range and 8% to 11% ABV.

AB InBev in turn is suffering consumers’ general pullback from beer.

Video is starting to roll in from the CMO Council Summit. You can watch now:

Adobe struck a $1.9 billion deal to acquire Semrush, a software platform that helps businesses run better search-engine optimization as reliance on AI increases. [WSJ] 

Fox News has been working with Palantir to build a set of AI tools for the newsroom. [Axios]

President Trump said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr should look at revoking ABC’s broadcast license after a reporter asked him about Jeffrey Epstein. [BI]

FanDuel and DraftKings left the American Gaming Association over the trade group’s opposition to members getting into prediction markets. [CNBC]

Men’s grooming brand Manscaped plans to run its first Super Bowl commercial in the upcoming game. [Adweek]

Kroger said it will lean more on local stores and services like DoorDash, Instacart and Uber Eats for its ecommerce business, and less on in-house fulfillment centers. [WSJ]

L’Oréal is going after “patsumers”—a portmanteau of “patients” and “consumers”—as distinctions between health and beauty products blur. [Glossy] 

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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