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Can a $3,000 Smart Mattress Cover Get Regular People to Buy?; Louis Vuitton Breaks Into Beauty; MSNBC Will Change Its Name and Lose the Peacock

By Nat Ives

 

Good morning. Today, Eight Sleep angles to bring “sleep fitness” to more people, Pat McGrath directs Louis Vuitton’s long-awaited arrival in cosmetics and MSNBC can’t keep the NBC name.

A bed for two with dark sheets and a bedside console resembling a large router

Eight Sleep’s Pod system includes a mattress cover attached to a central hub that controls the bed’s temperature and tracks sleep and health data. Photo: Eight Sleep

“Sleep fitness” startup Eight Sleep has won praise for its smart bedding from health-optimizing tech types like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, but now it wants to find more customers on Main Street, Katie Deighton reports.

The 11-year-old company has raised $100 million in new funding, partly to expand into physical retail and medical devices that insurance could cover.

It’s also working real, non-tech customers into its marketing, betting that growing interest in health and longevity will drive more people to spend big on their nightly snooze. And it plans to add lower-cost products.

But the price of the Eight Sleep’s core offering—a mattress cover and router-shaped hub that provide features including cooling, heating and data tracking—remains significant (even before the optional $1,000 blanket).

“Our audience is still someone who’s spending $3,000 on a high-tech device to help them sleep better,” said Alexandra Zatarain, co-founder and vice president of brand and marketing. “But they are normal people—they are doctors and they are dancers and they are teachers.”

 
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Amid Uncertainty, AI Is Helping Some Retailers Rethink Holiday Buying Strategies

Ahead of the holiday shopping season, retail buyers are adapting to uncertainty by front-loading inventory, diversifying suppliers, and using AI-enabled tools, according to a survey. Read More

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Vuitton’s New Venture

Pat McGrath smiles in front of a black-and-white lattice

Makeup artist Pat McGrath, known as ‘Mother’ to her acolytes in fashion, is creative director at Louis Vuitton’s new venture. Photo: Campbell Addy for WSJ. Magazine. Production: Angels Production.

Louis Vuitton’s cosmetics line lands in stores this month, offering hope for growth as luxury is squeezed on many fronts, Natasha Khan writes.

The eight eye shadow palettes, 10 lip balms and 55 lipsticks (to represent the Roman numerals corresponding to “LV”) are certainly luxury: The scented lipstick is $160 and the eye palette is $250.

Star makeup artist Pat McGrath, the creative director of La Beauté Louis Vuitton, is particularly excited about the price-upon-request beauty trunk.

But the line is just one of Vuitton’s recent new offerings, including cafes and chocolates, to give more people a way into the brand.

“Launching makeup is a smart way of creating a steppingstone for that aspirational consumer who’s been priced out and who hasn’t found a reason to push the door again,” said HSBC researcher Erwan Rambourg.

 

Quotable

“I’ve seen a lot of my friends have a really hard time getting jobs, even with their degrees.
This is the future.”

— Adele, a 20-year-old psychology student in Florida, on putting college on pause to earn money making AI videos for social media. One of her clips, an AI-generated video depicting an influencer eating glass fruit, earned her $886 on TikTok in four days.
 

Coming Soon

The new name for MSNBC, MS Now, next to a stylized but abstract flag image with white and red stripes, above the text "My Source / News / Opinion / World"

A new name for MSNBC is part of an effort to distance the network from its NBC heritage and establish its own identity ahead of a corporate spinoff. Photo: Versant via AP

MSNBC will change its name to My Source News Opinion World, or MS NOW, Isabella Simonetti reports.

The shift comes before NBCUniversal’s spinoff of most of its cable networks.

MSNBC, which got its name from founders Microsoft and NBC in 1996, was originally told it could keep its name after the corporate split. But NBCU decided to keep the NBC brand for itself after it became clear that the post-spin cable network would still include both news and opinion.

MSNBC and some other channels will also lose the use of NBC’s iconic peacock logo. The new names and logos roll out later this year.

Some decent burns here: It’s hard for any new brand name to win immediate approval; even MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler told the Journal she noticed “a little trepidation” at first. And on X, of course, you don’t talk about a rebrand unless you’re dunking on it. [NY Mag]

A different “NBC” brand survives: CNBC will change its logo but keep its name, which originally stood for Consumer News and Business Channel.

 

The Magic Number

$67 million

Amount that Newsmax will pay Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit over on-air claims that the voting-machine company helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election

 

Keep Reading

Cars in the parking lot of a Home Depot

Home Depot posted higher sales in the second quarter and said consumers are continuing to tackle small home improvement projects. Photo: Oscar B. Castillo/Bloomberg News

Home Depot said tariffs may soon start hitting some price tags even as consumers continue to hold off on larger projects because of higher interest rates and economic uncertainty. [WSJ] 

The FDA told Vacation that its mousse sunscreen was “misbranded” because the packaging looks like whipped cream, and warned consumers that whip sunscreen in general “might not be effective.” [Today] 

TikTok is licensing actors’ likenesses to turn into AI-fueled avatars that pitch advertisers’ products. [NYT]

Some brands and agencies are seeking safeguards for consumer trust and legal compliance as “vibe marketing” spreads in the beauty industry. [Business of Fashion]

Crocs Inc. Chief Brand Officer Terence Reilly named veteran marketers Carly Gomez and Amondo Redmond as CMOs of the company’s Crocs and Hey Dude brands. [WWD]

Subway hired Krispy Kreme marketer David Skena to be its CMO for North America as part of a broader executive overhaul. [Adweek] 

Meal-kit marketer HelloFresh will pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it deceptively enrolled consumers in subscription plans that automatically renewed. [Santa Barbara Independent] 

More than two decades after the FDA banned bottled nicotine water, a nicotine energy drink has arrived. [Snaxshot] 

 
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We bring you the most important (and intriguing) marketing and experience news every day. Write me at nat.ives@wsj.com any time with feedback on the newsletter or comments on specific items. We want to hear from you.

And follow the CMO Today team on X: @wsjCMO, @megancgraham, @dollydeighton, @patrickcoffee and @natives.
 
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