Actors Timothée Chalamet and Larsen Thompson are stranded on the side of a highway with a broken-down motorcycle in EV startup Lucid’s 2025 “Driven” ad campaign.

They sneak into a nearby warehouse and abscond with Lucid’s Gravity SUV in the action movie-style commercial that highlights the vehicle’s performance, technology, and range.

“Holy sh—!,” Thompson exclaims as Chalamet leads them on a high-speed chase, escaping into the desert.

This type of messaging may become more common in a market that’s at an inflection point. Many consumers who were motivated to adopt cutting-edge tech and ditch their gas-guzzling vehicles for environmental reasons have already gone electric. Now, the industry is tasked with attracting mainstream consumers who no longer have the benefit of tax credits to offset the higher up-front cost of electric models.

“The power, the performance, the technology, the general desirability: These are the things that I think EV marketing should be talking about,” Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at automotive marketing research firm AutoPacific, told us.

“Everybody’s gotta get on board,” he added. “So take the messages that are potentially politically polarizing out of the equation.”

Continue reading here.—JG

TV has transformed before our eyes: A medium that was first dominated by networks and then cable companies has fast become streaming-centric. Could it now be time for the age of creator TV?

According to the creator platform Spotter, that new age is already here. At its second annual Showcase event in New York, the company invited brands to listen to an upfronts-style presentation aiming to position longform YouTube creators as the next era of television. Creators like Dude Perfect, Jordan Matter, and Michelle Khare, which combined have more than 100 million followers, highlighted their content offerings and showed off previous successful collaborations.

YouTube is already attracting plenty of brand investment: The platform raked in $40.4 billion in ad revenue last year, according to MoffettNathanson, more than traditional media giants Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Onstage, Scott Winkler, head of commercial partnerships for Dude Perfect, emphasized that longform creators represent the future of reliable, fan-beloved, episodic programming—the kind that brands have long clamored to spend their ad budgets on.

“When brands partner with us the right way, they’re not interrupting the story—they’re stepping into it,” Winkler said onstage. “And when that alignment is right, business outcomes follow.”

Aaron DeBevoise, Spotter CEO, told us ahead of the event that the goal was to shine a spotlight on its creators’ tentpole offerings and alert brands about more creator opportunities they can tap into on a perpetual basis.

“What this year will really address is to say, ‘Hey, your calendar matters, advertiser.’ So does the creator’s calendar, and the cultural calendar matters,” DeBevoise said. “When you combine those three things, given that creators’ [programming is] always on, a lot better planning can go on.”

Read more here.—JN

It’s officially the post-Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Paige Bueckers era of NCAA basketball, but college fans still have an appetite for women’s sports.

More than three-quarters (78%) of US college sports fans said they followed at least one women’s college sport last year, according to new survey data that marketing analytics company Big Chalk shared exclusively with Marketing Brew. Of those fans, 87% watched at least two.

Though basketball remains the “crown jewel” of the women’s college sports ecosystem, there are opportunities for brands to tap into this increasingly engaged audience by working with other sports and athletes as well, according to the report.

“College sports as a media property are becoming more compelling in general, and it’s not [because of] any one thing,” Big Chalk partner Rick Miller said. “It’s not the Caitlin Clark effect. It’s not the move to a 12-team College Football Playoff. It’s lots of little things that are building interest in this medium…People are looking at sports as the last real reality TV.”

Continue reading here.—AM

Jennimai is fresh from her trip to SXSW and reporting back on the biggest themes she heard (and overheard) from marketers at panels, activations, and on the ground throughout the event. Listen more here.

Brands are turning rising food costs into headline-grabbing marketing moments. Here’s why experts say cost-of-living stunts can create reputational risk, especially when they blur the line between philanthropy and promotion.