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Last Week's Marketing Moves: On Taps Spike Jonze, Always Alpha Enters Tennis, and Pfizer Brings AI Search In-House
In the latest marketing news, creative ambition gets more cinematic, women's sports infrastructure keeps attracting investment, and the race to control brand visibility in AI search is moving inside the building.
Key Points
Swiss sportswear brand On enlisted Spike Jonze to direct a surreal short film for Zendaya's new footwear and apparel collection, continuing the brand's push from performance into lifestyle.
Always Alpha, the talent agency co-founded by Allyson Felix, made its first acquisition by bringing tennis management firm Courtside Talent into the fold — adding Grand Slam champion Sloane Stephens to its roster.
Pfizer has moved its SEO and AI discoverability efforts in-house, joining a growing wave of blue-chip brands building internal teams to manage how they show up in AI-powered search.
Recent marketing news highlights how brands are rethinking the systems behind their strategies. On is elevating product storytelling through high-profile creative partnerships. Women's sports is attracting a new wave of structural investment from agencies, sponsors, and leagues alike. And blue-chip advertisers are racing to bring AI search expertise in-house as the way consumers discover brands continues to evolve. The common thread: the brands gaining ground are the ones building for what comes next.
Here's what stood out:
CAMPAIGN NEWS
Dream logic, real product: On continued its multi-year partnership with Zendaya by tapping acclaimed director Spike Jonze to create Shape of Dreams, a surreal short film visualizing the creative process behind the actress's new footwear and apparel collection. Co-created with stylist Law Roach and On's product design team, the collection fuses Zendaya's perspective on modern sportswear with On's design credentials. The film opens in a white room that serves as a blank canvas, with ideas personified by shapes and materials that shift and evolve into finished pieces, the latest chapter in a partnership that has steadily expanded On's presence in the lifestyle space.
Behind the headlines: On's creative strategy is worth watching for how deliberately the brand is building cultural credibility beyond performance. By pairing a globally recognized talent with a director known for visually inventive storytelling, On is positioning each product launch as a creative moment. For advertisers in competitive lifestyle categories, the takeaway is that the caliber of creative talent attached to a campaign can shape brand perception as much as the product being promoted.
AGENCY MOVES
Courting the future: Always Alpha, the first sports talent agency built exclusively for women, announced its first acquisition: Courtside Talent, a tennis-focused management firm founded by Casey Reede. The deal brings Grand Slam champion Sloane Stephens onto the roster and marks Always Alpha's official entry into tennis. Co-founded by CEO Cosette Chaput, Olympic legend Allyson Felix, and her brother Wes Felix, the agency is building a model of athlete representation centered on off-field earnings, brand building, and long-term equity. Recent projections estimate women's global sports revenues will exceed $3 billion in 2026.
The move comes as investment in women's sports continues to accelerate. CVS Pharmacy recently partnered with the U.S. Soccer Federation and the NWSL to refurbish local fields and build grassroots programming tied to community health. Ally Financial has taken an "impact over assets" approach, backing the Unrivaled basketball league as a founding partner and launching campaigns that turn social engagement into donations. And a recent industry report shows ads in women's sports consistently outperform comparable placements on engagement and attention, with impressions up 79% year over year.
Behind the headlines: What's notable about the current wave is how structural it's becoming. Always Alpha is building agency infrastructure purpose-built for women athletes. CVS is investing in physical community assets. Ally is designing campaigns that strengthen the ecosystem. For advertisers, the brands earning the most from women's sports are the ones investing in it as a long-term system, not a seasonal media buy.
AD TECH
DIY discoverability: Pfizer officially transitioned its SEO and AI discoverability efforts to its internal team this week, building out the capability in roughly 60 days with new hires that included a former director of SEO from Kinesso. The move reflects growing urgency among major advertisers to control how their brands appear in AI-powered search as generative engine optimization (GEO) reshapes discovery.
The trend is picking up speed across categories. Georgia Pacific and U.S. Bank have recently built out dedicated internal teams, and job postings from Adobe, Hertz, T-Mobile, Lowe's, and Skims all point to a growing appetite for in-house talent focused on AI search visibility. According to a recent forecast, more than 26% of the U.S. population is expected to use generative AI for search this year, and some advertisers have reported decreases in unbranded search traffic of between 30% and 70%. Additionally, eight global clients of Brandtech Group have brought these capabilities in-house in the last nine months.
Behind the headlines: As AI chatbots and LLMs reshape how consumers discover products and information, the brands moving fastest are building dedicated internal teams that can react in real time. For advertisers still relying entirely on agency partners for search strategy, the competitive gap may widen quickly, particularly in categories like healthcare, finance, and retail where being cited accurately in AI-generated results has direct business implications.
