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Corporate America is on the hunt for storytellers, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Katie Deighton, who notes LinkedIn job postings featuring the term doubled YoY to nearly 70K listings across marketing and communications. Major firms like Google, Microsoft, and USAA are actively recruiting for these positions, often as a rebrand for media relations or content creation roles to attract customers and talent in a fragmented media landscape where "earned media" opportunities are shrinking. Print circulation, Deighton notes, has dropped 70% since 2005. USAA VP of Communications and Public Affairs Tara Ford Payne distinguishes the role from traditional copywriting, explaining: "This is truly bringing to life scenarios, situations and opportunities to advocate for our members." Executives mentioned "storytelling" on earnings calls 469 times this year, up from just 147 in 2015, reflecting a shift where CEOs are increasingly seeking content strategies over traditional PR. Hirsch Leatherwood Co-Founder/CEO Steve Hirsch puts it like this: “It’s more common now that I get on the phone with CEOs and they’re proactively coming to me saying, ‘It sounds like I need a content strategy.’ The AI slop of it all creates so much distrust, and they see that the brands that are winning right now are the ones that are most authentic and human and relatable.” (link)

Inc.’s Sydney Sladovnik explores the concept of “Amazon-ification” in which consumers expect immediate gratification, delivery, and results, and why it makes Time to Value (TTV) a critical metric for businesses. TTV measures how long it takes for a customer to realize a product's full value or have an “aha! moment,” with shorter timelines correlating to higher retention and satisfaction. Here are the goods…

➤ Business advisory firm Portage Point Partners Director Tyler Rainey explains that "TTV can be used to understand how effective you are at converting dabblers into advocates, where you are losing customers on the purchasing journey, and what commercial techniques are most effective and efficient." 

➤ Rainey adds: “By monitoring how quickly customers move from awareness to consideration, convert to first use, and ultimately demonstrate loyalty and advocacy, organizations can pinpoint friction points and optimize targeted interventions that accelerate perceived value and long-term ROI." 

➤ Sladovnik outlines strategies to accelerate TTV across the customer journey: leveraging authoritative platforms like Google for awareness, using reviews and influencers to speed up consideration, and removing purchase barriers (e.g., simplified forms, discounts) to boost conversion. 

➤ Sladovnik cites the example of pain-relief brand Chirp, which pivoted its marketing from yoga to back pain relief after analyzing customer feedback, leading to $4M in sales in six months by shortening the time customers took to understand the product's primary utility. Chirp Co-Founder Tate Stock: "Get your customers, get your fans, and then work with them—talk with them, ask them questions, be genuine about how you’re helping them, and you’ll probably find that, just like in our case, you’re helping them in ways that you didn’t expect. … From there, your fans do what they love most: spread the good word." More. (link)

The Evolution of Revenue, Facilities, and Leadership

➤ NACMA Timeout Podcast host Zach Dayton welcomed Oklahoma Director of Athletics Joe Castiglione to discuss a range of strategic topics, including the evolution of revenue generation, the founding of NACMA, leadership across different generations, the complexity of funding the "Palace Project" renovation, and the rise of private equity.

➤ The Palace Project & Fan Strategy: The stadium's west side renovation is a necessity, not a vanity project, as that section is over 100 years old. The project maintains the original 1925 footprint while focusing on a "something for everyone" strategy, incorporating a range of options from new premium "Founder's Suites" to technology upgrades to "juice up your senses" for the game day experience.

➤ The Private Equity Question: Castiglione views private equity interest as a validation that collegiate sports has great value and offers more opportunities for growth. However, he notes that PE is "very expensive money," requiring institutions to consider the trade off of granting PE a large portion of rights to monetize as they see fit.

Core Values as Cultural Foundation: Castiglione underscored that a clearly defined value system is crucial for shaping the departmental culture. Oklahoma's core values, summarized by the acronym MAGIC, stand for: Masterful, Accountable, Gracious, Inspiring, and Competitive.

CLICK HERE for the episode.

San Francisco Giants VP of Ticket Sales and Premium Seating Matt Peterson joins the Sports Geek podcast to discuss the evolution of the organization's sales strategy, acknowledging that the franchise was "stubborn" in being the last MLB team to exclusively offer full-season packages until 2019. Since pivoting to flex memberships and offering unlimited ticket exchanges, Peterson notes the club raised utilization scores to the "85+ range," which correlates directly to a 92-93% renewal rate. More from Peterson…

➤ On the premium front, the Giants are shifting from large clubs to bespoke experiences like the Cloud Club, which was created by gutting six suites to form a space with 61 seats but a 150-person capacity, meaning "90 people almost will just have lounge access...and they're absolutely fine with that." 

➤ Additionally, Peterson highlights the use of an AI sales bot to nurture "50K leads that would otherwise go untouched," while advising young sales professionals to treat their craft like players taking infield practice: "Sales is not a throwaway field. It's not something that because you feel like you have a good personality, you're going to be great at. There is a skill set involved with it. There are things you need to learn and you need to practice a lot. … That's how sales people need to think is practice, have an awareness of what you're doing well and not doing well and be your own biggest critic and cheerleader at the same time."

➤ On how stadium design philosophy has shifted since Oracle Park opened in 2000: "I think if we would have built the park today versus in 2000, it would look wildly different in terms of the layout. We would have 50 small clubs around the building instead of having two or three big ones. So a lot of that segmentation and and trying to create different pockets around the ballpark with like bespoke or unique experiences, like that's the direction we're headed right now."

➤ On the importance of integrating Sales, Analytics and Marketing: "The glue between those three units has been a huge part of the success that we're seeing right now. So, prior to a pitch being thrown this year when no one really knew what to expect from the team, we were already on pace to really crush a lot of record sales records that we had."

➤ On the generational divide in customer service preferences: “Our full-season buyers and I'll say to some extent our half-season buyers tend to be our longest tenure. And every year they rank their customer service and having a personalized service person as either the second or third biggest benefit of being a season ticket member. So we never want to take that away. … I think it's a lot of our newer, younger customers that are coming online – they're more apt to buy online than they are through a rep. They're also more apt to self-service online than deal with a rep. So, we're finding this new generation of customers that are way more comfortable living in that virtual space and not needing the personalized attention and service." (link)

A new Groundwork Collaborative/Consumer Reports study finds Instacart displaying different prices to different shoppers for the exact same items, from the same stores, at the same time, underscoring the rapid spread of algorithmic, dynamic pricing into everyday groceries. Nearly 200 volunteers in four cities simultaneously priced 20 goods and routinely saw variances: eggs at a Safeway in Washington, D.C., ranged from $3.99 to $4.79, Skippy peanut butter at a Target in Ohio ranged $2.99 to $3.59, and Wheat Thins at a Seattle Safeway ranged $3.99 to $4.89. Groundwork’s Lindsay Owens: “Two shoppers who are buying the exact same item from the exact same store at the exact same time are getting different prices.” Instacart says retailers control pricing and that these are short-term randomized tests meant to “learn what matters most to consumers,” while Target says it is not responsible for prices shown on Instacart’s platform. Instacart added that it ended pricing tests on Target orders and says the variation is not tied to shopper attributes such as income or ZIP code. Still, Groundwork found price differences on three-quarters of all items tested, with the 20-item basket differing by ~7% within the same store, a gap that could cost shoppers hundreds annually. The study arrives as algorithmic pricing accelerates across retail, enabled by AI tools like Eversight (acquired by Instacart in 2022). (link)

Despite early economic jitters, 2025 has emerged as a "high-water mark" for the experiential agency sector, SBJ’s Terry Lefton reports, noting leaders from Momentum, GMR, Octagon, and Excel Sports Management are all characterizing it as their strongest financial year on record. Excel Partner/CBO Emilio Collins attributes the surge to the industry's massive structural shifts “with investment from entirely new sources of capital; new leagues; continued expansion of F1; new Mideast and Asian opportunities; women’s sports growth; the complete transformation of the college landscape; and global expansion for so many sports. That’s left many brands looking for integrated platforms across all of that, which is what we do.” Meanwhile, Wasserman President of Brands and Properties Elizabeth Lindsey tells Lefton: “It’s still a bit of a blurry economy, but clients found a way through and resumed spending. Across the business and marketing world, there’s a focus with AI, of course, but we are saying that anything live is the AI antidote. The only thing that matters anymore is what happens live. Generally, sports and music are at the epicenter of that.” (link)

Marketing Dive’s Sara Karlovitch details a new Forrester report forecasting a "year of volatility" for B2C marketing in 2026, with 64% of executives expecting more instability than 2025. The outlook includes 52% of leaders predicting tighter budgets and 51% anticipating headcount reductions. Price hikes remain a major risk, with projections that up to one-third of consumers may defect to cheaper alternatives, as only 37% of online U.S. adults indicate a willingness to pay a premium for brand loyalty. Additionally, marketing measurement confidence is predicted to dip 7% due to AI-driven transparency concerns, while the "excitement surrounding the new technology will begin to wane" as legal risks rise – specifically a projected 20% increase in class-action lawsuits linked to AI data breaches. Forrester VP/Research Director Mike Proulx notes: "It’s not great news in terms of the strife and headwinds that CMOs and other business leaders are going to face." (link)