A hometown story worth flagging: IU's own Curt Cignetti just landed his first national commercial, and the joke is entirely at his own deadpan expense.
Curt Cignetti Never Smiles on the Sideline. State Farm Bet the Whole Commercial On That.
Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti, 27-2 in two seasons in Bloomington and coming off a national championship, stars in a new 30-second State Farm commercial alongside longtime campaign character Jake from State Farm. The spot uses green screens to place Cignetti in a series of everyday scenes, on an elliptical, driving a motorcycle, getting sprayed by a garden hose, all while he talks with Jake about a "personal price plan," and never once breaks his famously stoic expression.
The joke is entirely built on Cignetti's known sideline demeanor. He tells Jake sarcastically, "I'm so excited, I can't stop smiling about it," delivered completely deadpan. Cignetti joins a State Farm roster that includes Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, Caitlin Clark, Chris Paul and Cooper Flagg, and follows earlier 2026 marketing turns on the cover of EA Sports College Football 27 and as Indy 500 pace car driver. He's been selective about which opportunities he takes, telling reporters, "We thought the EA Sports cover was good for recruiting. We turned down a lot of things."
The best celebrity endorsement casting builds the joke around something the audience already knows to be true, not something the brand has to explain. Everyone who follows college football already knows Cignetti doesn't smile on the sideline. State Farm didn't invent a bit, it just pointed a camera at his actual reputation. That's the difference between a celebrity spot that feels manufactured and one that feels like it was always going to happen.
Good Brand Management Practicum case on athlete endorsement fit. Ask students to identify what made Cignetti's deadpan persona specifically suited to State Farm's long-running Jake format, versus a more traditionally charismatic coach or athlete, and whether the same joke would work if delivered by someone without an established public reputation to play against.
No fresh, dated B2B influencer story cleared the bar today, most of what's circulating is evergreen listicle content rather than actual news. Worth flagging plainly rather than forcing a weak fit.
A Quiet Day for Creator Economy News
Kelly flagged interest in fresh B2B influencer marketing stories today. A thorough search turned up plenty of evergreen strategy guides and roundups, but nothing dated to a specific recent announcement or campaign worth treating as news. Rather than stretch a stale example into today's edition, we're skipping the section and will flag anything truly new the moment it surfaces.
Some days the creator economy news cycle is just quiet, and that's fine. Better to say so than to dress up a six-month-old case study as breaking news.
ChatGPT Ads Manager just crossed a real milestone, and opened its doors wider on the same day.
ChatGPT Ads Just Crossed $1 Billion in Run Rate. It Took 200 Days to Get There.
OpenAI announced Monday that ChatGPT Ads has reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate, a milestone hit roughly 200 days after the platform's February launch. The company is targeting $2.5 billion in advertising revenue for the year, tracking toward an annualized run rate near $40 billion, and is holding the figure up as validation of its diversified business model ahead of an anticipated IPO.
The bigger news for marketers landed the same day: starting today, self-serve access to ChatGPT Ads Manager opens directly to eligible advertisers across Europe, India, and the Middle East and North Africa, meaning startups, SMBs and larger brands can build and manage campaigns without going through an agency first. The expansion follows India's launch last week with 50 brands and agency partners WPP and Omnicom, and a self-serve Indian ad manager opening Sept. 4 with a daily minimum budget of roughly $7.60. OpenAI also quietly shipped a native ChatGPT Ads Manager Plugin this week, letting advertisers manage accounts, create ads, and review campaigns directly inside a ChatGPT conversation.
Self-serve access opening across three regions on the same day the platform crosses $1 billion isn't a coincidence, it's OpenAI removing the last real excuse for marketers to wait. No agency gatekeeping, a native plugin that manages campaigns from inside a chat window. If you've been telling yourself this is still too early-stage to test, that argument gets weaker every week.
Meta's ad platform still sets the bar every new entrant, including ChatGPT Ads, gets measured against.
Meta Platforms (META): The Incumbent Every New AI Ad Platform Is Racing to Catch
As ChatGPT Ads crosses $1 billion in run rate and expands self-serve access globally, it's worth remembering the scale it's chasing. Meta's ad business remains the benchmark every new AI-native platform, including ChatGPT Ads, gets compared against on targeting sophistication, self-serve tooling, and advertiser trust built over more than a decade.
Meta continues investing heavily in AI-driven ad optimization and creative tools of its own, meaning the competitive pressure from ChatGPT Ads' rapid growth cuts both ways, forcing continued innovation rather than complacency from the incumbent.
Every headline about ChatGPT Ads' rapid growth is implicitly a story about Meta's scale, because that's the bar being measured against. Worth watching whether Meta responds to the competitive pressure with real new tooling or just optimizes what already works.
⚠️ Not investment advice. Verify independently before any decision.
The standing lineup, no changes today.
NBA Finals Recap
The Knicks won the championship. Still the standing sports pick until something replaces it.
ABC/ESPNClaude for Small Business
Anthropic's push into small business tooling. Worth tracking as a comp for our own AI-in-the-loop positioning.
AnthropicAnthropic IPO S-1
$965B valuation, $47B run rate. Watching how the media frames the filing as it moves through the process.
S-1 FilingSilicon Valley Girl
Still the sharpest lens on tech culture from the inside. Recommended for anyone building a personal brand in AI.
YouTube"The Art of the Brand" Podcast
Camille Moore and Phillip Millar keep delivering the best brand-strategy conversations in podcast form right now.
PodcastTed Lasso, Season 4
Premiered August 5. Ten episodes, weekly, through October 7. Early word is it earns the return.
Apple TV