A heritage spirit rewrites its setting. The lesson is about where a brand chooses to show up, not just what it says.
Courvoisier Takes Its First Global Campaign in Years Out of the Bar and Into the House Party
Courvoisier, a Campari Group brand, is running its first global campaign in nearly two decades. Titled "Pass The Courvoisier," it was created with BBDO Paris and runs across out-of-home, retail, TV, social and live experiences. The minute-long film, directed by Grammy winner Ibra Ake and shot in Atlanta, follows a bottle passed among party attendees. The setting is a house party, not the upscale bars and lounges spirits brands usually pick, and the name comes from a Busta Rhymes song. Two New York activations follow, starting with "The Living Room" at Fosun Plaza on Oct. 21 and a phone-free House of Courvoisier event the day after.
The brand-shared research behind it comes from a Censuswide survey of 2,500 consumers aged 21 to 50 in the U.K. and U.S. Nearly a third want to host more intimate gatherings at home over the next year, and 70% have attended a house party. The business case is there too. Courvoisier sales fell 1% year over year for the six months ended June 2026, while Campari's House of Cognac & Champagne segment grew net sales 4.6%, driven by South Africa and Asia-Pacific and a stable U.S. presence. Campari bought the brand in 2024 for $1.17 billion.
Every cognac brand sells the same velvet-rope fantasy, so the category's visual language is a crowded lot. Courvoisier picked a different room, and that is the strategy. We would still want to see whether the house party carries into pricing and distribution, because a campaign that changes the setting but not the shelf is only half a repositioning. Note too that the headline research is the brand's own, so treat it as the argument, not the proof.
Positioning is often won by changing where a brand shows up, not what it claims. When every competitor owns the same setting, moving to an adjacent one can be the cheapest way to become distinct. The test is whether the new setting is credible for the product, and whether the sales data follows.
A creator stacks brand deals, a service business and equity, and shows where the real leverage sits.
A Fashion Creator Turned Audience Demand Into a 500+ Client Styling Business
Maddy Gustini started posting in 2023, after earning a fashion merchandising degree and joining Neiman Marcus' buying team. She passed 100,000 Instagram followers within a year and now has nearly 300,000. Her long-term brand deals typically run $5,000 to $10,000 per month depending on deliverables, with partners including J. Crew, Calvin Klein, Todd Snyder, Steve Madden and Aldo. Her styling service, Maddy G Style, charges upwards of $250 per hour for shopping help, $55 per outfit style deck and $800 for a full closet redo. She has more than 500 style deck and closet redo clients and over 100 regular styling clients, though her earnings from the service are not disclosed.
Her revenue splits about 60% brand deals, 20% Maddy G Style and 20% affiliate links. Gustini said, "Everything comes from my content, and that's the only way I advertise my styling business." She also joined Driptail, a social fashion app, as an equity partner, with terms undisclosed. Driptail had about 100 users at its March launch and nearly 6,000 by July, and one of her posts drove 1,000 new users and over 100 purchases in three days. She was clear about the tradeoff: "You don't have a paycheck coming every two weeks, you're really working for everything you make."
Brand deals are the top line, but the styling business is the part she owns. Every client came from her own content, with no ad spend. That is the model we point creators and brands toward: an audience that converts into a direct service, not only a rate card. For brands, the lesson is that a creator with her own revenue streams negotiates differently, and should.
Diversified income changes a creator's incentives. When 40% of revenue sits outside brand deals, she can decline a mismatched product, as she says she does, and that protects the trust the audience pays for.
Publishers are being paid to experiment with AI, and they still cannot see how the platforms use their work.
Forbes Joins Google's Paid News AI Pilot to Learn What AI Discovery Means for Its Audience
Forbes has joined Google's paid News AI pilot, which gives Google expanded rights to its content to test ways of giving readers context before they click. Forbes chief innovation officer Nina Gould, speaking at Digiday's Media Strategies London event, said the deal is paid but declined to share terms. The pilot funds publishers for features such as in-depth article overviews and customizable audio briefings, with attribution and direct links. Google launched it in December with the Guardian and the Washington Post, and a Google blog post puts participating publishers at more than 400.
The backdrop is a traffic decline. Forbes' referral traffic is down about 45% year over year, and Gould called the large AI platforms "a black box." Forbes tracks citations with Profound, but says publishers lack granular insight into how LLM platforms use their work. Gould described the pilot as "a chance for us to learn without having to expend the resources to do the experimentation ourselves." Forbes is also shifting toward loyalty and direct audience building, including personalized homepages, newsletter sections and brand partnerships that use citation data.
Forbes is being paid to run Google's experiment on Forbes' own audience, and Gould says the terms stay private. That is a fair trade only if the learning flows both ways, and she admits the platforms are a black box. For brands, the takeaway is blunt. If publishers cannot see how AI surfaces their work, neither can you. Build direct audience first, and treat AI citations as a bonus channel you cannot yet measure.
A paid pilot trades money and data access for learning. The useful question for any platform partnership is who gets the insight. If the platform sees the results and the publisher only sees a check, the experiment benefits one side.
A Google name tied to this edition's AI story, framed as something to watch and not a pick.
Alphabet (GOOGL): The Platform Behind the Pilot
Alphabet is the company on the other side of the Forbes story. Google runs the News AI pilot that pays publishers for expanded content rights, and it sits at the center of the question publishers keep asking about AI answers and referral traffic. GOOGL closed Oct. 20, 2026 at $340.28, down 1.13% on the day.
The valuation figures below come from a live Oct. 22 snapshot on StockAnalysis.com, not the edition date. At that snapshot the shares traded at $323.47, below the close shown here. StockAnalysis lists a Strong Buy consensus from 62 analysts. Dividend yield is small at 0.27%. This is a name to watch for how AI search changes ad and publisher economics, not a recommendation.
Publishers are paid to test Google's AI features while their traffic falls, which tells you who holds the leverage. The price action is a reminder that the market is also re-pricing that power. For us this is a watch item: follow whether paid pilots like this scale past 400 publishers and whether referral traffic stabilizes. If it does, the AI search story gets simpler. If not, expect more of these deals.
⚠️ Not investment advice. Verify independently before any decision.
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