The Marketer’s Storybook: Home, Power, and the New Currency of Believability
This week’s stories show brands navigating a shifting power dynamic. Meaning is no longer assigned by scale, spend, or spectacle, but by credibility, authorship, and emotional truth. From Airbnb turning “home” into competitive advantage for Olympians, to Dollar Shave Club choosing defiance over censorship, to legacy brands remixing culture with humor, family, and self-awareness, the strongest work is grounded in intention. At the same time, leadership volatility, AI’s creative ceiling, and public feuds doubling as performance marketing reveal how fragile trust has become when visibility outpaces accountability. The throughline is clear. In 2026, brands win by being legible, human, and deliberately on one side of the story.
Intrigued? Let’s dive in!
This Week’s Marketing Stories
A curated mix of breaking news, insights, and trends, each with actionable takeaways to inspire your brand storytelling.
1) Airbnb turns “home” into competitive advantage for Olympians
Ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Airbnb released a documentary-led campaign that reframes accommodation as performance infrastructure. The mini-series follows athletes supported by Airbnb’s Travel Grant and Airbnb500 programs, showing how access to the right space reduces friction during long training periods. Kitchens, garages, and bathrooms double as training grounds, reinforcing the idea that stability, not spectacle, fuels elite performance.
The centerpiece, a 15-minute in-house film titled Bring It Home, focuses on athletes whose preparation is shaped by constant travel and isolation. Rather than celebrating destinations, Airbnb centers emotional grounding, positioning “home” as a functional advantage rather than a lifestyle perk. The work extends Airbnb’s long-standing platform into elite sport without forcing brand presence into the narrative.
Key Takeaway: When your product removes friction, tell stories about what people can finally concentrate on once the obstacle disappears. Read more
2) Spencer Stuart shows how the CMO role is stretching, not shrinking
A new report from Spencer Stuart highlights a structural shift in senior marketing leadership. Average CMO tenure at S&P 500 companies sits at 4.1 years, shorter than most C-suite roles, yet exits increasingly reflect expansion rather than failure. Nearly two-thirds of CMOs who left between 2021 and 2025 moved into equal or larger roles, including CEO, chief commercial officer, and chief revenue officer positions.
The data suggests the mandate itself is changing. As growth, technology, and customer experience converge, companies are redesigning leadership roles through “CMO-plus” titles that absorb revenue and commercial accountability. While this evolution creates opportunity, it also raises risk when narrative ownership is not clearly defined and brand strategy resets too often.
Key Takeaway: Short tenure does not always signal instability. But without clear narrative stewardship, ambition can quietly erode long-term brand coherence. Read more
3) Little Black Book turns Super Bowl ads into an open cultural archive
The best part of the Super Bowl – besides the Patriots being in it this year? The commercials, obviously! While I go through all of these and work on my annual write up of storytelling lessons from my favorites, I wanted to share this roundup from Little Black Book in the event you want to watch all of them too.
Enjoy – and do let me know which ones are your favorites! Read more
4) Dollar Shave Club turns Super Bowl rejection into brand proof
After NBCUniversal rejected Dollar Shave Club’s “Bullshit Meter” spot for profanity, the brand chose not to censor or soften the work. Instead, it pivoted away from the Super Bowl entirely, launching the campaign across connected TV, social, and targeted digital channels aligned with its audience expectations.
The decision reinforced the brand’s original positioning. Rather than chasing validation from the biggest stage, Dollar Shave Club used rejection as narrative fuel, turning constraint into credibility. The campaign calls out exaggerated category claims while positioning the brand as willing to walk away from reach to protect tone and truth.
Key Takeaway: Stay true to your core values. Walking away sometimes communicates more than showing up. Read more
5) Jacquemus names its grandmother as the brand’s first ambassador
Simon Porte Jacquemus appointed his 79-year-old grandmother, Liline Jacquemus, as the fashion house’s first official brand ambassador, formalizing a truth longtime followers already understood. Family, memory, and southern French roots have always shaped the brand’s aesthetic and emotional core.
The rollout emphasized intimacy over aspiration. Shot at the designer’s family home and paired with a playful list of “ambassador rules,” the campaign reframed exclusivity as devotion rather than fame. Heritage was presented as lived experience, not archived mythology.
Key Takeaway: When heritage is genuine, putting it on camera builds more belief than borrowing cultural status. Read more
6) JCPenney turns breakups into brand theater with The Ex-Change
For Valentine’s Day, JCPenney launched a one-day in-store event inviting customers to trade jewelry from past relationships for a new lab-grown diamond necklace. No appraisals, no receipts, no explanations. Just a clean emotional reset paired with a tangible reward.
The activation works because it respects the emotional moment customers are in. Humor, low friction, and a charitable donation of surrendered items turned personal baggage into a ritual of renewal. Commerce became supportive rather than transactional.
Key Takeaway: When brands reduce emotional friction, transactions feel generous instead of extractive. Read more
7) Jet-Puffed gives marshmallows a darkly joyful personality
Jet-Puffed’s “Love ’Em to Death” campaign leans into an uncomfortable truth: marshmallows exist to be destroyed. Instead of pristine food styling, the brand anthropomorphizes marshmallows as cheerful characters eager to be roasted, squashed, and melted.
Developed with Gut Miami, the work marks a shift from category familiarity to distinct voice. In a shelf crowded with generics, Jet-Puffed differentiates by dramatizing usage, not ingredients. Purpose becomes personality.
Key Takeaway: When functional differences are thin, honesty about how people actually use the product creates memorability. Read more
8) AI beats average creativity but stalls at excellence
A large-scale study of more than 100,000 participants found AI systems outperform the average human on structured creativity tests, while still falling short of top creative talent. The research shows AI excels at recombination and speed, but struggles with originality driven by lived experience and emotional risk.
The finding reframes the debate. Generative tools raise the baseline for ideation, but they do not replace judgment, taste, or breakthrough thinking. Creativity is being redistributed, not eliminated.
Key Takeaway: AI makes starting easier, not finishing better. Human judgment remains the differentiator at the top end of creativity. Read more
9) Ryanair turns an online feud into measurable demand
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary credited a public spat with Elon Musk for a 2–3 percent increase in ticket sales over five days. The exchange followed Musk’s suggestion that Ryanair adopt Starlink Wi-Fi, which O’Leary rejected on cost and ROI grounds. The airline amplified the moment with characteristic irreverence – and some clever social posts.
What made the moment effective was grounding spectacle in economics. Installation costs, fuel impact, and low passenger willingness to pay reframed the feud as business logic rather than noise. Attention translated into bookings.
Key Takeaway: Public conflict converts when it is tied to clear economics, not just personality. Read more
10) McDonald’s turns a meme into a Valentine’s Day product drop
McDonald’s is formalizing a long-running internet joke with limited-edition McNugget Caviar kits, pairing its nuggets with premium sturgeon caviar. Released via a free, timed drop, the kits include all the cues of fine dining alongside the brand’s most familiar product.
The success lies in recognition. McDonald’s did not invent the behavior; it legitimized one fans already performed. Irony, aspiration, and accessibility collapsed into a single moment of sanctioned play.
Key Takeaway: When customers have already made your product cultural, formalizing the behavior scales faster than inventing something new. Read more
My Stories
The Unexpected Career Lessons My Side Project Taught Me
What started as a personal blog in 2006, launched without a strategy or career ambition, quietly reshaped everything that followed in my professional life. In this piece, I reflect on how a side project taught me to ship before I was ready, understand audiences from the inside out, and recognize storytelling as a career path long before it had a title. Read more
New on My London Guide: 5 Places You’ll Love
This latest update to my London Guide leans unapologetically indulgent. From a conveyor belt devoted entirely to British cheese to Italian restaurants worth crossing the city for, these five additions celebrate food, atmosphere, and places that are genuinely fun to spend time in. Read more
NH Torino Centro: A Practical, Comfortable Base in Turin
I stayed one night at the NH Torino Centro after an early flight from London and found it to be a reliable, no-fuss choice near Porta Susa train station. The room was clean, spacious, and well set up for work, with a solid desk, strong air conditioning, and a comfortable bed. Wi-Fi handled large uploads and a Zoom call without issue, and the lobby bar worked well as a secondary workspace. Breakfast was generous and well executed, offering a wide range of sweet and savory options. While the hotel shows some age in places, it delivers where it counts: location, comfort, and efficiency.
Unlock More of My Stories
🌍 Website: JessicaGioglio.com Your one-stop shop for all my books, speaking engagements, and blog posts on marketing and storytelling.
📚 Books:
- The Power of Visual Storytelling: Learn how to shape a visual story around your brand using images, videos, GIFs, infographics, and more. Get your copy here.
- The Laws of Brand Storytelling: The definitive guide to using storytelling to win over customers’ hearts, minds, and loyalty. Grab it here.
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Until Next Time
Thank you for being part of this journey. Whether you’re here for marketing trends, storytelling inspiration, or both, I’m so grateful to have you along for the ride.
Jessica Gioglio is the co-author of The Laws of Brand Storytelling and The Power of Visual Storytelling. Professionally, Jessica has led innovative marketing and public relations programs for Dunkin’, TripAdvisor, Sprinklr, and more. Today, Jessica is a keynote speaker (book her here) and founder of With Savvy Media & Marketing, a strategic branding, storytelling, and content strategy consultancy.