Sydney Sweeney’s “Just Sports” Campaign Starts a Marketing Conversation Beyond Sports
BY Grace Turney September 17, 2026Novig, a sports prediction market, just launched its first national “Just Sports” campaign, starring Sydney Sweeney. The Euphoria star is not only the face of the campaign, but also a strategic partner and equity holder. One ad shows Sweeney posing with sports equipment just barely covering her nude body. Some female athletes have called it a step backward for how women’s sports are marketed.Novig’s marketing tactic isn’t anything new. Brands have long used shock value and celebrity endorsements to grab attention and generate buzz. But the visual language the company chose is doing more than catching the eye of sports fans who happen to like Sydney Sweeney. It’s become part of an ongoing conversation about how women’s sports are depicted in the media.In a press release announcing the campaign, Novig described it as a way to present its “Just Sports” message with “confidence, humor and a playful edge.” As Sweeney’s ad circulated widely online, backlash was swift. The overall consensus is that the ad has little to nothing to do with sports trading, and instead primarily highlights Sweeney’s body. Female athletes are among the loudest critics.Four-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Ariarne Titmus called out Novig’s marketing for sexualizing women’s sports. “I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” she wrote on Instagram, per The Guardian. She added that the ad undermines every woman who has built her career on skill rather than image, and questioned why monetizing women’s bodies still passes as acceptable marketing.Former college gymnast Gracie Kramer also took to Instagram to criticize the ad. She posted a highlight reel of her own athletic career, captioning it with a line aimed squarely at the Novig campaign: “idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.”This is not Sweeney’s first time facing controversy for a marketing campaign. Selling soap made from her bath water in a partnership with Dr. Squatch garnered criticism for what some deemed vulgar exploitation. Her series of short video ads for American Eagle similarly used her sexuality as a marketing ploy. In one clip, Sweeney said, “My body’s composition is determined by my genes.” The camera then panned down to her chest, and she said, “Hey, eyes up here.” For marketers, the Novig campaign offers a case study in a tactic that’s becoming increasingly common: using controversy as a way to drive engagement. Novig set out to build a reputation as a platform for serious sports fans, but the campaign has generated conversation well beyond the world of sports trading. Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle campaign and Novig’s latest campaign suggest a broader pattern in celebrity marketing: sex appeal can be an effective way to capture attention, while also creating reputational risk when the underlying message is perceived as regressive.The bigger risk for brands isn’t the backlash itself, but what the backlash reveals about audience trust. A campaign can rack up engagement and still erode the thing marketers actually need long-term: the sense that a brand understands and respects the people it’s trying to reach. As more companies lean on star power to break through a crowded feed, the Sweeney campaigns are becoming a reference point for what happens when a “bold” creative choice reads as out of touch instead.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photot by ElenaMist/iStock)
Innovative Benefits for a Workforce with Diverse Needs
BY Katie Chambers September 17, 2026The 10,000 employees at Seattle Children’s Hospital are made up of a wide variety of professionals: nurses, physicians, environmental service technicians, facilities workers, supply chain employees, administrative support teams, researchers, and foundation fundraisers—to name just a few. Because of this diversity of experience and demographics, the organization needs a flexible, comprehensive benefits program that can serve them all. As workforces become more multigenerational, distributed, and varied in their needs, employers are looking beyond traditional medical and dental offerings to build benefits programs that support workers more holistically. During a fireside chat at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Keturah Hallmosley, deputy CHRO at Seattle Children's Hospital, shared how she is building benefits for the frontline workforce, using worker feedback to shape offerings and exploring creative approaches to healthcare, childcare, transportation, recognition, and more.Understanding the Diverse WorkforceSeattle Children’s tiered benefits structure was designed eight years ago. “Everyone has a very different family makeup, a different pay structure, and so [what] our benefit tiered structure does best [is] to meet employees where they’re at. And so, if you make more, you pay more,” Hallmosley said. “[We] want to make sure that we are continuing to evolve our benefits for the needs of what our employees have shared, and also make sure we’re aligning to the market, and this particular strategy really does help us do that.”Her team finds that AI has helped them better understand and respond to employees’ needs. In addition to launching Google Gemini organization-wide, “we have an interactive tool as well that’s specific to benefits.” The tool lets employees ask what their current benefits are, how they change, and provide family details to see how to best utilize what is on offer.Keturah Hallmosley of Seattle Children's Hospital spoke with moderator Corinne Lestch journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop (photo by From Day One) “One of the challenges that we have today is that sometimes we get so much feedback, it’s hard to compile it into themes and be more direct and honest about what we are able to do and what we are not able to do,” Hallmosley said. “This year, we are in the process of implementing a new [AI] tool that will help employees to understand what’s right for them, and then also we’ll be able to look at the information from a trends and themes perspective to proactively think about what ways we can continue to evolve our benefits.” Building a Robust Benefits PackageIn addition to comprehensive medical and dental offerings, Hallmosley says Seattle Children’s offers additional options to fit the lives and varied generations of its workers, such as pet insurance and childcare and eldercare benefits. The employee assistance program can also be used to confidentially discuss options like mental health support or legal counseling. And while it may not fall in the traditional “benefits” category, Hallmosley acknowledges other perks that come with working at Seattle Children’s and can help attract, engage, and retain employees. “We have a very large community presence, so that’s where we partner with the engagement and retention team. If you go to this restaurant, you have these options. If you go to this gym, there are these options. The team thinks about it from a holistic perspective,” she said. There’s a staff member dedicated to focusing on well-being, and the organization launched a tool called Wellable, which links up with your smartwatch and tracks well-being activities. “You get points [and] when you’re at the top, you get entered into our system that we use for recognition to get some additional points, and you can cash those in for Seattle Children's Apparel as well as gift cards,” Hallmosley said. “I appreciate that pairing of well-being and recognition to reward individuals for taking care of themselves.” The team continuously tracks engagement in partnership with the vendor, teaches employees about the app during orientation, mentions it in employee forums, and offers competition events to encourage usage. Of course, the world of benefits is changing as rapidly as our culture. “Is there any sense of what direction the priorities are going to go in, or if there’s going to be any change in headwinds on the benefits front?” asked moderator Corinne Lestch, journalist and founder of the Off-Site Writing Workshop.“At this point in time, I think what people are looking at is, ‘What is the whole benefits package?’” Hallmosley said. That means covering every phase of life from children’s healthcare through retirement. “Where we’re working to be different is making sure that we’re being deliberate [in] involving our inclusion networks and also making sure that we’re gathering feedback from front lines. I think the challenge for us is that there is no shortage of ideas around how benefits can improve, and being able to communicate what is possible versus what is something that we cannot invest in is an item that we’re constantly challenged with.” Investing in the Future of the WorkforceFor full-time frontline workers, Seattle Children’s offers the same full package it allows everyone else, including tuition reimbursement and retirement options. “We are very intentional in helping people understand that Seattle Children’s can be a career for you,” Hallmosley said. “We have a multigenerational workforce, which is not uncommon, but I think being deliberate about the different needs and communicating that to our frontline employees is really important.” The organization also recognizes the unique challenges and opportunities of working in Seattle. The benefits and transportation teams work closely together to support carpooling, automatic deposits for Orca cards for public transportation, or even provide “commute bonuses” for those who work remotely.Going forward, Hallmosley and her team see “there is opportunity to continue to listen and to see what is possible and what we continue to build upon.” This can be a challenge, given rising costs. “We work hard to make sure that if we can’t do a particular coverage or benefit option, [that we] identify what might help meet individuals in the middle around covering medications or covering services, even if we can’t look at the whole package.” This individualized service within such a large organization is one of the things that sets them apart. “Our benefits team is very cued into if an employee is struggling, and [thinking], ‘How can we partner to figure that out?’ Always looking to say ‘yes,’ even if it’s not ‘yes’ to the whole thing. It’s listening and being creative about what's possible.” Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by Unaihuiziphotography/iStock)
The Benefits Gap: Why Wellness Dollars Aren't Reaching Employees
BY Kristen Kwiatkowski September 16, 2026Wellness dollars are intended to give workers access to valuable benefits, but too often they go unused. How can organizations make sure those dollars actually reach workers and deliver value?During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Tray Ross, VP of growth at Corporate Traditions, an employee recognition and gifting company, shared how companies can help their employees know about these benefits and how to use them to their advantage. “We have leaders telling us they have wellness credits built into the plan, but half the team doesn’t even know they exist,” said Ross. Beyond workers not knowing wellness credits exist, companies report that wellness apps often see low adoption and redemption catalogs don’t always offer what people want. As a result, the wellness dollars expire unused, employees get another login they don’t want, and there tends to be a catalog that employees don’t peruse or simply don’t want the items.How to Get Wellness Rewards to EmployeesTray Ross, VP of Growth at Corporate Traditions, led the session about "The Benefits Gap: Why Wellness Dollars Aren't Reaching Employees" (company photo)These unused benefits come with real costs, from delayed recognition to paying for duplicate benefits without getting full credit for what HR provides. But there are ways to close the gap. Organizations can close the gap by making rewards easy to access: no app required, meaningful choice in what workers receive, and rewards delivered as soon as the activity is completed.It’s also important to ensure that the carrier-administered wellness funds go through a single-step redemption process and get the rewards in the hands of employees as soon as possible, says Ross. This can be accomplished by having the employees record their activities and progress and submit them for rewards close to when they earn it.Closing the Unused Benefits GapOrganizations can take four steps to close the gap: identify expiring rewards, tie rewards directly to activities and distribute them soon after, offer a wide range of choices, and use a single platform for accessing wellness rewards.“With Corporate Traditions, the access that they have is one link or one code to be able to copy and redeem,” said Ross. “They can access the catalogs, whether it’s on their phone, their tablet, or their computer and they've got millions of options.”Even if organizations would rather not give away gift cards, Corporate Traditions partners with online retailers to offer expansive options to individuals wanting to use their wellness rewards. “Employees can get the specific item they want from their favorite vendor and have it shipped directly to them with the same warranties; it shows up in the same box as if they were to buy it off of their favorite online platform themselves,” said Ross. “And by employees getting physical, tangible items, it qualifies as a de minimis fringe benefit.”However organizations choose to offer wellness rewards, it’s important that workers receive notice of their reward right away and can redeem it quickly and easily. Delays or a complicated redemption process can lead to rewards going unused, leaving wellness dollars on the table. Ross also encouraged organizational leaders to talk with their carriers about available wellness benefits, particularly if they haven’t used them before. Some companies may not even know these benefits exist or what they include.When rewards are earned and redeemed soon after, companies can put their wellness dollars to work while ensuring workers actually receive the benefits.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Corporate Traditions, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Kristen Kwiatkowski is a professional freelance writer covering a wide array of industries, with a focus on food and beverage and business. Her work has been featured in the Bucks County Herald, Eater Philly, Edible Lehigh Valley, Cider Culture, and The Town Dish.(Photo by Viorel Kurnosov/iStock)
The Caregiving Continuum: Meeting the Needs of a Multigenerational Workforce
BY Jessica Swenson September 15, 2026Nearly one in four adults provides ongoing care for someone they love, says Lisa Leighton, chief commercial officer at Cariloop, making caregiving an increasingly important workforce issue. “Caregiving touches every generation in the workforce,” she said.And because it affects “how employees show up, how they stay at work, how they use their benefits,” she believes this type of support should be more than a niche offering. She sees it as “a fundamental workforce and benefits priority” that cannot be addressed by supporting only one population or need at a time.During a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s September virtual conference, she emphasized that caregiving is a human experience that doesn’t happen in a tidy, predictable pattern; rather, these needs often overlap and can arrive unexpectedly. Leighton embraces Cariloop’s core philosophy that caregiving is continuous and concurrent, with needs ranging across people’s careers from pre-childbirth to caring for aging parents, and everything in between. Employees are trying to balance these demands with their workloads on a daily basis, she says, creating hidden costs that companies may not even realize they are incurring. Citing research showing that “more than 80% of employees with caregiving responsibilities say that caregiving affects their productivity” she acknowledged that employers are already paying for the impacts of caregiving roles among their employee populations through absenteeism, presenteeism, burnout, reduced hours, and turnover.Lisa Leighton, Chief Commercial Officer at Cariloop, led the session (company photo)“Supporting caregivers isn’t just a nice to have or a feel-good benefit,” Leighton said. “It's removing a very real barrier between employees and their ability to be present and productive at work.”However, she cautions against simply expanding your company’s benefits portfolio with more vendors and services without including tactical support to help navigate what is available. “We have made the benefits ecosystem and the employee experience so sophisticated at the exact same time where employees’ lives have become more complicated, so too often employees are trying to connect dots themselves,” she said. Employers may offer robust benefits, but employees are trying to solve a problem, and “that distinction really matters when you think about how we are evolving and communicating our benefits to our people,” she said. It’s important to improve employee access to existing benefits when they actually need them, not just add more layers.Caregiving situations are rarely introduced with a clear statement of benefits needs. Rather, they arrive with an open-ended, multi-pronged problem to solve. Cariloop’s model uses a four-step approach to support employees through the process. Personal care coaches work one-on-one with employees to help assess the situation, navigate available benefits, and build a plan. “Sometimes the most valuable thing you can give somebody isn’t just another website or a link to another solution. It’s a knowledgeable person in your corner,” she said. They also help users move from the research phase to locate and secure the care needed, and can initiate flexible backup care to address immediate disruptions. The personal care coaches connect members to the existing benefits that can fulfill their needs, rather than replacing them with something more complex. “Our goal isn’t to replace every single benefit that you’re offering. It’s actually to help your people understand where those resources fit into their caregiving journeys and how we can help them navigate.”This type of model drives value not just for the employee but also for employers, says Leighton. The value to employees is of course personal: less time spent searching, less ambiguity, and a knowledgeable guide. “It’s helping them make what feels like a very impossible situation feel more manageable.”Employer value includes less distraction, improved productivity, and a strong culture of care that helps employees maximize their use of available benefits. She encourages the use of broader questions, rather than a single metric, to evaluate the value of caregiving support. “I like to ask our clients ‘How much employee time did we get back? How many complex situations did we help resolve? How did your people feel using the benefit?’” To help organizations evaluate their own approach, Leighton suggested asking whether they understand the caregiving needs across their workforce, what unsupported caregiving is already costing them, and whether an employee who suddenly becomes a caregiver would know where to turn for help.She encourages leaders to design this programming around how people experience life, rather than focusing exclusively on the benefits. Think about what happens at transition points like starting a new job, having a baby, supporting aging parents, or retiring, and “weave caregiving into all of those moments across the employee lifecycle.”“Your people don’t wake up every single day thinking about benefit strategy. They wake up thinking about their lives. When they’ve got somebody in their corner to help them, they have more capacity for everything else, including their work and especially their families,” said Leighton.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Cariloop, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photo by svetikd/iStock)
Open Enrollment at a Time of Rising Costs and New Technology
BY Ade Akin September 15, 2026Kim Duck spent most of her time opening mail and processing papers when she started her career as a benefits analyst at Dow Jones in 2021. Twenty-five years later, she now oversees benefits for a global media empire operating in 44 countries. What set Duck apart was her curiosity. She asked questions nobody else wanted to ask. “If you have that question, someone else on your team also probably has that question,” Duck said. “There’s no bad question you can ask other than the one that you don’t ask.”Duck, now the VP of global benefits at News Corp, shared her career-long philosophy during a fireside chat at From Day One's September virtual conference. The session, “Open Enrollment at a Time of Rising Costs and New Technology,” was moderated by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, a business reporter at The Seattle Times.A Portfolio of Brands, a Universe of Benefits ChallengesNews Corp may not be a household name, but many of its brands are. The company owns The Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins Publishing, the New York Post, Barron's, and Realtor.com, among others. Duck says she leads with three words that define the company’s ethos: passionate, principled, and purposeful. “You have to be passionate,” she said. “You have to love the ability to jump in with two feet and to help someone. You’re going to get on a call, or you’re going to get an email, and you don’t know what it’s about, but you have to be able to be excited about what you do every day.” For Duck, being principled means "doing the right thing all the time," especially when benefits teams must fix mistakes that affect employees' lives. For her, being purposeful means having a long-term strategy, such as planning benefits three to five years out with CFOs or entering union negotiations with a clear vision.The Hardest Renewal Season in YearsThis year, News Corp is conducting its first active enrollment in 10 to 12 years. The shift matters because employees have grown accustomed to benefits rolling over automatically. Duck’s team plans to spend weeks educating workers on their options, combating the misconception that paying more always means getting better coverage.Technology is central to that effort. “The experience you have from a benefits perspective and the experience you have in your shopping and the whole rest of your life; they shouldn’t be different,” she said. That means jargon-free communication.Kim Duck of News Corp spoke with journalist Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton during the virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Additionally, Duck’s long-range planning ability is now colliding with the worst cost cycle she has seen in years. “This is the hardest year that we’ve had in many years,” she said. “Many of us are facing double-digit increases, which wasn’t necessarily the case in the last two to three to five years.”The increases she’s referring to are the cost of health coverage for employees. Three main forces are driving costs up: employees are using more care benefits post-Covid, healthcare services are more expensive, and new, pricier treatments are entering the market. Boyanton provided data illustrating the national trend. She cited an Aon projection that U.S. employers will pay almost 10% more per employee for health coverage next year, pushing the average annual cost of covering one worker above $19,000. Facing these rising costs, benefits teams are reassessing their benefits plans. “We’ve all started looking at our plan designs and reassessing: is this fit for purpose going forward?” Duck added.Any answer lands on employees in one of two ways. Raising what workers contribute from each paycheck spreads the increase across the whole workforce because everyone pays it. Tightening plan design by raising deductibles, raising copays, and dropping covered services falls mainly on people who actually use care. That tension is the job. “How does this impact us as a company? But what does this actually mean to our employees?”GLP-1s and Emerging Benefits: Balancing Cost and CareNo conversation about rising costs is complete without addressing GLP-1 medications. Duck acknowledges that the topic is top of mind for every benefits professional. The challenge is twofold: the drugs themselves are expensive, and the eligible population is expanding.“Employers, for the first time, are having to take a really hard look at whether they can even consider continuing the coverage,” she said. Those that do are exploring lowest net unit pricing, BMI thresholds, and wraparound wellness programs that address nutrition and behavior change.The numbers tell a story of rapid retreat. The share of employers covering GLP-1 drugs for weight management fell from 72% in 2025 to 60% in 2026, according to Business Group on Health. Just under 15% of employers have already dropped coverage or plan to do so by 2027, up from 10% earlier this year. Pharmacy now accounts for roughly 25% of employers' total healthcare spending, with drug costs projected to rise by 12%.Like in the case of GLP-1s, employers have often raced to adopt point solutions. Duck loves the innovation of these vendors, working to solve specific health challenges, but foresees a correction coming. Duck describes the shift as a pivot toward intentionality: “If we’re going to spend the money, we want to know that it's the right product at the right time. It’s going to hit the right people.”Innovations in Health PlansNews Corp has embraced two structural alternatives. The first is Centivo, an alternative healthcare plan that focuses on primary care within hospital systems. Duck compared it to an old-school health maintenance organization (HMO), but with expansive networks such as Mount Sinai in New York and RWJBarnabas in New Jersey.“Employees really struggle with that,” she said. “They think it must be a worse plan because I can only see these doctors.” But the trade-off includes no deductible, low copays, and some free services, all at a reduced payroll contribution. “It’s kind of a win-win, but it’s a slow burn,” Duck added.The second innovation involves transparent pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). News Corp issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for its prescription carrier, hoping to move from one of the “big three” to a smaller, more transparent option. The numbers didn’t work out this time, but Duck believes the direction is inevitable.“The black box of prescription coverage and how it determines what your payment is—I think that’s going to be a thing of the past,” she said. New Tech in BenefitsAI is already transforming Duck’s daily work. She uses Gemini to locate lost emails in seconds rather than spending 15 to 20 minutes digging through her inbox. However, the far greater potential lies in aggregation.With nearly 20 point solutions under management, Duck’s team conducts dozens of annual reviews. AI can synthesize those conversations and highlight relevant themes.“The human brain can’t comprehend that and pull it together,” she said. “AI is going to help us have succinct conversations, to bring it to the forefront and be very pointed.” The result, Duck believes, is a more articulate benefits professional walking into leadership meetings.When asked for a go-to tool she can't work without, Duck didn’t hesitate to mention Slack. News Corp’s brands operate on different technologies, and Slack provides a common channel for benefits teams across Dow Jones, HarperCollins, the New York Post, and News UK.A Look AheadDespite cost pressures, Duck remains optimistic. She compared this moment in time to the Affordable Care Act era, when many predicted benefits would cease to exist. Instead, the profession adapted. In Duck’s view, artificial intelligence will strengthen decision-making and foster greater vendor accountability. “If you care enough about this and you’re intentional about what you’re doing, you can weather those tough years and still position yourselves as being the employer of choice,” she said. At their core, benefits continue to fulfill two essential roles: attracting top talent and retaining key employees, making distinct offerings critical. News Corp’s partnership with DoorDash, for example, gives employees a break from cooking on busy days. And GLP-1 coverage itself could become a recruitment tool, Duck suggests, for companies willing to keep it.“You weather the storm,” she added. “Do it smartly, and do it with heart.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by paripat niyantang/iStock)
How Employers Are Rethinking Worker Well-Being
BY Grace Turney September 14, 2026Tim Leier’s household runs on two directions of care at once. He looks after a parent and a child; his manager does the same for a parent, a child, and a grandchild. Leier, director of HR international benefits at Ecolab, described his own “sandwich generation” experience and said the company has leaned into on-site healthcare, wellness providers, and caregiving support that spans generations.It’s the kind of arrangement benefits leaders now build entire strategies around, as employees across multiple generations and life stages bring different needs, responsibilities, and expectations to the workplace.That reality was the starting point for a panel on holistic and inclusive well-being strategies for a multigenerational workforce at From Day One’s September virtual conference. “I believe this is the first time we have five generations working side by side in the workforce,” said session moderator Courtney Vinopal, a senior reporter for HR Brew. Populations Are Bigger Than Age GroupsThe panelists agreed early on that generation alone rarely explains what an employee needs. Jacki Schwartz, a global people solutions business partner at Concentrix, says her company of roughly 450,000 employees worldwide focuses less on age and more on life circumstances such as caregiving, family status, and financial well-being. “We approach it from a lens of inclusion and flexibility,” she said.That view held across industries. Julie Lawrence, VP, HR business partner, at ISS Facility Services, says that about 80% of her company’s workforce delivers services directly at client sites. With the majority of our workforce serving clients in operational environments, ISS has focused on creating an omnichannel employee experience that meets employees where they are. Whether through mobile technology, multilingual communications, manager-led engagement, or digital self-service tools, our goal is to ensure every employee has equitable access to information and support regardless of work locationMamie Wheaton, CFP, CFDA, CCC, and director of financial planning at LearnLux, put a finer point on it: two employees from the same generation can have completely different financial situations, so her team weighs life stage, income, and financial complexity ahead of age. “We don’t assume that someone’s generation tells us exactly what their financial needs are,” Wheaton said.The Importance of Supporting CaregiversSupporting workers with caregiving responsibilities also comes with difficult decisions about how much employers can afford to provide. Leier says the company has been looking for ways to provide meaningful support while keeping a close eye on costs. “The money’s not growing on trees, so we’re getting a lot of pressure every day to make sure we’re not overspending,” he said.Panelists spoke about "Holistic and Inclusive Well-Being Strategies for a Multigenerational Workforce" during the virtual conference (photo by From Day One)Lawrence also pointed to the growing need to support workers as they balance caregiving with their own health needs. ISS Facility Services introduced women’s health benefits covering reproductive care and menopause, along with specific benefits supporting men’s health, as employees navigate caregiving responsibilities alongside their own health needs, she says. “They’re not only trying to take care of kids at home or aging parents, but they also need to be prioritizing their own health,” Lawrence said. “We view well-being as both a people strategy and a business strategy. When employees have access to resources that support their health, financial wellness, and caregiving responsibilities, it contributes to engagement, retention, attendance, and ultimately the quality of service we deliver to our clients,” she said. Personalizing Choice Without Creating OverloadEvery panelist described some version of the same tension: employees want choice, but too many options create confusion. At Concentrix, leaders use a tiered flex benefit system paired with an AI-enabled benefits portal so employees can ask questions and select what applies to their families, says Schwartz. Leier said Ecolab is looking for opportunities to offer evergreen elections, so employees who are happy with their choices don’t have to revisit them every year. But even a well-designed benefit only helps if employees know it exists, the panelists agreed. Wheaton described sending LearnLux teams directly into manufacturing facilities to reach shift workers, planning around shift changes and offering support in other languages, including Spanish, rather than relying solely on a benefits website. Leier says Ecolab has found some shift workers prefer an on-site kiosk while some office employees favor a mobile app, so the company avoids a one-size-fits-all channel. He added that Ecolab wants personalization to remain associate-driven rather than relying too heavily on AI, and that the company is cautious about using AI for decisions involving HIPAA or other regulatory considerations.Cost Pressure Is Reshaping Every DecisionWith health care costs continuing to put pressure on benefits budgets, the panelists described approaches including preventive care, simpler access to benefits, and financial guidance to help employees make informed choices. “We focus on simplifying the employee experience because benefits only create value when employees can easily navigate and utilize them. Reducing fragmentation improves access, drives greater utilization, and helps ensure we’re maximizing our investment while delivering meaningful support to employees,” said Lawrence. Wheaton noted that LearnLux increasingly helps employees weigh premiums against deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums so they choose a plan suited to their actual needs rather than defaulting to the cheapest option.Utilization Isn’t the Only Measure of SuccessAsked how they judge whether a benefit is working, the panelists pushed back on relying solely on usage data. Leier, who described himself as “a recovering actuary,” said Ecolab’s employee assistance program has modest everyday participation but proved essential during crises in Ukraine and Venezuela, when utilization spiked sharply. Schwartz described bringing a leave-administration process back in-house after employee surveys showed the outsourced version added stress during already difficult moments, a decision driven by sentiment rather than usage numbers.Looking ahead, Wheaton predicted that the biggest shift will be rising expectations for personalization, as employees accustomed to tailored experiences elsewhere in their lives expect the same from their benefits. For a workforce spanning multiple generations and life stages, that growing expectation for personalization may be one of the most important challenges, and opportunities, facing benefits leaders.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by AKart Design/iStock)
Ghost Jobs Are About to Get Expensive for Employers
BY Grace Turney September 09, 2026Ghost jobs, online job listings for positions that do not actually exist or that a company has no immediate intention of filling, are becoming more than just an annoyance for job seekers. While eager applicants took the time to personalize and submit their resumes, portfolios, and cover letters, anxiously hoping for a call that could lead to their dream job, the company was really looking to build a talent pipeline, signify growth, placate current employees, or meet compliance rules. But ghost jobs may no longer help companies fulfill compliance requirements, and are turning into a compliance risk.New York’s Senate Bill S8877, which passed the state legislature in June and was delivered to Gov. Kathy Hochul, would fine employers $2,500 per publication or digital platform for failing to disclose real hiring intent. If the bill passes, it would have a major impact on the job market, for both hiring companies and job seekers alike.Ghost jobs have gone from an open secret to a measurable epidemic. Criteria Corp’s 2026 Candidate Experience Report shows that more than half, 53%, of job seekers experienced ghosting within the last year. That figure comes amid a three-year rise in employer ghosting: 48% of applicants were ignored by employers in 2025, up from 38% in 2024, according to Fortune. Pennsylvania’s proposed Ghost Job Postings Prevention Act and Ontario’s new job posting requirements (effective Jan. 1) indicate that this isn’t a one-state phenomenon. Other states, including California and New Jersey, are considering anti-ghost job legislation, as well.Meanwhile, employers are facing another challenge: application volume. Robert Half reported that 67% of HR leaders say AI-generated applications are slowing hiring. The volume problem that makes ghost postings tempting (pipeline-building, optics of growth) is intensifying, not easing.New York’s S8877 would require employers to state in job listings that the post is for a current vacancy with a specific fill date. If they don’t plan to fill the position within 90 days, they must specify that as a “no sooner than” date. Employers would also have to specify if the job is not for a current vacancy but the employer is seeking resumes for potential future openings. Employers and third-party advertisers must take down a job advertisement within two weeks after it’s filled. If companies advertise jobs violating the statute, they could be fined $2,500 for each publication or digital platform where the posting appears, with the fine doubling if the violation is not rectified within 30 days.For HR teams, that means ghost-job compliance could become an operational issue, not just a legal one. Employers would need to know exactly where each job posting is listed, distinguish active openings from pipeline postings, document intended hiring dates, and create processes for removing filled positions from every platform. A job posted simultaneously on a company careers page, LinkedIn, Indeed, and a third-party recruiting site could rack up multiple potential violations from a single stale posting.But the stakes go beyond fines. New research suggests that repeated negative experiences with the labor market can shape how people view work itself. According to a June 2026 NBER working paper, men’s labor-force participation is influenced by beliefs about the returns to working, which are shaped by their experiences with the labor market. Those effects can persist even when men move to different states, and the researchers argue that short-term declines in labor demand can produce long-term declines in labor supply.Ghost jobs are not the only factor influencing those beliefs, and the NBER study does not specifically examine ghost postings. But the implication for employers is worth considering: If workers repeatedly encounter jobs that appear available but never lead anywhere, they may learn that pursuing work is less worthwhile than they once believed.That matters at a time when the labor force is already under pressure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the labor-force participation rate fell to 61.5% in June, while 6 million people who were not in the labor force said they wanted a job. And Lightcast projects that the U.S. could face a shortfall of roughly 6 million workers before the end of the decade.Ghost jobs are evolving from a convenient recruiting tactic into a serious liability with legal, operational, and potentially long-term talent-pipeline consequences. As the competition for workers intensifies, companies may want to think twice before asking candidates to invest their time and trust in a job that was never really there.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, artist, and former librarian. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by FangXiaNuo/iStock)
The Personality Traits That Can Help Workers Move Ahead
BY Ade Akin September 08, 2026For decades, candidates have suspected there’s more to acing interviews than their resume alone. Hiring managers have known it, and the data now supports it. Informal behaviors such as casual conversations, email communication, and rapport with administrative staff may carry more weight than an applicant’s qualifications.According to a recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll for Express Employment Professionals, 91% of U.S. hiring managers say a candidate’s personality is as important as their qualifications, while 86% say preferable personal attributes can compensate for a lack of specific skills. These findings highlight an evolving approach to talent acquisition. Foundational personality traits, like reliability, integrity, and adaptability, are becoming central to recruitment strategies as technical expertise becomes easier to teach and AI tools automate routine responsibilities. The First Conversation Is the Real InterviewThe research shows that initial interactions can significantly influence hiring outcomes. According to the study, around 87% of hiring managers say they decide whether an applicant will thrive at their organization based on their first discussion. Meanwhile, 61% of employers use informal touchpoints, such as pre- or post-interview small talk, messaging tone, and interactions with support staff, to evaluate candidates’ soft skills.Today’s job applicants are aware of this heightened focus on their personality traits. 61% of job seekers express concern regarding how their personal demeanor is perceived, and 94% report having their personalities assessed during the recruitment process through:Informal conversations (47%)Situational inquiry (46%)Behavioral questions (45%)Reference verification (43%)Structured personality assessments (37%)The Traits Employers Value MostHiring managers and job seekers largely agree on the personality traits employers value most. Reliability ranks first, followed by honesty, adaptability, flexibility, self-motivation, and work ethic.The survey cites that 94% of hiring managers and 91% of job seekers say personality shapes how performance is perceived once hired, additionally 99% of hiring managers believe a positive or approachable personality can directly accelerate career advancement, a view shared by job seekers. “Every employee has an effect on the workplace beyond the responsibilities listed in a job description,” Bob Funk Jr., the CEO, president, and chairman of Express Employment International, said. “The right personality can build trust, make change easier to navigate, and raise the standard for how a team works together.” At a time when skill demands are changing rapidly, this can be a positive development for job seekers. While technical skills may become outdated, qualities like reliability, adaptability, and strong work ethic remain valuable, giving candidates an opportunity to stand out by showing employers what they can bring beyond their resumes.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by PixelsEffect/iStock)
How to Plan Holiday Recognition That’s Simple, Scalable, and Actually Meaningful
BY Katie Chambers September 02, 2026A few Decembers ago, Tray Ross, VP of growth at Corporate Traditions, received a very special gift from his company: the option to choose his own company Christmas present. “I got a backpack that I’ve always wanted, but never really had the budget or had the means to purchase. I still use that backpack almost every single day. And every day I pick that backpack up, I flash back to getting that gift, and the holiday party, engaging with the different members of my team,” Ross said during a From Day One webinar. That little gift had a major impact: positive emotion. “It wasn’t anything massive. It wasn’t incredible. It’s not going to change the world, but every time I look back, I have immense gratitude for the fact I was able to get that small item,” he said. Most HR teams scramble to pull together holiday gifts weeks before the deadline and end up with branded swag nobody wanted, last-minute raffles, and a budget that didn’t stretch far enough. Ross discusses how to build a holiday recognition strategy now, before the rush hits, that scales across your entire workforce, maximizes the value employees actually feel, and makes HR the hero of the holiday season. Beating the Holiday Season ScrambleLots of companies fall into what Ross calls the Q4 scramble, trying to plan holiday celebrations or gifts for employees at the last minute, losing hours or work time to logistical planning, running out of room for storage, giving out branded swag nobody wanted, and working with a budget that doesn’t quite stretch far enough. Waiting too long to plan for holiday recognition,including waiting on the leadership team to approve a budget, can lead to overpaying for less and employees feeling like an afterthought. Tray Ross, the VP of Growth at Corporate Traditions, led the session (company photo)Ross says August is the perfect time to start planning holiday recognitions, giving teams 60 to 90 days to prepare. His suggested plan of action is to shortlist a tool now that can move as soon as the budget is approved. By September and October, you’ll be ready to move forward, wherever the budget lands. Then, in November and December, you can execute in minutes rather than weeks.With Corporate Traditions, “you can just upload and send out lists and be able to recognize employees at scale and make a personal impact, even if it’s for three employees or with 3000 or 5000 or 10,000 employees,” Ross said. “We make our money on the back end through our partnerships, so we keep everything dollar for dollar for you, which makes it easy to get approval from finance.”Available rewards include Gift Card+™, in which employees can select from over 1700 gift card options and enjoy instant fulfillment; GiftYouPick™, in which employees choose their own prizes from over 500 brands; and Grocery Vouchers, which can be especially meaningful around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both GiftYouPick™ and Grocery Vouchers are de minimis fringe eligible, Ross says, meaning they can stay compliant with the IRS requirements to keep a gift tax-free and off an employee’s W-2 payroll. “The IRS has outlined three requirements for a de minimis fringe gift,” Ross said. “The first requirement is it has to be infrequent, so holiday gifts, birthdays, work anniversaries [all apply]. The second one is that it has to be impractical to track for,” which means generally $100 or less, though this threshold varies by city, county, and state. “The last one is it has to be something specific and tangible, so that’s where the GiftYouPick™ and the Grocery Vouchers come in handy because they’re able to get something specific and tangible that is no longer a cash equivalent.” Corporate Traditions makes it easy to ensure gifts are actually fulfilled and enjoyed, he says. “You have digital copies of every single code that was issued for the employees for the Gift Card+™ and the GiftYouPick™, so you can just reissue those as many times as you need without ever being charged again, as well as being able to send reminders as often as you need,” Ross said. The Holiday PlaybookRoss offers a playbook for creating gift programs that are simple, meaningful, and memorable. Start by choosing a tool that can move quickly, since you rarely control when the budget is approved. Instead, focus on being ready to act as soon as it is available. Next, choose the moment you want to recognize, whether that’s Thanksgiving, December, or both. Rather than sourcing a single gift and guessing at people’s sizes or preferences, give recipients a choice and let them pick for themselves. Finally, keep the process simple: upload your list once, with no minimum order or contract required.This streamlined process can help you avoid hours of vendor calls, reviewing quotes, making spreadsheets of preferences, storing items, chasing down who got what, and reconciling piles of receipts. Instead, you can focus on what really matters for the business. “It takes a lift off the HR team,” Ross said. “You can now spend time developing your people, taking care of the people, and building the business and building your culture, rather than dealing with all of these logistics and things that honestly sometimes are just a time suck, especially when a vendor changes pricing last minute or those types of things.” But don’t minimize the importance of intentional holiday gifting among other HR strategies: it too can have a major impact. “Employers are spending fortunes on retention strategies, but I’ve had friends in the recruiting space, and they talk to different employees about why they’re leaving or why they’re looking at different jobs. And they tell me one of the common threads that they’re promised certain things, even small items or opportunities, and they never come to fruition,” Ross said. “We need to keep true to those small promises, even though they are small. Staying true to them will help retain our employees and make it easier to keep them, especially around the holidays.” That’s because holiday gifts are tied to memories and emotions, the things that make us human. “Most memories we have are attached to the emotions that we have,” Ross said. “If you can create more emotions, and if we can allow employees to choose exactly what they want, it fosters more of those positive emotions, which then lead to gratitude [and] appreciation.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Corporate Traditions, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photo by dikushin/iStock)
The Numbers Behind the Strategy: Financial Fluency for L&D Leaders
BY Jessica Swenson August 26, 2026There is a significant gap in business acumen among not only frontline workers, but also senior leaders, says Kevin Cope, founder and CEO of Acumen Learning. A Harvard Business Review study showed that 95% of a company’s employees don’t understand its strategy. “Even VPs in well-run, well-known companies have a big gap,” Cope said during a From Day One webinar. “I think [this happens] as companies grow—they specialize, and people become experts in L&D, marketing, sales, or operations, and they sort of lose that big picture perspective.” He encourages learning and development (L&D) leaders to see themselves as business leaders first, who happen to work in L&D. By learning how executives think about the business, knowing how to read the company’s profit and loss (P&L), and connecting L&D activities to business outcomes, Cope believes leaders can build credibility and elevate the learning function to a strategic business driver rather than just a cost center. The Five Business DriversCope laid out a framework to help any leader learn more about financial data, financial performance, and elevate their department’s interorganizational value.Kevin Cope, the founder and CEO of Acumen Learning, led the session (company photo)There are five key business drivers foundational to executive strategy, he says: cash, profit, assets, growth, and people. Cash, profit, and assets are clear indicators of a company’s health and potential, but they also tie directly to financial statements that public companies are required to file—the cash flow statement, income statement, and balance sheet.“What happens to companies that run out of cash? You really have two options. You’re either figuring out a way to get more cash, or you’re going out of business,” he said. Different business strategies drive different profit margins—organizations that establish themselves as a unique brand or offer unique product lines often have deeper profit margins, while companies competing on a price basis have thinner margins, Cope says. Companies can use those profits to fund reinvestment in the business, its products, and its employees.Assets are anything owned or controlled by the company that has value—this can include cash, property, product inventory, or even company vehicles. He emphasized a need to balance asset strength with asset utilization to optimize short- and long-term value. Cope shared the example of UPS, which counts 140,000 delivery trucks among its assets. To improve route efficiency and reduce both labor and vehicle wear-and-tear, a driver suggested eliminating left-hand turns. This small operational change reduced routes by 100,000,000 miles and eliminated 100,000 metric tons of emissions annually. “Growth is critical for organizations,” said Cope, and that’s true for a few reasons. Stagnation can indicate decline, shareholders expect growth, and it attracts top talent. Candidates “want to be aligned with an organization that is innovative and also has opportunities for movement and upward mobility.” The final driver, people, highlights the importance of engaged employees who are anticipating and meeting customer needs. Gallup data places the cost of employee disengagement in the trillions of dollars, both domestically and internationally. Cope referenced a study that identified key employee engagement levers: understanding the connection between one’s role and the company strategy, and having a sense of one’s role being important to the organization’s success. “In other words, when people are clear on how their role can drive and impact company results, they’re going to have a better sense of how they make a difference, how they add value and the importance they bring to a company. That’s where you’re going to get engagement,” he said.Financial Fluency in ActionCope conducted a detailed review of retailer Costco’s recent P&L. For a more concise P&L review or for people with limited time, he suggests looking at three key items. “If I’ve got just a couple of minutes to look at a P&L, I do three things. Number one, I look at revenue, and I want to see it growing. Number two, profit—I’d like to see profit growing, ideally at a faster rate than sales. And then the third thing I look at is the net profit margin,” he said. The net profit margin reflects net income as a percent of sales, and has to be calculated.How can business leaders in L&D shift their mindset and begin connecting their department activities to company outcomes? A good place to start is understanding two key profit levers, increasing revenue and reducing cost. Each method has its place, though cost-cutting has its limits and risks. “If you need to improve profit in the short run, you’ll get there faster by reducing costs. Over the long term, ideally, you’re growing revenue consistently over time and looking for any way to save money and reduce costs.”Cope recommends partnering with a finance colleague willing to help you understand the nuances of your company’s financials and explore how your department’s functions can affect business results.For example, he suggests, you can look at more nuanced impacts of your training programs beyond just the quantity of employees trained. Document any increase in retention that you can attribute to training, which saves employee replacement costs. Training can also lead to more knowledgeable, experienced sales and marketing staff, boosting sales and deal-making, while well-trained purchasing and sourcing staff can lower product and material costs. Expedient onboarding processes across departments can accelerate revenue generation or lower costs by removing technology bottlenecks.By gaining financial knowledge and serving as a strategic business partner, you can elevate L&D’s value within your organization and also help your employees understand the impact they have on its results. “People work hard for paycheck, harder for a person, and hardest for a purpose,” said Cope. “The more that you can help your team understand how their actions impact company results, creating that line of sight, the more you’re going to get engagement from your own team.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Acumen Learning, for sponsoring this webinar. Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photo by utah778/iStock)
Companies That Kept DEI Policies Have Fared Well, New Research Finds
BY Ade Akin August 26, 2026Following President Donald Trump’s executive orders ending DEI programs within the federal government, some of the country’s largest companies, including Google and Target, quickly scaled back or scrapped their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments amid threats of federal scrutiny. Others, including Costco, Apple, and Delta Air Lines, stood their ground and maintained their commitments.New research shared with The Guardian reveals that companies that maintained commitments to DEI didn’t see a direct financial penalty. The study found that S&P 500 companies that kept their DEI policies intact performed about as well financially as companies that rolled them back, reports The Guardian.Jacob Grumbach, an associate professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, analyzed how firms performed after President Trump’s executive order, using what economists call “abnormal returns,” a metric that represents the variance between a stock’s projected performance and its actual market outcome. Grumbach’s analysis found no measurable difference in financial performance between companies that retained their diversity and inclusion programs and firms that eliminated them. His findings challenge the “go woke, go broke” narrative that gained momentum in 2023 following conservative boycotts of Bud Light and Target for its Pride merchandise. Grumbach tracked corporate DEI initiatives by analyzing news coverage, anti‑DEI shareholder proposals and votes, and data from DEI Watch, a corporate accountability tracker. “No matter how we measure DEI in companies, we find the same answer,” Grumbach said. Holding on to DEI promises had no measurable impact on financial performance, according to the study. The broader implication extends beyond DEI. Grumbach says the findings show how organizations fare when they resist political pressure. “This shows that large U.S. corporations really do have leeway and the ability to sort of do non-compliance to executive branch pressure and end up fine,” he told The Guardian. While some executives may still fear regulatory retaliation, such as less favorable treatment from the executive branch, delayed merger approvals, or aggressive tax auditing, the market itself does not appear to punish firms that stay the course. Changing course on DEI in response to political pressure can carry its own risks. When Target dropped its DEI programs in January 2025 amid backlash, for example, the retailer faced renewed calls for a boycott from shoppers. The episode illustrates the broader challenge companies face when navigating competing pressures. As former Medtronic CEO and author Bill George said during a fireside chat at From Day One's Minneapolis conference, “It’s easy to follow your true north, follow your values, your purpose, until you get under pressure, and you have to decide between two options. And that’s the real test. Where there may be sacrifices you have to make, do you have the moral courage to step up and follow what you believe, or do you back down?” George noted that leaders who stand firm, like Costco CEO Ron Vachris, whose company saw shareholders reject an anti-DEI proposal by an overwhelming 98% margin, suggest that “having a moral center is actually good for business.”Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by ZenSaBi/iStock)
Back-to-School Season Meets the AI Shopping Agent
BY Lisa Lacy August 25, 2026The back-to-school shopping list is getting an AI assistant.With a projected $43.3 billion in K-12 back-to-school spending up for grabs this year, retailers are watching closely as AI agents begin to influence how shoppers discover and ultimately buy products.From finding the right supplies to comparing products, AI shopping agents are taking on more of the work during this season’s back-to-school marketing campaigns. Jason Alan Snyder, chief AI officer at AI startup SuperTruth, called back-to-school a “particularly good use case” for AI shopping because “the list is fixed, the time window is fixed and the task is not about taste—it’s about coordination.”The Rise of AI Shopping AgentsAccording to Adobe’s research, 86% of consumers use AI while shopping, which marks a huge behavior change from just two years ago.“It’s really indicative of everything that consumers are dealing with and then all of a sudden, the AI assistant being able to be a personal shopper for them,” said Vivek Pandya, director of insights at Adobe.A recent Adobe report highlighted AI’s increasing value in commerce. As of July 2026, traffic to U.S. retail sites from AI sources was up 62% year over year. What’s more, AI visitors converted at a 60% higher rate and had a 14% higher engagement rate than other shoppers. Consumers using AI tools also spent 59% more time on retailers’ sites, were 33% less likely to bounce and added items to their carts at a 28% higher rate.The potential is not lost on retailers. Retail analyst Bruce Winder, who recently attended a Prime and grocery analyst event in Seattle, shared back-to-school use cases from Amazon, which include: sharing photos of supply lists so Alexa for Shopping can identify items and add them to shoppers’ carts. Consumers can also set budgets and price alerts and enable auto-buy functionality when an item drops to a specified threshold.And consumers appear willing to give retailer AI a try. According to Amazon, Alexa for Shopping, which was formerly known as Rufus, “helped over 300 million customers in 2025.” But it’s not easy to make apples-to-apples comparisons.In a February 2026 earnings call, David Guggina, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., said roughly half of Walmart’s app users have used its AI assistant, Sparky. However, the retailer bundles app usage figures within its broader customer base: In a March 2026 regulatory filing, the retailer said, “Each week, we serve approximately 280 million customers who visit more than 10,900 stores in 19 countries and through our numerous eCommerce websites and mobile applications.”Nevertheless, analysts agree shoppers are more likely to start with third-party AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, which have 900 million weekly users, 1 billion monthly users and a reported 20 million users in 2025, respectively.“The smarter retailer move isn’t to force shoppers into some kind of branded AI tool,” said Snyder of SuperTruth. “It’s to make sure that their product data, pricing and inventory shows up inside of general AI tools people already use.”AI as a Back-to-School Shopping AssistantResearch from the National Retail Federation (NRF) found 61% of back-to-school shoppers in 2026 are using these tools to find “the best prices and discounts and ask for recommendations and ideas.”Pandya agreed. “We’re finding that it is helpful for research comparison shopping, getting a sense of what’s available, like broader details around what they are looking for, product-wise,” he said. This price checking functionality is significant, as the NRF said 78% of shoppers expect to see higher prices on back-to-school items this season.“As affordability remains a significant concern for many shoppers, they are using AI agents to compare prices, promotions, specifications and other attributes to lower overall costs,” Winder said. “They may also ask AI agents to recommend specific life hacks to save money as well for the back-to-school season.”Abby Lovett, founder of AI agency CTP Visibility Advisors, noted most parents don’t want to skimp on the back-to-school experience for their kids, but the total cost of supplies is “jaw-dropping.” The NRF forecast families with kids in elementary through high school will spend an average of $863.86 in 2026.“Most kids have a thing they really look forward to, e.g., a new hoodie or new kicks,” she said. “Using AI to comparison shop on prices, colorways and sizes has made me and many other parents an absolute hero.”Back-to-School Season Creeps Into SummerCost concerns reflect another behavior change from recent years: The influence of Amazon’s Prime event and other summertime sales, which resulted in $26.4 billion in online spend in June 2026. That’s starting to rival Cyber Week numbers.“We’ve just seen so much early back-to-school shopping being mapped into the Prime event,” Pandya said. “You have consumers understanding the context of the deals happening, understanding that multiple players are likely vying for their dollar and then they’re using the AI agent to help strategize around that.”Does this mean we’ll be ready for AI agents to do back-to-school shopping for us in 2027? Not quite. While there were some attempts to support this functionality in 2025, Pandya says there has been some pullback.“The consumer [feels] more comfortable in having that back and forth with the agent and then having a lot of control on what actually gets spent once they get to the site,” he added. “Or having a conversation and then maybe you step away and you come back through paid search or you come back through social and then with the intel that you had from your AI exchange, you’re purchasing with more confidence.”Where AI Shopping Falls ShortBut AI shopping does have some limitations, even when it comes to back-to-school deals. “AI is much better at narrowing things than creating taste,” Snyder said. “It’s much stronger when you know what you want and you need help finding the price or the availability and it really, really sucks at surfacing things that you love.”For Snyder, the current shift is less about AI shopping going mainstream and more about consumers getting used to AI as a starting point.“Shopping is one more place that people use AI to reduce effort, so the question is more where in the journey is AI actually helping people,” he said. So while the technical capability for AI agents to shop for us may exist, consumer demand does not. At least for certain products. “Glue sticks, printer ink, that stuff, I can’t imagine somebody wouldn’t gladly hand that to an agent,” Snyder said. “But buying is also how we express care in a lot of cases or our identity. Picking your kid’s first day of school backpack isn’t the same thing.”There is a silver lining for retailers. As routine buying gets automated, the human-facing parts of retail—like the backpack—are where brands can differentiate themselves.“The divide isn’t between AI shopping and human shopping. It’s between purchases where convenience is the whole value and where the act of choosing has emotional weight,” Snyder said.As a result, he encouraged retailers to think about where their offerings have the greatest emotional impact and what introducing AI will do “because that’s the part that’s worth the most money.”Preparing for the AI ShopperThere is a more tangible opportunity in the meantime. Brands and retailers need to make sure their offerings, including details like pricing and availability, can be found by the AI platforms consumers are using.The recent Adobe report found this is one area many sites fall short—and recommended brands focus on machine readability, or making their websites and product information easy for AI systems to understand and interpret.As Pandya put it, that means “how can they work to organize the structure across their site so that they can benefit from even being read by the machine because the LLM agent has to serve an answer back to the user very quickly, so it all needs to be structured and highlighted in a way where it can do that.”Optimizing for AI search should also include cultivating reviews on sites like Google and Amazon, as well as monitoring conversations on platforms like Reddit and YouTube.“All that is being absorbed by these agents in order to give an answer back to the user that feels very well vetted and trustworthy,” Pandya said. “That’s the opportunity for the brand to show up across all those fronts and ensure strong machine readability, so that they get visibility.”Moving forward, Pandya anticipates AI platforms will explore how to better serve their own users, which could include pre-populating shopping prompts. “That’s what we’ll be keeping an eye out for,” he said.Lisa Lacy is a writer based in Atlanta. She has covered marketing and technology for more than a decade for publications like TechCrunch, CMO.com, VentureBeat, The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, ClickZ and Search Engine Watch.(Photo by Nikita Burdenkov/iStock)
So Focused on AI, Companies Are Neglecting Their People
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 24, 2026If there is anything that can unite the U.S. in these divided times, it’s the fear and loathing of AI. Concerns about its impact on jobs, the environment, and even our ability to think has been described as “America’s new consensus” and “the most bipartisan issue since beer.”While AI affects everyone, workers feel particularly concerned–and employers need to respond to this darkening mood. In a new poll from Pew Research, 71% of adults think AI will lead to fewer jobs in the U.S. over the next two decades. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report includes some figures about emotions felt by workers today. They’re grim. It says that negative emotions—more specifically: stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness—are felt less frequently than they were in the thick of Covid, but more frequently than before 2020.A primary cause, researchers say, is the seeming gap between corporate bullishness about AI vs. the advancement of their workers. U.S. companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into AI, and one would be hard-pressed to name a major company that hasn’t made a public commitment to using AI. For some, these moves are genuinely strategic, for others, a matter of keeping up with the Dow Joneses.Yet for all its shiny, head-spinning advancements, organizations have little to show in the way of results (thus far). While it may help an individual do their job faster or more efficiently, even the Gallup report cites a survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research of executives in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia, which found that 89% of executives report that AI has had no meaningful impact on company productivity in the last three years.The great promise of AI is its ability to activate a company’s booster rockets, and executives have invested accordingly. Until those results are realized, AI is going to be a priority. But as companies race to operationalize AI and have something to show for their investment, have leaders become so focused on new technologies that they’ve forgotten the people in all of it?The Danger of the Bottom-Line MentalityAmerican business has periodically gone through peak periods of bottom-line mentality–and the current AI boom is a prime example. Rebecca Greenbaum, professor of HR management at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, calls this mentality, in which a single, narrow goal is pursued to the exclusion of everything else. “It’s a cognitive mindset that people slip into when they’re under threat,” she told From Day One, which means that people are often unaware that they’ve fallen into the pattern. That threat, she says, is uncertainty.In the case of the executives hyper fixated on AI, the uncertainty is whether their investment will provide a return, whether their competitors best them, or whether their boards of directors will lose patience.Emotions are contagious, particularly ones like anxiety, so when leaders become anxious about where the company is headed, workers will do the same, and “it starts to feel less like a team and more like we’re all on our own,” Greenbaum said. Soon it becomes all about survival.While it’s not exactly a zero-sum game, having priorities means some things get more attention than others. “Our lens has gotten narrow. It’s about moving faster and more aggressively,” said Dan Kwong, the EVP of people at Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey. “But we’re forgetting about the people and the relationships that actually are the root of many things.”Ways to Heal the Negative VibePeople feel negative emotions in response to a discrepancy between what we expect and what we get. “We’re very loss-sensitive,” said Denise Rousseau, professor of organizational behavior and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. If an employee takes a job at a company where hard work is rewarded with job security, but then watches the leadership team salivate over technology famous for its ability to do human jobs at a fraction of the cost, it will inevitably produce negative feelings like sadness and anger.In general, an organization distracted by operationalizing the latest anything may not be extending a lot of support to its employees. “We’re in an era in which what’s being committed to employees is relatively low,” Rousseau said. Basic needs like job security and job prospects aren’t being met, and “precarity is a negative-emotion generator.”The only way to address it is to heal the breach, she said. So, if someone joins a company with the knowledge that high performers get promotions, but promotions go away, then what will be offered instead? The company might provide skills training that the employee wants or coaching for the career they imagine down the road. “Resources heal violations because they offset or substitute what people lost,” said Rousseau. Another key remedy for negative emotions is simply “fair treatment and following procedures.”While anger and sadness are typically individual emotions, anxiety is shared. “Our emotions are amplified by our surroundings,” Rousseau said. That goes for a feeling like enthusiasm just as much as it does for stress. “The most important people for emotional contagion are friends. The second most important are advice-givers, like your boss or someone you really respect,” she pointed out.The best remedy for anxiety is openness and communication, but rather than admitting uncertainty, most leaders will simply clam up, giving up as little information as possible and opening ample room for nervous speculation. Candor is almost always a better solution. If you’re not sure whether promotions will be available or if there will be layoffs, say so. Then offer to heal the breach.You might say, “as long as you stay here, we can give you retention bonuses,” Rousseau said. “Stay for one month, stay for three months, stay for a year, and we will make it worth your while. That way people don’t feel shortchanged by their precarity. I’ll stay here because it benefits me in the short term.”Loneliness is an individual feeling typically felt in a social setting, and it’s often about a lack of belonging. Lisa Sánchez, who leads human resources at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, believes that as soon as the notions of diversity, equity, and inclusion came under attack, workplace culture took a dive.“The truth is those things matter to the culture,” Sánchez said. “Those are all deeply rooted in people’s experiences. The problem is that organizations have treated them as programs or quotas or giving people a handout, but that’s not what that is.” She told From Day One that if leaders can treat these things as values to be lived by rather than programs to be discontinued, “we’ll see that it’s not about quotas, it’s not about a handout, it’s about doing the right thing.”Loneliness is not only a physical state, and calling everyone back into the office won’t solve the problem. Still, for teams that must work in person, it can be designed to help.Relationships are built in small groups, said Stacey Olson, the global wellness leader at design firm Gensler. People can bond more easily and take bigger risks in small groups, especially when it comes to learning new things. “Nobody wants to be in a group of 100 to raise their hand and say, ‘I can’t find the button,’” she said. If you can quietly turn to the coworker next to you, you can ask in safety.“That builds camaraderie and trust,” she said. “Then you start to have friends at work. When you have friends at work, you’re excited to be there. You go to lunch, you wind up building play into your day, and all of those help you reduce stress.”Don’t Forget the ManagersManagers are shouldering heavy loads these days. Too much, many would argue. The role has expanded so widely that managers must now be coaches, therapists, operational experts, AI evangelists, and individual contributors at once. Not surprisingly, the role of manager is now an unpopular one.Such disproportionate responsibility is a major contributor to poor workforce engagement. According to the Gallup report, low manager engagement accounts for most of the downturn in overall workforce engagement. But you need managers to be engaged, especially if you’re trying to operationalize AI. In their report, Gallup also points out that managers key to winning over the workforce when it comes to AI adoption.“In these stressful times, the quality of management is getting worse,” said Rousseau. “They’re also feeling precarious, they’re also feeling pressed for results, they’re also uncertain. Managers who are depressed or angry are really bad problem solvers, and they’re really not good at [caring for their teams].”Simply, companies can extend some care and recognition to their people, she said. And because they’re expected to extend it, perhaps managers should be the first in line to receive.Finding Your People in the AI of It AllFor the last decade, companies have struggled to recognize the value of the employee, Rousseau said. “The focus is much more on short-term impact because investors respond to it, because the market sees it, and, often, because that is what executives are rewarded for.”But people are running out of emotional energy, Kwong told From Day One. “Whatever’s happening in the world—the economy, politics, communities—it’s a lot,” and it’s seeping into the workplace.What does it take for a worker to feel like their company really supports them? When an employee offers feedback, listen and act. Heal the breach between expectation and reality. When the company isn’t able to offer one thing, go out of the way to offer something comparable.Knowing whether your own employees are angry, sad, stressed, or lonely isn’t as simple as asking them. Admitting that you’re angry at the company is often a quick way to jeopardize one’s job. But there will be signs, though. Kwong said that he finds it in patterns like more frequent worker disagreements and increased requests for leaves of absence.If leaders really want employees to be honest with how they’re feeling, they have to go first. “There’s something to be said when leaders are vulnerable and they say, ‘I’m having a tough day, I’m overwhelmed,’” Kwong said. You could say, “I’m going to try my best. It may not come out right. I might use the wrong tone or appear frustrated. Give me a little bit of space. I’ll get back to a good place, but it’s just where I am today.”Being so honest is unnerving for most, he continued, “but it signals a really important cultural thing, that as a leader, I don’t just say that we care about well-being and mental health and transparency and open communication. I actually do it.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by gorodenkoff/iStock)
For Influencers, a Free Brand Trip Can Come With a Price
BY Erin Behrens August 20, 2026Scroll through TikTok for a few minutes and you’re almost guaranteed to see content from a brand trip. These highly curated getaways for influencers have become a staple of brand marketing, giving companies a way to put their products directly into the feeds of engaged audiences.At their best, these trips can generate thousands of views and create the kind of aspirational content that traditional advertising struggles to replicate. Dairy company Kerrygold found that formula with a trip to the Irish countryside, bringing along a seemingly hand-selected group of content creators, including chef Hailee Catalano, whose connection to food gave the trip a natural fit with the brand. Catalano’s posts from the trip quickly drew comments from followers expressing envy over the experience. The stakes are particularly high with this form of marketing since so much of the experience is meant to be visible. Unlike a traditional brand event, where much of the experience happens behind closed doors, nearly every element of them becomes content. When these trips don’t strike the right balance of people or place, viewers notice. Like in the case of OpenAI’s “Summer Camp,” a Hudson Valley influencer getaway in early August. The trip took place at the luxury resort Wildflower Farms in Gardiner, NY, and included activities like beekeeping, farm-to-table outdoor dinners, and OpenAI product tutorials. The AI company invited tech and lifestyle influencers to enjoy and post about their weekend upstate. But the posts didn’t go to plan, immediately sparking a wave of criticism that prompted some influencers to disable comments or delete their posts altogether. The posts that remain online are flooded with critical comments, with a common theme emerging: How could a company whose technology is contributing to environmental harm choose a retreat so immersed in nature as the setting for its brand? And how could these influencers participate in it?It can be argued that any press is good press, so as OpenAI remains in the news weeks after the trip, it’s still getting attention for the company. The company walks away largely untouched, while the influencers who used their own judgment to decide whether to participate are facing a different reality.Commenters on influencer Grace McCarrick’s still-active posts write that her participation was “tone deaf.” The commentary fits into a larger cultural criticism of AI, especially voiced by Gen Z. McCarrick took to LinkedIn saying “I genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI.” Other attendees from the trip still have their comment sections disabled, likely in response to the criticism.When a brand trip goes wrong, influencers are often the ones left to absorb the shock. The brand can move on from a poorly planned itinerary, but creators have to return to their audiences and explain what happened. Their credibility is part of what brands are paying for in the first place, which means a trip that misses the mark can put an influencer’s reputation at risk. For creators, one lesson from this trip is that accepting the invite also means accepting some of the risk. A free trip may come with a price that isn’t visible until the content goes live.Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One. (Photo by Andrii Iemelyanenko/iStock)
Brands Want More From Their Hollywood Partnerships
BY Erin Behrens August 12, 2026A celebrity in a commercial is nothing new. But increasingly, brands aren’t just putting famous faces in ads to sell products. They’re finding new ways to make entertainment part of the ad itself.The reason appears to be fairly simple: attention has become harder to buy. Brands are looking for ways to create campaigns that feel less like interruptions and more like something audiences actually want to watch.Take Gap, which just launched a campaign with scream queen actress Inde Navarrette, recognized for her role in Obsession, and emerging musician Malcolm Todd. Navarrette is a relatively new face on the scene but has quickly expanded her profile across entertainment and fashion, while Todd brings his own music audience to the campaign, titled, “Denim On Your Own.”“With this campaign, Gap continues to serve as a platform for the next generation of creative voices, championing emerging artists who are shaping culture through music, art, and self-expression,” said the campaign announcement.The ambassador choices reinforce the idea that it’s no longer just about who appears in an ad, but what the entertainment itself can do for a brand that an ad alone can’t. The campaign features Todd’s rendition of Robyn’s hit “Dancing On My Own,” turning the partnership into a piece of music and entertainment.Patrón is going a step further, bringing Hollywood’s creative talent directly into the making of the advertising itself. The tequila brand tapped the Oscar-winning director of Frankenstein and Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro to direct and star in its 2026 campaign, “The Perfect Pour.” The campaign puts del Toro’s distinctive visual style at the center of the brand’s storytelling. “Both born in Jalisco. Both obsessed with Mexican craftsmanship. Experience The Perfect Pour,” the campaign reads. These campaigns illustrate a broader shift in how brands can think about entertainment. A celebrity can bring an existing fan base, but the more valuable proposition may be the ability to create something people encounter as culture first and advertising second. The result isn’t necessarily that brands are becoming Hollywood studios. It’s that they are increasingly trying to borrow Hollywood’s ability to create attention and cultural relevance, and make it work for the brand.Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One(Photo by AscentXmedia/iStock)
What Does Return-to-Office Look Like Now?
BY Erin Behrens August 11, 2026TikTok is bringing most of its U.S. workforce back to the office five days a week, adding another major technology company to the growing list of employers moving away from hybrid work.Beginning in September, most U.S. employees who currently work hybrid schedules will be expected to work from the office every day, Business Insider reported this week. The policy will apply across functions including product, marketing, and advertising sales.The move represents a significant escalation from the hybrid schedules that became standard across much of the tech industry after the pandemic. Companies including Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs have maintained five-day office policies since 2025, pointing to company culture, collaboration, and effectiveness as reasons for bringing employees back. Meanwhile, some companies are framing return-to-office mandates as a way to improve employee well-being. Monique Scroggins, VP of HR total rewards and operations at Lloyds Banking Group, and her team have launched a cost-containment strategy centered on wellness programs. “We focused on return-to-office engagement and having people on site teaching you how to eat clean and healthy, and encouraging you to take walks on your lunch break,” she said during a panel discussion at From Day One’s June virtual conference.The shift suggests that for some organizations, the office is increasingly being positioned as more than a place to work. While the five-day work week hasn’t become the universal standard yet, with 10% more workers still working from home than in 2019, for HR leaders, the growing divide creates a strategic question: What does an employer gain by requiring employees to be in the office, and is that benefit worth the tradeoff in flexibility?Data from Gallup finds that five in 10 full-time U.S. employees have remote-capable jobs, about one-third prefer fully remote work, and less than 10% prefer to work on-site. The same study found that hybrid workers feel strongly about the benefits they experience from their schedule. “In fact, six in 10 remote-capable employees who work exclusively remotely now say they’re extremely likely to look for a new job if remote flexibility is taken away,” the report states.That gap between employer priorities and employee preferences could make RTO policies a retention issue as much as a workplace strategy. If employees view flexibility as a meaningful part of their compensation, taking it away could push some workers to look elsewhere, particularly as hybrid and remote jobs remain available at other companies.For HR leaders, the challenge is making the case for why employees need to be in the office rather than simply mandating that they be there. If collaboration, culture, learning, or well-being are the goals, companies will need to show employees what they gain from being on-site.Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One(Photo by skynesher/iStock)
Brands That Endure: Authenticity in Action
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza August 04, 2026Companies once made public commitments to ethics and responsibility, but it became “acceptable, and maybe even a little trendy, for brands to quietly neglect those commitments,” said Sandra Moerch, global head of content and customer marketing Autodesk, which makes industrial design software. “That behavior just won’t cut it anymore. Authenticity is making a comeback because people are craving honest and pure and authentic transactions again.”During a panel discussion on brands’ enduring authenticity at From Day One’s July virtual conference on brand strategy, Moerch and a panel of additional marketing leaders spoke about the risks and rewards of brand realness.Marketers have to reach outside their own department to achieve authenticity in their messages. “Some of our best ideas really come from our sales teams, our engineers, our product management field teams, and most importantly, our customers,” said Diana Sanicki, head of North American marketing at construction technology company Doka. “We regularly talk with them and visit job sites, and those conversations help us create marketing that’s relevant instead of promotional.” Journalist Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the session among marketing leaders (photo by From Day One)Even the most global and wide-reaching brands need some level of localization to achieve authenticity, said Emma Riley, director of marketing and growth for the Americas Global at creative firm AKQA. “Backstory,” the Levi’s commercial that debuted during the 2026 Superbowl, features shots of the brand’s iconic back pockets and red tab on musicians, dancers, rock climbers, and even cartoons, with cameos from Grammy-winning rapper and singer Doechii and Woody from Toy Story, and a nod to the iconic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.. Riley said that these “influencers speak to who it is that we needed to talk to, but they are true. They are who they are. They really use the product.” Even Woody.‘Customers Don’t Buy the Story You Tell About Yourself’Customers aren’t looking for a sales pitch. They want an experience, like Levi’s can offer, or, as is more common in the B2B world, they want a solution.Yet customers aren’t always aware of the problems they have, said Todd Brown, VP of marketing for the financial institutions group at Fiserv, “not until they read a piece of thought leadership or they hear from someone on the team about a new solution.” Fiserv, which makes the technology underlying much of the financial services industry, expands mostly by selling into its existing customer base, so Brown must deliver a constant drip of education and customer testimonials. When a client has a particular need, they know Fiserv can meet it. “The best advocates for us are our clients who are telling the stories about the impact our partnership has not only on their business, but also on the communities they serve,” he said.Authenticity requires giving up some amount of control over the message and presentation of your brand—attaching your logo to a celebrity or handing the mic to a customer carries inherent risk. But any authentic relationship requires vulnerability. Believability begins with deferring to the customer point of view, which means letting the buyers say it for themselves. “Customers don’t buy the story you tell about yourself. They believe the story your customers and employees tell about you,” Sanicki said. “Years ago, companies owned the message, and today the customers own the conversation.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by julief514/iStock)
The Marketing Lessons Worth Taking From the 2026 World Cup
BY Erin Behrens August 03, 2026Now that the 2026 FIFA World Cup has wrapped up, marketers are taking a closer look at the brands that won the battle for attention, and what their success says about today’s marketing landscape. While official sponsors enjoyed unmatched visibility, some of the brands that generated the most conversation weren’t necessarily the ones that paid for the most prominent logos. Instead, they won by tapping into fan culture and creating content people actually engaged with. On Fox networks, World Cup advertisers averaged an attention index of 121, according to iSpot, meaning their ads performed 21% better than the average ad. The metric was based on the percentage of viewers who completed watching the full ad message.Here are three lessons from the brands that captured attention across the screens of viewers, the arenas where players competed, and the billboards that turned the tournament into a global marketing stage. Opportunities Exist Beyond the Main EventThis year’s tournament highlighted the power of shared experiences, as fans traveled across continents, explored new cultures, celebrated victories, and shared in the heartbreak of losses together. The cities hosting matches became part of the story, with fan experiences and local moments filling social media feeds throughout the tournament, like in the case of the Boston beer-shortage.The brands that stood out recognized that fans weren’t just watching the games, they were traveling, discovering new cultures, and becoming part of the global experience surrounding the tournament.Airbnb brought this idea to life through its “The World Is Meant to Meet” campaign, which centered on the connections and cultural exchanges that happen when people travel. Rather than focusing only on the competition itself, the campaign highlighted the people, places, and experiences that bring a global event like the World Cup to life. The company even offered rewards for those who signed up to host during the event. By celebrating the communities and connections formed around travel, Airbnb showed how brands can create relevance by becoming part of the cultural moments happening beyond the stadium.Marketing That Feels Interactive, Not DistractingMichelob ULTRA, a brand that calls itself “a superior light beer brewed for the social athlete,” built its World Cup marketing around fan participation. The brand introduced the Superior Player of the Match award, selected through fan engagement, giving viewers a role in recognizing standout performances. It also created fan-focused experiences designed to bring the tournament atmosphere beyond the stadium.“For more than twenty years, Michelob ULTRA has connected with its fans during the occasions they love. The brand’s playbook has been simple and relentless: invest, learn, and execute as the Official Beer Sponsor of America’s most prominent sports and active-lifestyle moments from Team USA to the NBA to the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2026™ and LA 2028 games to a 30+ year partnership with the PGA Tour. This approach has turned Michelob ULTRA into an absolute rocket ship, and we’ve got tremendous opportunity ahead of us,” said Kyle Norrington, chief commercial officer at Anheuser-Busch. Strong marketing doesn’t interrupt the moments people care about; it becomes part of them and invites them further into it. The success shows in the sales, as the beer continues to be the best-selling beer by volume, in America. Becoming Part of the CultureThe brands that make a lasting impression find ways to become woven into the event itself, creating products or experiences that fans recognize and remember. Adidas demonstrated the power of turning a sponsorship into a cultural asset that everyone recognizes. As the official match ball provider, the brand had a presence in every game, but it went beyond simple visibility by making the ball itself a centerpiece of the tournament experience. The design and storytelling created around the ball helped transform a piece of equipment into a symbol of the competition. The lesson: brands can earn lasting attention when they create something audiences naturally associate with a cultural moment, not just something they see during it.Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One(Photo by peterschreiber.media/iStock)
What We’re Learning from Real AI Deployments in HR
BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza July 30, 2026Dina Siclovan’s HR team was spending far too much time on emails. As the director of team member experience at Breeze Airways, she knew that while the company would keep growing, the size of her team would not. “We spent a lot of time just answering repetitive questions, even though the information already exists on our intranet. There are hundreds of policies, and many answers depend on the context,” she said during a From Day One webinar. “So we saw a need.” For many helming an HR department today, “the strategic work is often done in the leftover hours,” Jim Barnett, CEO and co-founder of HR tech platform Wisq. AI can now handle the repetitive tasks that gobble up valuable hours, but Barnett believes it can do even more.Together, Siclovan and Barnett—plus Wisq’s AI-powered HR teammate Harper—have changed not only the way Breeze’s HR team gets done, but the work that’s theirs to do. Context Is EverythingHR is seldom short on documentation. Any given team might have reams of policies about employee leave and PTO, performance reviews, performance improvement plans, rewards and recognition, benefits packages, and payroll. Then there’s the information on individual employees, like location, performance, team structure, skills, and tenure.But it’s usually just that: Reams of paper (digital or otherwise) with little relation to each other and plenty of room for error and interpretation. So when a long-tenured employee is moving from one city to another and in the midst of that has a medical emergency that requires complex surgery—what do you do? Situations like this may be governed by a policy, but they’re handled under precedent and case specifics. Jim Barnett, the CEO and co-founder of Wisq, the Agentic HR Platform, spoke during the webinar (company photo)“The AI opportunity is so large and so diverse,” Barnett said. “It’s not talking to a bot about whether you have President’s Day off. These workflows are complex and compliance-ridden with lots and lots of risk. You have to have HR reasoning because you want to get this right, and it’s going to get more complex over time.”There’s also opportunity in finding gaps in all those policies. When their AI agent Harper started identifying patterns in employee questions at Breeze, Siclovan realized that in some cases no process, policy, or guidance existed. AI is equipped to assist there too, says Barnett. The right AI agents are capable of fielding context-dependent questions, identifying patterns, finding policy gaps, and now—building the processes that underlie the policies. “There should be both manual and automated learning loops,” he said. As questions come in, “patterns emerge, which can trigger an alert that there’s a missing policy. It’s really important that you put these learning loops into your system so it can get smarter and grow and get better over time.”Barnett said he often finds that HR teams are operating on ambiguous and conflicting policies, but “your system should be able to fix this for you.” AI can tell you what the workflows are and recommend what that flow should be, and then it should tell you the integrations you need. It can even help you build a business case and line up the resources to build it. But it’s smarter than to take an idea and run with it. Harper knows “when to escalate, triage, and hand off to a human,” he said.The airline industry is heavily regulated at both the federal and state levels, so Siclovan can’t simply hand the reins to a disembodied agent. Breeze employs a complex and varied workforce of maintenance crew, flight attendants, and pilots distributed across airports around the U.S., plus the folks, like her, in corporate headquarters. “Essentially, HR has to support the operation that runs 24/7, and we work a standard eight-to-five Monday-through-Friday schedule.”Siclovan’s team once spent a lot of time answering questions from all directions about benefits, payroll, recruitment, and onboarding, “and now they’re coaching leaders,” she said. “They’re solving team member relations issues. They’re helping with workforce planning and reorganization design.”This has been a successful partnership because, Siclovan explained, we started with a clear problem to be solved. “Ask yourself, ‘Where do you spend too much time? What questions are on repeat every day? What work doesn’t actually require human judgment?’ That’s where you start.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Wisq, for sponsoring this webinar.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by S and V Design/iStock)
How Marketeers Are Finally Solving an Age-Old Question
BY Jessica Swenson July 27, 2026It’s no secret that marketing departments have long operated in a chaotic, reactive state, and the growing complexity, expanding market channels, and an increasingly fragmented audience base only amplify the problem. When marketers are unable to quickly answer unpredictable questions, this creates what George Huff, co-founder and CEO at Opal, calls an alignment tax—the hidden cost of extra meetings and late-night or off-hours work—which can make them seem disjointed and is very costly to businesses.“How do we help build confidence in the marketing function?” is the question he explored during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s July marketing virtual conference about brand marketing and strategy.Huff believes that the volume of marketing and content demands will only continue to increase in 2026 and beyond, which could require organizations to produce as much as twice what they did in 2025. Aside from the increased capacity this involves, it also creates a need for additional organization and structure, which can get more difficult as organizations and programs grow.George Huff , the founder and CEO of Opal, led the virtual thought leadership spotlight (company photo)Despite mixed industry sentiment on AI use, he predicts that 50% of marketing content will be AI derived by the end of 2026. Some of Opal’s clients avoid AI while others are already running early pilots with agentic platforms. He and his team see the use of AI as a massive opportunity to “rethink some of the entrenched patterns within our organizations.”Huff acknowledges that as more employees gain access to AI tools, governance becomes more important—but he doesn’t foresee a single person using AI to create operational change on an organizational scale. Instead, he believes the most pragmatic next step for marketing organizations is what he calls a “multiplayer mode for marketing teams.” “Multiplayer to us is really about teams of people having agentic workflows and agents working together in the same spaces, and you have this visual home for plans, campaigns, and content.” Huff said, “And it really is integrated into how you work.” He emphasized the importance of evolving to integrate AI, but considering it as a part of your stack so you can maximize team alignment from the start.His team at Opal has created that shared space where teams can organize work in real-time around strategy, maintain a real view of the customer experience, and quickly inform partners and leaders about marketing initiatives, making alignment a low-friction activity. Users can import presentations into the platform or export content out into fully branded documents, including live data views, quickly answering questions that might have previously required extra meetings or late-night emails to answer, he says.With the existing space as a foundation, Huff sees future opportunity for organizations to leverage Opal’s structured historical context to make their experience even more comprehensive by adding an instructional layer.“When your team is working in a shared environment that has all the planning and the historical context, it's got strong instruction, and you’re bringing AI into that environment—that’s really the multiplayer vision, and that’s a massive step change from where we are. And I think it’s the right future for marketing as a function to go towards, because it allows you to do all the things you need to do.”In response to an audience member question about safely using AI for branded content, Huff outlined Opal’s process that allows teams to place guardrails on both the front and back ends of production. Marketers can encode brand requirements into their space, he said, ensuring that any AI-generated content remains grounded in the brand. For those who don’t use AI to generate content, the platform also allows externally drafted content to be compared to the encoded brand standards.“While there’s definitely fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the marketplace,” Huff said, “we think that it [AI] represents this opportunity to rethink everything in terms of how we work, and so that’s the future that we’re aiming at.”Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Opal, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photo by JLco - Julia Amaral/iStock)