The global “L.O.C.O.S.” effort comes as Taco Bell’s parent company, Yum Brands, continues to work the restaurant chain into popular culture to build its loyalty program and digital infrastructure. Centering the platform on the emotional highs and lows of a major sporting event like the World Cup gives the brand a way to connect with consumers regardless of the outcome, while positioning itself within the event without being an official sponsor.

Fandom, and sports fandom in particular, has become a popular go-to for marketers looking to connect with culture. Prebuilt communities around interests, such as sports, give brands a target audience united by a shared passion.

In addition to the mobile component, in-person activations largely line up with major tournament moments. On June 25, the brand hosted activations in New York and Los Angeles, coinciding with the United States team’s final group-stage match against Türkiye. Taco Bell’s June 27 London activation coincided with England’s match against Panama. Other markets include Spain, Brazil, Australia and Canada.

“L.O.C.O.S. takes an existing fan behavior and builds a global platform around it, giving Taco Bell a bold new way to show up for fans in moments they care about most,” said Taylor Montgomery, global chief brand officer at Taco Bell, in press materials.

Also Read: Payment Experience Is the Foundation of B2B Loyalty

Taco Bell is looking to expand its loyalty program following a first-quarter period in which loyalty sales grew 30 percent year over year. Yum Brands saw digital sales near $11 billion in the same quarter, with digital mix increasing to 63 percent. Christopher Turner, chief executive and director of Yum Brands, said expanding loyalty programs is a key part of growing the company’s digital business during a call with investors.

Yum Brands saw first-quarter sales growth of 6 percent, and Taco Bell’s same-store sales grew 8 percent, putting it ahead of the quick-service restaurant industry as a whole, according to an earnings release.

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Credit card rewards were built for a world where the issuer set the terms, the consumer spent, and the value arrived later.

But as payments sped up, that legacy model stayed the same. Smart basket technology could help close the gap. Findings in “The Smart Checkout Opportunity: Why Issuers Are Ready for a Better Rewards System,” a PYMNTS Intelligence report produced in collaboration with FIS, reveal that nine in 10 issuers surveyed are highly interested in adopting smart basket systems. More than eight in 10 say they would participate if such a system became commercially available.

And across all cardholder behaviors studied, issuers rated smart basket tools far more effective than current rewards, with net effectiveness scores ranging from 43 to 59 percentage points.

But that enthusiasm should not be mistaken for simplicity. The report’s most revealing finding is not that issuers want a smart basket. It is that they want it on tightly governed terms. Issuers view smart baskets as a way to reclaim control over loyalty economics. Three in four expect such systems to give them more control, especially over targeting, merchant participation, and offer timing.

The word “control” matters. As rewards shift from broad issuer-funded programs to incentives funded by brands, merchants, and other ecosystem participants, issuers are not simply adding a new feature. They are deciding how much of the cardholder relationship, data flow, and incentive economics they are willing to expose to outside partners.

Traditional Reward Offers Have a Relevance Problem

Traditional rewards still work reasonably well as blunt instruments. They can encourage card use, lift spend, and support broad engagement. But they perform less well where issuers increasingly need precision.

Fewer than half of issuers say their current incentives drive loyalty or retention. Only 47 percent say rewards cause cardholders to switch to their cards, and just 40 percent say they shift the timing of spend.

Smart basket technology attacks that weakness by making rewards immediate, contextual, and transaction-specific. Instead of asking consumers to activate an offer in advance or wait for a statement credit after purchase, the system can identify eligible savings in real time and apply them at checkout. The value becomes visible when the consumer is deciding how to pay.

That matters because rewards are no longer competing only against other rewards programs. They are competing against friction, relevance, and timing.

Issuers see Smart Basket as a way to regain control over loyalty economics, particularly across the data that determines eligibility, the rules that govern timing, the funding flows that settle the offer, and the liability model that determines who pays when the system fails.

The report highlighted the following breakdown:

• Rules: Smart basket only scales if issuers can govern the transaction layer — who qualifies for an offer, when it appears, who funds it, how disputes are handled, and where liability sits when incentives misfire.
• Data: The value shifts from generic rewards data to permissioned, transaction-level intelligence that can identify basket contents, cardholder behavior, merchant context, and incremental lift in real time.
• Economics: Rewards move from broad issuer-funded subsidies to a more dynamic incentive marketplace, where brands, merchants, and issuers co-fund targeted offers tied to measurable spend, retention, and conversion outcomes.

The card rewards war is therefore entering a more technical phase. Richer offers will still matter. So will consumer experience. But instead of rewarding entire categories with static rates, issuers could participate in a system in which brands and merchants fund targeted behavior at the transaction level. This turns the path forward into one that goes straight through the incentive layer inside the transaction.

Smart basket may arrive as a better way to save at checkout. Its deeper impact is that it turns loyalty into infrastructure.

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AGNT LAB has launched a social media AI agent aimed at entrepreneurs and small businesses nationwide. The agent’s features and enhancements continue to be updated across freemium, pro and max user categories. From simple schedulers to full multichannel agents, the three-tiered options help with everyday social media management tasks.

“At AGNT LAB, we are leveraging the speed and reasoning of AI, allowing small businesses, as well as startups, an easy way to get their social media going and keep in the loop, during even the busiest of days,” said Jamahal Winston, founder of AGNT LAB.

AGNT LAB automates a brand’s social media using context-aware AI agents that create, schedule, engage and convert. The company is AI-powered to automate organizational processes seamlessly.

The freemium version allows an entrepreneur or small business owner to schedule posts in one channel and monitor comments and direct messages with a history of availability. The agent works across Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn, with TikTok access available by the end of August. Beta users who have been onboarded for more than 90 days can upgrade to a discounted paid plan with additional capabilities.

Also Read: Your AI Chatbot Knows More Than Your Marketing Team

The pro version includes the ability to add more agents and channels, and to manage lead tracking with key performance indicators and analytics. At the max version, the highest tier of service, the agents can respond to lead requests by generating outreach content after a lead is received, performing sentiment analysis of the lead and showing the number of views on posts.

“I’ve used the agent to support my social media posts, keeping me on track, and AGNT LAB has contributed to my productivity on a weekly basis. I can’t wait to see what they will do next,” said a beta user.

“Because we are AI-powered, unlike other social media platforms on the market today, we assist in the actual content generation phase, keeping it easy and managing content. You set the agents’ autonomy, and they are supervised. For every action, you are in complete control, and the system will ask permission to move to the next step, as well as learn your brand voice,” Winston added.

Also Read: Are We Using AI to Help Customers or Avoid Them?

Like other social media managers, AGNT LAB will auto-connect to a user’s channels after the first session and review past content to establish brand voice, he said. The agent or agents will also have access to a user’s image and graphic library.

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Walmart last week announced plans to acquire Vibe.co, a connected TV ad platform designed for small- and mid-sized businesses and mid-market brands. The deal, reportedly for $1.2 billion in cash, is the retailer’s latest move to build out its ad business and its largest investment in the space since buying smart TV maker Vizio for $2.3 billion in 2024.

The deal reflects Walmart’s need to keep growing its ad business as it chases Amazon, a company with a more mature ad operation that generates roughly ten times as much ad revenue per year.

“This is good news because it lowers the barrier to entry for CTV, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses that may have found TV advertising too complex in the past,” Martin Kristiseter, CEO at Digital Remedy, wrote in emailed comments. “The conversation is shifting from ‘Should I invest in CTV?’ to ‘How do I make sure I still have clear measurement and access to my data as these platforms continue to evolve?'”

The addition of Vibe.co will help the retailer bring more advertisers into its ad ecosystem, which promises closed-loop measurement and retail outcomes. The deal unites Walmart’s deterministic purchase data with Vibe’s probabilistic cross-device identity graph, further connecting exposure and outcomes, according to Jesse Math, vice president of strategic partnerships at Keen Decision Systems.

“Together, the promise is a more complete picture of omnichannel ROI, one that captures how spend within Walmart creates halo on direct channels, and how spend outside of Walmart feeds velocity back into Walmart,” Math said in emailed comments.

The growth of Walmart Connect, in both capabilities and overall ad spend, makes the retailer’s pitch stronger but complicates decisions for marketers grappling with an already fragmented market.

“What’s the right amount to spend with Walmart versus Amazon versus Kroger? What’s the right balance between retail media and Google Search and Meta? What’s the right split between on-platform Walmart investment and off-platform?” Math said.

Also Read: Your Marketing Dashboard Is Lying to Your CFO

Connecting with CTV

The acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions, comes as Walmart continues to see momentum in its advertising business, with 36% growth in the U.S. in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, spurred by engagement with marketplace sellers, who grew ad spend by over 50% and saw a corresponding lift in sales. Walmart Connect, the company’s retail media arm, saw a 44% increase, excluding Vizio.

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When retail media first landed at Cannes Lions, it made for a bit of an odd fit — an unshowy, lower-funnel channel encroaching on the festival celebrating bold creative ideas.

As the annual gathering’s tech focus has only become more pronounced — and arguably reached a fresh peak this year — retail media networks have further extended into the upper funnel, broadening their vision beyond sponsored search and display ads into channels like video and even branded entertainment.

“Leaning into the opportunity to connect commerce and creative, this is the place to do that,” said Ali Miller, general manager of advertising at Instacart, in an interview at Cannes last week.

At Cannes Lions, Instacart, a grocery delivery platform that works with over 2,200 retailers, dropped a round of product news underscoring its push further beyond performance channels into full-funnel marketing, including a new Ads Studio. The studio invites brands to collaborate on Instacart’s campaigns and specific cultural moments, building on efforts like a Super Bowl push from last year that featured cameos from an array of CPG mascots. Brainstorming, execution and measurement will be supported by Instacart’s first-party data, bringing the company’s retail media arm closer to its decorated in-house agency Local Produce.

“We’re really hoping to get in conversations with brands before they’ve fully arrived at a concept,” said Miller. “Let us ideate and come up with great concepts together that can be activated throughout the year.”

Another new offering is an Immersive Feed for short-form vertical video within the Instacart app. The experience resembles what one would find on TikTok, but with brands supplying videos that last between five and 30 seconds. Hellmann’s, Kettle & Fire, Rachael Ray Nutrish and Siete Foods are piloting the format, which is aimed at driving discovery and transactions through recipe and product recommendation videos that feature add-to-cart capabilities. Instacart plans to expand the feed into organic content through partnerships and sponsored creator integrations.

“When you think about recipe content, product demonstrations, personal care content, beauty content — vertical video is the perfect format for this,” said Miller, adding that the “sky’s the limit” for Immersive Feed.

Also Read: The Agency-Led E-commerce Model Is Changing

Vision for AI Advertising

At Cannes Lions, Instacart also laid out its vision for an artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant designed to help users solve problems like planning gluten-free meals for a family of four. Miller said Instacart will “likely” start to experiment with ads in the program later in the second half of this year. Still, the executive noted that Instacart is taking a deliberate approach to an ads rollout, factoring in user feedback rather than rushing to monetize. Instacart grew ad revenue 16% year over year to $286 million in Q1.

“We really want to make sure that it’s a two-way street,” said Miller of AI.

Where the assistant will sit within Instacart’s advertising mix is an open question. Other AI platforms beginning to run ads have similarly taken a TBD position regarding their ultimate place in the marketing funnel. Sponsored recipes and occasions — a shopping list for a barbecue, for instance — along with surfaced deals and product exploration were among the potential use cases Miller floated.

“We’re going to see what ends up being the dominant behavior that consumers turn to AI for,” said Miller. “I think it can help … drive a little bit more of that discovery behavior.”

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John Deere is the oldest consumer brand among the official sponsors of the nonpartisan America250 commission, having been established in 1837 just 61 years after the country’s founding. Its yellow and green sit alongside Coca-Cola red and Levi’s blue as some of the most recognisable brand colours in American life. But with iconic heritage comes a specific pressure: staying relevant as the country, and its consumers, continue to change.

“We have so many brand fans, and even families, who have lived, breathed, died and built their farms around John Deere equipment,” said Jen Hartmann, Global Director of Corporate Reputation and Brand Marketing at John Deere. “We know that our brand has a really emotional connection to a lot of people, and we want to be sure that as the world evolves in this technology space, we remind people our heritage has always been about innovation.”

Hartmann has been at John Deere for nearly two decades and has led public relations, social media, and brand marketing for the past six years. Her tenure has overlapped with the pandemic and post-pandemic era, as well as the company’s push into technological innovation, including the fully autonomous tractors it introduced at CES in 2022. The marketing challenge has been clear: recognise how farm work is evolving — and who is doing it.

“We know that younger generations are moving away from the farm,” Hartmann said. “Younger generations are not as brand loyal, and for us, we know it’s important to remind people that our history is something that differentiates us from our competitors. It’s as much about celebrating our history as it is about strengthening trust people have in the brand.”

Also Read: Are We Using AI to Help Customers or Avoid Them?

Baseball, TikTok, and a Very American Pivot

To market its heritage and strengthen that trust, John Deere is taking its brand to the places and platforms where consumers actually spend their time. In March, the company announced a multi-year deal with Major League Baseball, timed to this summer’s semiquincentennial celebrations.

“Baseball, John Deere, America’s 250th — all we needed was an apple pie partnership. It just felt so iconically American,” Hartmann said.

As the official tractor of MLB, John Deere will highlight the work that goes into maintaining ballfields and backyards across digital and linear media. The partnership includes corporate social responsibility extensions, a launch video voiced by Kevin Costner of Field of Dreams and Bull Durham, and experiential activations during the 2026 MLB Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa, and MLB All-Star Week in Philadelphia.

“Our archivist is helping us with the All-Star display, harking back to all the ways Deere has been involved, in some way, shape or form, with baseball,” Hartmann said. “Almost everything you see at a ball field is created by one of our customers or someone in the industry.”

On TikTok, John Deere took a notably different approach from the wave of brands that have used comedic C-suite stunts as brief PR plays. The company had been one of the top brands mentioned on the platform for years before it even had an official page. When it finally launched its profile in 2024, it did so by searching for a Chief Tractor Officer — a real role with real ownership of the brand’s presence, not a campaign gimmick.

“We absolutely hit the lottery with Rex Curtiss and the work he’s done,” Hartmann said. “He’s genuinely curious about the industries that we serve. He has an incredible way of talking to farmers and contractors that allows them to talk about the work they do in a way anyone can understand.”

Alongside Curtiss, John Deere has enlisted 10-year-old Jackson Laux as its Chief Tractor Kid and worked with micro-influencers in the agricultural space to bring farmers’ authentic voices into the mix.

Also Read: E-commerce Doesn’t Have a Data Problem. It Has a Speed One.

Celebrating America Without Touching the Politics

John Deere is also using the 250th anniversary to showcase its all-American credentials more broadly. The brand’s annual John Deere Classic golf tournament runs July 1–5 and features a military family tribute alongside other celebratory programming. John Deere is also a partner with Freedom 250, the organisation behind the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, where the brand will display a Model D heritage tractor alongside an ethanol-powered prototype.

Navigating the anniversary has required some care. John Deere has previously drawn criticism from President Trump, and the political climate around America250 has not been straightforward for any large corporation. The brand’s approach has been deliberate: keep the story centred on the people, not the company.

“We’ve made a concerted effort to keep the story customer-centric,” Hartmann said. “If we are at an event for America’s 250th, it is not about celebrating Deere. We are doing everything we can to make sure this is really about how the builders, farmers, maintenance workers, manufacturing facilities and factory workers are actually the ones helping build America. That’s how we’ve differentiated ourselves, and maybe prevented some of the political fray that can come with these activations.”

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Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Google has released a new commercial asking a very 2026 question: what if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?

With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft, receiving a nagging text from Ben Franklin that sets off a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar, and conducted remotely via Google Meet — with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off — and the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures. Cue the fireworks.

Since this is an ad from a tech company in 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google’s “help me visualize” AI tool to audition different animals for the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders consult the chatbot before declining King George III’s request to access the document.

The tone is tongue-in-cheek throughout — at one point Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this over beers?” — and the AI evangelism is relatively restrained compared to many recent ads in the genre. Notably, the commercial stops short of suggesting that the Declaration of Independence would benefit from AI assistance, a line that has tripped up other brands. Perhaps the most AI-forward element is the footage itself, which carries the uncanny visual quality associated with AI-generated video.

Also Read: HubSpot’s Aja Frost on Marketing in the Age of AI Search

Viewer response has been mixed. Comments on YouTube and Instagram have been largely positive, but reactions on Bluesky have been sharply critical. Posters called the commercial “cringey” and “stunningly tone deaf,” with the AI angle drawing the most scrutiny — even as several users, including historian Angus Johnston, pointed out that it is “amazing how little of this is actually AI.”

“Even in a corny fantasy joke, it’s impossible to make the case that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human collaboration,” Johnston wrote.

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Zeta Global, the AI Marketing Cloud, unveiled new findings from its latest AI shopping behaviour research, highlighting that consumers are increasingly willing to authorise AI agents to shop and buy on their behalf — signalling the early emergence of what the company calls agentic commerce.

Based on a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults who reported using AI to make a purchase within the past three months, the study marks the second instalment in Zeta Global’s AI shopping insights series. While fully autonomous shopping remains in its early stages, the findings suggest consumers are becoming more open to delegating portions of the purchase journey to AI-powered agents, with the strongest signals emerging among parents.

“There’s no question consumers are increasingly trusting AI with shopping decisions,” said David A. Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global. “The more important question now is whether brands are positioned to be discovered, recommended, and ultimately selected by AI. As consumers increasingly turn to AI to discover and evaluate products, brands need to know how they’re showing up.”

Also Read: HubSpot’s Aja Frost on Marketing in the Age of AI Search

Agentic Commerce May Change Discovery Before It Changes Transactions

While consumers are increasingly comfortable using AI to guide purchase decisions, they still prefer to complete transactions directly with brands. Seventy percent of AI shoppers said they would rather purchase directly from a brand’s website than buy through AI, suggesting AI is taking on a discovery and evaluation role while the actual transaction continues to flow through brand-owned channels.

Consumers also expressed a strong appetite for AI experiences built by brands themselves. Fifty-four percent of AI shoppers said they would choose a brand’s personalised AI experience over a general-purpose AI tool. Among consumers aged 18 to 45, that figure rises to 58%.

“When we conducted our first AI shopping study in late 2025, consumers were beginning to invite AI into their purchasing decisions,” said Pamela Lord, President of Customer Relationship Management at Zeta Global. “Just a few months later, we’re seeing signs that invitation is evolving into authorisation. As AI becomes a more influential layer in the purchase journey, brands need to understand how they show up in AI-driven recommendations and create experiences that are useful enough to earn the next click.”

Parents Are Leading the Shift

Parents with children under 18 are emerging as some of the earliest and most engaged adopters of AI-powered shopping experiences. Forty-three percent said they would allow AI to make purchases on their behalf within a set budget, compared with 27% of non-parents. The same proportion — 43% — said they would let AI automatically reorder household essentials, versus 31% of non-parents. Seventy-four percent said AI helped them discover a new brand they otherwise would not have considered, compared with 66% of non-parents, and 60% said they would choose a brand’s personalised AI experience over a general-purpose AI tool, versus 49% of non-parents.

Broader Shifts Across the Consumer Base

The survey also surfaced wider behavioural changes. Thirty-six percent of AI shoppers now spend less time researching purchases, while 59% say AI has reduced the likelihood they will return a purchase — a meaningful finding for retailers managing reverse logistics costs. Only 21% say they spend more money because of AI, and 29% say AI has made them less likely to shop in-store.

Also Read: Are We Using AI to Help Customers or Avoid Them?

AI Use Varies Sharply by Category and Demographic

Electronics is the leading category for AI-assisted shopping, with 33% of AI shoppers naming it their top AI category — rising to 45% among men. Among women, beauty products are the most common AI shopping category at 20%, compared with just 4% among men. Household items rank second overall at 21%, followed by clothing, jewellery, and accessories at 15%.

The survey was conducted online in May 2026 among 2,000 U.S. adults who reported using AI to make a purchase within the past three months.

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Talkdesk, a leader in Customer Experience Automation, announced Talkdesk Agent Builder, a natural language-driven tool that enables both business users and technical teams to oversee the complete lifecycle of their customer service AI agents. Customer experience leaders describe the outcome they want to achieve in plain language, and Agent Builder creates, tests, diagnoses, and validates the AI agent before it ever interacts with a customer. The result is a faster path to production, lower deployment risk, and the ability to build a trusted AI workforce in hours instead of weeks.

Building a production-ready AI agent has traditionally required weeks of iteration, testing, and tuning to keep it on topic. Agent Builder introduces a zero-prompt approach to AI agent development, compressing that process into hours and enabling organizations to rapidly build and scale a full AI workforce without sacrificing quality or control.

By functioning as a specialized agent-building agent, the platform automatically ingests an enterprise’s existing raw assets, such as standard operating procedures and policies, and translates them into high-precision logical instructions and structured guardrails. Once new AI agents are approved by a human operator and deployed, they are continuously monitored, evaluated, and governed through the CXA Operations Center. This complete framework helps organizations grow their AI workforce without multiplying their operational risk.

Also Read: AI Ads Will Win Only If They Earn Consumer Trust

The platform’s capabilities include plain-language agent creation, which allows operations teams to define an agent’s role, tone, behaviors, and edge cases using natural language, eliminating the need for prompt engineering or technical configuration. Pre-deployment validation automatically reviews instructions for consistency and completeness, surfaces gaps and ambiguities the team may have missed, and recommends specific actionable improvements before any agent reaches production. Simplified troubleshooting means that when an agent underperforms during testing or in production, Agent Builder diagnoses the issue, recommends fixes, and facilitates re-validation, with the highest-scoring version presented for human approval.

“You cannot simply deploy an AI agent into the wild and hope for the best,” said Munil Shah, Chief Product, Technology, and Customer Officer at Talkdesk. “Organizations need proof that an agent will follow instructions, stay on brand, and handle pressure before a real customer ever experiences it. Talkdesk Agent Builder provides that certainty. By systematically debugging and validating interactions against simulated datasets, we give enterprises the confidence to expand their operations with an AI workforce that’s trusted and reliable.”

Also Read: Your ERP Is Holding You Back. Here’s How to Fix It.

Talkdesk is showcasing Agent Builder and the broader Talkdesk Customer Experience Automation platform at Customer Contact Week Las Vegas, where Talkdesk CXA is a finalist for Automation Solution of the Year in the CCW Excellence Awards.

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Starbucks is expanding its Green Apron Creators program by launching a new creator network management tool developed in partnership with TikTok, set to pilot this summer. The tool will enable Starbucks to share content briefs and ad revenue directly with employee-creators, allowing baristas to earn money by creating content for the company while on its payroll.

“Every day, our partners bring Starbucks to life by creating moments of connection with our customers and with each other,” said Erin Silvoy, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Starbucks. “And more than ever, they are sharing those moments with the world online in authentic, creative and unique ways.” The company hopes to use the new tool to celebrate and amplify that storytelling.

The move comes as employee-generated content gains serious traction as a marketing channel. In February, a Staples staff member named Kaeden began posting TikTok videos showcasing the surprisingly wide variety of things people can do at the office supply retailer, racking up millions of views and earning herself the nickname “Staples Baddie.” Her employer leaned in by amplifying her posts through its own TikTok account, turning an organic moment into a brand strategy.

Starbucks has been experimenting with employee content for several years. In 2024, the Seattle-based company began piloting Green Apron Creators. Last year, it hired two full-time content creators to travel to Starbucks locations around the world for 12 months and post about their experiences online.

Also Read: How Brands Turned the World Cup Into a Cultural Play

The company claims its employees already use social media at three times the rate of those at similar chains, suggesting an existing base of creators the program can tap into rather than cultivate from scratch.

“In addition to great content, it’s also a relevant development opportunity that resonates with Gen Z, which makes up a majority of our baristas,” said Tressie Leiberman, Starbucks’ Global Chief Brand Officer. “This helps drive sales and connection as the program enables us to extend the coffeehouse experience beyond the walls of our cafes.”

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