Fly By News — Week of Oct 3
Every week we zoom in on signals that shape how brands grow. This one spans a Microsoft shakeup, a CMO ascending to CEO, a toy line turning into global IP, ad growth cooling to single digits, and a playbook from Taylor Swift on owning cultural moments. Below is the deeper read, with actions you can take now and fully verified sources linked in-line.
1) Microsoft kills the silo
Microsoft reorganized its commercial business and combined sales, marketing, and operations under a single leader, Judson Althoff. The goal is tighter execution around AI products and a more unified commercial motion.
See coverage in the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-ai-0b02c6fe
and Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-promoted-new-ceo-of-commercial-business-compete-in-ai-2025-10. Wall Street Journal+1
The structural shift pairs with Microsoft’s data strategy. Microsoft Fabric is explicitly pitched as a single, AI-ready foundation that brings organizational data together for any team to act on.
Read Microsoft’s announcement: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/16/microsoft-leads-shift-beyond-data-unification-to-organization-delivering-next-gen-ai-readiness-with-new-microsoft-fabric-capabilities/
and Fabric feature notes: https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en/blog/september-2025-fabric-feature-summary.
What this means for operators: if sales, ops, and marketing still run on different systems and incentives, your AI advantage gets throttled. Unify data and workflows so models can see full-funnel context.
If you are mapping these touchpoints, Hawke’s quick refresher on micro-moments is a practical place to start: https://hawkemedia.com/insights/d2c-micro-moments/.
Do now
- Stand up a shared source of truth for leads, pipeline, and fulfillment before you roll out more AI.
- Align your team on one revenue calendar and one experimentation cadence.
- Upgrade your journeys in tools that already integrate sales and marketing, like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, which is shipping features across sales and journeys in the Oct 2025 wave: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2025wave2/sales/dynamics365-sales/ and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2025wave2/customer-insights/dynamics365-customer-insights-journeys/.
2) Pandora’s CMO becomes CEO
Pandora announced that Chief Marketing Officer Berta de Pablos-Barbier will succeed Alexander Lacik as CEO in March 2026. Company announcement: https://pandoragroup.com/investor/news-and-reports/company-announcements/newsdetail?id=27541.
Coverage: Reuters https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/pandora-ceo-retire-next-year-will-be-replaced-by-marketing-chief-2025-09-30/
The signal is simple. Increasingly, brand leadership and business leadership are the same job. When the person closest to consumer insight owns the P&L, brand investments get treated like growth engines rather than cost centers. For a quick diagnostic, look at your roadmap. If brand, product, and performance live on different roadmaps, you are likely leaving enterprise value on the table.
Do now
- Tie your brand metrics to revenue drivers like retention and LTV, not just awareness.
- Give marketing a seat at pricing, packaging, and channel strategy.
- If you want an example of brand and performance working in tandem, scan our Funko case study: https://hawkemedia.com/case-studies/funko-pop-yourself/.
3) Pop Mart turns Labubu into culture
Pop Mart is treating Labubu less like a toy and more like a platform. The company is openly borrowing from Disney’s model with content, parks, and experiences that extend the IP well beyond shelves.
Read Reuters’ interview on the strategy: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/labubu-maker-pop-mart-learns-disney-capitalise-toys-viral-success-2025-09-30/.
Store count and global expansion context via WWD: https://wwd.com/business-news/financial/labubu-may-have-peaked-but-pop-mart-is-here-to-stay-1238084450/.
The pace is new. Fandom can globalize in months through drops, resale communities, and short-form video. Wired’s feature quantifies the surge and valuation narrative, which underscores how quickly IP can compound when fed by media and experiences: https://www.wired.com/story/labubu-pop-mart-journey/.
Do now
- Audit your product line for “fandom seeds” that merit their own editorial, community, and live experiences.
- Design scarcity with intention: limited variants, timed releases, and IRL moments.
- Build a three-tier content plan around the IP: short-form social, owned editorial, and periodic event-based spikes.
4) Digital ad growth cools
Forecasts keep drifting toward single digits.
MAGNA projects global ad revenue up 4.9 percent in 2025 after a double-digit 2024, a clear deceleration: https://magnaglobal.com/advertising-proves-resilient-amidst-economic-uncertainty/
and summary via Marketing Dive: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/magna-latest-to-downgrade-global-ad-spending-forecast-expects-979b/750871/.
Digital specifically also cools.
Dentsu pegs 2025 global digital growth at 7.9 percent: https://www.dentsu.com/news-releases/ad-spend-forecast-to-grow-by-four-point-nine-percent-in-2025-despite-a-reduced-economic-outlook.
In the U.S., Insider Intelligence reports 2025 digital ad growth dipping below 10 percent for the first time since 2009: https://www.emarketer.com/content/h1-digital-ad-spending-forecast-trends.
Efficiency becomes the new scale. That does not mean cut, it means prove. Shift budget toward channels and creative that can tie spend to incremental revenue or LTV.
For practical campaign hygiene as we head into peak season, here is a concise Hawke checklist on BFCM email that maps tightly to ROI measurement: https://hawkemedia.com/insights/6-best-practices-for-a-bfcm-email-marketing-campaign/.
Do now
- Set a pre-holiday testing plan, then lock on the winners before heavy spend.
- Move one budget line into creative that is built for speed: modular assets, rapid iterables, and clear learning agendas.
- Make LTV math explicit before you justify aggressive discounting. If your LTV model is thin or unverified, err toward bundles, value adds, and list growth over blanket price cuts.
5) Taylor Swift runs the playbook
Taylor Swift is pairing the release of her twelfth studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” with a national theatrical fan event weekend.
AMC has the official listing: https://www.amctheatres.com/movies/taylor-swift-the-official-release-party-of-a-showgirl-81310.
Additional details on the cinema-only window and content mix are captured in news hits like WUSA-TV: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/nation-world/taylor-swift-the-official-release-party-of-a-showgirl/507-7aa7787a-d061-4f49-abca-25b542daad71
and Decider: https://decider.com/2025/10/02/watch-taylor-swift-life-of-a-showgirl-movie-official-release-party-streaming/.
The lesson for brands is not to imitate scale. It is to construct owned moments that blend product, media, and community so the launch drives its own distribution. Swift’s model stacks anticipation, controlled scarcity, and cross-channel storytelling into an event that earns attention rather than rents it.
Do now
- Plan one tentpole per quarter where product, content, and community converge.
- Package exclusive assets for that window, such as a premiere, a limited colorway, or a live demo.
- Treat distribution like programming. Build programming blocks across your channels that ladder into the tentpole.
Closing thought
The connective tissue across these stories is orchestration. Microsoft is reorganizing to run revenue under one operating system. Pandora is elevating a marketer to steer the business. Pop Mart is scaling a toy into a cultural platform. Ad growth is maturing, which puts pressure on proof. Taylor Swift is showing how to architect a moment that dominates. If you can align teams, data, and distribution around a few decisive moments, you will bend the curve in your favor.
If you want help turning these signals into a Q4 plan, start with a short sprint on micro-moments or a BFCM content tune-up.
Hawke has frameworks you can lift into your roadmap today: micro-moments primer https://hawkemedia.com/insights/d2c-micro-moments/
and BFCM email guide https://hawkemedia.com/insights/6-best-practices-for-a-bfcm-email-marketing-campaign/.