On a Thursday morning in June at Spring Studios in New York City, writer/director Sid Gopinath and producer Alifya Ali of the film project Minnesota Goodbye supercharged their feature-filmmaking dreams with $1.2 million—provided by AT&T.

Gopinath and Ali were the winners of the ninth annual AT&T Untold Stories event held at Tribeca Festival, a pitch competition that rewards one project with a grant to help take a feature film from pitch to finished product and a guaranteed premiere at the following year’s festival. This year, the prize money increased by $200,000 from previous years’ events, something that Bill Moseley, AT&T’s director of sponsorships and experiential marketing, told us might have been overdue.

“We started this program nine years ago with a million dollars, and the films have gotten more expensive,” he said. “I think it was just the right thing to do for the filmmakers at the right time to enable them to make better films.”

For a company that might be better known for their sports partnerships, supporting filmmaking—and emerging filmmakers in particular—is an important way to balance out the brand’s portfolio, Moseley said. And for the filmmakers, the sizable grant can be hard to find elsewhere.

“It feels surreal that it even exists,” Gopinath told us after the win was announced. “It gives us permission to create something that is genuinely us, without restrictions around it, so that we can execute our vision to the fullest.”

Continue reading here.—JN

Buying ad inventory in the NBA Finals is almost as hard as securing a seat on Madison Square Garden’s Celebrity Row. Well, maybe not exactly that hard—but Disney Advertising has been sold out through the first four games of the best-of-seven series between the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks for “a couple of weeks.”

Much of the general market interest in this year’s finals started around the time of last year’s upfront, Jim Minnich, SVP of revenue and yield management, told Marketing Brew, although he noted that some “core advertisers” are locked into multiyear deals with “the best positions with the best terms.” His team sells inventory for the first five games well in advance (even though technically only four games are guaranteed), and by Tuesday afternoon, there were only a handful of available slots left in Game 5, he said.

Game 1 and Game 2 have drawn the biggest audiences on ABC since the 2018 finals, when Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors swept LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Spurs notched their first win of the series on Monday, which means Minnich expects viewership to remain high, spurring advertiser interest in a range of NBA-related inventory headed into Game 5.

And with the Knicks pulling off the biggest comeback in finals history on Wednesday night, that momentum is palpable.

“There’s an excitement with the Knicks and with the young Spurs team that I think is resonating,” he told us before Wednesday’s game. “The first two games, the audiences have almost doubled versus the prior year…That leads into some really, really good opportunities for advertisers in Game 5.”

Read more here.—AM

As basketball culture continues to stretch far beyond the court, Foot Locker is betting big on the sport as both a cultural identity and business strategy.

In May, the retailer unveiled “Hoops Lives Here,” a new year-round basketball platform and campaign featuring NBA and WNBA stars including Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren, Payton Pritchard, and Jewell Loyd. The campaign imagines the athletes living inside a Foot Locker store, reinforcing the idea that basketball “lives” everywhere, not just during the game.

“You may never step foot on a basketball court, but you’re still really interested in things like Air Force 1s, Nike Dunks, and all kinds of court-related shoes from all our partners that resonate and make you feel like you’re part of a specific culture, whether you’re a basketball player or not,” Foot Locker CMO Brett O’Brien told us. “I think that’s pretty special.”

Retail Brew caught up with O’Brien to discuss the company’s broader basketball strategy, the rise of women’s basketball sneakers, and why the retailer believes even non-basketball fans want to participate.

Continue reading on Retail Brew.—JS

The week’s biggest Marketing Brew stories, now in quiz form. Test yourself on the latest headlines in brand strategy, social media, influencer trends, sports marketing, and more in a quick, competitive challenge built for marketing pros. Challenge your coworkers and see how your score stacks up!

Real jobs shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

• Senior Digital Marketing Manager - Clumio at Commvault
• Manager, Regional Social Media Marketing & Community at SanDisk
• Partner Marketing Specialist at Red River
• Senior Social Media Manager at Unity Technologies in New York, NY
• Senior Social Media Manager at Unity Technologies in San Francisco, CA

Stories we’re jealous of.

• 404 Media wrote about how marketers are spamming Reddit to “manipulate” AI search results.
• The New York Times wrote about the influx of entertainment content showing up on LinkedIn.
• The Wall Street Journal wrote about the growing presence of comms execs in the C-suite and what it may mean for businesses.
• Curbed talked to illustrator and designer Michael Doret, who designed the New York Knicks’ logo.