The Unhedged Marketer

AI agents are coming for your forgotten subscriptions.

Meta’s Muse can scan your spending, find the subscriptions you’re not using and cancel them for you. That’s convenient for consumers, less convenient if your business model depends on people meaning to cancel and never quite getting around to it.

That’s the big story this week.

Also: McDonald’s puts Geico in the drive-thru, On explains why Mbappé doesn’t need to sell football shoes, Costco finds younger customers through delivery apps, marketing hiring continues to struggle, Staples invents the Hard Button, and Kraft Dinner makes a cheese-adjacent cream soda.

Plus, this week’s Substack: what Adobe looks like when switching costs stop doing the retention work for it.

Links:

The Take: Meta’s Muse and subscription “ghost members”

* Barchart via Yahoo Finance, Planet Fitness and Muse: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/meta-muse-threatens-ghost-members-170845201.html

* Investing.com, winners and losers of Muse: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/metas-muse-who-are-the-winners-and-losers-of-more-agentic-ai-adoption-93CH-4914391

* Benzinga, Citrini’s 90 subscription stocks: https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-stock-ratings/analyst-color/26/09/61971690/citrini-ai-short-list-90-subscription-stocks-agentic-cancellation

* Axios, subscription stocks and the cancellation-friction research: https://www.axios.com/2026/09/24/meta-muse-subscription-stocks

* CNBC, Muse, Amazon’s block and Recurly’s pause data: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/27/meta-muse-ai-personal-agent.html

Market Signal: McDonald’s Media Network

* Marketing Dive, McDonald’s investor day: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/inside-mcdonalds-new-marketing-model-as-it-enters-media-network-fray/831170/

* Gizmodo, the drive-thru demo: https://gizmodo.com/mcdonalds-is-putting-ads-in-its-drive-thru-and-everywhere-else-2000817423

The Move: On’s investor day

* WWD, On investor day takeaways: https://wwd.com/footwear-news/shoe-industry-news/on-running-investor-day-takeaways-golf-financial-targets-1239254540/

* Sporting Goods Intelligence, what’s inside On’s 2029 plan: https://www.sgieurope.com/strategies/investor-day-ons-2029-plan-is-more-than-football/123217.article

The Number: Costco

* Modern Retail, Costco’s $33 billion in digital sales: https://www.modernretail.co/operations/costcos-digital-sales-hit-33-billion-in-2026-growing-more-than-20/

Signal vs. Noise

* Business Insider, Indeed’s CMO on marketing hiring: URL-NEEDED

* Indeed Hiring Lab job postings data: https://github.com/hiring-lab/job_postings_tracker

* TV Insider, Tilly Norwood on Piers Morgan Uncensored: https://www.tvinsider.com/1292123/tilly-norwood-cantonese-glitch-piers-morgan-uncensored-interview/

* Business Wire, KD × Solly’s Cream Soda: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260923939374/en/Kraft-Dinner-Pops-Into-the-Beverage-Aisle-with-First-of-its-Kind-KD-x-Sollys-Cream-Soda

Creative of the Week: Staples

* Marketing Dive, Staples’ Hard Button: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/staples-cmo-on-introducing-a-hard-button-amid-bigger-b2b-push/830611/

From the Substack

* Adobe’s right to rent: https://marissahomere.substack.com/p/adobes-right-to-rent-and-a-new-era

When the company that invented inbound marketing starts selling ads and cold outreach, what does that say about inbound?

This week, I look at HubSpot’s first UNBOUND conference, why the old content model depended more on free Google distribution than we liked to admit, and what happens to B2B marketing budgets when that traffic stops being free.

Plus: Omnicom plans for 15,000 fewer employees while raising its growth forecast, Toys R Us builds stores with influencers in mind, OpenAI experiments with ads that turn into sales conversations, and Sonos goes back to selling the exact thing its broken app put at risk.

Links & Resources Mentioned

* HubSpot: Fall ’26 Spotlight and the launches from UNBOUND

* HubSpot + OpenAI: ChatGPT Ads integration and small-business ad credit

* Yahoo Finance: HubSpot’s revenue outlook and August share drop

* Boston Globe: Why HubSpot renamed INBOUND

* Mediaweek: Omnicom plans to end the year with roughly 15,000 fewer employees

* Retail Dive: Toys R Us opens 120 stand-alone stores, including Creator Studios

* Financial Planning: Cerulli’s survey on AI and hiring at financial advisory firms

* PPC Land: OpenAI tests Sponsored Agents inside ChatGPT

* TechCrunch: Profound raises $180 million as brands focus on visibility in AI answers

* Boston.com / AP: Converse pulls its Chuck 70 X campaign and apologizes

* Sonos: Love the Sound. Feel the System.

The Unhedged Marketer - Marissa Homere is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

When a 27-year-old AI researcher quits his job and posts “this is not a marketing stunt,” why does the internet immediately jump to the conclusion it IS an ad? This week, I break down the structural trap of virtue branding in tech, what proposed AI safety regulations would actually do to market competition, and why interest rates are coming for your 2027 brand budget.

Plus: Florida sues Netflix over old marketing statements, Nike gets dropped from the S&P 100, and the hilarious campaign that features Elon Musk’s estranged daughter dragging a robot around by its ankles.

Links & Resources Mentioned

* Axios: Jacob Coxon interview on his resignation and safety warnings

* Dario Amodei Essay: We Must Pace the Frontier

* Stanford GSB Study: The Unintended Consequences of GDPR on Market Concentration

* Fortune: Sam Altman on delaying the OpenAI IPO

* WWD: Desigual’s fall campaign starring Vivian Jenna Wilson

Welcome to my first podcast edition of Unhedged Weekly, a newsletter I’ve been running on LinkedIn for a few months. I figured I’d give readers a different format of the newsletter, hope you enjoy!

Okay, so the most interesting thing I read this week was a lawsuit… stay with me. It’s about how Amazon decides what a brand pays for an ad, and the answer turns out to be “a bidder who doesn’t exist.” The second most interesting thing was Amazon’s reply, because they make a point I agree with, which is annoying. Pepsi and KFC are in here too. This week’s episode gets into it.

To read this week’s news instead of listen to it, head over to my LinkedIn and subscribe.

— Marissa

Links:

FTC and 22 states sue Amazon, press release, Aug 31: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/08/ftc-states-sue-amazon-over-secret-ad-surcharge-scheme

Amazon's response: https://www.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-ftc-sponsored-ads-lawsuit-response

Marketing Dive on the suit (the $70B and three-quarters figures): https://www.marketingdive.com/news/amazon-hid-surcharges-on-ad-auctions-alleges-ftc-complaint/829274/

Pepsi moves to Publicis: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/pepsico-hands-global-media-to-publicis-amid-transformation-at-cpg-giant/829556/

KFC's first global chief brand officer: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/kfc-names-first-global-chief-brand-officer-amid-identity-overhaul/829675/

Dr. Squatch and IShowSpeed: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/why-dr-squatch-is-investing-in-experiences-not-ads-with-ishowspeed/829009/

Chipotle's 100 creators: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/chipotle-deploys-100-creators-for-latest-ads-spotlighting-fresh-food/829149/

The UPS Store's Blu: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/the-ups-store-enlists-first-brand-character-to-support-franchisees/829215/

Axe, "You got better. So did we.": https://www.marketingdive.com/news/axe-vies-for-more-mature-brand-positioning-while-nodding-to-y2k-roots/829426/

Stop the slop: The Unhedged guide to AI tells: https://marissahomere.substack.com/p/stop-the-slop-the-unhedged-guide