Today’s MLB All-Star Game, as the name implies, brings together stars from across the league. Also in the lineup for All-Star Week, which started Friday, is a litany of brands looking to do some sports marketing.

Brands play ball: As is the case with most major sporting events, there seems to be no shortage of campaigns, from traditional sponsorships to giveaways to interactive experiences around T-Mobile Park in Seattle, where the Mariners play.

• T-Mobile, with its name on this year’s host stadium, is also an official MLB partner. The company had its branding on Monday’s T-Mobile Home Run Derby, and is showcasing its tech in several ways, including testing an automated system that uses a private 5G network to challenge calls—and receive decisions on challenges—in real time.
• SiriusXM put its name on the All-Star Futures Game, a showcase for next-gen players.
• Pete & Gerry’s, a “humane egg farming” company, is activating at the park and hosted a ticket giveaway leading up to All-Star Week.

Swipe out: Mastercard is the title sponsor of this year’s All-Star Game, and will run an ad for its fraud-detection software (used by MLB to “prevent bots from stuffing the ballot box for the All-Star Game”) twice during the game, according to Adweek.

Plus, it wouldn’t be a sporting event without at least a few beverage brands. Keep reading here.—AM

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Last month, influencer Destene Sudduth posted a video on Instagram and TikTok showing the inside of a Shein factory. The video features footage she filmed while touring a factory located in Guangzhou, China, along with other American influencers.

“I expected this facility to be so filled with people just slaving away, but I was actually pleasantly surprised that a lot of these things were robotic, and honestly, everybody was just working like normal, like, chill, sitting down. They weren’t even sweating,” she said in the video.

It was one of several filmed on an all-expenses-paid trip that set off an online firestorm. There was no shortage of criticism of the influencers’ positive portrayal of Shein; the company has faced questions around its labor practices for some time.

Big picture: The trip marked the latest public-relations challenge for Shein, which is reportedly considering a US IPO, per Bloomberg. According to a report from Morning Consult, the brand is losing favor among the same Gen Z consumers that helped it go viral thanks to TikTok.

• In June, the brand’s net favorability among Gen Z consumers fell nearly 20 points year over year.
• Net purchasing consideration for Shein among Gen Z also fell 10 points, with interest in making a purchase from the brand dropping from 49% to 42% year over year.

Overall, “brands should view the latest Shein incident as a cautionary tale,” the report said. Some observers have described the content filmed at the factory as propaganda. One influencer has since deleted her post about the trip and apologized, saying she cut ties with the company. Meanwhile, a parody of the influencers’ videos has gotten hundreds of thousands of views and over 100k likes on TikTok.

Read the full story here.—JS

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Carrie Goggans is VP of client services at A Little Bird, a brand engagement agency.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Last year, we did a sampling tour for Yasso frozen Greek yogurt that spanned nine months, 13 cities, and 35 events. We were able to hand out over 740,000+ samples from our fully renovated ice cream truck. It was so fulfilling seeing consumers posing with our photo ops, sampling the product, and leaving with a smile on their faces.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? The most recent ad campaign that I loved was Ocean Spray’s Jiggle campaign. They took something that is not very exciting or aesthetically appealing (sorry, cranberry sauce) and made it fun and catchy.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? I went to school for film and television production. After graduating from The University of Georgia, I moved out to Los Angeles and worked in reality and scripted television. After working on some gems like Bridezillas, Billy the Exterminator, Sex Sent Me to the ER, and many, many Hallmark movies, I made the move into marketing.

Read the full Q&A here.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

#Useful: Bookmark this hashtag generator to help boost videos on Reels.

Press play: Read up on all the new video tools and updates on Twitter and what they mean for marketers.

The greatest gift of all: Check out Reddit’s guide to holiday campaign planning.

Quality + quantity: Creating engaging content doesn’t have to break the bank. Join Canva on July 19 for a chat with the pros about scaling branded content without compromising quality (or your budget). Register here.*

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Roku and Shopify have teamed up to let connected TV users buy directly from Shopify merchants using their remote controls.
• Snap and Linktree are working together on a link-in-bio tool for Snapchat users.
• Amazon and Priceline are together offering Prime Day shoppers travel booking discounts.
• Dentsu invested in Fiddler Labs, an AI monitoring company that says it offers visibility into the behavior of businesses’ AI and machine learning models.