Nevada State University Seeks Brand Strategy Partner to Support Enrollment Growth
At a Glance Buyer: Nevada State University Industry: Higher education Location/markets: Henderson, Nevada; local, state, regional, and potential western U.S. markets Primary scope: Branding and marketing services to build university awareness and increase enrollment Key deliverables/channels: Research, brand positioning, student personas, messaging, creative development, digital and social advertising, SEO and paid search, print, outdoor, landing pages, brand video, media pl… Get Unlimited NextBigWin Access Subscribe to become a NextBigWin Pro member and get access to all our exclusive content. Turn access and intelligence into your next big client win. Already a member? Login Subscribe to NextBigWin Pro
Eastern Kentucky University Opens $1.1M Recruitment Media and Search Opportunity
At a Glance Buyer: Eastern Kentucky University Industry: Higher education Location/markets: Richmond, Kentucky; statewide Kentucky; southern Ohio; southern Indiana; eastern West Virginia; northern Tennessee; select national metropolitan areas Primary scope: Advertising and related communications services for undergraduate and GOAT recruitment, plus college search strategy Key deliverables/channels: Strategic planning, media strategy, media buying and placement, performance analysis, college search services, audience segmentation, reporting, digital, broadcast, print, search, social, and other traditional and emerging media Budget: $1.1M annual all-inclusive budget Contract type/term: Not specified Key dates: Proposal deadline: Not specified Eligibility/must-haves: Higher education marketing experience strongly preferred; ability to support local, regional, and national campaigns; comfort collaborating within the University’s internal project environment; vendors not required to be locally based but must be properly registered to conduct business in the Commonwealth of Kentucky Why This Could Be Interesting Eastern Kentucky University is looking for an agency partner to support enrollment growth across undergraduate and GOAT audiences — graduate, online, adult, and transfer. This is a public university engagement tied directly to recruitment performance, market expansion, and long-term audience development. The assignment is broader than a basic media-buying brief. EKU wants strategic planning, channel strategy, media placement, performance reporting, and a full college search approach that spans students from freshman through senior year of high school, with segmented outreach built around different recruitment pathways. What makes this notable is the mix of scale and complexity. The University is planning across local, statewide, bordering-state, and select national markets, while also pushing harder into online, hybrid, graduate, adult, and transfer enrollment. It also wants employer-partnership thinking folded into the GOAT strategy, which gives the work a stronger growth and pipeline-building angle than a typical awareness assignment. Best suited for agencies with higher education enrollment marketing experience, strong paid media and search capabilities, and the ability to plan across traditional students, adult learners, online audiences, and employer-connected recruitment efforts. Proposal deadline: April, 06, 2026 Download the full RFP here. Apply to the RFP here.
Where Agencies Can Help Underdog Fantasy Become a First-Choice Brand
At a Glance Interviewee: Kimberly Corbett, Chief Marketing Officer Company: Underdog Fantasy Estimated Revenue: ~$500M projected (2025) Location: New York, NY Website: www.underdogfantasy.com Industry: Fantasy sports, sports betting, and sports media Company Notes: Fast-growing sports gaming platform founded in 2020, spanning fantasy, pick’em, sportsbook, and original content Best-Fit Agencies: Brand strategy, performance media, lifecycle CRM, analytics and measurement, cont… Get Unlimited NextBigWin Access Subscribe to become a NextBigWin Pro member and get access to all our exclusive content. Turn access and intelligence into your next big client win. Already a member? Login Subscribe to NextBigWin Pro
Inside TikTok’s Next Phase of Commercial Growth
At a Glance Interviewee: Sofia Hernandez, Global Head of Business Marketing and Commercial Partnerships Company: TikTok Location: Culver City, California Website: www.tiktok.com Industry: Social media, creator platform, advertising, and commerce Company Notes: Privately held platform with 10,001+ employees, a global creator ecosystem, and a growing ad, commerce, and AI-enabled marketing business Best-Fit Agencies: Creator marketing, social strategy, measurement and attributi… Get Unlimited NextBigWin Access Subscribe to become a NextBigWin Pro member and get access to all our exclusive content. Turn access and intelligence into your next big client win. Already a member? Login Subscribe to NextBigWin Pro
CMO Moves – Week of March 16, 2026
Highlights Darren Chait named Chief Marketing Officer at Beehiiv Beehiiv is a newsletter and creator platform that helps publishers and creators build, grow, and monetize audiences. The appointment stands out because Beehiiv says it is expanding beyond its roots as a newsletter publishing tool into a broader platform for creators and publishers. The announcement also makes clear the company is moving from product-led growth toward a more deliberate marketing buildou… Get Unlimited NextBigWin Access Subscribe to become a NextBigWin Pro member and get access to all our exclusive content. Turn access and intelligence into your next big client win. Already a member? Login Subscribe to NextBigWin Pro
Inside Kimberly Corbett’s Clear-Eyed, Proof-Driven Leadership Lens
Executive: Kimberly CorbettCompany: Underdog FantasyIndustry: Sports gaming and fantasy sportsCompany Snapshot: A sports gaming platform that blends fantasy play, pick’em games, sports betting, and original sports media.Format: CMO Journeys Interview Why It Matters Kimberly Corbett didn’t take the typical “marketing major to CMO” route. She began in accounting and auditing, then built a marketing career by teaching herself digital skills in the real world. She says sports fans carry fandom as part of their identity—which raises the bar for how brands show up. For agencies, her viewpoint is useful because she’s clear about what earns attention: real understanding of the business, proof you can deliver, and zero fluff. Their Path, in Short Corbett traces her work ethic back to an extremely rural farming and ranching community in Eastern Oregon. She worked from a young age, and it gave her confidence that she could “out hustle almost anybody” and figure things out. She started her career in accounting and auditing. It was a solid path—but she didn’t love it. And she’s candid that when you don’t love something, it’s hard to be great at it. So she quit and became a nanny. While the kids were at school, she volunteered at a nonprofit, discovered a Google grant budget for search ads, and taught herself search engine marketing and SEO. That became her bridge into digital marketing. Through each transition, she kept a quantitative edge. She says she’s always loved finance and economics, and that understanding how marketing investments flow through to a P&L has been a competitive advantage—something she believes has made her more successful in her roles. From there, she moved into mobile games and major franchises, including work tied to Marvel, Game of Thrones, and Mortal Kombat. Those experiences sharpened her view of community: when people care, they become advocates—but they also bring high expectations. She says teams sometimes learn the hard way that not engaging with a customer base is the wrong move. Now she’s in sports gaming. The business model may be familiar—software, an app, transactions—but the fan base is different. Sports, she says, is “always on,” and sports fans are deeply tied to what they love. For her, that makes the job both more intense and more meaningful: you’re not just selling a product. You’re trying to earn a place inside something people already care about. Big Themes From the Conversation Hustle shows up as a core belief. Corbett talks about hard work as the baseline—the thing that lets you walk into a new domain and learn fast. She’s also vocal about permission to pivot. There’s no shame in trying something and deciding it isn’t for you. The real mistake, in her view, is staying stuck and letting that become your identity. Community is another through line. Working on well-known franchises taught her that engagement isn’t optional. She says not engaging can be “really detrimental,” especially when the audience feels ownership. Then there’s the bar she sets. She tells a formative story: when she wanted a promotion, her boss asked what she had done that no one in the industry had done. “Never been done” became a standard she carried into her teams—an expectation that people can do bigger things than they think they can. Her leadership style follows from that. She isn’t a micromanager, expects flawless execution, and asks new team members where they want to be in the future—because sometimes someone’s in the wrong seat on the bus, and the job is to help them move toward the right one. Watch CMO Journeys Interview How They Choose the Right Agency Partners When I asked Corbett what great agency partners get right, she went straight to leverage. The best partners, she says, offer something that would be a high-capital investment for her to build internally—technology, specialized expertise, or a capability that’s hard to recreate. The price has to be good enough that she won’t even consider doing it herself. And the partner has to bring real domain expertise, not a generic pitch dressed up in trendy language. Her make-or-buy framework is practical. First: capital position and cost structure—how much fixed cost versus variable cost does the business want? Second: time—do you need results now, or can you afford a longer build? Third: what must remain proprietary? She’s wary of building something bespoke with a vendor only to see it turned around and handed to a competitor in a way that changes the game. That same clarity shows up in how she evaluates agencies and vendors who want her attention. She says she’s “not on the overly fluffy side of CMOs.” She doesn’t want someone who can’t explain how even great brand work impacts business results. She wants case studies and proof. She wants someone who has looked at her business and can say, plainly: here’s what you’re doing, here’s what we notice, and here’s how we can do something better. Cold outreach can work—but it has to earn the click. She describes the kind that gets through as simple and specific: a known problem, clearly stated, with a clear cost. She points to AI-focused vendors as an example—teams that understand the cost structure of creative services, explain what they solved, and put the trade-off on the table without making her dig for it. No grand speeches. Just a novel solution and the math. She also follows great work in the world. If she sees a strong campaign, she wants to know who did it. That’s credibility she can evaluate quickly, because it doesn’t rely on promises—it relies on evidence. And the way she discovers ideas may surprise agencies who believe the path runs through trade press and awards. Corbett says her media consumption mirrors the target demographic she’s marketing to. She’s more interested in native content consumption than in what someone wants her to think the trend is. She follows creators in the space, pays attention to what her husband consumes, and relies on her own competitor intelligence—monitoring where
