Hasta La Creative!

Financial services companies deal with a lot of data, so it comes as little surprise that JPMorgan Chase has looked to the data industry for its latest marketing hire. The bank has appointed Tim Suther, CMO of database marketing company Acxiom, as chief customer officer of a new business still being kept under wraps.

"I’m going to Chase to work on a new venture to use information to serve customers better," Mr. Suther said Thursday morning. Other than saying he is to focus on marketing, project management and product development, he declined to share much about the new role he will start next week, such as how he envisions using Chase’s customer data for online and offline marketing or the name and size of his new division at Chase. Representatives from Chase and Acxiom did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The chief customer officer role is an entirely new one at Chase, said Mr. Suther.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Police sit down in sympathy with the protestors.

Read more on Adbusters.org

AKQA has announced the winners of its annual Future Lions competition at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France today. Winners of the Future Lions, which celebrates forward-thinking ideas for brands without media, technology or audience constraints, can be seen below. Stellar work.

Hosting this year’s Future Lions ceremony was by James Hilton, co-founder and CCO, and Ajaz Ahmed, AKQA’s founder and CEO.

Of the awards, Hilton said: “Future Lions, in its eighth year, has yet again showcased five incredible ideas that inspire and impress. Throughout all the entries submitted, we saw a clear desire to provide tangible benefit to the audience. By applying technology and creative thinking to a range of problems, Future Lions 2013 winners have demonstrated the power and impact brands can have when they make people’s lives better.”

AKQA Art Director Andrew Diprose, who took to the stage to present the School of the Year trophy, added, “I’ve been blown away by standard of the finalists for this year’s Future Lions. WIRED celebrates fresh ideas and disruptive thinking, and it’s so great to see this coming through with the next generation of creatives.”

This year’s entries were judged by AKQA’s Creative Council: Brendan DiBona, Duan Evans, James Hilton, Johan Vakidis, Nick Turner, and Rei Inamoto – and other guest judges.

Awaken by Amazon by Konomi Tashiro: Tokyo Institute of Technology; Tatsuki Tatara,
Kenji Shimo and Taichi Nihei: Keio University; Tomoki Hayashida: Waseda University, Japan

Editorialist by Alexander Norling and Sara Uhelski: Miami Ad School San Francisco, USA

IBM Project Accel by Jarrett Jamison and Verenice Lopez: The Creative Circus, USA

Keepit by Alejandro Ladeveze and Caroline Escobar: Miami Ad School Hamburg, Germany

The Pebble: Sense Danger by Thomas Bender and Thomas Corcoran: School of Communication Arts 2.0, UK

Maybe someday USA TODAY will hire me to cover Cannes for them. Until that day, we’ll have to do with Michael Wolff’s coverage.

Apparently Wolff wandered into a party where Jay Sears from Rubicon Project, “the leading technology company automating the buying and selling of advertising globally,” was explaining how in three years 50% of all media buying will be automated.

Wolff says he has no idea what that means.

I have, however, been failing to understand this long enough to have begun to comprehend that what we don’t understand is now transforming the media business in ways that we don’t understand at our own peril.

Here’s a video description of what it means:

For ad buyers, Rubicon offers a single access point to premium inventory at massive scale — reaching more than 96.7% of the entire U.S. internet audience.

Wolff, in his confusion, does note that prices of digital advertising have “relentlessly dropped since it became clear that digital supply would ceaselessly outstrip demand.”

But now smart publishers using new automated tools could start to make prices go up again, Wolff contends. “Automation could be used to counter automation, in other words.”

The post Media Buyers, You’ve Been Disintermediated By The Modern Abacus appeared first on AdPulp.

Focus sur l’artiste Danny Ivan basé au Portugal, qui aime jouer avec de nombreuses couleurs pour composer des œuvres hypnotiques du plus bel effet. Des créations splendides pour cet amoureux de design abstrait. L’ensemble de ces réalisations graphiques sont à découvrir dans la suite.

Instagram for video – a competitor for Twitter’s Vine that’s capped at 15 seconds compared to Vine’s six — was officially revealed at a mysterious Facebook product announcement event today.

Like Vine, the product allows users to stitch together cuts of video. In a uniquely Instagram-esque twist, it also comes with 13 filters and a new video-stabilizing feature dubbed "Cinema" intended to make footage less wobbly.

It will be available to the app’s 130 million monthly users on iOS and Android devices, and brands including Burberry and Lululemon were part of a launch group that already had video posted in the midst of the announcement.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Life is meant to be lived!

From Adbusters #107: The Epic Story of Humanity: Part 1, Spring

RAFAEL VILELA

Three months ago Adbusters pondered what it would be like if Brazil took the spirit of Carnival and turned it against the corporations with whom they are battling for their very future, their very soul. Now as the uprising on the streets of São Paulo, Rio continue to gain momentum, we see those musings in an entirely new light …

Yesterday, the prefecture of São Paolo heeded to the people’s demands and retracted their plan for a bus fare increase, signaling the first victory of the Brazilian uprising! The protest scheduled for today has been scrapped and turned into a signature Brazilian-style celebration … the Carnival against Capitalism has finally begun!

Here is that short blast from Adbusters #107 last April:

…

Carnival is the largest spectacle on Earth. There was a time when Carnival was about grit, spirit, struggle, passion, sensuality, contrast, celebration, people. It was simple. Now, Carnival consists of naked dancers performing erotic acts with float-size cameras; bronzed beauty queens massaging products for advertisers; an entire megacity on hold so that a party-bazaar the size of Nascar can pass unhindered through the streets, reminding all that life is meant to be lived.

Corporations have all but trademarked the country’s most sacred season – creating the world’s first total advertisement. The same process that turned Jesus into Santa Claus, love into a Valentine’s gift and celebration into a ticketed event, is now turning the magical pulse of Brazil into a corporate brand to sell beer, telephones and energy drinks. Today, the world’s largest corporations fund the favela schools who create the acts that draw the adoring crowds. No corporate cash = no spot in the most-cherished downtown precession.

Within this, a new resurgent counter carnival has begun. Everyday unbranded Brazilians are fleeing into the side streets, bypassing the total ad entirely. The battle between the people and the takeover is on, and the metaphor is trending around the world. If the street urchins can win out against the corporations; if the corporate carnival can be tossed for a more authentic, more real, more close-to-the-ground carnival; then maybe we here in the West can breathe real air again.

…

And here’s another update from Adbusters’ Creative Director Pedro Inoue in São Paulo:

The state and prefecture of SP yesterday have pulled back and accepted the decrease of the bus fare. The protest scheduled for today has turned into a celebration and there will probably be more meetings to see what will be the next target.

Somethings have changed from last week to this one, like the way ordinary people see protest culture and how it can actually change things for the better. The dialogue is now open with the prefecture, major and governor; and it’s beginning to be understood that the old media and their discourse has to change and incorporate transparency – quoting Paul Mason, “today with social media, truth travels faster than lies, making all propaganda incendiary.&rdquo

The main shift however was that people became aware of each other and their power as a connected network. There is the old and there is the new. This makes the politicians scared as hell to connect with this new reality, and it opens up all possibilities for this new generation.

Time to get cracking and start aligning ourselves with the fight for the imaginary narratives through out the world.

In reaction to a recent survey of 7,000 U.S. mothers which found 42% suffer from “Pinterest stress,” Planet Fitness, purveyor of the Judgement Free Zone and No Gymtimidation philosophy, aims to help de-stress the web with No Pintimidation.

It’s a Pinterest-based effort that starts by pinning perfectly imperfect images that people can feel good about. The effort was developed with Philly-based agency, Red Tettemer + Partners.

Planet Fitness is encouraging people to visit No Pintimidation to engage in the effort by first uploading an image they might find “Pintimidating,” and then de-pintimidate it by adding embellishments like cats, unicorns or phrases that call out the unreachable perfection.

Clearly no one in Cannes this week will bother with this since, as we know, everyone in advertising is so hot and has no need for this sort of therapy.