Hasta La Creative!

Last week at the Upfronts event in New York, GE announced plans to produce a new TV series called “Breakthrough,” which will begin running on the National Geographic Channel in November.

GE is partnering with award-winning producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer at Imagine Entertainment, as well as producers at Asylum Entertainment, on the six-part documentary series, which will highlight science and technology innovations.

The series is the latest effort by GE to move more deeply into content as a key part of its marketing strategy. Over the last year, GE has sponsored a recurring segment on “The Tonight Show” called “Fallonventions,” which showcases inventions by kids. It worked with Vice Media’s in-house creative agency Virtue Worldwide on a nine-part digital video series titled “The Invention Factory” for GE’s YouTube channel. And it partnered with filmmakers Gavin Free and Daniel Gruchy — producers of “The Slow Mo Guys” web series — to show off science inventions on GE’s YouTube channel. GE did not disclose the budget for the “Breakthrough” series.

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Big Data is still more of a Big Mystery in most marketing departments. Part of the problem is that too many executives think they need to wrap their arms around all analytics and come up with a comprehensive big data strategy. They either want one that’s equated to a series of data-driven tactics or to the building of a complex infrastructure. They also want a plan large enough to encompass the vast swaths of ever-increasing information.

Big data is now native to marketing. Data tools have finally matured enough to become useful, practical and available to CMOs and customer strategy executives. We are now in the age of intelligent marketing technology. More broadly, machine learning is the single most important trend in data and analytics for everybody, not just those trying to use it to unlock revenue growth and new value for customers. Machine learning is going to be the most disruptive economic change since the industrial revolution. Period. All executives — but especially the CEO, CMO and those in strategy — must get ahead of this trend now.

Conservative estimates put the investment in data-driven marketing technologies at more than $3.3 billion in 2014 alone. While the power of machine intelligence to make sense of this data often sounds futuristic, machine intelligence is already here and completely transforming one industry after another. And in the vast majority of cases, it makes better decisions than people do. Consider the Chicago and Los Angeles police departments, which use algorithms to predict crimes before they occur. Or the Microsoft engine that predicted the recent World Cup winners with perfect accuracy, even though the field was rife with upsets. Can you imagine how disruptive this technology will be to the sports gambling industry?

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(TrendHunter.com) Beyond the packaging and branding of individual products, the top April 2015 drinking trends focused on unique and interesting alcohol displays.

Having an eye-catching bottle or can is only part…

He made the announcement on “The Daily Show” on Monday night.

Le studio de design pluridisciplinaire Golden, basé au Royaume-Uni, a réalisé cette magnifique publication ultra colorée pour mettre en valeur une partie de ses dernières créations commissionnées par Nike, Playstation ou encore Google. Plus de détails en images dans la suite.

After Ameneh Bahrami was blinded and disfigured by a scorned suitor who poured acid on her face, she fought to punish her attacker in kind.

La 20th Century Fox a dévoilé la bande annonce officielle de la future production Marvel : « The Fantastic Four ». Au casting de cette dernière production, réalisée par Josh Trank, nous retrouvons : Miles Teller, vu dernièrement dans le très réussi « Whiplash », Kate Mara, Michael B.Jordan, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell et Tim Blake Nelson. Ce trailer explosif marque le début de la campagne de promotion pour une sortie prévue en France le 5 août 2015.

Interpublic’s FCB has named Karin Onsager-Birch as the new chief creative officer of the agency’s San Francisco and Los Angeles outposts.

The West Coast slot had been vacant since Eric Springer left the post last summer. Ms. Onsager-Birch’s appointment follows the recent hire of a new chief creative, Eric Cosper, for the agency’s New York office, FCB Garfinkel.

Dominic Whittles, CEO of FCB West, which includes the San Francisco and Los Angeles offices, said that Ms. Onsager-Birch was chosen because her “leadership style is substantive and direct, she’s open minded and solution-oriented, she’s clear about her point of view and very forthright.” He added that given her tenure overseas, Ms. Onsager-Birch has global experience that “allows her to draw on a much larger source code of information.”

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New York City was blanketed in snow as more than 100 Scripps Networks staffers arrived at the Helen Mills event space March 5. They were there to serve as a faux audience for the company’s final dress rehearsal before embarking on its seven-city upfront tour.

At a time when other network groups are scaling back their upfront presentations, forsaking the glitz and glitter for one-on-one meetings, Scripps still firmly believes in the big show. The company continues to host such presentations across the country, flying top executives and its most prestigious stars to make its pitch in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, in addition to New York.

Scripps isn’t impervious to the challenges facing the rest of the industry; it too has gone through layoffs and staff reductions and has seen its fair share of ratings erosion. But in spite of this — or perhaps even because of it — Steve Gigliotti, chief revenue officer, and Jon Steinlauf, exec VP-ad sales and marketing, are adamant about sticking to the company’s tradition.

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