Hasta La Creative!

For most of “Mad Men” so far, Glen Bishop has lurked around the fringes: friend to a young Sally, companion to a bored Betty, protector to an older Sally. He’s always been so nicely underwritten, both guileless and slightly blank. Even as he shed the baby fat and moved into manhood, he’s remained lovable. In other words, he’s exactly the kind of minor character we want to see pop in to the show’s final episodes.

And what a pop-in it is. On the way to Rye Playland, Glen, now 18, and a new girlfriend drop by the Francis/Drapers’. He might have been Sally’s pen pal all these years, but it’s clear he wants him some Betty. Betty doesn’t recognize him, which is weird but not as weird as Glen’s news. He’s packing off to Vietnam. His rationale: why should all that dirty business be handled by poor American kids? It’s a line of thinking that’s both admirable and hard to swallow. After all, this is late spring 1970. By that late date, it’s hard to imagine an educated, suburban kid putting aside the horror that was Vietnam enough to enlist.

But this is “Mad Men”: all shall be explained. It turns out that Glen’s motivations are, as so often on this show, more pragmatic. Joining the military had the benefit of getting his stepfather off his back. Could it help him woo Betty? “I feel safe because I know you’re mine,” he tells Betty in studly fashion. Betty turns him down by telling him that she’s married. She doesn’t, as one might expect, object on the grounds that he’s just a kid. Whatever’s there between them has always been there and is still there. Glen is a balm to Betty’s loneliness, which seems to transcend whatever domestic situation she is in at the moment. Don was a bad guy; Henry is a good guy. Either way, Betty is pretty much miserable.

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BuzzFeed deleted three posts after receiving complaints from advertisers and members of its business-side, an internal review conducted of the site’s practices revealed. The three posts were about Unilever’s Axe body spray, Microsoft and Pepsi.

Removing published articles from a website without issuing a formal retraction or reason for the deletion is a major taboo among serious news and media organizations.

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s editor in chief, explained in a memo to staff over the weekend, first reported by Gawker, why the posts were deleted. Here’s a portion of the memo, provided by BuzzFeed:

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“By the time I was in kindergarten, I had been designated as class artist. Some of the older kids discovered that I could draw girls doing unspeakable things, and I could get a nickel apiece for those.”

Thus began the illustrious career of design legend Milton Glaser, 85, who discusses his life and work in this insightful and charming video made by Poppy de Villeneuve for The New York Times.

Among the many highlights packed into three minutes:

• Glaser recalls creating the iconic “I [Heart] NY” logo on an envelope while riding in a cab: “It was an expression that people felt, and it was sort of inside out rather than outside in.”
• He recounts the early days of New York magazine: “We learned on the job. It was so primitive—no computers of any kind.”
• And he reveals the simple yet awesome power of design: “You invent what is real when you look at something and draw it.”

It’s an inspiring piece that transcends its subject matter, reminding viewers that magic can happen in business and life when you follow your heart.

Separately, Glaser has also weighed in on Hillary Clinton’s much-debated presidential campaign logo. Check out his verdict here.

Via Design Taxi.

More than 600 participants descended on Manhattan’s Pier 36, aka Basketball City, last week for Ad Age’s ninth annual Digital Conference. This time it carried a “post-digital” theme — because what isn’t digital now? — and a secondary theme of “storymaking,” which can improve, in many cases, on pre-digital storytelling. The event starred master marketers from top brands including Beats, Visa, Kraft, MasterCard, IBM, Frito-Lay, Nickelodeon, Taco Bell, Philips and more.

“WHY DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY? WHAT MAKES YOU CREDIBLE ON THAT SUBJECT?”

Tressie Lieberman,

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Martin Beck, photographe sud-africain et écossais basée à Dubaï, a produit une série de portraits intitulée « We Can Be Heroes » dans laquelle il conteste le stéréotype irréaliste de Super héros. L’artiste a imaginé ce que deviendraient ces personnages en costume dans la vie de tous les jours dépourvus de super pouvoirs. De Batman à Superman, la réponse en images dans la suite de l’article.

Real audio of a 5-year-old girl calling 999 (Britain’s version of 911)—after her mother has had a seizure—anchors this compelling new PSA from Grey London aimed at getting more parents to teach their kids how to call the police in an emergency.

Elleemae Addison was home with her mother Loretta and her baby sister when Loretta had an epileptic fit in 2012. Luckily, Elleemae had been taught how to dial 999. Check out the how the call went here:

The PSA, supported by British Red Cross, is for parenting website Mumsnet. In a Mumsnet survey of 757 people, 37 percent of them said they had not taught their child to dial 999. Nearly half of them said it was because they didn’t think their child was mature enough.

“Nobody wants to think about the circumstances in which their child might need to call 999, but as Elleemae’s story shows, it can literally be a lifesaver,” says Mumsnet CEO Justine Roberts. “We hope this powerful film will encourage parents to take a deep breath and have a chat with their children.”

For visuals, the ad uses home movie footage of Elleemae and her family.

“Ads are glossy and distant. How we record our lives is awkward, beautiful, and constantly changing,” says Grey London chairman and chief creative officer Nils Leonard. “The black holes, mixed media, low resolution, distortion and awkward crops are the canvas of our real lives, and the craft leveraged here was all in service of amplifying this incredible phone call with as much emotion as possible.?”

The book, a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities, is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.

Like Lucious Lyon, Toby Byrne is building an empire. He isn’t a hip-hop mogul in the midst of a familial power struggle, but as the ad sales chief for all of Fox Networks Group, he is charged with leading a suddenly emboldened regime.

That was far from the case in October, when Mr. Byrne was appointed to the newly created role. At the time, Fox looked more like a fallen kingdom. The network lagged its broadcast rivals in ratings; many of its freshman series, including the ambitious 24/7 reality show, “Utopia,” were canceled early on; its flagship “American Idol” continued to lose ground; and the network group was grappling with a major managerial shakeup.

But after six months at the helm, Mr. Byrne will have a very different story to tell when he brings the company’s broadcast, cable and digital assets to market as a unified group during this year’s upfront. Much of that is due to “Empire,” Lee Daniels’ sudsy mid-season drama, which broke ratings records by growing its audience every week during its 12-episode run. The show, which follows a hip-hop producer whose ex-wife and three sons vie for the throne of his music business after he is diagnosed with a terminal illness, is not only a ratings blockbuster, but has become part of the cultural zeitgeist.

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Perhaps it’s a function of the way the river light splashes all over the room like bourbon poured from a great height, or maybe it’s just that this is the first day in which spring no longer seems like some kind of cruel rumor. Either way, the mood around Horizon Media’s Manhattan office is positively sunny.

It’s a little after five o’clock on Wednesday, April 1, and Horizon CEO Bill Koenigsberg and a retinue of around 80 employees are winding down around the terrace bar with a group of senior executives from Discovery Communications, who made the four-mile trip downtown to present a scaled-down version of the company’s annual upfront pitch. Whereas Discovery’s traditional dog-and-pony show would clock in at around two hours, this year’s “Honey, I Shrunk the Upfront” production was a much more succinct affair — 57 minutes and change.

As was the case with the discontinued Discovery upfront model, no one here is breaking away to talk deal points or hash out pricing on the back of a napkin. That’s not the point of the exercise. If anything, Discovery’s 11-agency barnstorming tour is simply meant to reaffirm longstanding partnerships while giving buyers an early look at some of the new shows on offer for the latter half of the year and beyond.

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