(TrendHunter.com) Well Well Designers created a folding lamp using the common idea of pop-up cardboard shapes, the likes of which are seen in children’s books. The simple lamp uses a space in a room that is…
Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: The marketing and advertising landscape is still trying to figure itself out. The business scene, with Corporate America and Wall Street, is not doing it any favors. With investors scared about what is going on in the Asian markets and clueless about what is going through the heads of the Chinese government…
Consumers are well aware of the negative chatter surrounding Amazon’s high-stakes workplace culture, but they still plan to shop there.
Amazon’s brand perception plummeted 60% this week, after a New York Times expose spotlighted a troubling workplace environment, according to YouGov BrandIndex, which tracks the “buzz” consumers are hearing about brands. In this instance, the research firm asked shoppers: “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?”
As of Monday, Aug. 24, Amazon’s “Buzz” score dropped to 23 out of 100, its lowest score since last October when a book about the company called “The Everything Store” was released. The last time it fell below that score was in July 2013 when it announced it was cutting back on free delivery.
Russia has pulled household chemicals from Procter & Gamble Co., Henkel, Colgate-Palmolive Co. and Clorox Co. among others from shelves, citing safety concerns, in what could become the biggest threat of fallout yet to western marketers from worsening relations with Moscow.
Bloomberg reports that the website of Russia’s official consumer watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, restricted sales of detergents and other household chemicals from the U.S. and German companies after a probe showed violations of toxicological safety requirements. RT.com, the website of the state-funded Russia Today TV network, has focused since tensions between the west and Russia began rising last year on studies linking cancer and other toxicological dangers to household chemicals.
The move comes amid sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union against Russia over its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. Russia has responded with an import ban on some foods from the E.U. and U.S., including widely publicized destruction of illegally imported foodstuffs.
ConAgra named Darren Serrao to the new post of chief growth officer on Aug. 17. Mr. Serrao previously spent years at Campbell Soup, most recently as senior VP-chief marketing and commercial officer for Campbell’s Americas Simple Meals and Beverages division, that company’s largest unit, encompassing everything from Campbell Soup to V8. Before Campbell, Mr. Serrao was with PepsiCo and Unilever.
Here are a few things you might not know about Mr. Serrao:
1. He has worked on some America’s most iconic brands, but grew up outside of the U.S. Mr. Serrao is from Trinidad and Tobago, the islands off the coast of South America. (His parents and grandparents were also native to Trinidad, with family ties to Portugal and Spain.) He graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.
While virtual reality has been used primarily for consumer applications such as video games and movies, some business-to-business marketers are beginning to test the waters with VR in industries including manufacturing, architecture, construction and hospitals.
Advances in technology that make VR more accessible to users, such as Samsung Gear VR, as well as investment from big players such as Facebook — which acquired Oculus Rift last year — are giving b-to-b marketers new ways to demo big, complex equipment to buyers in settings from live events to individual sales calls.
“Virtual reality is another part of the puzzle for us in terms of opening up the world of GE and doing it through visual storytelling,” said Katrina Craigwell, director-global content and programming at GE. “The more we can show rather than tell, the better we do.”
Passion Pictures has signed London-based director Cassidy Burcher to its roster for exclusive representation. Burcher is a young Londoner whose breakthrough commercial project was Honda’s Perfect Fit film announcing the new HR-V. Having started his career as a runner at Rattling Stick, Burcher worked in a number of roles including as director of photography on several music videos. He became a second unit director on shoots for brands such as Renault and Kit Kat, and most notably on the multi-award-winning Ringan Ledwidge-helmed “Three Little Pigs” spot for The Guardian. Subsequently he earned independent freelance directing jobs from agencies, including a Morrison’s film via DLKW Lowe.
Toronto digital production and design company Jam3 has appointed Mark McQuillan, who founded the firm in 2003 and has served as its technical director since its inception, as managing director. His former duties are being split among Aaron Morris, who has been with Jam3 since 2007 and now takes on the title technical director, and Adam Slayer, who joined Jam3 in May as head of development and user experience.The changes follow a 50% increase in employees and doubling of revenues in 2014-2015. Jam3 has moved into new offices in downtown Toronto, has opened outposts in Europe and Latin America and is set to open an office in Los Angeles this fall.
With outsize creative talent and a local market prone to economic and political turmoil, Argentines often have one foot in cosmopolitan Buenos Aires and the other in the rest of the world.
Santo, one of three WPP agencies to win Coca-Cola’s global creative review this month, has always worked for the world from Argentina. About 60% of Santo’s business is international and 40% comes from local accounts, said partner Maxi Anselmo.
At Del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi, founder Pablo Del Campo became the network’s worldwide creative director last year, and dispatched his Buenos Aires Executive Creative Directors Mariano Serkin and Maxi Itzkoff to Europe in the new roles of co-chief creative officers for the region. At home, a new generation — CEO Gloriana Lopez-Lay and Executive Creative Directors Ariel Serkin, Juan Pablo Lufrano and Rafael Santamarina — is taking charge at the agency’s offices, a gorgeous complex of former stables in horse country-turned-suburbs north of Buenos Aires.
Imagine products such as a medicine cabinet or refrigerator throwing off a constant stream of data points about a consumer. By the end of this decade, there will be over 50 billion connected objects — approximately six objects for every person on the planet. More connectivity means more opportunities to use, as well as abuse, the resulting flow of information. Soon, manufacturers, brands and even employers and insurance companies could have unprecedented access to formerly private information about consumers.
The value of data outshines the value of product
In the IoT, selling a product is a catalyst for data transaction, not an end in itself. For example, an appliance manufacturer could make a fortune selling data about the contents of people’s refrigerators to CPG brands. This would enable manufacturers to change their commercial model, perhaps offering a subscription or service fee model; or even offering free use of the appliance in return for data access.
Burger King was ready to play peacefully with its larger rival, until McDonald’s fired back with a push for a bigger peace plan.
On Wednesday, Burger King began publicizing its idea for a “McWhopper” collaboration between the two chains, tied to Peace Day on Sept. 21.
Peace Day, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly, is meant to be “devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples.”
As fantasy football season gets underway, with some leagues beginning their drafts, Pizza Hut said it is now the official pizza of ESPN Fantasy Football.
Plans from the Yum Brands pizza chain include weekly awards for ESPN leagues as well as one grand prize including a championship-style ring, encrusted with rubies, diamonds and a Pizza Hut logo, valued at an estimated $10,000.
Pizza Hut’s push to entice fantasy football fans comes as such leagues are drawing a large and hungry crowd. According to the pizza chain, participation in fantasy football leagues has jumped 40% in the past year. And according to a survey from American Express, nearly 75 million Americans plan to participate in fantasy football this year. Amex said 56% of those participating plan to spend on food while they play.
A longtime print magazine sales executive may not be the obvious choice to run ad sales for a digital video network aimed at millennial women. But that’s the choice StyleHaul has made with the appointment of former Meredith exec Dick Porter as its cheif revenue officer. He fills a position that’s been vacant since Alison Kennedy left in April.
StyleHaul CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski said she saw parallels between Mr. Porter’s experience at Meredith, the publisher of magazine brands including Better Homes & Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal, and the business StyleHaul is building as it tries to sell brands on executions beyond run-of-the-mill ads. “The really big publishing houses have had to evolve and iterate their practices to become more complex offerings, which is actually a lot similar to us, but at scale,” she said.
Print magazines have a long history of selling brands on more than just traditional ad pages: They also sell advertorials, forerunners of so-called “native” ads on sites like BuzzFeed and branded videos on YouTube. And those branded videos happen to be where StyleHaul primarily focuses its ad sales efforts. YouTube’s sales team sells the pre-roll ads running before StyleHaul’s videos, typically taking a 45% cut of the revenue, while StyleHaul sells videos that incorporate a brand and don’t require sharing the take with YouTube.
WPP, the world’s biggest advertising holding company, reported first-half revenues up 6.8% on a strong performance in North America, and CEO Martin Sorrell said he was still bullish on China despite the turmoil in the stock market.
WPP maintained its 2015 forecast of like-for-like revenue growth of more than 3%. But it also sounded a note of caution about client sentiment in uncertain times.
“To survive and exist in the advertising industry, you have to be an optimist When I listen to the broadcasts by our competitors, or by industry commentators, it’s always very optimistic, ‘How’s everything? Fabulous, wonderful, nothing could be better,'” Mr. Sorrell said during a conference call with investors. “The reality of course is different.”
The beer agency changes keep coming: MillerCoors has put Blue Moon into creative review and has selected Venables Bell & Partners to handle its Leinenkugel’s brand.
The brewer, which is already in review for its largest brand, Coors Light, has “selected a small group of agencies to compete for the Blue Moon above-the-line work and expect to award this business by the end of September,” according to a memo sent to distributors. The incumbent on the brand is Integer Group, which “will refocus on retail marketing for Blue Moon,” according to the memo.
Venables Bell & Partners, which is based in San Francisco, takes over Leinenkugel’s from Jacobson Rost, which will “refocus their efforts against our retail marketing programs,” according to the memo. New work for both brands is scheduled to debut next year.
Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, a company that catalogs, tags and measures activity around TV ads in real time. The New Releases here ran on TV for the first time yesterday. The Most Engaging ads are showing sustained social heat, ranked by SpotShare scores reflecting the percent of digital activity associated with each one over the past week. See the methodology here.
Among the new releases, there are plenty of feel-good tunes with family visuals. Coca-Cola pairs Jess Glynne’s “Hold My Hand” with a family dinner, and Kraft overlays a chipper guitar song with kitchen scenes.
In “The Perfect Escape: Mattress,” a man buys movie tickets using Visa Checkout. He narrowly avoids mattress shopping with his parents, but not before his dad texts him, “We wore the old one out…. HAHA!!!” (Ew, gross.)
A dispute between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Dish Network that’s left about 5 million satellite-TV customers without local channels could spur limits on the use of such programming blackouts in business squabbles.
Sinclair blocked Dish customers’ access to 129 stations in 79 markets on Tuesday, Dish said in a statement. It asked regulators to intervene in what it called the largest blackout in TV history, affecting viewers in 36 states.
Within hours, Federal Communications Commissions Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency’s staff would call an emergency meeting with the companies to “bring back local programming.”
Facebook is testing a personal digital assistant to run inside its Messenger mobile application, an early step toward a challenge to artificial intelligence-based services like Apple Inc.’s Siri, Google Inc.’s Google Now and Microsoft Corp.’s Cortana.
The service, called M, can carry out tasks on a user’s behalf, such as making purchases, booking appointments and travel, or sending gifts, according to a posting on the social network by David Marcus, Facebook’s vice president of messaging products. It’s being tested with a few hundred people in the San Francisco Bay Area to start, said Facebook spokesman Ari Entin.
“This is early in the journey to build M into an at-scale service,” Marcus wrote. “But it’s an exciting step towards enabling people on Messenger to get things done.”
For “Star Wars” fans, Christmas is coming early this year: on Sept. 4, when the toys tied to Walt Disney Co.’s first film in the space-adventure series go on sale.
Three months before “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” opens in theaters, the company is staking its claim on gift lists, with everything from Captain Phasma action figures to Nerf crossbows and blasters. Disney on Wednesday described plans for events leading up to next week’s “Force Friday.” They include a global unwrapping of “Star Wars” merchandise on YouTube by Disney’s web video unit Maker Studios, and coverage on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” ABC is also part of Walt Disney Co.
If all goes according to plan, fans, many in costumes, will be lining up well before any new Chewbacca masks, lightsabers or red-armed C-3PO action figures go on sale. The products, built around one of the highest-grossing film franchises in history, could help the toy industry score its best growth in more than a decade, according to NPD Group Inc. The researcher predicts the industry’s U.S. retail sales will increase 6.2% to $19.9 billion this year.
Independent agency Cramer-Krasselt has picked up sibling brands Pacifico beer and Casa Noble tequila without a review.
The Chicago-based agency is already on the roster of the brands’ parent company Constellation Brands roster with longtime client Corona Extra. Pacifico was previously handled by Omnicom’s GSD&M, while Casa Noble had no incumbent.
“Our Pacifico beer and Casa Noble tequila brands have significant upside potential for growth,” said Jim Sabia, chief marketing officer at Constellation Brands, in a statement. “We’ve had a solid partnership with C-K over the years and look forward to continued success in raising the profile of these two high-performing brands.”
Fans of USA’s taut techno-thriller “Mr. Robot” will have to wait another week to watch the season finale, as the NBC Universal network has pushed the broadcast date back in light of Wednesday morning’s shooting in Virginia.
USA said late Wednesday that an unfortunate, unforeseeable coincidence prohibited it from airing the episode so soon after the shocking murder of two members of the WDBJ-7 news crew.
“The previously filmed season finale of ‘Mr. Robot’ contains a graphic scene similar in nature to today’s tragic events in Virginia,” USA said. “Out of respect to the victims, their families and colleagues, and our viewers, we are postponing tonight’s episode. Our thoughts go out to all those affected during this difficult time.”
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