Hasta La Creative!

Whenever there is a creative presentation coming up on my calendar, I mistakenly look forward to it, thinking that I can sit back and be entertained by songs, antics, laughter. Won’t this be fun? Then inevitably, by the time we are 15 minutes into it, my mind is spinning and I wonder, “What the hell was I looking forward to again?”

I think as clients, we mistake our role at this stage as that of audience or judge. I don’t buy that. I think it should be coach. The agency has done the best job it can, given our “ask.” Now it’s up to us to help guide the work. This is such an important moment. Think of your kid coming to you with something they created. You have the opportunity to help, inspire, focus and build or say something really stupid that will deflate, confuse and anger. Here are five basic tips that can help brands get better at guiding the creative pitch:

1. Strictly limit who is in the room. I love to give junior people the opportunity to learn, but if this is a high stakes project, keep it very small. I like to have seven people (four agency, three client) tops in the room. You will have to force this to happen, but it’s worth it to actually have a group that can discuss rather than lob things across the table.

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Millennials — 83 million strong and 45% non-Caucasian, according to market research firm Experian. They are the most ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history. Developing content for this audience is a huge opportunity and a real conundrum. With NewFronts in full swing, it’s a perfect time to look more closely at the needs of these diverse audiences and how to fuel successful digital content development and more addressable moments. The reality is, most established media and agency players simply do not have enough talent to meet the emerging appetite of this cultural group’s inclinations.

So, think like a venture capitalist (VC). VCs look for one out of every 10 investments to pan out (i.e. to produce a 10x return). Risky business to some, but that’s what winning looks like when funding startups. If you want to remain relevant with fastgrowing, multicultural audiences and ensure your long-term relevance, you cannot dabble. Risk is the absolute key to success. You must put a number of irons in the fire. Hiring a few one-off representatives of these diverse groups to produce content doesn’t scale. This is a volume game, so get out there and place some bets.

In the late ’90s, overhead on content creation was fitting for the time — i.e., massive budgets for massive audiences. Digital development is custom built to drive the next evolution of content for diverse audiences. With lower overhead, you can rapidly create, test and develop large volumes of content that will ultimately prove successful with diverse audiences. It’s relatively easy for companies to identify what’s resonating without inordinate risk, because you’re testing on digital before pushing to other primary channels and/or linear TV.

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Hulu is looking to improve the ad experience on its service and help marketers better measure the effectiveness of their media buys on over-the-top devices.

The company announced at its NewFront presentation at Madison Square Garden on Wendesday morning that it has partnered with BrightLine to deliver the first interactive advertising built specifically for connected TVs. Havas Media will be the exclusive charter agency for the new product, which will debut this summer.

It is also working with Nielsen to enable the measurement of ads through so-called over-the-top video delivery devices like Roku, PlayStation, Xbox and Apple TV. This will allow Hulu to deliver accurate measurement of ad campaigns’ viewership beyond the PC.

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Omnicom’s BBDO New York has promoted Kirsten Flanik to be president of the office.

Ms. Flanik was most recently managing director and has been overseeing a number of accounts, including FedEx, ExxonMobil and Tropicana, since she took the role in 2011. She joined the agency in 2006 to oversee the Mars U.S. business. John Osborn, president-CEO for the past 12 years, will retain his CEO title, and Ms. Flanik will report to him.

The move, Mr. Osborn said, gives him the opportunity to focus on more “macro” issues, while Ms. Flanik can focus running the office day to day. “In order to stay focused on our current portfolio of clients while continuing to push out new practice areas like retail, pharma and healthcare, all while growing in data and analytics and comms planning, we frankly need to share responsibilities,” said Mr. Osborn, adding that “we pride ourselves on being nimble, but we need to be doing that and pushing out into new practice areas, which I’ve been really involved in.” The pair will be splitting the oversight of clients, though Ms. Flanik will add more to her roster.

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In late March, Vox Media President Marty Moe forcefully made the case for a Vox-produced TV show (“We bring the ability to create a new generation of television programming for a new generation of digital television consumers”) and said he’d be ready to share more about the company’s plans when they sold their first show.

It appears the time has come. On Wednesday, the company said A&E Networks’ FYI channel has greenlit a Vox Entertainment-produced show with a working title of “Prefabulous.” Despite the tentative name, it’s not about digital natives on the cusp of fabulous celebrity, or anything along those lines. It’s about prefrabricated homes.

Production is beginning now on eight half-hour episodes, according to Vox.

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VeryStar has been one of the buzzed-about small independent agencies in China, with a specialty in online retail commerce and mobile capabilities, including for hot all-purpose app WeChat. On Wednesday, the Dentsu Aegis Network said it had acquired VeryStar, wrapping it into Isobar China.

The Shanghai-based agency, whose full name is Shanghai VeryStar Internet Science and Technology Co., has around 70 employees and was founded five years ago. Clients include KFC, Pizza Hut and Uniqlo. Post-acquisition, it will be known as VeryStar Linked by Isobar. Financial terms were not disclosed.

China is the world’s largest e-commerce market, and mobile payments are big there already. VeryStar is a certified mobile platform design agency for both WeChat and Alipay, the payment system affiliated with Alibaba Group. Those players are driving innovations in how people use smartphones, and how brands interact with consumers. WeChat, for example, is now way more than a messaging app people use it for customer service requests, to book hospital appointments, buy airline tickets, pay gas bills, order takeout and donate to charities and all that happened well before before Mark Zuckerberg got excited about the potential for chatbots to link brands and consumers on Facebook Messenger.

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I’m here to report that the phrase “digital marketing” may soon go the way of the wind. No marketer I know can honestly say that his or her job operates only in the digital space, as marketing increasingly takes on the human psyche in more channels than you can count. There’s much more to the equation than pixels, and indeed there always has been.

Speaking of Indeed, this “it’s all marketing” idea comes from the company’s senior VP-marketing, Paul D’Arcy, who has ranked among the “100 Most Innovative CMOs in the World” and recently picked up a Growth Award from The CMO Club for his work with Indeed.

Here are some of the factors that fuel Indeed’s growth, beyond digital:

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The Lowdown is Ad Age’s weekly look at news nuggets from across the world of marketing, including trends, campaign tidbits, executive comings and goings and more.

Effen Vodka is caught up in a controversy involving 50 Cent that this week led to some Cincinnati outlets boycotting the brand. As reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer, it started when the rapper “accused an airport janitor of being on drugs because he wouldn’t respond to him in a video posted Sunday on Instagram.” The video can still be found on YouTube, below. Here’s the problem: The man targeted in the video has a social anxiety disorder and a hearing impairment, people who know him told the Enquirer.

The backlash resulted in a few Cincinnati retailers pulling Effen from their shelves. Also yanking it was a popular bar downtown called Holy Grail, the newspaper reported. On Tuesday, 50 Cent offered this apology, according to the Enquirer: “While the incident at the airport resulted from an unfortunate misunderstanding, I am truly sorry for offending the young man. It was certainly not my intent to insult him or the disability community, which is a source of great strength in America. I have apologized personally to him and his family.”

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Pandora has named Interpublic’s Deutsch its new creative agency.

Deutsch’s Los Angeles office will handle the account. Interpublic’s TwofifteenMcCann previously handled Pandora’s work, and it was believed the shop did not participate in the internally led review. It wasn’t immediately known what other shops were in the pitch.

Deutsch, which will handle creative as well as digital, will work on Pandora’s brand positioning and marketing strategy as the service launches products to a new generation of users, said a press release. DigitasLBi was named Pandora’s media agency last July.

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Today is May 4 — aka Star Wars Day — which means tons of people are sharing #MayThe4thBeWithYou sentiments on social media. Among them: Some hapless John Kasich campaign staffer, who released the following video this morning via @JohnKasich (“This account is run by Kasich For America staff”):

And then shortly thereafter, John Kasich, “Our Only Hope,” officially dropped out of the presidential race.

Quick question for the skeleton crew left at Kasich for America HQ: You got permission from Lucasfilm to use John Williams’ “Star Wars” theme, right? And they were like, “Oh, yeah, definitely use it! What’s ours is yours!”?

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