(TrendHunter.com) Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist that works with a variety of different media to create pieces that drive a strong message to its viewer.
For her interactive sculpture titled ‘…
Office workers and children on summer vacation streamed out onto Tokyo’s streets on Friday to play Pokmon Go, after the hit mobile game was released in its home country.
Anticipation had been building for weeks in Japan, the country that gave birth to the franchise two decades ago. The smartphone game, which topped the country’s download charts just like it did on its U.S. debut earlier this month, lets users collect virtual “pocket monsters” scattered throughout the city on a digital map and battle them against each other.
By lunchtime, with parks and benches still wet after a morning drizzle, dozens of people outside Tokyo station were playing Pokmon Go while eating sandwiches and rice balls. Children congregated at a Pokmon store and at McDonald’s outlets, which are among the digital pit stops where people can collect tools and train their monsters.
Pandora, the internet radio service that’s become the subject of heated merger speculation, posted second-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ estimates as active listeners fell.
The company posted a loss of 12 cents a share, excluding some items, according to a statement Thursday. That was smaller than the 15-cent average loss projected by analysts in a Bloomberg survey and larger than a year earlier. Second-quarter revenue rose 20% to $343 million, short of analysts’ projections of $351.7 million.
Founder Tim Westergren, who returned as chief executive officer in March, is trying to almost quadruple sales to $4 billion by 2020 by steering the company into new businesses, such as ticket sales and concert promotion. That’s led to forecasts for wider losses. Pandora, which was exploring a possible sale, received an informal offer of $15 a share in recent months from Sirius XM Holdings, which is controlled by John Malone’s Liberty Media, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company spurned the overture.
Gravity was a pretty good movie, in our humble opinions, despite George Clooney’s complete inability to play anyone but himself and the fact that Sandra Bullock will always be the actress from Speed.
It was all about the cinematography anyway, right?
The Paris offices of TBWA recently parodied Alfonso Cuaron’s movie two and a half years later in an elaborate promo for the French debut of McDonald’s Triple Cheeseburger. Again, it’s all about the cinematography and the “GRAVICHEESE.”
Ben Gregor of Moonwalk Productions directed the spot, which tells French consumers that they will finally get to experience the Triple Cheeseburger with its “three fat patties” and pickles and even … KETCHUP!! Hopefully the two friends can at least share some astronaut ice cream.
Pretty big budget for such a notoriously tightwad client.
On an unrelated side note, we attended this year’s Cannes talk with The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu and Ogilvy’s Tham Khai Meng, and we lasted about three minutes. But it was far less infuriating than the Vice thing in which a smug, fat douche told all the media people in attendance how few shits he gives about the industry he disrupted so he could pay his ad salespeople $80K and his full-time writers $35K.
Verizon is nearing a deal to buy Yahoo, beating out rival bidders for the iconic web pioneer, people familiar with the matter said.
Verizon is discussing a price close to $5 billion for Yahoo’s core internet business, one of the people said and the deal doesn’t include the company’s patents at this stage. While other assets including Yahoo’s real estate were also on the block, it could not immediately be learned if they are part of the deal.
The companies may be ready to announce the deal in the coming days, but the agreement hasn’t been finalized and may still fall apart, the people said, asking not to be named because the deliberations are private. The two companies are in one-on-one discussions, one of the people said.
It’s not at all unexepected that Milo would eventually get kicked off twitter, we’ve already discussed the arbitrary approach to community moderation by the service in “The trouble with Twitter. Trolls, Verifications removed & Stock failing”. Twitter Verifications could seemingly be bought for $60,000 a year in advertising, unless of course you are a celebrity or a journalist at the right publication as they get verified for free – all depending on if anyone at Twitter knew who you were, of course. This explains why world famous bands would not be verified, while California indie bands and interns at Buzzfeed would be. Hollywood celebrities would be verified before they even signed up, while established journalists with several books authored, would never be verified. All of this is about to end, they say, as Twitter just announced a application process for verified accounts. This is how it used to work, almost ten years ago, but Twitter had to take down the application process then after overwhelming demand.
So, what happened? Milo wrote a review of Ghostbusters – the Cliff notes is “didn’t like it” – and this evolved into a twitter spat with Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. After enduring a day of harassing tweets – not from Milo – Leslie Jones left Twitter because of insults and racism. Leslie Jones has previously stated that she retweets dumb people, basically siccing her followers on them, but when Milo’s followers reply to her she “leaves Twitter with a sad heart.”
This is a problem for Twitter. There’s an actual method to their madness, when they Verify the hip kids they know, and celebrities of the selfie generation, they grew their user base. Now they’re trying to make money off this platform, and claim that new movie marketing research reveals Twitter Ads deliver increased ticket sales. If Twitter increases ticket sales whilst driving away movie stars who hear about bad reviews via their service…. Well, the solution is obviously to kick the reviewer off the system.
Whether it’s the first day of filming or the red carpet premiere, Twitter is now a key part of the marketing mix for movies. In 2015, there were more than 400 films with an official Twitter handle, from studio blockbusters like “The Martian” (@MartianMovie) to indie darlings like “The Danish Girl” (@DanishGirlMov). Even more eye-opening is the fact that in 2015 we saw over 165 million movie-related Tweets globally.
Using Ghostbusters as an example in their own post about this, Twitter clearly knows who is paying their rent. Hint: it’s not Milo.
Remember Twitter when it was lauded as a communications tool that helped the Arab spring and helped people spread news during natural disasters? Pepperidge Farm, er, I mean Wikilekas remembers, and they are not too happy about what they see as “Cyber feudalism.”
Cyber feudalism: @Twitter founder @Jack banned conservative gay libertarian @nero for speaking the ‘wrong’ way to actress @Lesdoggg— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 21, 2016
Twitter is a privately owned company though, a platform for communication where the providers of the service can say “no shirts, no shoes, and no right wing provocateurs” if they want to. After all, they banned Chuck C. Johnson over a year ago and the service is still ticking along, albeit with a stock down at 18.39USD (Price decrease 0.17 (0.92%). The problem is once again that by using a centralised service, said service will eventually wander down the advertising road. Twitter may be sued for letting ISIS use it for terrorist communication & propaganda, while also facing lawsuits for copyright infringement, but when stock prices keeps falling like lead ballons you know their main focus will be on keeping those potential advertisers happy. After all twitter’s stock value plunged $165 million at the start of the year, Twitter still needs to find a way to turn profit, and you dear users who hand your content away in the form of jokes, attention, chatter, and clicks are the product they’re selling.
Update – you’ll be pleased to know that, to quote Yahoo News, “Leslie Jones makes triumphant return to Twitter after vanquishing racist trolls”, where her most recent retweet is currently the quote “don’t try and explain yourself to idiots you’re not the fuckface whisperer.”
I’ll show myself out.
The relationship between CP+B and Domino’s is strong despite the fact that 6 of the top execs working on the account quit their jobs this week to launch their own venture. As if to prove it, here’s a new spot that serves as the latest chapter in the company’s ongoing attempt to reinvent itself by speaking less and less about its core product: pizza.
This one is pretty straightforward, even though Domino’s doesn’t really have anything to apologize for.
Most bars don’t have happy hours on weekends either, and it’s because that’s when they do their best business, duh.
As history’s very first useful YouTube comment put it, “The whole point of the ‘Large 3 topping $7.99 Monday through Thursday Carryout Only’ deal was it got people to come in on the less-busy days.” And $7.99 does feel kind of cheap for a three-topping pizza.
We were struck by the reappearance of The Noid, which will inspire either fond memories or nightmares for any kid who grew up in the ’80s. Get ready for a flashback.
Wasn’t Claymation great?
You guys all probably know this, but we are currently engrossed by a 2014 Fast Company piece about how The Noid (created by Group 243) died an ignobile death.
The character, which the writer calls “a terrible corporate mascot,” inspired a paranoid schizophrenic named Kenneth Lamar Noid to take several Atlanta-area Domino’s employees hostage in 1989 with the help of a .357 mangum.
Group 243 later got swallowed by Ross Roy Advertising after (understandably?) losing the $50 million Domino’s account in 1991.
We’re quite surprised to see The Noid return, given that he didn’t even get a line in this 2001 Simpsons episode. (Don’t let anyone tell you Season 10 was the last decent one. It was Season 14.)
Seems like the company is very quietly bringing him back. The pizzapayback.com campaign site includes various prizes like this “Noid Gift Pack.”
Someone get Tim and Eric on it.
Following the departure of chief strategy officer Anush Prabhu for MediaCom, Deutsch New York CEO Val DiFebo announced a reorganization of the New York office’s media, communications planning and data teams, which were overseen by Prabhu. The move also follows the recent hiring of Rachel Mercer as vice president, digital strategy director and the arrival of New York chief strategy officer Andrew Dawson in March.
Post-Prabhu, the agency has realigned its data, tech, communications planning and creative teams.
“There has been a natural gravitation and a growing collaboration occurring between our tech and data departments, as well as our creative and comms planning teams,” DiFebo said in a statement. “We have an incredibly strong leadership team already in place who will serve as the key pillars ensuring our continued success. This will optimize our creative and media output.”
Going forward, communications planning will unite with creative. Director of communications planning Matthew George will align more closely with the agency’s creative department, reporting to CCO Dan Kelleher, who arrived at the agency in April. There will also be closer ties between data and tech, as director of data analytics Rich VanSteenburgh will now report to chief technology officer Trevor O’Brien. On the media side, director of integrated media Karen Benson and director of local buying Maureen Burzynski will now report to chief operating officer Erica Grau.
“By bridging the gap between science and art, copy and code, and insight intelligence and emotion intelligence we’ll continue to change the way brands go to market and result in improved bottom lines for our clients,” added DiFebo.
Platypi have always been our favorite example of the weirdness of evolution. And while we laugh, it’s easy to forget that nature makes us the way we are for reasons we can’t always gauge. Humans specifically have changed their habits so quickly that our bodies haven’t quite had time to compensate.
That’s why agency Clemenger BBDO Melbourne and Australia’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC)—alongside artist Patricia Piccinini—created Graham, a human designed to withstand crash forces.
On a special live edition of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” following the Republican National Convention, Jon Stewart popped up (literally — from under Colbert’s desk) to join in a brief, discreet celebration of Fox News chief Roger Ailes’ abrupt exit. The former Comedy Central “Daily Show” host then took over Colbert’s chair (but not before Colbert put a jacket and clip-on tie on his former boss). Addressing the close of the Republican National Convention, Stewart said, “I thought Donald Trump was gonna speak. Ivanka said he was going to come out. She said he was really compassionate and generous, but then this angry groundhog came out and, uh, he just vomited on everybody for an hour.”
But most of Stewart’s rant was devoted to a takedown of Sean Hannity for what Stewart sees as the Fox News host’s hypocritical support of Donald Trump. For 10 minutes or so, it was like the old “Daily Show” was back — on CBS.
Simon Dumenco, aka Media Guy, is an Ad Age editor-at-large. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.
Brands know that to advertise effectively on mobile, they need to gain access to consumers through the few apps that dominate daily smartphone use. This is one reason why brands have embraced Facebook’s recent announcement that it plans to support chatbots on Messenger.
WeChat, a messenger app in China, already has more than 10 million official accounts, including banks, hotels and even celebrities that are registered to interact with users through chatbots. While Chinese consumers are currently a more enthusiastic audience for messenger apps and bots, it’s likely that U.S. consumers will warm up to them as the technology and the accessibility improves. Brands certainly hope so. They want to be able to reach a wider audience more directly through chatbots than currently possible with Facebook’s newsfeed, where recent tweaks to the algorithm could limit their access to consumers even further.
If business bots on Facebook end up looking anything like the applications on WeChat, we can expect to see mostly service and subscription bots. Service bots allow consumers to transact with businesses, book a flight, order a meal or review a movie. Subscription bots are focused on delivering pre-selected categories of content to users.
If you visit Reddit frequently enough, you’ll notice the abundance of accounts that just keep posting old content over and over, reaping the site’s “karma” points.
But why? Reddit karma is just an imaginary number with no real value. Or is it?
A common theory is that Reddit accounts are created and loaded—possibly by bots using algorithms to identify popular content—with lots of old posts. Then they are sold to companies looking to make viral revenue off Reddit accounts that seem legit due to their high karma and historic activity.
Now, a Redditor has spotted what appears to be this exact scenario in action.
As a video of a baby orangutan, seemingly building a tower from large Lego-type blocks, exploded in popularity on the Videos subreddit, some savvy viewers noticed the clip was actually reversed footage of the ape dismantling a tower.
But then user dublzz pointed out a more fiendish deception:
Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: Agencies don’t just show what they represent through their awesome office spaces but through what they listen too as well.
When digital agency Poke left its East London office 18 months ago to join other Publicis Groupe agencies on Baker Street, much of its defining culture was tied up in a building that couldn’t move with it, with the exception of its radio system.
Already riding a wave a resurgent popularity due to the Pokemon Go crazy, Nintendo said last week that it was coming out with a reconstituted version of the old Nintendo Entertainment system, complete with “Donkey Kong” and other games built in. With that, it outdid every other marketer on Twitter for retweets and likes in the week through Tuesday.
Check out the week’s other most-engaging brand posts on major social-media platforms, and click on the chart to see the original post in its native habitat.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
