Hasta La Creative!

WPP’s GroupM is downgrading its ad-spending forecast for 2016 due in part to “recent political convulsions” rocking confidence in ad spending at the Olympic Games in Brazil, according to the company’s new global ad spending forecast.

For 2016, the media agency network is predicting a 4%, or $20.5 billion, increase in global ad spending, down from the 4.5%, or $22 billion, increase it predicted in a previous forecast.

“After a slow growth in 2015, the communicatons market is feeling the effects of economic crisis in 2016,” the company said in its latest forecast. “Advertisers’ budget cuts have had a bigger impact on traditional media. High expectations surrounding the Olympics did not materialize and, unlike the World Cup ’14, sponsor investment was lower. The events have always had a great difference of attractiveness to the population, but political moment has certainly overshadowed the Games and pushed away advertisers concerned about ratings and corporate images.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Bill Ackman worked for years to drive the supplement company out of business, calling it a pyramid scheme. It’s still in business, but maybe not for long.

Facebook has started running tests of mid-roll video ads inside live video broadcasts from top publishing partners, the company confirmed Monday.

These are Facebook’s first ads that get served directly inside videos on the social network. “We’re running a small test where a group of publishers have the option to insert a short ad break in their Facebook Live videos,” Facebook said in an e-mail.

The social network has indicated for months that there was a possibility of introducing commercial breaks during live-streams, and head of product Fidji Simo touched on the opportunity in a forum in June.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

One thing is undeniably true: Americans (and, by extension, American advertising agencies) are currently engaged in an at-times uncomfortable conversation whose central component is race.

This goes beyond the fact that African-American representation in advertising is quite low and that many conversations have begun within the agency world concerning the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the industry’s ability to speak to that demographic.

Four high-level black creative leaders want to change this trend … or at least move the resulting conversations in a positive direction. Butler, Stern, Shine and Partners ECD Keith Cartwright got the initiative started along with colleagues Geoff Edwards (DOJO co-founder and creative executive at Creative Artists Agency), Apple/Beats global CD Jayanta Jenkins and Amusement Park chairman/CEO/CCO Jimmy Smith.

The four have come together to launch an initiative they call Saturday Morning because — as they put it on their home page — “Sunday is the most divided day in America” while Saturday is a time for emotional calm and, hopefully, mutual respect.

According to the release, the four got together for the first time recently to discuss their own experiences as black men moving through life in America and the ad industry along with the attendant challenges and opportunities. They now want to extend that conversation to other agencies as well as those who are interested in the topic at hand but do not work in the advertising industry.

According to their mission statement, they will coordinate on more such events and then release a quarterly PEACE BRIEF summarizing work done in attempting to “tackle a peace-related cause and/or initiative.” The release continues, “This could be in the form of helping passing a law, building awareness around an injustice or helping garner donations for a cause.” The ultimate goal is to counter the pervasive idea that “black lives are in some way not as important as others,” and the project implies that the ad industry can and should play a role in moving this conversation to another, more positive place.

Here’s the full letter as sent by Mr. Cartwright to various media outlets, ours included:

This letter starts with the highest level of optimism, that powerful voices are gearing up right now to take a stand.
I don’t know if there’s ever been an opportunity as great as this to make change.

My Friday morning began with a text message. I reached out to three of my friends:

Geoff Edwards,
Jayanta Jenkins
Jimmy Smith.

The text read, “We need to come together. And say something.”

We’ve all known each other for some time, and not once have we sat down together to have a conversation. Friday’s text led to a meeting Saturday morning in Los Angeles, one of the best meetings of my career.

We talked about our families, our careers, and how shocking it was that we’d never done this before—but how important it was that we were doing it now. Geoff, Jimmy, Jayanta and I talked about our own experiences growing up as black males, and the racism we’ve encountered in our lives. None of us grew up in the same city or town, but we all shared similar stories and have had to approach our lives and careers with a dual consciousness. To this day we all still share the unique fear that comes with flashing lights in a rearview mirror, and the bias placed against us for the color of our skin.

The brutal deaths of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and the five police officers murdered in Dallas, Texas, brought us together this Saturday Morning to talk about how we can help change the perception that black lives are not as important as others. The dehumanizing effects of this belief are causing African-Americans across this country to be brutalized, incarcerated and even killed, at an alarming rate.

How do we as an industry change that, and how do we enlist others around our industry to join the discussion?

It has been said that Sunday morning is the most segregated day in America. So, let’s get in front of that together. If Sunday morning is seen as a day of division, then Saturday morning should represent both a day of change and a way to dispel the myth that there is no hope for tomorrow. SATURDAY MORNING will be an organization that helps build awareness, promote change and shift the overall perception that black lives are in some way not as important as others.

Our vision is that SATURDAY MORNING will be a coalition across industries. This letter is the first call to action. We’ll now begin the process of inviting thought leaders across technology, music, entertainment, advertising, media, art and design, and anyone willing to participate in this conversation. Our action will be brought to life through a quarterly PEACE BRIEF, which will outline our objectives. Those objectives could be anything from raising money for a foundation or helping pass legislation, to bringing awareness to a cause or creating peace-based technology—all in an effort to make every Saturday Morning better than the last. We are currently active, working to bring this vision to life. There will be more to come in following weeks.

Please join us at saturdaymorning.co  as we start to seed our beginning efforts. If you want to be part of this movement and take a role as we put ideas into action and identify opportunities where we can have impact, please email us at: info@saturdaymorning.co.

Again, this letter ends with the highest level of optimism, that powerful voices are gearing up right now to take a stance. There’s never been an opportunity as great as this to make change.

Sincerely,

Keith Cartwright
Geoff Edwards
Jimmy Smith
Jayanta Jenkins

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, Peyton Manning wants company while watching the NFL on DirecTV; an office becomes a battleground for Mobile Strike; a boy finds that mistakes are not that scary in this kid-created Target commercial; and Arby’s announces its Loaded Italian sandwich with meatballs.

Finally, Geico explains that you don’t have to be a race car driver like Casey Mears to save on car insurance.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

In news that we missed last week, Jägermeister appointed Opperman Weiss as its lead global creative agency, tasked with launching a heritage campaign for the brand next year. Deutsch New York has handled the brand’s U.S. creative since being awarded those duties following a 2014 internal review.

Opperman Weiss was selected “based on prior relationships it had with the spirits brand,” co-founder Jeff Weiss told AdAge. 

Jeff Popkin, CEO of Sidney Frank, the company that imports Jägermeister in the U.S., said Opperman Weiss was able to “connect with and immediately look into the brand and articulate the story that has yet to be told.” 

That language hints at what Jägermeister and Opperman Weiss have in store for next year’s campaign. While the brand, which Popkin said was “built in North America” on Jager bombs, will not completely shy away from its party image, the campaign, he said, aims to “reintroduce Jägermeister to current consumers and introduce it to a new generation of consumers who will be surprised by the level of detail and meticulous planning that goes into the brand.”

The work will mark Jägermeister’s first national brand campaign in five years. While more recent spending information doesn’t seem to be available, the brand spent around $5.6 million on U.S. measured media in the first nine months of 2013, according to AdAge, and Popkin told the publication the current budget is “easily double that.” The effort will include broadcast, digital, mobile, OOH, experiential and influencer marketing initiatives and is expected in the first quarter of 2017.