Aug
01
Mercure: Mercure moments
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Aug
01
While You Were Chasing Pokmon, Line Had a $1.3 Billion IPO
Posted in: Uncategorized
Amid all the hype around Pokmon Go, you may have missed another huge technology story emerging from Asia. Line, a messaging app with approximately 218 million monthly active users in the Far East, recently raised more than $1.3 billion in 2016’s largest tech IPO.
With the company now valued at over $8 billion dollars, Line is quickly becoming a major technology player that can advance and influence mobile and app innovation alongside U.S. players like Google, Apple and Facebook.
So why is this important?
Aug
01
Amy Schumer Is Joining Old Navy's Roster of Funny Girls
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“[Amy] speaks to women and almost everyone in a very honest way, she is body proudthose are core values that we stand for,” said Liat Weingarten, senior director of Old Navy advertising. “She’s so honest and humble in a way that we think really resonates with our customer.”
In the first spot, which will air during “The Bachelorette” finale Monday evening, Ms. Schumer is babysitting her niece and nephew and phones some cool kids at the mall to ask advice about something called “back-to-school.”
“Back-to-school is like our red carpet,” says one kid, whom viewers may recognize as actor Thomas Barbusca the “Burp King of Westchester” in Netflix’s “Wet Hot American Summer” series last year and a commercial regular. He recommends Old Navy, for its 60% off promotions. Ms. Schumer gives an enthusiastic “Noice” and “Stank” before she’s reprimanded for her embarrassing lack of hipness. The spot, which will debut on TV in a 30-second version and digitally as a 60-second clip, includes three young influencers, Laneya Grace, Skai Jackson and Hayden Summerall, whose followings may give Old Navy a boost on the social-media circuit. Ms. Weingarten noted the importance of the “squad” or group of friends and how critical that is to kids today, who have communities outside of their families.
Aug
01
Dinosaurs Dance to a Song About Underwear in Happiest Ad Ever About Child Abuse
Posted in: UncategorizedThe Aardman studio, known best for creating Wallace & Gromit, made the rollicking cinema commercial below for the NSPCC’s anti-sexual abuse “Pants” campaign in the U.K. The ad is a four-minute music video for a song, produced by Adelphoi Music and voiced by X Factor’s Peter Dickson, urging children to speak up if someone tries to touch them inappropriately.
Aug
01
International Small Agency of the Year, Silver: Mr. President
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Clients include Unilever’s Prestige Brands and Maille Mustard; L’Oreal’s The Body Shop, Virgin Trains; NBC Universal; Global (the U.K.’s largest commercial radio company); and online gambling enterprise Bet Victor — many of them won in pitches against big London agencies.
Mr. President has a digital heritage — founders Claire Hynes and Nick Emmel met while working at MDC Partners’ Dare — but its creative aspirations are wider-ranging.
Creative partner Laura Jordan Bambach, who joined the agency (also from Dare) a year after launch, is a key player in the agency’s ambitions.
Aug
01
Small Agency of the Year, Gold: Zulu Alpha Kilo
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“Our enemy is the bullshit of the way the process works,” says founder and chief creative officer Zak Mroueh, adding that the shop turns down 80% of potential work because of its stance on spec.
Mr. Mroueh launched the shop in 2008 after leaving Canadian shop Taxi. (“Zulu Alpha Kilo” is the NATO phonetic alphabet for the spelling of his first name.) The agency built a name for its creativity for clients including Bell Canada and Audi and with stunts like the anti-spec video, which blend thought leadership, humor and self-promotion.
Its website doesn’t have much actual information; it’s a parody sendup of agency clichs. There’s even a “Super-Buzzword” generator, spewing out phrases like “RealtimeDataCrystallization” and “OmniHolisticization.” (The site shows off what its new content division can do.)
Aug
01
Small Agency of the Year, Midwest, Gold: Solve
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“We focus on solving a client’s problems versus selling them departments and integrated services,” said Mr. Colasanti.
The agency’s gross revenue was $6.8 million last year and top clients include Bentley Motors, Porsche North America, True Value Hardware and President Cheese. The agency spent $1,400 on its own “Blank Video Project,” in which a blank four-minute video amassed an astounding 100,000 views, to demonstrate the “vanity metrics” of views.
Aug
01
Small Agency of the Year, West, Silver: Duncan/Channon
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Duncan/Channon specializes in launching or relaunching brands, work it has done for Hard Rock Cafe and Esurance. “We’ve always gone beyond the campaign, the marketing, the brief to get down to the brand underneath,” said CMO and partner Parker Channon. “We’re good at collaborating with clients to get to that level.” With 60 employees, the agency increased its revenue 45% from $9.2 million in 2014 to $13.3 million last year.
The shop headed a California Tobacco Control Program initiative to spark conversations around stopping tobacco use. It also does work for StubHub and created a hilariously clever campaign for Kona Brewing.
Aug
01
Marketers Root for Verizon as It Chases Facebook-Google Duopoly
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Advertisers desperately want an alternative to the digital powers of Facebook and Google, which just reported new heights in ad sales while would-be rival Twitter posted its slowest ad growth since going public. That’s why they cheered Verizon’s deal to buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion, all the better to challenge the duopoly selling more than half of the country’s digital ads.
“We need to create a third force,” said Bank of America Senior VP-Enterprise Media Executive Lou Paskalis.
But the new combination won’t be that close a third. Verizon, its AOL unit and Yahoo will sell $3.7 billion in digital ads next year, eMarketer says, surpassing Microsoft and LinkedIn’s $3.3 billion but still light years behind Facebook at $12.7 billion and Google at $28.8 billion. (Microsoft in June agreed to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.)
Aug
01
You Lost a Longstanding Client. Now What?
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The Richards Group is far from the only agency to lose a client after a long relationship, and it won’t be the last. But that doesn’t lessen the sting much.
Longtime agency-client relationships end for a number of reasons — among them new management at the client, slipping sales or a need for new capabilities. But depending on how it’s handled, the loss of a marquee account can send shockwaves through an agency, with the potential to damage the shop’s reputation or spur the loss of talent.
“One thing agencies should do is understand if you had anything to do with losing the account,” said Avi Dan, CEO of Avidan Strategies, noting that an agency should do a realistic assessment after a loss. “Sometimes it’s just a matter of a new CMO coming in, but sometimes the agency does contribute to it.”
Aug
01
Thanks to USOC Rules, Ads Hit a Bump on the Road to [Redacted]
Posted in: UncategorizedBut other marketers complained that the USOC remains too restrictive. New Balance, which is not a sponsor, won approval only to use “generic athlete stories and business-as-usual storytelling in our marketing campaigns,” a spokeswoman said. “We are proud to have more than 70 global athletes qualify for the Summer Games and we continue to find the IOC’s Rule 40 extremely challenging to work with as a brand who just wants to celebrate the many amazing achievements of our hardworking global athletes.”
Sports brand Brooks also sought a waiver, “but we weren’t prepared to share the level of detail USOC asked from us in order for us to get one,” according to the company. Nuun, which sells electrolyte-enhanced drink tablets and has six Rio-bound athletes on its roster, didn’t even try. “There’s a plethora of words you can’t say,” said Nuun CEO Kevin Rutherford, citing as examples “medal” and “Rio.”
“These are generic words and you can’t say them,” Mr. Rutherford said. “Do we not think we’ve pushed the boundaries too far?”
Aug
01
Consumer Protection Is a Two-Way Street, Says Legendary Adland Lawyer
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Carla Michelotti: Consumer protection is a two-way streetBy Rance Crain Consumer protection and privacy are not one-way streets, and consumers themselves need to step up to their obligations of “shared responsibility.”
That’s the view of recently inducted Advertising Hall of Famer Carla Michelotti, for many years the top lawyer at Leo Burnett Co., who has recently started her own consultancy.
Carla sat down with me in our Chicago offices overlooking Lake Michigan for a video interview, and we talked about such thorny issues as privacy, self-regulation, ad blocking and the division of advertising and content in the digital world.
Aug
01
The Hidden Optics of the RNC and DNC: A Cleveland and Philly Survivor's Story
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Editor’s note: Ad Age Media Guy Simon Dumenco reported from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia for AdAge.com. If you missed his daily dispatches, you can find them at AdAge.com/CampaignTrail. Here, Simon offers some final thoughts about the twin circuses. –Ken Wheaton
THE FREAK SHOW
Aug
01
Ad Age's 2016 Small Agency Awards: See the Winners
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There’s no small thinking to be found in the following profiles of the agencies who took top honors in our 2016 Small Agency Awards. Even if the shops range in size from 1 to 150 employees, they’re big on ideas, big on entrepreneurial spirit, big on experimentation and big on culturetopics that are on the minds of pretty much every reader of Advertising Age, regardless of sector or size. This year, we also saw a few big risks.
Three of the winning agenciesZulu Alpha Kilo, Anonimo and Zambezicut ties with their biggest clients in order to pursue other opportunities. And Zambezi did this after buying out its largest investor, Kobe Bryant. Spoiler alert: The risks paid off.
Ultimately, these shops serve as a microcosm for the larger industry. While some are going the full-service routeproviding creative, media and production solutionsothers are specializing in digital, social or events. Still others are selling their ability to crank out the massive amount of creative needed to feel the automated beast. And there are a few here that don’t quite fit the old definition of agency at all. We hope you enjoy meeting them.
Aug
01
The Worst Ads from the Biggest Brands in the Last Three Months Alone
Posted in: UncategorizedCategory: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: Ya’d think in 2016 that the supposedly smartest CMOs in the world would be able help produce, if not great ads, at least not complete garbage, wouldn’t ya?
If so, ya’d be wrong.
I have never seen so many bad big-brand ads within such a short span (about three months). I’m seriously advising you to not watch any of these, not even for five seconds.
Aug
01
Dave Schwartz, 63, Dies; Was Weather Channel Meteorologist
Posted in: UncategorizedMr. Schwartz, known for an easygoing manner and gentle sense of humor, spoke on camera this year about his third bout with cancer.
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