The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on visiting your Southern Baptist relatives when you’re no longer a believer, what to do when your E.R. colleague defers treatment of his patients until you arrive and more.
Patrick Phillips’s “Blood at the Root” tells the story of how Forsyth County drove out its black residents and stayed white-only for 80 years.
The Republican strategist on how being an anti-Trumper has affected her personal life, what it will take to rebuild the party and more.
In the midst of a national crisis of police violence, Baltimore’s state’s attorney gambled that prosecuting six officers for the death of Freddie Gray would help heal her city. She lost much more than just the case.
Nearly 50% of industry professionals believe agency culture is still discriminatory, if not as overtly as it once was, according to research findings released by the 4A’s at its Talent@2030 Conference during Advertising Week.
As part of its ongoing efforts around gender equality and diversity, the 4A’s conducted a member survey by via in June. Out of the 549 respondents, 74% said ad agencies are mediocre or worse when it comes to hiring diverse professionals. More specifically, 25% said the industry was mediocre, 29% said it’s not great and 20% said it’s terrible.
“The numbers didn’t really shock me, as we know the industry has to do better at hiring and retaining diverse talent,” said 4A’s President-CEO Nancy Hill via email.
Facebook has drawn unwanted scrutiny of late over how it counts video viewership and the usefulness of its ad targeting, but a Town Hall panel discussion with executives of two of the biggest advertisers in the world — Procter & Gamble Co. and General Motors suggests they still have plenty of love for the social network.
Two things were clear from the session that brought General Motors CEO Mary Barra and P&G Global Brand Officer Marc Pritchard on stage with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. They now see a platform long touted for its ability to deliver highly personalized messages largely as a mass medium. And gender equality will continue to be fundamental to the messages of all three with an emphasis even on backing the talk with concrete steps to bolster the place of women in their own ranks and, at least in the case of P&G, at its agencies.
Despite decades of proclamations about the death of mass marketing, such talk was nowhere to be found among the giant social network and giant marketers on stage. Indeed, Ms. Sandberg repeatedly referred to the giant Facebook network’s capacity to deliver “a Super Bowl every day.”
What’s the agency of the future? CEO Publicis Communications North America Andrew Bruce says it’s not just about emerging technology, but about learning and translating consumer insights into relevant messages.
“We’re in a post-CSR environment in which businesses are now acutely aware that consumers are demanding ethical, as well as financial, value from their products and services,” said D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay. “Tokenistic projects no longer hold any weight for customers: Global industry cannot afford to neglect the imperative that their bottom line must now be driven by purpose as well as profit.”
Jamie Oliver and Richard Curtis led juries that included David Droga, creative chairman, Droga5; Anthony Casalena, CEO, Squarespace; Alex Dimiziani, Airbnb marketing head for Europe, Middle East and Asia; Andrea Bastiani Archibald, chief girl expert, Girl Scouts of America; and One Young World Founder Kate Robertson.
In addition to the two Black Pencils, there were 20 White Pencil winners and 87 Pencils in total.
UPDATE: After this article published, ABC News reported that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is warning consumers that some top-loading Samsung washers have reportedly exploded.
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The laundry industry has come a long way since the days of plunging and scrubbing on a washboard. Today, consumers can set their washing machines from afar via cellphone, watch a spin cycle in action and separately clean their delicates in the same load as regular clothesall at a time when washers, using less water and energy, are increasingly environmentally friendly.
Facebook wants users of its Facebook Live streaming service, including media publishers, to “go live frequently,” so as to maintain a steady stream of offerings and grow a base of consistent viewers, as encouraged in an online “tips” page. But just how often to really use Facebook Live is a question with which publishers are grappling.
“For The Beast, it’s about whether or not there’s an interesting/unique moment for us to use it,” Daily Beast President Mike Dyer said in an email. “At the end of the day, if there’s a story that we can tell in a unique way and it’s well-suited for Facebook Live we’d do it, but we don’t prioritize it for its own sake.”
Mr. Dyer said The Daily Beast is now doing “far fewer” Facebook Live broadcasts than a few months ago, when the platform was starting to catch on with publishers. The company has already pulled the plug on one Facebook Live show, “The Appointment,” which focused on men’s style, though it still produces a show about cocktails called “Drink Cart” and occasionally airs a show called “Cheat Sheet” when a news event calls for it.
Consumers will let you know if your content isn’t good enough or is too much of a sales pitch, says Mastercard Exec VP Jill Cress.
General Motors is targeting millennials with Maven, a new car-sharing service aimed at consumers who don’t own a car and value sharing and experiences over possessions.
“Maven is a startup — in eight months we’ve launched a new company, a new brand and three new services,” said Megan Stooke, Maven’s chief marketing officer, at an Advertising Week session with Nigel Morris, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network, Americas & EMEA. “We’re an on-demand mobility service, setting up in an industry that will see more change in the next five years than in the last 50.”
Ms. Stooke, an Australian who joined General Motors 20 years ago as a product manager in her native Australia and was most recently Detroit-based general director, global advertising, said Maven is rolling out city-by-city in the U.S. and has global ambitions. The majority of the startup’s staff of 60 come from outside General Motors, from companies like Google, Goldman Sachs and Starbucks.
In the aftermath of a complete digital transformation, it’s easy to forget just how much time and learning went into making that change happen. Shifting paradigms doesn’t happen overnight, after all, and organizational change certainly doesn’t occur any more quickly. This week, Cara Coffee of SABMiller, the world’s second-largest beer and beverage distributor, shares just how much effort has gone into — and is still going into — turning the company’s marketing to a more social, consumer-focused approach. In Latin America, where Ms. Coffee is part of the Marketing Development Americas team, it’s a case of collaboration and knowledge transfer that would make any self-proclaimed digital “growth hacker” more than just a little envious.
The challenge
Time and time again, we hear about the challenges of a globally recognized brand undergoing a facelift or repositioning, and the growing pains that accompany this. Often, there’s a confluence of global and local messaging. Indeed, this was the first transformational challenge that Ms. Coffee and her Latin America digital team faced several years ago. At the time, SABMiller had a bare-bones presence on social media, and its global branded content didn’t necessarily make sense for the distributor’s local markets, which include Mexico, Nicaragua and the Caribbean.
The final vote on the FCC Proposal to unlock the Set-Top Box is coming up on September 29th. Issued in January of this year, the proposal would require cable and satellite TV operators to let subscribers choose their preferred device, commonly known as a set-top box (STB), to access paid-TV programming. Opening up the STB market would drive innovation in the space, creating opportunities for companies, existing and new, to reimagine how content is found, accessed and consumed. Beyond content consumption, this could also open up the possibility of reimaging the advertising and monetization models within the industry.
With the vote quickly approaching, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) has responded with an alternative proposal that modifies the FCC’s original one materially. FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, initially proposed open standards for set-top boxes, allowing companies to directly access video content and reimagine how that content is presented. The revised proposal grants device makers the ability to integrate cable companies’ (commonly known as Multiple Video Programming Distributors or MVPDs) apps into their devices. These MVPD-provided apps could then be run on a device of the consumer’s choice.
Passing the modified version going up for vote on the 29th is a mistake. It’s a baby step. A small incremental change designed to hang on to an existing viewing experience and business model that consumers have already rejected. It’s a lost opportunity for content creators, networks and advertisers and stops way short of driving the type of innovation the original proposal offers. We’ve already seen the future of TV in the eyes of cable companies: Apps that largely offer the same viewing experience we’ve had for the last 50 years. Putting these same apps on different hardware devices hardly constitutes innovation.
With perhaps the exception of Red Bull, there may be no marketer seemingly better situated to dominate online video views than GoPro, the maker of cameras that consumers attach to motorcycle helmets, parachute rigs, drones and more. Although big-spending smartphone campaigns more often dominate the our Viral Video Chart, which includes both organic views and paid advertising, this week GoPro has the most views of any brand outside of movie and video-game marketers.
Taco Bell is running concurrent campaigns this fall: One plays up the chain’s gamer cred; another aims to raise the game of value-priced fast-food marketing.
The efforts show how the Yum Brands chain is trying to make its voice stand out months into the tenure of Chief Marketing Officer Marisa Thalberg and years into its relationship with Deutsch L.A.
First, Taco Bell began airing a TV commercial and set up a temporary club-meets-arcade in New York to announce that it was giving away thousands of Sony PlayStation VR headsets. A few days later, it started a campaign centered around a modern-day-slash-17th-century theme to promote items it sells for $1 each.
Later videos will include another trip to California to showcase where produce comes from and to Idaho to harvest potatoes. McDonald’s worked with Chicago shop Purple Strategies on the video project.
What’s the future of mobile? It sure isn’t about people using their phones to talk to other people, according to L’Oreal USA VP-digital innovation and entrepreneurship Rachel Weiss. Speaking on a panel at the Modern Marketing Summit, held alongside Advertising Week in New York on Monday, Ms. Weiss observed flatly: “We know people don’t want to talk to human beings anymore.” Any parent who’s tried coaxing a millennial into calling someone for customer service help may concur. So what is the future of mobile as L’Oreal sees it? Ms. Weiss believes it will include consumer care within apps, such as Facebook’s Messenger, using bots. She broadly expects to see “the death of apps” in favor of creating useful experiences within Messenger. But she also expects brand to find other ways to provide “on-demand utility” through such vehicles as L’Oreal’s Makeup Genius for trying and buying makeup without talking to a human being at a cosmetics counter.
Speaking of makeovers, Cedar’s Hommus has a new look. The brand has been working with GYK Antler for more than a year to come up with everything from fresh package and website designs to a new content campaign and updated more traditional digital marketing. The campaign began last week and marks Cedar’s first time working with an external agency, according to Ashley Spicer, account director at GYK Antler. The tagline “Know Better Hommus” is a play on words, of course. And yes, the small brand continues to spell hummus with an “o” after the “h,” differently than competitors including market-leader Sabra do. Starting in February, consumers can expect to see an extension of the campaign that folds in more of the brand’s supporting products “always kind of having hummus kind of be our star,” Ms. Spicer said.
Amazon is already the biggest online clothing retailer in the U.S., thanks to the huge volumes of affordable basics and private label items it ships. Not content with conquering the mass market, the internet giant now wants to dominate the more upmarket end of the fashion spectrum, and is rolling out an international ad campaign to boost its style credentials.
The exclusive world of runway fashion may not be a natural fit with Amazon’s high turnover, heavy discount culture, but the film, by four-year-old independent shop Joint London, cleverly weaves designer clothing and uncompromising style into a story that is unashamedly Amazon. It’s breaking this week in the U.S. and started airing last week in Europe.
Fashion models dressed in new season styles carry Amazon packages to urban, suburban and rural addresses, strutting to each delivery as if parading the length of a runway at New York Fashion Week.
If it wasn’t already clear enough, a panel today at Advertising Week pretty much assured that the ANA and 4A’s are going their own way when it comes to solving the rebate issue.
Issues around media transparency will likely be solved “on a more individual marketer-to-agency basis versus having a global solution because of different perspectives in the membership of 4A’s,” said Tony Pace, chairman of the Association of National Advertisers, during a panel at Advertising Week.
The 4A’s was originally slated to speak during the Trust Forum panel on transparency, but the association pulled out of the discussion a few weeks ago to put more energy into educating its members.
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