Hasta La Creative!

Chris Edwards, author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some,” transitioned from a woman to a man while he worked as a creative director at Arnold. He says he is often asked whether his career took off more when he was male.

Mr. Edwards, who among other things created McDonald’s “Singing Fish,” said the answer is yes — but the reason why may surprise you.

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How big is Snapchat? How sorry is Facebook? How advanced is Google? How long does Twitter have left?

These are all questions swirling around Advertising Week, where the industry has gathered for its annual digital rush in New York. The executives from the major platforms were on hand to capture the attention of brands needing guidance on where to spend their money online.

Here’s what everyone from Imran Khan of Snapchat to Carolyn Everson of Facebook were offering.

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When data giant Acxiom scooped up data onboarding company LiveRamp in 2014, it felt like the pieces were finally falling together for Acxiom CEO Scott Howe. The company had shed its information security business and still planned to divest other divisions that detracted from Mr. Howe’s strategic mission to remake the Little Rock-based firm into the streamlined agency-friendly data services firm of tomorrow. The former corporate VP-advertiser and publisher solutions at Microsoft, then on the job at Acxiom for three years, told Ad Age, “This is a big acquisition for us.”

It was almost an understatement. LiveRamp has become a major growth generator for Acxiom, which had it not innovated by realigning its focus around what the industry has come to call “people-based marketing,” could be languishing as a washed up data broker. In August, Acxiom reported Q1 2016 revenue for its Connectivity business, led by LiveRamp, was $31 million, up 52% compared with Q1 2015. The division has around 300 customers, according to recent earnings reports.

While Acxiom remains one of the largest aggregators and suppliers of third-party data, its LiveRamp acquisition propelled it toward Mr. Howe’s goal to become a conduit for connecting offline, personally identifiable data to digital channels. It helped spur intense interest in this type of service by a variety of brands with huge customer databases but a lack of knowledge or wherewithal to use that information to find those customers across channels and reach others like them.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The TV industry still hasn’t completely figured out how to measure audiences in 2016, but that didn’t stop Nielsen from using the Advertising Week stage to make predictions about what measurement will look like in 2025.

While technology and ad models will continue to evolve, reach and age and gender demographics will continue to be the core of audience measurement, Megan Clarken, president-product leadership, Nielsen, argued during an Advertising Week panel on Tuesday.

Age and gender will always matter because they have a “known universe” that allow for the calculation of the total market share, Ms. Clarken said.

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“I was up until 2 in the morning because I was so revved up by this debate,” Yahoo News Global Anchor Katie Couric told an Advertising Week audience Tuesday morning before introducing a panel of political experts. “I’m sure you, like all of us, have a severe debate hangover. … I think everyone is sort of really exhausted from this whole campaign, which seems as if it’s been going on for years.”

Ms. Couric and her panelists — Jamal Simmons, a democratic consultant and former aide to Al Gore; Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster, Washington Examiner columnist and ABC News political analyst; and Matt Bai, national political columnist at Yahoo News — took the stage at Manhattan’s Times Center to debate Monday night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as well as the overall political climate in a session titled “Elections 2016: The Wild Ride to the White House.”

Some highlights:

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Last night toward the end of the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state was able to squeeze in the name of a woman who had been previously “victimized” by the Republican candidate, Alicia Machado. Ms. Machado was the first winner of the Miss Universe pageant after Trump had purchased it in 1996.

Along with the win, however, she was later subject to the billionaire’s bullying: He allegedly called her everything from “Miss Piggy” to “Miss Housekeeping” and then blindsided her with a pre-arranged press shoot after his organization had scheduled a workout session intended to kickstart her exercise program because she had gained weight following the contest victory.

A new Clinton Campaign video released after the debate entitled “Trump Victim – Alicia Machado” shows the former Miss Universe recounting in Spanish her post-pageant humiliation and revealing how the ordeal contributed to her subsequent eating disorders. Now, as Ms. Clinton pointed out last night, Ms. Machado is an American citizen who will be voting Democrat come Election Day.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

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.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Zimmerman Advertising of Fort Lauderdale hired Bryan Sweeney as its new executive vice president of integrated content production. He is the first person to hold that title.

Sweeney joins Zimmerman following nearly fourteen years with Boston-based agency Hill Holliday. Most recently, he served as executive vice president, director of creative production, beginning at the start of 2013, overseeing content production, broadcast, digital and print. Before that he spent nearly ten years as senior vice president, director of broadcast and around a year and a half as senior vice president, co-director of integrated production. Sweeney joined Hill Holliday in December of 2002, following over two years as vice president, executive producer group head at Arnold Worldwide in Boston. Prior to that he spent ten years as vice president, executive producer at DDB Chicago. Over the course of his career he has worked with clients including McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, MLB, Bank of America and Cadillac.

“Bryan brings with him a strong creative pedigree, but even more importantly, he brings big ambition, big innovation and an unrestrained passion for innovating across multiple platforms, something so critical to keep up with the dynamic retail marketplace our clients must thrive in,” Zimmerman Advertising CEO Michael Goldberg said in a statement. “Bryan’s remit will be to leverage his experience creating a connective production tissue between video, audio, UX, social and digital content, along with the alignment of the agency’s state-of-the-art production studio.”

“He fits in the organization today, but will also be a driving force to getting to tomorrow quickly. He is a rare breed that understands that it is a collision of analytics and creation that must drive results,” added Zimmerman Advertising chairman and founder Jordan Zimmerman. “He is the kind of person that makes all the ideas and people around him better and we are so glad he is joining our team.”

Adam&EveDDB launched a new spot promoting H&M’s Modern Essentials collection via David Beckham and Kevin Hart, or the latest incarnation of the classic “odd couple” trope.

In “The Road Trip,” the identically-dressed duo are making their way to Las Vegas to pitch Hart’s idea for an “I, Beckham” musical, despite his own apparent lack of any musical talent. Beckham, predictably, plays the straight man as the two get pulled over by a cop who really just wants a selfie.

Hart then proceeds to get the two into all kinds of trouble over the course of the long-form spot, which runs over five minutes.

The concept could have sustained a 60-second spot for the brand, as Beckham and Hart showcase the Modern Essentials line, but many of the attempted jokes don’t really land.

For better or worse, the drawn out, celebrity focused ad has become something of its own genre, particularly in the wake of Anomaly’s “The Gentleman’s Wager” series for Johnnie Walker starring Jude Law. “The Road Trip” will attract some attention for H&M based on the celebrity names alone, though it’s unclear whether that will translate to sales.

On that celebrity front, a recent headline in Vanity Fair read: “Brand It Like Beckham: Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz, and Harper Beckham Are Already Developing Their Personal Brands.”

This should really be labeled as sponsored content. How did Beckham’s PR firm not pay for that placement?

Credits:
Head of Marketing Creative, H&M: Erik Zetterberg
Head of Marketing, H&M: Daniel Herrmann
Project Manager, H&M: Fia Ingman

Agency: Adam & Eve/DDB
Chief creative officer: Ben Priest
Executive Creative Directors: Ben Tollett, Richard Brim
Copywriter: Patrick McClelland
Art Director: Feargal Ballance
Agency Producer: Jack Bayley
Account Director: James Rowe

Production Company: Sonny/MJZ
Director: Fredrik Bond, Sonny London
Producer: Alicia Richards, Sonny London
Editor: Tim Thornton-Allan
Assistant Editor: Matthew Pochettino
Sound Designer: Anthony Moore, Factory Studios
Soundtrack Composers: Bill Martin, Phil Coulter

Post production: Glassworks
Post production Producer: Abi Klimaszewska
Project Lead 2D: Duncan Malcolm
Project Lead 3D: Jordi Bares
Colourist: Daniel De Vue

“Harry, I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.”

We are of mixed feels about the Twin Peaks, which was obviously an important and groundbreaking show but doesn’t really hold up so well today and completely fell apart in the second season when the producers made David Lynch “solve” the central mystery and then end the show on a weird note to be followed by an even weirder movie. TV was different then.

But the show is coming back next year by way of Showtime, and web design company Squarespace of the Lebowski/W+K Super Bowl ad helped create a corresponding campaign to promote The David Lynch Foundation along with Austin-based creative agency Preacher.

It’s called “Playing Lynch,” and it involves John Malkovich recreating scenes starring the director’s best-known characters over seven days. Here’s the trailer, which is a little nuts.

The first episode, which went live today, features Malkovich imitating Kyle MacLachlan. We can’t embed it for some reason, so you’ll have to click here to watch the whole thing, but of course Malkovich does a nice job straight up copying his mannerisms.

There’s also a very odd short featuring Malkovich as special agent Dale Cooper meditating, because the project revolves around Lynch’s non-profit, which promotes transcendental meditation as a way for young people to overcome stress and trauma.

Not that it needs to be said, but Lynch is an odd man. Remember his ad for Christian Louboutin?

Pretty interesting assignment for Preacher, which has been working with Squarespace since the February Grammys ad starring Leon Bridges. The client, of course, helped design the project’s website. There’s also an art exhibit and an album.

Now we look forward to seeing Malkovich as the Log Lady.