Hasta La Creative!

Ad Age “Media Guy” columnist Simon Dumenco’s media roundup for the morning of Friday, March 31::

What can you expect in today’s media scan? Let me quote an expert: “I will say it’s everything. It’s the highs and lows, brightness and darkness, alpha to omega, a quiet-loud-sad-happy tragiredemptive circus of emotion, anguish, and grace. I hope people feel it all come together and have that rush you feel when the roller coaster finally coasts back to the platform.” OK, actually that’s showrunner Scott M. Gimple describing this Sunday’s season finale of “The Walking Dead” to Entertainment Weekly’s Dalton Ross. But it more or less appliies here too! Anyway, let’s get started …

1. At 9:37 p.m. ET last night, a “Breaking News” alert from The New York Times landed in our email inbox: “Michael Flynn wants to talk to congressional investigators examining the Trump team’s ties to Russia. But first he wants immunity” — linking to a story by Mark Mazzetti and Matthew Rosenberg headlined “Michael Flynn Offers to Testify Before Congress in Exchange for Immunity.” Naturally, that’s one of the stories dominating the morning news cycle — along with a certain flaming freeway. (For that story, check out “7 things to know about the fiery I-85 bridge collapse” via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

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R/GA has moved further into “traditional” agency turf by way of multinational tech conglomerate Samsung.

Multiple parties have confirmed that R/GA significantly expanded its global remit for the Korea-based company starting in late 2016. Earlier this week, the client’s North American CMO Marc Mathieu confirmed to Adweek that R/GA would be working on its “most ambitious marketing campaign yet” to promote the new Galaxy S8 phone along with W+K and design agency Turner Duckworth. (And then there was the Leo Burnett spot promoting Gear VR. Lots of moving parts here.)

The R/GA ads in question are not “live” yet, but they’re broadcast. And they play on nature themes.

Back in January, we posted on the client moving its global social media business to Bob Greenberg’s agency and away from Big Spaceship, which closed its Seoul office in December after losing AOR status. R/GA has been working with Samsung since it won a digital AOR review in 2013; the business had previously been with Razorfish for less than a year.

According to our sources, R/GA added broadcast TV to its expanding list of Samsung responsibilities for the first time beyond the digital and social media work. Beyond the Galaxy S8, R/GA will also be creating future campaigns to promote the client’s kitchen appliances division.

These wins happened around the same time as the social media transition, but it’s not clear whether there was a formal review because no one has spoken to us on the record.

An R/GA spokesperson deferred to the client for comment. Samsung PR has not responded in any way, shape or form to multiple emails and phone calls made over the past several weeks.

This is somewhat understandable given that the company has larger things on its mind including the launch of the new phone and the arrest of vice chairman and de facto CEO Jay Y. Lee, who is accused of colluding with now-former Korean president Park Geun-hye in a bribery scandal that led to her impeachment and removal from office. Yesterday, officials placed her under arrest on corruption charges.

Samsung also hopes that the Galaxy S8 will help eliminate all memory of the exploding phones that ultimately led to $3 billion or more in losses last year by the company’s own estimate.

Expect to see a lot more R/GA Samsung work to come.

News UK is introducing a new-look Sunday Times this weekend featuring a streamlined design with easier navigation between sections and a higher story count per page.

This 2002 essay by the playwright Arthur Miller was meant to assist a campaign to abolish the death penalty in Illinois.

-Carl’s Jr’s sexy ads may have stopped working, but surely this Paris Hilton-starring spot that Allenby Concept House made for SodaStream will do the trick. (We don’t know because we didn’t actually watch any of it.)

-On that note, Americans now trust ads more than the corrupt MainStream Media, and Mashable wonders who can blame them. We agree: the only things less trustworthy than tech blogs are ad agency gossip blogs.

-Oh, also: Coca-Cola says 30% of its own ads don’t really work.

-Happy pre-April Fools’ Day. Here are a bunch of brands desperate for your attention.

-Campaign wonders whether the CMO is headed toward oblivion like the the global chief creative officer. Don’t get excited—this will not mean fewer agency reviews.

-One anonymous creative director tells Digiday that the biggest change in agencies is the rise of people like our friend Bill Grizack: “It’s become about decks…nothing ever gets made.”

-In More Schadenfreude News, YouTube stars are angry that their videos aren’t making as much money as they used to.

If you’re ever “lucky” enough to be part of a clinical trial for a proposed medication or treatment, you’ll be told that you’ll have a 50% chance of being administered the actual drug being tested, and a 50% chance that you’ll be receiving something that looks like the medication without the active chemical in it. You’ll simply take that pill you’re assigned, as a part of your routine each day, and make regular visits to a doctor to determine whether the condition you’re trying to affect is improving.

Clinical trials using control groups — half the patients get real medicine; half get a placebo — are usually set up as a “double-blind” test. Not only you, the patient, have no idea whether or not you’re receiving the actual treatment being tested; neither does the doctor who is performing the regular evaluation of your progress. These precautions are taken because, sometimes, the idea of receiving treatment can actually create physical — or, at a minimum, perceived — improvement. Even the doctor evaluating you isn’t immune to experimenter bias, and might “see” signs of improvement that aren’t actually there, if they believe you’re receiving some sort of treatment.

What’s baffling to me is that while we’re all aware we can be fooled by this placebo effect, we seldom apply our understanding of it to market research — especially as it pertains to creative or concept testing.

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Online
Guinness

Social post for Ireland beating England in the final game of the 6 Nations rugby competition.

Advertising Agency:BBDO, Dublin, Ireland
Creative Directors:Steve Jones, Martin Loraine
Art Director:Clayton Homer
Copywriter:Dillon Elliott
Retoucher:Kevin Brooks
Additional Credits:Priya Shial

Media
The Survivors Trust

The Guilty Clothes collection was created in order to provoke society.

Advertising Agency:Marvelous, Moscow, Russia
Chief Creative Officer:Artem Sinyavskiy
Creative Group Head:Marat Shakirov
Strategy:Bulat Ayupov
Copywriter:Alina Dmitrieva
Art Director:Elisey Soloviev
Designers:Svetlana Solovieva, Kristina Koroleva, Margarita Nikolaeva
Additional Credits:Zarya Production, Yana Sadovnikova, Irina Stroeva