Hasta La Creative!

The U.K.’s Marketing Society gathered chief marketing officers together to discuss what they regard as the elephants in the room that make for uncomfortable conversations. Here’s what they talked about at an Advertising Week Europe panel:

“Stop using the word digital,” said Zaid Al-Qassab, chief brand & marketing officer of telecommunications group BT. “The word is causing enormous problems in clients and agencies and the work we’re getting.”

Mr. Al-Qassab said that in the old days when he did print and billboard ads, he wasn’t called a “paper marketer” as he is called a “digital marketer” today. The word digital moves the focus to clicks and likes, rather than customers, and is used heavily in briefs sent to agencies, he said, leading to 300 social media ideas from the agency, and clients asking for something that will “go viral.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Virtual reality is being held back from the marketing mainstream by a skeptical public and reluctant advertisers, according to speakers at an Advertising Week Europe session on VR and branded content.

“We’re not even at VR 1.0. It’s more like VR 0.7,” said Nokia’s head of VR technologies, Tarif Sayed. He added, “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Content creators say it’s too expensive and you’re not going to shift headsets if there’s no content.”

Examples of VR marketing from the Abu Dhabi tourist board (for which CNN created a virtual trip to the city) and Jaguar Cars (who worked with Mindshare to create an immersive experience of the Wimbledon Tennis tournament), were presented as best in class, but even their creators admitted that there is still a long way to go.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few weeks about electronic appliances capturing data for surveillance purposes. But can marketers access this type of data?

In an interview published March 12, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, suggested that his campaign may have been spied on via televisions or microwaves. Her comments alluded to baseless accusations by President Trump himself that the Obama administration “wiretapped” his campaign. Also this month, documents about CIA hacking practices exposed through Wikileaks have raised questions about the spy agency using Samsung televisions to gather room audio through a TV-remote microphone.

While the concept of microwave oven-as-snooping-device has been debunked, the swirling rumors do prompt questions about what types of audio data-capturing capabilities televisions have and whether marketers have access to such TV audio data. It turns out a massive amount of TV audio data is made available to marketers, but not necessarily the kind we’d read about in a modern day Ian Fleming novel.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The end could finally be near for long-struggling Sears and Kmart. Sears Holding Corp., parent company of the two brands, issued a warning in its annual 10-K filing Tuesday evening that noted the chain could be in trouble with generating additional liquidity.

“Our historical operating results indicate substantial doubt exists related to the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” read the filing.

The news caps years of sales declines and losses, and, more recently, January’s announcement of the closures of 150 stores. Earlier this year, Sears sold its Craftsman tools brand to Stanley Black & Decker, ending decades of exclusivity.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Print
Dr Stretch

Dr Stretch is a physical fitness program in Singapore.

Stretch your limits.

Advertising Agency:McCann Worldgroup, Singapore
Creative Directors:Peter Hibberd, Alfred Wee
Art Directors:Peter Hibberd, Alfred Wee, Beng Wee
Copywriter:James Keng Lim
Photographer:Teo Chai Guan

-Colenso BBDO launched this “Child Replacement Program” campaign for Pedigree promoting the brand’s adoption drive (video above).

–AT&T, Verizon and J&J moved to pull all their ads from YouTube today due to the presence of pro-ISIS videos on the service.

-Business Insider weighs in on “The real motivations behind the growing YouTube advertiser boycott.”

-On that note, GroupM chief digital officer Rob Norman argues that “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.”

-AdAge asks which agencies stand to lose from the (inevitable) demise of Sears.

-Toronto-based agency Red Lion created what it claims is the first ever Instagram Jigsaw Puzzle to promote The Toronto Silent Film Festival 

-Budweiser and the MLB teamed up with local artists for a series of cans celebrating MLB teams for opening day.

Months after kicking the tires on a modest reduction of in-game commercial stoppage, the NFL on Wednesday said that it is working with broadcasters on a scheme to restructure the ad pods in all future televised contests.

In an email to fans dated March 22, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the league is looking to cut down on some of the more egregious instances of “dead time” that have contributed to football’s recent broadcast bloat. Last season, the average running time for an NFL game was three hours and 12 minutes, which marked an increase of five minutes per game compared to the 2014 average.

To that end, the NFL hopes to put the kibosh on one of football’s most exasperating disruptions, which arrives whenever a post-scoring kickoff is sandwiched between two ad breaks.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

On our last Mother’s Day together, I took her to the big morning Mass at St. James Cathedral. As I attempted a Houdini maneuver getting her out of the car, up the curb and down the sidewalk to the church door, she somehow slithered from my grasp.

My mother sank to the ground in what seemed like slow motion. She never made a sound. She just lay there in the green grass in her rose-colored tweed suit, brilliant white hair glinting in the spring sun, blue eyes open wide, staring straight up into an unusually cloudless Seattle sky.

With church bells pealing through the cool morning air, my beautiful, brilliant mother stretched out her arms and made angel wings in the grass.

And all the doctors and all the medications and all the years of worry that couldn’t bring my mother back together again, also couldn’t defeat the magic of that moment.

I lay down next to her, threaded my fingers through hers, and for a brief wondrous moment, we held the present.

— Mary Claude Foster

FROM

Adbusters #127

The Year of Living Dangerously Pt. 4

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