Hasta La Creative!

(TrendHunter.com) Considering the millennia of history behind architecture as a whole, it’s hard to imagine that the March 2017 architecture trends could manage to put forward completely novel shapes….

The Advertising Research Foundation has named Scott McDonald, a longtime researcher with Conde Nast and Time Inc., to fill its vacant CEO post as the industry’s foremost research organization navigates growing conflicts over measurement and media deals.

Mr. McDonald joins the ARF at what he acknowledges is a contentious time. The group’s parents the Association of National Advertisers and 4A’s, which came together to establish the ARF in 1936 — have been fighting for two years now over the issue of how transparent media agencies are in handling marketers’ money. And the ARF’s work is at the heart of another contentious industry issue the demand by Procter & Gamble Co. that leading digital platforms such as Google and Facebook have their audience metrics verified by third-party research firms accredited by the Media Rating Council.

“I think of the ARF as the Switzerland of the industry,” or one of the few neutral places, Mr. McDonald said. Sources of information about media and marketing have become far more varied and complex in recent years, he said. “We’ve had a crisis of confidence because of that. It’s the perfect time for research to be done to make our industry more fact based.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The Martin Agency welcomed Megan Sheenan as group creative director in its New York office.

Sheenan will report to executive creative director James Robinson, who joined the agency two years ago from twofifteenmccann, where he served as co-CCO.

The move is the latest in a series of additions which has seen The Martin Agency building its New York office over the past couple years. In addition to Robinson, the agency added a slew of new creatives in January of 2016 and Amber Guild to serve as the office’s first managing director last October.

Sheenan has spent the past several years as a New York-based freelance creative director/art director.

Earlier in her career she served as an art director with EnergyBBDO, CP+B, Saatchi & Saatchi. She then joined FCB as creative director, where she was part of the team behind the “Daily Twist” social media campaign for Oreo. In addition to Oreo, she has worked with brands including State Farm, Gatorade and The Smithsonian Institute.

Through a new partnership with linear TV ad platform Simulmedia and offline-to-digital data connector LiveRamp, advertisers can tie their TV advertising to online measurement more seamlessly.

Brands including Home Depot, Choice Hotels, Go Daddy and Zycam run TV campaigns with Simulmedia, which combines TV viewing behavior with transactional credit card data to target TV audiences on a household level and directly measure whether those ads led to actual purchases. Many of the company’s clients also have worked with Acxiom-owned LiveRamp to turn their offline CRM, loyalty and other proprietary data into information that can be used to target their audiences in digital media, and measure whether their TV spots prompted people to take actions online.

“Clients would like it to be faster and easier more automated,” said Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan. “Most of them have a data relationship already with LiveRamp so they already have a lot of segments there.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Soylent, the meal-replacement brand designed to eliminate the hassles of regular eating, is getting a (fictional) artificially intelligent spokeswoman in its first work from Wieden & Kennedy’s tech-focused Lodge group.

The character, Trish, will appear to run a virtual store on Soylent’s website and play a part in a mix of broadcast, digital, social and other marketing as the brand sets out to broaden its consumer base, according to the company.

Still, the company is not abandoning its tech-savvy followers. Trish has a Bitcoin-based store, Soy Route, on the dark web, where Soylent aims to sell rare products including mystery-flavor Soylent, a beef-flavor kit and golden Soylent signed by the CEO. Trish is also set to make an appearance at the upcoming SXSW Conference.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Ad Age “Media Guy” columnist Simon Dumenco’s media roundup for the morning of Tuesday, March 7:

Some free advice: Be careful what you say in front of your Amazon Echo (see No. 1, below), your iPhone or Android phone and your smart TV (No. 4). Because not only are they listening to you, but apparently they all regularly get together in an internet chat room at night while you’re sleeping to complain about you to each other. (It turns out they really can’t stand you!) My source on that: I believe it to be true. And/or I saw it on cable news. Anyway, let’s get started …

1. “Amazon has stopped fighting a legal battle to keep Echo recordings secret, after the defendant at the heart of the case gave his permission for the evidence to be handed over,” The Guardian’s Alex Hern reports. Amazon had previously argued that “both its users’ requests to Alexa and its own responses were covered by American First Amendment rights, and that law enforcement should thus meet a high burden of proof to require release of the data.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Soylent, the meal-replacement brand designed to eliminate the hassles of regular eating, is getting a (fictional) artificially intelligent spokeswoman in its first work from Wieden & Kennedy’s tech-focused Lodge group.

The character, Trish, will appear to run a virtual store on Soylent’s website and play a part in a mix of broadcast, digital, social and other marketing as the brand sets out to broaden its consumer base, according to the company.

Still, the company is not abandoning its tech-savvy followers. Trish has a Bitcoin-based store, Soy Route, on the dark web, where Soylent aims to sell rare products including mystery-flavor Soylent, a beef-flavor kit and golden Soylent signed by the CEO. Trish is also set to make an appearance at the upcoming SXSW Conference.

Continue reading at AdAge.com