Hasta La Creative!

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Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” is facing a growing backlash from marketers pulling their ads from the cable news show in response to sexual harassment allegations involving host Bill O’Reilly.

Ad Age this afternoon confirmed the exit of one of the show’s largest advertisers in recent weeks — men’s shirt maker Untuckit. The brand was among the top five ad spenders on the show in the past 30 days, according to iSpot. “As a company in which more than 2/3rd of our employees are women, we take sexual harassment claims very seriously,” Untuckit CEO and co-founder Aaron Sanandres said in a statement. “Moreover, it is important our corporate partners reflect the same principles of inclusivity and equality upon which we have built our brand. In light of the disturbing allegations, we instructed our media buyer this morning to reallocate our ad dollars to other shows effective immediately. We will continue to closely monitor the situation but believe this is the right decision at this time.”

“The O’Reilly Factor” also has relied on auto spenders to a significant degree of late, but at least four brands have confirmed they have halted spending plans, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Mitsubishi Motors.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Back in February, we learned that the founders of Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw, the independent U.K. agency that sold to Publicis in 2011, were suing Publicis for allegedly misleading them about a failing relationship with P&G at the time.

Publicis purchased the independent agency back in 2011 with the intention of merging it with DigitasLBi’s London office. The acquisition included an earn-out tied to the future performance of Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw, and the agency alleged that Publicis assured them that its relationship with P&G—upon which its future performance was heavily dependent—was strong.

This despite the fact that, according to KNAS’ lawyer, the “impending loss of Digitas UK’s P&G business had in fact been widely anticipated within Publicis and DigitasLBi UK since as early as July 2010.”

Today, Campaign reports that High Court judge Mr Justice Males ruled in favor of the agency’s founders, awarding the claimants £2.6 million (approximately $3.2 million) and finding that Publicis Groupe subsidiary MMS breached the buyer warranty over the 2011 purchase of the agency. Campaign adds that he has not yet ruled on costs, which could add another £2 million. The claimants argue they should have been awarded £3.6 million and reportedly plan to appeal. Campaign notes the discrepancy is related to “the treatment of IT fees charged by Publicis’ internal Shared Service Centre.”

As co-founder Kitcatt told Campaign, this judgment effectively proves that Publicis agencies including Saatchi and Leo Burnett London planned to “take business away from Kitcatt Nohr Digitas.” He also noted that Maurice Lévy didn’t “honour their agreements” and didn’t bother to show up in court either but instead tried to draw out the court case in order to make victory more difficult while “pretend[ing] there was no deal, and pretend[ing] again they knew nothing about the ad agencies’ plans.”

“It’s a massive moral victory and proof that the big guys don’t always win,” wrote Marc Nohr in an email to AgencySpy today. “Things can work out if you do the right thing, as Spike Lee once said.”

Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention analytics from 10 million smart TVs. The New Releases here ran on TV for the first time yesterday. The Most Engaging ads are ranked by digital activity (including online views and social shares) over the past week.

Among the new releases, a bunch of dorky coworkers get down to Ice-T’s “Colors” while drinking Bud Light at a bar because, as the tagline at the end says, “At happy hour, you’re not just coworkers, you’re co-friends.” In an Angel Soft commercial, a dad attempts to console his son, who’s crying over a breakup — and, naturally, using Angel Soft toilet paper to dry his tears. And the Geico Gecko teams up with Groot in a “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” cross-promotion (spoiler: Groot is not so great at the whole TV commercial thing). Creativity’s Ann-Christine Diaz has more details on the campaign here.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

After spending the first 10-plus years of her journalism career focused on music, Jessica Robertson changed things up in 2015 when she joined The Players’ Tribune, the for-fans-by-athletes digital media company founded by baseball legend Derek Jeter.

With roles at RollingStone.com, AOL Music, MTV and The Fader, sports may seem like a random transition, but outside of music, Ms. Robertson said sports is her biggest passion. In high school, she played basketball and softball, and she still plays basketball recreationally as a shooting guard, referring to herself as “the small girl in the corner who can post up on the wing and hit the shot.”

But aside from the sports enticement, Ms. Robertson said she took the head of content role at The Players’ Tribune because she thought the first-person storytelling concept was powerful. “What’s so exciting is that sports is the prism we use to tell stories and they’re human interest rather than sports-focused,” she said. “There’s not a lot of nuance allowed in post-game interviews and we want to provide that real estate.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com