Business Trip Travel Bags – The 'LUNDI' Business Travel Bags are Intended for Short, 36 Hour Trips (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) Trips for work are often quite short, so the ‘LUNDI’ business travel bag is designed for trips that last 36 hours in order to offer the ideal amount of space for only what you’ll…

Automated Laundry Cabinets – The Electrolux Laundry Cabinet Washes, Dries and Irons Clothing (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) Laundry is a chore that usually requires extensive time to perform, but the Electrolux Laundry Cabinet is intended to make this a notion of the past. The cabinet appliance design works by enabling…

Let’s Adapt the Rest of NBC’s 1985 Saturday Morning Cartoon Lineup for the Big Screen

One of the big selling points for this week’s Smurfs: The Lost Village movie has been that it’s the first fully animated feature for the little blue elves. They’ve been on the big screen a couple of times in recent years, but always with human companions in a live-action/animation hybrid. While the Smurfs have a…

Architectural Upcycling Exhibitions – The Wasteland Exhibit Shows How Architects Can Tap Into Waste (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) The Wasteland exhibit on display at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen encourages visitors to consider one of the vastest untapped resources currently available to the construction industry….

Risky Toddler Photography – Stephen Crowley Uses Photoshop to Raise Awareness for Childhood Diseases (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) Stephen Crowley has found Internet fame after photoshopping his daughter Hannah into what he calls “marginally dangerous situations.” These include the 18-month-old holding a large…

Designer Secondary Screen Displays – The 'L-Rod' is a Beautiful Peripheral to Extend Desktops (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) The ‘L-Rod’ is a secondary screen display that is an inherently beautiful piece of technology that can make extending the desktop capabilities of your laptop simple and intuitive….

Glenn O’Brien, Writer and Editor Who Gained Fame With Warhol, Dies at 70

After being invited by Andy Warhol to work on his magazine, Mr. O’Brien’s 15 minutes in the New York spotlight lasted more than 40 years.

Tomi Lahren Sues Glenn Beck, Saying She Was Fired for Her Stance on Abortion

Ms. Lahren, a star in conservative media, is still being paid by The Blaze, a TV station Mr. Beck started, but she said the company has sought to silence her.

Mamilos 103 – Reforma da Previdência

Mamileiros e mamiletes, olha quem tá de novo na sua timeline Cris Bartis e sua companheira de fone Ju Wallauer pra debater o assunto mor das timelines nos últimos tempos: A reforma da previdência. Sim, nós também queríamos falar sobre porque o ceu é azul ou quais as melhores praias do Brasil, mas por enquanto […]

> LEIA MAIS: Mamilos 103 – Reforma da Previdência

O’Reilly’s Troubles Give Viewers Pause, but They Still Watch

Fans of the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly are skeptical about the recent sexual harassment claims against him and don’t appear inclined to stop watching his show.

Tecnicalidade 036 – O drone que fica duro e fica mole

Calma que esse título não é tão indecente quanto você tá pensando. Na verdade é só um drone bem diferente escolhido como gadget da semana neste episódio. E que pela imagem acima você já pode ter uma ideia do que ele tem de especial. Também neste episódio, Rafael Silva e Rodrigo Gonzalez falam da Apple […]

> LEIA MAIS: Tecnicalidade 036 – O drone que fica duro e fica mole

Nonfiction: Why an Open Market Won’t Repair American Health Care

In “An American Sickness,” Elisabeth Rosenthal writes about the “economic rules of the dysfunctional medical market.”

Books of The Times: Visions of Snowflakes Dance in Bill O’Reilly’s Head in ‘Old School’

The Fox commentator’s new book, written with Bruce Feirstein, deploys “snowflake” as an insult for anything from spinelessness to political correctness.

Samsung: Fear

Leo Burnett Argentina developed Samsung’s first commercial for the Latin American region communicating the new global concept of the brand: Do what you can’t.

From its beginnings, Samsung is a company that proposed to challenge the limits with innovation and technological advances.

Such as the new generation, who lives without limits and proposes to do what in the past seemed impossible.

“Nowadays, we all have a voice and we can express to the whole world what we feel through technology. New generations are going to live with less prejudices and barriers. This commercial is here to reminds us that fear is a thing of the pass”, Leo Burnett Argentina Executive Creative Director’s commented.

Video of Samsung: Fear

Here’s the Problem with That Content Studio You Just Built

This is a guest post by Brian Tolleson, head of content at BARK BARK.

Great branded content is really tough.

I’ve been in this space for over fifteen years and the biggest mistake I’ve made, or seen other people make, is thinking that it’s simple: that if you just build the right machine and rent a cool space in Brooklyn, you can churn out effective branded content. This flawed assumption has also given rise to one of the greatest plagues of our time, “The Branded Content Studio,” second only to “programmatic advertising” in its destructive capability.

(I went to a programmatic conference recently where some salesperson actually said, “And then you just render the creative and all of your marketing is automated!”)

Render the creative. That’s where we are. And we wonder how we end up with painful “brand films” as pre-roll to terrorist videos on YouTube.

It’s easy to play armchair quarterback with Pepsi’s recent Kendall Jenner disaster created by their internal Branded Content Studio, The Creator’s League. My apologies for being opportunistic, but I think CMOs and marketers need to deeply process this moment. There’s been much discussion over what went wrong: corporate insensitivity, lack of women in advertising, a complete misunderstanding of what actual diversity means … all of which are probably true.

But I’d like to put most of the blame on the very concept of an internal Branded Content Studio.

There has been so much focus on finding the eyeballs with the pipeline, the media, the bucket, etc., that we forgot that what use to fill up the pipeline/media/bucket matters more than ever in so many ways, matters more than ever.

We’ve told ourselves that we can build internal brand studios with a bunch of new college grads and laptops who don’t have much content experience or knowledge of diverse storytelling genres. We pat ourselves on the back each and every hour of the day, thinking we can just “make stuff” and everyone will watch it and love it—voluntarily! We can just “render the creative,” hit send on our programmatic buy, and win.

This is not how content gets made. At all.

I’ve worked on Academy Award-winning movies, and I can tell you that real entertainment arises from deeply experienced professionals working in an inspiring, collaborative, challenging environment of their own creation (not a corporate cube). Real content creators are driven by passion, and taste, and such a discerning sense of what is meaningful to an audience, that they would never put their name on that Pepsi thing. In fact, that’s the one major difference … real creators have names.

There’s a reason that the lots at Universal and Sony and Paramount aren’t full of content farms. These studios have instead made deals with the most diverse and interesting content creators on the planet. Studios secure proven experts who know their genres and their audiences incredibly well, and they support those creators with resources and insights. In advertising, we are entering the era of content—and we need to look a lot more like studios than farms.

You cannot build an internal Branded Content Studio and serve anything more than your own ego. To build a real “studio” you need experienced creators with diverse opinions. You want the people making content for you to challenge your assumptions. Because if you breathe only the stale air inside your very own content farm, you might find yourself apologizing to Kendall Jenner, and to all of America, one day after you hit “send” on your “rendered creative.”

My takeaway: Let’s put creators back in charge of content creation.brian tolleson

72andSunny, Anomaly and BBDO Want to Sell You a Used Car in Great Condition

The New York offices of 72andSunny, Anomaly and BBDO are among the agencies pitching in a creative review by New York-based auto ecommerce site Vroom, Adweek reported today. Droga5 was also purportedly invited to participate in the review but declined.

Led by former Priceline CEO Paul Hennessy, Vroom raised some $50 million in its most recent round of funding after acquiring online car sales platform Texas Direct Auto. It’s currently running on more than $200 million with estimated revenues of well over $1 billion per year.

As Adweek puts it, the company wants to be “the Zappos of used cars” by eliminating the middleman and his infamous tendency to haggle over prices. You pretty much order online and have the cars delivered to you. Then you can try them and return them if they don’t fit!

After initially handling its digital marketing internally, Vroom is now looking for an agency to help with its expansion efforts.

According to the sources behind this story, Vroom is preparing for an integrated campaign that will run later this year and include broadcast, digital, radio and OOH. Its estimated budget of $20 million could increase, because it will be “results-driven.”

Representatives for Vroom and all of the agencies involved in its review have declined to comment.

Friday Odds and Ends

-Weiden+Kennedy New York knows there’s only one time anyone really drinks Bud Light: Happy Hour.

-Translation released a new ad promoting the NBA Playoffs from a man who would know: Scottie Pippen.

-Deutsch parted with two unnamed employees at its New York office and hired two more in an effort to “restructure part of our studio to ensure we can meet changing client needs.”

-A guy named Tom wrote a Medium post entitled “5 further pitches from the creatives behind that Pepsi ad,” and you should read it if you’re not sick of all these Candle Jenner takes.

-In the mood for more Pepsi satire? McSweeney’s has you covered.

-Agencies like Huge, CP+B and Rain are teaching their employees how to use voice activation technology with “two-day hackathon[s].” But don’t you just talk to Siri and ask her stuff?

-Burbank-based entertainment marketing agency Terry Hines & Associates has rebranded its multicultural division as THE MRKT. Marcos Barron will be president and Bree Bosselmann SVP.

Fair or Not, In-House Agencies Take Heat for Pepsi Gaffe


The Pepsi-Kendall Jenner ad fiasco was barely a few hours old when some people at ad agencies targeted a culprit: Pepsi used an in-house shop, which in the eyes of many led to the marketing mishap.

The criticism was particularly sharp on a Reddit thread dedicated to the ad. “In-house just doesn’t cut it, as there are too few people in the chain saying ‘no.’ Advertisers clearly don’t have the self-discipline,” a self-described creative from New York stated. “In-house creative directors are jaded, tired old-timers who simply want to get paid and go home.”

But the issue is a little more nuanced and complex than that.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

John Oliver Rants About HBO's New Brand Campaign, and Then the Campaign Devours Him


HBO’s iconic static opener is an icon of entertainment branding — a subject of fascination for both everyman and intellectual, with many pondering how those fuzzy black and white visuals, elevated by a heavenly, choir-driven chord, manage to get viewers so riled up with anticipation. HBO “solves” that mystery in its new brand campaign, “It’s What Connects Us,” created out of Mekanism.

According to Chris Spadaccini, exec VP-consumer marketing at HBO, the decision to debut the campaign now was not sparked by increasing fray of original content from streaming services like Amazon and Netflix. Rather, the effort bows just as HBO is gaining more momentum from its hit “Big Little Lies,” and ahead of what promises to be a robust spring and summer season. Its aim is to honor its own subscribers but also to catch the eye of newcomers.

“We challenged the agency to find a way to tap into our subscribers’ emotional connection to our brand, but in a fun, unexpected way using our family of talent,” he said. “How can we tap into that feeling of anticipation and excitement our viewer has before entering our world — that feeling that is best captured by the iconic static that opens our programming? Mekanism came up with a cool idea of how we could bring that static to life.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

'The O'Reilly Factor' Had Just Seven Advertisers Thursday Night


Simon Dumenco, aka Media Guy, is an Ad Age editor-at-large. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

Continue reading at AdAge.com