Publicis Groupe is pulling out of all marketing activity for the next 365 days – and won’t be entering awards at Cannes next year – as it focuses its resources on developing Marcel, described by chief executive Arthur Sadoun as a ground breaking new platform.
MUH·TAY·ZIK | HOF·FER launched a new spot for Audi anticipating the upcoming release of Marvel blockbuster Spider Man: Homecoming, entitled “Driver’s Test.”
While VB&P usually handles advertising for Audi, MUH·TAY·ZIK | HOF·FER has handled work related to the brand’s long-running partnership with Marvel in the past. In this case, the cinema and online short focuses on Parker (played by Tom Holland) attempting to get his driver’s license. His driving instructor for the test is played by actor/comedian J.B. Smoove, whose comedic portrayal holds the spot together.
When Parker gets in an Audi prototype (actually the new Audi A8) that belongs to “his friend Tony,” the instructor remarks that it’s a “sweet ride for a 15-year old kid.” Over the course of the spot it becomes clear that’s something of an understatement as using the vehicle on the driver’s test is practically cheating.
Often this type of cross-promotional branded content is really difficult to watch. “Driver’s Test” avoids this by not taking itself too seriously and utilizing Audi in an entertaining way that actually integrates the brand into the story without feeling too forced. While it’s probably not going to blow away Marvel fans, it’s a small addition to the Marvel universe that should appeal to franchise fans eager to consume any and all Marvel content. Spider Man: Homecoming, meanwhile, will showcase the Audi R8 V10 Spyder and the Audi TTS Roadster, in addition to Parker’s taking the Audi A8 for a spin in the “Driver’s Test” short preceding the movie (and living online until its release).
“With ‘Spiderman-Man: Homecoming’ and our continued partnership with Marvel, we have the opportunity to reach the next generation of both superheroes and innovators,” Loren Angelo, vice president of marketing, Audi of America, said in a statement. “At Audi, we are constantly redefining what superpowers are through our vehicles and this partnership and platform provide an organic way for us to showcase select current and future Audi Intelligent Technologies to that next generation audience that will be behind the wheel of our next generation models.”
Credits:
EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: John Matejczyk
CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER: Matt Hofherr
HEAD OF PRODUCTION: Michelle Spear Nicholson/Tanya LeSieur
DIRECTOR OF ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT: Carolina Cruz-Letelier
GROUP CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Joel Kaplan
SENIOR PRODUCER: Lyra Rider
2ND SENIOR PRODUCER: Sam Petersson
COPYWRITER: David Roth
ART DIRECTOR: Grant Piper
ACCOUNT DIRECTOR: Ryan Pariseau
ACCOUNT SUPERVISOR: Henry Fernandez
ACCOUNT MANAGER: Kathryn MacLeod
DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY: David Gonzales
ASSOCIATE SOCIAL STRATEGY DIRECTOR: Krystha Dart
SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER: Holly Nicolson
content production // Caviar
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Caviar Content
DIRECTOR: Jody Hill
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Michael Sagol
LINE PRODUCER: Bernard Rahill
DP: Eric Treml
AD: Jesse Fleece
2ND AD: Nadeem Ashayer
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Mark Snelgrove
CASTING AGENT/DIRECTOR: ASG Casting, Arlene Schuster-Goss
editorial // Union Editorial:
EDITORIAL HOUSE: Union Editorial
EDITOR: Jim Haygood
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Nicholas Lipari
PRESIDENT/MANAGING PARTNER: Michael Raimondi
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Joe Ross
GRAPHICS ARTIST: Mannix Rickenbacher
VFX // Method VFX
Sr Exec Producer: Stephanie Gilgar
Sr Producer: Michelle Machado
VFX Supervisor: Vernon Wilbert
CG Supervisor: Lee Carlton
audio // Lime Studios
RECORDING STUDIO: Lime Studios
AUDIO ENGINEER: Rohan Young 2:23 & :15, Loren Silber :30
EXEC PRODUCER: Susie Boyajan
music // Sony Pictures
MUSIC HOUSE: Sony Pictures
COMPOSER: Music cues for Spiderman: Homecoming
SOUND DESIGN: Gus Koven at Stimmung
SFX: Gus Koven
Publics Groupe will take a year off from any awards programs or promotional investments, including the industry’s biggest annual festival in Cannes, to shift its spend toward a new AI-powered professional assistant platform.
“All investments and focus” from across the group will go toward the platform, named Marcel after the company’s founder Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, said Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun. “No promotional events. We’re serious about that. No Cannes next year,” he said.
The platform, which is in the process of being built internally, will allow all 80,000 employees across 200 disciplines in 130 countries to stay connected, identify project opportunities they want to work on in different markets and anticipate clients’ needs with its predictive behaviors.
But none of the executives criticized the president in public sessions, and Trump at least projected a jovial mood, touting the gains in technology stocks since he took office and expressing confidence his administration would overcome such long-running challenges as modernizing the air traffic system.
He also offered a bit of solace for tech executives on concerns his immigration policies would deny the industry talent, saying he was working “very diligently” with congress on immigration so “you can get the people you want.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has castigated Trump for his travel ban and the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty, responded with praise for Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is leading the administration’s technology sector outreach.
Facebook wants users to “lean back.” No, that’s not the sequel to Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In”; it’s how people watch TV, unlike the way they scroll through the News Feed.
For months, Facebook has been talking to its biggest media and publishing partners to introduce TV-worthy programming to the social network. Last week, names of new reality and scripted shows were reported in The Hollywood Reporter — the competition series “Last State Standing” and the comedy “Loosely Exactly Nicole,” late of MTV.
Now, Facebook is talking to brands about how video will evolve on the network, from low-quality, user-generated clips to TV-quality offerings that viewers sit back to watch, according to advertisers and media partners. Facebook hopes people will tune in to shows and watch for longer periods of time, rather than just stumble upon videos in the News Feed and quickly swipe away.
CNN will invest $40 million over the next two years in Great Big Story, transforming the in-house social video startup into a 24-hour streaming channel.
Time Warner’s cable-news network launched Great Big Story in 2015 to make short videos about offbeat places and people, like a mountain climber with no arms or legs, or the inventor of the Dothraki language from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” The goal was to distribute videos on social media to reach millennials who don’t watch CNN on television.
Starting next summer, Great Big Story will enter a new chapter, using the funding to fill a full-day programming schedule with a wider array of content, including live programming or feature-length films. It’ll distribute the streaming channel on the growing number of web-TV services like Dish Network’s Sling TV or AT&T’s DirecTV Now, said Andrew Morse, general manager of CNN’s digital operations. “This investment is to build something entirely new,” he said.
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–Julie Walters stars in Oliver’s new spot for Vision Express (video above).
-P&G, AT&T, Walmart and other big spenders have yet to return to YouTube since the “brand safety” trend broke open.
-Miami Ad School students Oscar Gierup and Kristina Samsonova are using targeted Facebook ads to reach agency leaders in Cannes and hopefully land a job.
-Sleeping Giants goes OOH with a mobile protest billboard in Seattle urging Amazon to pull its ads from Breitbart.
-The Longhouse managing partner Helen Kimber shares “a headhunter’s guide to boost your career at the Cannes Lions.”
-Berlin is banning sexist depictions of women on billboards in the city, defining such ads as depictions of women as “weak, hysterical, dumb, insane, naive, or completely controlled by their emotions.”
-Adweek examines Ogilvy Chicago’s gold Lion-winning “Portraits Completed” campaign for shoe brand Kiwi.
-And also takes a look at Burger King’s “Biggest Hits of the Past Year.”
Fox Networks Group is following YouTube’s lead in rolling out six-second ads.
The media giant, whose TV channels include FX and the Fox broadcast network, announced at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that six-second ads will roll out across its digital and on-demand properties, where they will be unskippable, as they are on YouTube.
Fox plans to bring the short ads to linear TV as well, Fox said.
With Cannes Lions 2017 in full swing, the debate continues: Is the advertising industry’s annual event a showcase for Mad Men or Math Men? In other words, does Cannes celebrate art or science? Is it honoring the subjective (campaign creativity) or the objective (campaign performance)?
Ultimately, Cannes Lions is about both. A natural shift has occurred from a traditional media system predicated on brand awareness and a very art-focused approachthe “Mad Men”-style of yesteryear, which is still very prevalentto something that is shaped more and more by measurable performance across channels. Now when you go to Cannes, there’s more of a blend of different media and marketing technologies heavily focused on the value they’re adding to brands and agencies.
But there still seems to be a disconnect around art vs. sciencei.e., Mad Men vs. Math Menand it comes down to the maturity of the industry and its relentless fixation with reach. That leads to a mentality of “In front of how many people can I get this highly impactful, beautiful, creative ad?” as opposed to a philosophy predicated on reaching very small segments of highly targeted, responsive audiences. This means that many of the data creativity awards handed out at Cannes are focused around, “How I do target an audience?” as opposed to, “How do I target a person?”
If you’ve read Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s “Y: The Last Man,” a comic series about the only man who survives the apparent simultaneous death of all other male mammals on Earth, I won’t have to explain much. If not, read on.
I wasn’t going to come to Cannes this year. I needed a break. But when Phil Thomas, CEO of Cannes, called and asked me to judge the Glass Lions which “celebrate work that sets out to positively impact ingrained gender inequality, imbalance or injustice,” I changed my mind.
I thought it would be an incredible learning experience. I was right. I learned a lot. The first thing I learned after accepting was that I was going to be the only male and that Phil was actually asking me to take part in his own wickedly devised social experiment.
Everybody in marketing and media is doing Cannes this year — just like everybody did SXSW in March and everybody did CES in January, and so on.
Upward of 30,000 guests are expected to crowd the Cte d’Azur for what’s properly known as the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which means that, uh [taps spastically at calculator keypad, Colbert-style], yes, 100% of the marketing and media world — plus or minus 99% — will be attending.
Except me. I’m sitting out Cannes this year, but I’m determined to not miss out. That’s why I’ve developed the revolutionary new Cannes Play-at-Home Edition, which is designed to allow me to indulge in the Cannes experience from the comfort and sanity (and cheapness) of my own apartment. Even better, the Cannes Play-at-Home Edition has a social media activation that will make it seem like I’m at Cannes without ever explicitly stating that I’m in the South of France (i.e., I won’t technically be lying).
Fox Networks Group is following YouTube’s lead in rolling out six-second ads.
The media giant, whose TV channels include FX and the Fox broadcast network, announced at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that six-second ads will roll out across its digital and on-demand properties, where they will be unskippable, as they are on YouTube.
Fox plans to bring the short ads to linear TV as well, Fox said.
With Cannes Lions 2017 in full swing, the debate continues: Is the advertising industry’s annual event a showcase for Mad Men or Math Men? In other words, does Cannes celebrate art or science? Is it honoring the subjective (campaign creativity) or the objective (campaign performance)?
Ultimately, Cannes Lions is about both. A natural shift has occurred from a traditional media system predicated on brand awareness and a very art-focused approachthe “Mad Men”-style of yesteryear, which is still very prevalentto something that is shaped more and more by measurable performance across channels. Now when you go to Cannes, there’s more of a blend of different media and marketing technologies heavily focused on the value they’re adding to brands and agencies.
But there still seems to be a disconnect around art vs. sciencei.e., Mad Men vs. Math Menand it comes down to the maturity of the industry and its relentless fixation with reach. That leads to a mentality of “In front of how many people can I get this highly impactful, beautiful, creative ad?” as opposed to a philosophy predicated on reaching very small segments of highly targeted, responsive audiences. This means that many of the data creativity awards handed out at Cannes are focused around, “How I do target an audience?” as opposed to, “How do I target a person?”
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