McSuicide? Twitter hoax affects McDonald's Hong Kong

McDonald’s Hong Kong received worldwide publicity due to a Twitter squatter making cryptic posts about suicide, kidnap and romantic rejection.

You can finally ask Alexa to order you a pizza from Dominos in the UK

More than a year after the service launched in the US, UK consumers can finally ask Alexa to please order them a pizza from Domino’s.

England's Euro football victory watched by record audience on Channel 4

Channel 4’s coverage of England’s victory over France in the Women’s Euro 2017 football championship attracted the biggest ever UK TV audience for a women’s football match.

AXA reviews UK comms and marketing agency briefs

Insurance giant AXA is reviewing its comms and marketing agency accounts in the UK.

Monday Morning Stir

-Havas London got some attention last week for this basic spot in which British boxer Nicola Adams hypes E45 skincare.

-Papa John’s doesn’t do marketing stunts…unless they involve sports teams or embellished family histories.

-The Drum names some rising LGBTQ+ stars of the creative world.

-Campaign reminds us that “Bullying has never lifted any creative bar.”

-The Drum asks, “Why isn’t advertising funny anymore?

-The latest ordering gimmick from Domino’s involves the Amazon Echo. We remain skeptical of the whole voice activation fad.

-The Washington Post asks what “natural flavors” really means and we all know the answer: bad copy! Bad!

-The number of TVs in American homes is shrinking.

Partners + Napier Expands Creative Team with Pair of Group Creative Directors

Rochester, New York-based Partners + Napier expanded its creative team by adding the role of group creative director with two new appointments. Mike Baron was promoted to the role of senior vice president, group creative director and Dan O’Donnell was hired as group creative director.

In his new role, Baron (pictured, right) will oversee creative on the agency’s BMW, MINI Financial Services Highmark Health Inc. and Delta Vacations accounts. He joined Partners + Napier as a creative director back in 2005 and has worked with clients including CapitalOne, Bausch + Lomb, PepsiCo, University of Buffalo, Kodak Alaris and Rochester Regional Health. Prior to joining the agency he spent a year and a half as an associate creative director with Crowley Webb & Associates, worling with clients such as M&T Bank, Aspen Dental, Independent Health and Praxis. Before that he spent over four years as a senior copywriter with Hill Holliday, working with clients including CVS, John Hancock, Fleet Bank and TJX Corporation.

O’Donell (pictured below) will be tasked with overseeing creative for Xerox, Bausch + Lomb, Keurig Green Mountain, BurgerFi, Conduent, Excellus BlueCrossBlueShield, Gannett, Friendship Dairies and Rochester Regional Health. He joins the agency following over two and a half years as a creative director with MARC USA. Prior to that he served stints as an associate creative director with Connelly Partners and Arnold Worldwide.

“At Partners, we believe creating brave work drives positive change for our clients, our people and our world. We are constantly seeking opportunities to improve our creative work, and both Mike and Dan have the talent, the track record and the leadership skills to fuel agency growth,”Partners + Napier executive creative director Pete VonDerLinn said in a statement.

“Their number one focus is to keep work quality high and client relationships strong.”

STUDY: Gullible Consumers May Actually Believe Your Client’s Bullshit

So… we hear that advertising is dying. And that’s due to growing public skepticism of and intolerance for marketing messages in general, right? A certain former Droga5 executive just published a book on this very topic. It is small and cute and we keep meaning to read it but other things always come up…

Anyway. A recent survey conducted by a couple of dudes at the Kellogg School of Management found that consumers are far more trusting of the stuff brands constantly spew at them than one might think.

As The New York Times put it, “when participants were asked what they thought of modern advertising techniques, they answered with words like ‘credible,’ ‘fair’ and ‘good.’”

That is worth at least one chin-scratching emoji as it seems to go against pretty much all the things we read and write every day.

There’s a bit of a twist, though. This study firmly splits into two columns: things people trust and things they don’t. In the first group we find third-party reviews and pricing promises like “we’ll match X, guaranteed.” Influencers, athletes and other “persuasion by manipulation” campaigns get dumped in the latter camp.

So maybe this research isn’t quite as head-turningly positive as we thought at first. As Zambezi president Chris Raih told the NYT, the interwebs have somehow made us all both dumber and more savvy or cynical at the same damn time.

And it all comes back to this awful word authenticity … or the subtle art of proving that your client actually gives a shit about anything other than selling its products to random people despite the fact that everyone knows this to be false.

Northwestern did a separate writeup of this study back when it went live in April. Some specific examples of stuff people liked:

Ads noting that you can try a product for a limited time but still return it and get all your money back (how often does that really happen)?

And stuff they didn’t like:

Ads where paid actors pretend to be “regular Joes” and talk about how much they love a product

Still a solid “not great, Bob” for traditional creative, which very rarely consists of talking up the awesome Yelp reviews of your client’s product.

Here’s a key sentence:

“Rather than reminding participants that they should be skeptical because marketing tactics are designed to manipulate them into making a purchase, Grayson and Isaac instead encouraged participants to keep an open mind about motives.”

Perhaps predictably, those who were told to think about the motivations of the brands in question were much more skeptical of the work they saw. But isn’t the key to a successful campaign often getting people to turn their brains off and give in to the distraction?

Kentucky Agency Scoppechio Named AOR for el Jimador Tequila

Brown-Forman Tequila brand el Jimador has named Louisville, Kentucky agency Scoppechio as its agency of record.

“The tequila market is growing internationally and here in the U.S. at a healthy pace,” Scoppechio CEO Jerry Preyss said in a statement. “We’re delighted that Brown-Forman selected us to help them realize their fair share of this growth. We feel el Jimador in particular has a tremendous upside for the business, given its strong heritage and popularity in the Hispanic community, with the potential to extend that into the mass market.”

“This is an exciting win for us,” he continued. “It allows us to extend our full suite of services, including experiential marketing, in support of a brand. It’s why we crafted our agency model the way we have and we can’t wait to make it work for el Jimador.”

“We’re optimistic about this new partnership and what Scoppechio has to offer,” added Brown-Forman vice president and group brand director, tequilas Mark Grindstaff. “Their understanding and passion for marketing to our target audience, omnichannel creative thinking and sports marketing experience in the soccer community were all important considerations that drove our selection.”

Scoppechio first work for the brand will be a campaign timed around Day of the Dead celebrations, followed by a campaign timed to coincide with 2018 World Cup soccer.

“While a traditional Hispanic celebration, Day of the Dead coincides with the Halloween season and is increasingly seen by the mass market as part of that holiday period,” el Jimador Tequila senior brand manager for the North American region Ed Carias, Sr. explained in a statement. “It represents a big marketing period for us, as does the upcoming World Cup Soccer event in 2018, as we are an official sponsor of the highly touted Mexican national team. Scoppechio will be activating some exciting plans for us in support of these important initiatives.”

Reddit Users Agree: Weird McDonald’s VR Post Is Totally an Ad

In another case of Reddit serving as the definitive underbelly of the internet, a post that was briefly trending has sparked a big debate about whether it is or is not an ad.

Less than a day ago, user vaskemaskine set the ball rolling with a simple post in the gaming subreddit: “Made my delivery driver’s night by showing him VR for the first time.”


Many readers noted the strategic placement of the McDonald’s delivery in the image and concluded: this must be an ad.

As one person put it, “Wine. Big Mac. Invite delivery guy in. Take photo of him while he can’t see. Post to interweb. Weird.”

Because this is Reddit and half of the users are deeply under the influence, there were lots of conspiratorial comments about bots and placements and upvotes and a little bit of pride over the group’s ability to see through what was SO OBVIOUSLY an ad, duh.

Holy crap, these guys really, really get into it.

For her part, though, the user behind the post did a pretty good job of defending himself as something other than a soulless McDonald’s flack who posts paid ads without properly labeling them:

[He was from] Uber Eats, so I guess he had time before picking up another order. He saw my friend playing when I opened the door and said he’d never tried VR before so I invited him to try it out quickly. I never get tired of seeing people’s jaws hit the floor when they first put the headset on!

We feel somewhat confident that this is not part of some big Omnicom plan to have McDonald’s infiltrate the unsafe space where you spend hours discussing games and girls, but now that we look at all these responses we are starting to doubt ourselves.

Is this what Reddit does to people? More importantly, would this even make sense for a brand like McDonald’s??

Church’s Chicken Names JWT Atlanta as AOR

Fast food chain Church’s Chicken has named JWT Atlanta as its agency of record, effective as of August 1.

The appointment concludes an extensive review which lasted four months and involved researching agencies of all sizes across the country, pitted JWT against another large agency in its final stages, Hector Munoz who joined Church’s Chicken from Popeyes as executive vice president and chief marketing officer in March, told AgencySpy.

“We weren’t looking just for a creative agency,” Munoz explained, “we were looking for that partner that will help us identify that key insight that will make this brand great again.”

He added that JWT Atlanta “showed tremendous passion for our business, our franchisees, our customers, high level strategic muscle, and made us feel comfortable with what they could bring to the table.”

The agency will be tasked with all brand marketing efforts, including broadcast and radio advertising, which will be led by chief creative officer Vann Graves, who was appointed to that role last December.

JWT Atlanta will partner with Munoz, Church Chicken senior director of advertising Georgia Margeson and the rest of the chain’s marketing team on a brand repositioning effort. The agency’s first campaign for the brand is expected in early 2018.

Munoz credited Graves and JWT Atlanta CEO Spence Kramer, along with the agency’s head of strategy, as “two main reasons” the brand selected the agency.

“We’re excited about the people, the caliber of their thinking, their creativity and all the resources that JWT Altanta and their parent company can bring to the table,” Munoz said. “Spence has done amazing things putting together a strong team of dedicated passionate people. One of the first things we noticed was that there’s a lot of passion in that room. They hit an emotional connection with Church’s Chicken about our brand.

Church’s Chicken formerly worked with Boulder, Colorado’s Made Movement as agency of record, a relationship which ended in late 2016. Since then the brand has been working with Erich & Kallman on a project basis and will be using the San Francisco-based agency’s work through the end of the year.

Millie Bobby Brown Has All the Back-to-School Feels in 32 Excellent GIFs From Converse

For teens, the first day back at school brings a plethora of emotions, from excitement to dread and everything in between. In her second work for Converse, Millie Bobby Brown (aka, Eleven from Stranger Things) tries to capture all those feels in 32 fun reaction GIFs as part of a new digital campaign from Big…

Failure to Build Brands Is Hurting the Economy, GroupM's Irwin Gotlieb Says


A “massive deficit” of brand building is dragging down the economy, according to Irwin Gotlieb, global chairman of GroupM.

When the history books get written on the last 15 years, Irwin told me in a video interview for his induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame, “I think they will say that the lack of brand building, the lack of effort on long-term marketing, destroyed and damaged more brand value than anyone can add up.”

Every client, Irwin said, is suffering from what his boss, WPP’s Martin Sorrell, coined as “short-termism.” Every client has to make the next quarterly report. “When you become more focused on the short term than the long term, you need to narrow your marketing funnel because that’s where long-term effect happens. You focus on short-term ROI, and brand building doesn’t give you short-term return, it gives you long-term return.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Apple Just Connected With Trump Country. (The MSM? Still Trying)


If you want to get a real, tangible sense of America — the America that the national mainstream media tends to forget — I highly recommend regularly skimming some of the big stories published by the very local, non-mainstream media in towns far from Manhattan and D.C.

Such as the Auburn Journal (front-page headline one day last week: “Highway 49 set for upgrade: two new stoplights, bike lanes on horizon”) of Auburn, Calif. (population 13,963). Or the Dothan Eagle (“Hopes high for 2017 local peanut harvest”) of Dothan, Ala. (pop. 65,496). Or the Herald & Review (“Schools fret over funding”) of Decatur, Ill. (pop. 76,122). Or The Telegraph (“Col. Drew takes command of 78th airbase wing at Robins”) of Macon, Ga. (pop. 92,582). Or the Bozeman Daily Chronicle (“State approves exploratory drilling near Yellowstone”) of Bozeman, Mont. (pop. 45,250). Or the Arizona Daily Star (“Football field at Tucson High is off-limits after flooding”).

Continue reading at AdAge.com

TBWA Hires Rowson, Airbnb's Stechschulte Joins Muhtayzik Hoffer


TBWA/Chiat/Day New York has hired Chris Rowson as head of design and group creative director. Prior to TBWA, Rowson was with Ogilvy New York, where he was creative director and head of design. He joined from Ogilvy Paris where his efforts helped the agency bring home Grand Prix, Gold and Silver Lions for clients such as IBM, Scrabble and Perrier. Rowson has also held creative and design posts at agencies in London. The role marks the third time that Rowson has teamed up with TBWA Global Chief Creative Officer Chris Garbutt, after working together in New York and Paris. TBWA also appointed Amie Miller as chief talent officer. She comes to TBWA from MDC, where she was SVP, chief talent officer. Before that, she was VP, talent director for CP&B in Miami.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Watch the Newest Ads on TV From KFC, Taco Bell, Geico and More


Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from 10 million smart TVs. The ads here ran on national TV for the first time over the weekend.

A few highlights: Pro golfer Daniel Berger plugs Geico insurance (very indirectly) with a little, uh, help from his “distant cousin twice removed.” A guy named Jason starts to get over getting dumped by Jenny by “filling the void with seasoned beef, hearty potatoes and warm nacho cheese sauce,” courtesy of a Potato-Rito from Taco Bell. And a couple of emo/goth kids delight (sort of) over a $10 KFC Chicken Share “bucket of fun.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Oh Snap! Shares Tumble After Insiders Get First Opportunity to Sell


Credit: Illustration by Tam Nguyen/Ad Age

The shares tumbled as much as 5.1% to $13.10 in New York, 23% below the company’s $17 IPO price.

Inside holders, such as executives and investors from the company’s days as a private startup, are barred from selling their shares for a certain period after the IPO. JPMorgan Chase & Co. had estimated that as many as 400 million shares could be sold in the first lockup expiration.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Watch the Newest Ads on TV From Motorola, JC Penney, Macy's and More


Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from 10 million smart TVs. The ads here ran on national TV for the first time yesterday.

A few highlights: JC Penney is promoting a Black Friday sale — but don’t panic, it’s a “Black Friday in July” thing, not an insanely premature ad for the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday. (For some context on the retailer, see Adrianne Pasquarelli’s post from earlier today: “Walking the Tightrope: Delicate Balancing Act For JC Penney’s New CMO.”) Macy’s hypes its Big Home Sale with markdowns as high as 60%. And Motorola introduces the new Moto Z with “Moto mods” that let you modify/customize your phone to your liking.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Twitter Tip-Toes Line Between Politics and Social Activism With #WallForACause


Twitter may well be the ultimate communication tool for social change — an impression it is trying to underscore with its #WallForACause, an actual wall in its New York City office. To promote social causes, the company turned over to artists a literal blank canvas, seen only by employees and visitors — and in a lot of selfies. It’s meant to showcase how 140-characters can breed world-altering movements.

Curious, then, that the wall makes no reference to Twitter’s perhaps most prolific and famous user — the country’s Tweeter-in-Chief, who has upended presidential communication protocol by using the service as a megaphone to attack both opponents and political allies, and unveil social policy changes. On the Friday of Donald Trump’s inauguration, 12 million tweets were sent about the subject, according to Twitter, yet he is not represented on the wall.

Instead, Artist Esteban del Valle is currently displaying a triptych of canvases, portraying three different scenes. The first depicts January’s Women’s March, and the far right canvas shows Killer Mike and El-P, from Run The Jewels, performing before a crowd as concert-goers hold their phones, recording and sharing the experience on social media.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Warning: This Story May Make You Hungry –But Also Nauseous


When a restaurant is named The Cheesecake Factory it’s no surprise that many of its dishes are the opposite of light, healthy meals. And a loaded sweet potato at Texas Roadhouse is clearly not the side dish worthy of a physician’s recommendation.

Those chains and others are called out in the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Xtreme Eating Awards, unveiled each summer as the group tries to get Americans to realize the amount of calories, cholesterol, saturated fat, sugar and sodium they’re consuming when they dine out.

The Cheesecake Factory’s Pasta Napoletana was named CSPI’s worst pasta. The dish — sausage, pepperoni, meatball, mushrooms, peppers, bacon, onions and garlic in tomato sauce served over parmesan cream pasta — has 2,310 calories, 79 grams of saturated fat and 4,370 milligrams of sodium, CSPI said. It says eating the entire entree is like having a Pizza Hut Meat Lover’s Personal Pan Pizza topped with three cups of pasta and a cup of heavy cream. Cheesecake Factory’s Flying Gorilla drink made the list as well; CSPI said the chocolate banana milkshake with dark chocolate and banana liqueur packs 950 calories, 26 grams of saturated fat, and an estimated 60 grams of added sugar.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Apple Just Connected With Trump Country. (The MSM? Still Trying)


If you want to get a real, tangible sense of America — the America that the national mainstream media tends to forget — I highly recommend regularly skimming some of the big stories published by the very local, non-mainstream media in towns far from Manhattan and D.C.

Such as the Auburn Journal (front-page headline one day last week: “Highway 49 set for upgrade: two new stoplights, bike lanes on horizon”) of Auburn, Calif. (population 13,963). Or the Dothan Eagle (“Hopes high for 2017 local peanut harvest”) of Dothan, Ala. (pop. 65,496). Or the Herald & Review (“Schools fret over funding”) of Decatur, Ill. (pop. 76,122). Or The Telegraph (“Col. Drew takes command of 78th airbase wing at Robins”) of Macon, Ga. (pop. 92,582). Or the Bozeman Daily Chronicle (“State approves exploratory drilling near Yellowstone”) of Bozeman, Mont. (pop. 45,250). Or the Arizona Daily Star (“Football field at Tucson High is off-limits after flooding”).

Continue reading at AdAge.com