Last week, we mysteriously received a Colonel Sanders pillowcase in the mail, designed to look like we were sleeping together. Now, KFC has explained what that whole thing was all about: As of yesterday, the brand launched KFC Ltd., an online merchandise shop packed with limited-edition goods and high-quality fried chicken apparel. This includes that…
This is not a nightmare, even though it features a giant, talking one-eyed dog, chronic insomnia and home invasion, with an eerie whiff of Stranger Things. The first ad for Coop Home Goods pillows actually depicts a trippy journey to “Dreamland,” the tranquil domain of Lloyd the portly angel-fairy who just wants everybody to get…
“Just Do It” has always been an entreaty to face up to daunting athletic challenges and break through with sheer force of will. But in Nike’s new ads, athletes seem fairly undaunted from the start–and intentionally make their workouts more grueling, and “Just Do It” that much harder to accomplish. Four new spots for the…
Ads with a social purpose dominate this year’s Emmy Award nominees for outstanding commercial, with two separate “Love Has No Labels” spots for the Ad Council making the list of five hopefuls, along with the “Why I March” PSA that mcgarrybowen made for the Women’s March on Washington. R/GA and the Ad Council won last…
There’s an unwritten rule in Hollywood–or it may actually be written down, considering how pervasive it is–that nothing can ever end. Franchises built on existing intellectual property, whether adapted from previous media or sprung wholly on film, are the key to success, according to the big movie studios. Not only can the marketing never tell…
It’s gotta be the influencers! Finish Line, the sports footwear and apparel chain, keeps pace with sneaker culture and adds some star power in these new “Shoes So Fresh” ads, created by Innocean USA. First, iSpy, with my little eye, rapper Kyle in the recording studio, enjoying a fidget spinner and mid-day refreshment: Spin it…
It’s no secret, girlfriend: That dude is worthless. So, weak moment or not, why would you even consider going back to him? This situation calls for a BFF squad, a musical pep talk (with synchronized choreography!), a dip into a crystalline Miami Beach pool, and a flock of flamingos. In that order. And in the…
After 32 years with Interpublic Group’s Hill Holliday in the U.S., financial services company Manulife, which operates as John Hancock domestically, has hired Deloitte Digital’s Heat as its global creative agency. Hill Holliday did not participate in the review.
All eyes have been on the big consultancies as they continue to encroach on traditional ad agencies’ territory, particularly in media, but this could be a sign that the creative space is no safer.
“Heat’s creative was by far the strongest,” said Manulife Global CMO Gretchen Garrigues. “They got customer feedback on the creative they were developing [in the pitch] and it was very thoughtful and innovative. They probably benefit from the relationship they have with Deloitte because it helps them add structure to the creative side of the world in terms of research.”
“Game of Thrones” fanatics are counting down the days (three!) until the season 7 premiere, and KFC’s “Lunchtime is Coming” spot played into the anticipation with actor Kristian Nairn, in character as Hodor, introducing the new chicken with rice.
KFC’s ad, from BBH London, debuted at No. 4 in the weekly Viral Video chart, with nearly 14 million views. Budweiser’s “A Dream Delivered” claimed the top spot, in which Star Wars actor and Marine Corps veteran Adam Driver delivers a college scholarship backed by Folds of Honor and Budweiser to the daughter of an Army veteran. That was produced by Vayner Media.
All top-five spots were new to the charts this week. And Samsung, which has claimed at least one top-10 spot every week since May 18, continued grabbing eyes with three. The tech company’s videos attracted over 50 million views this week.
Finally, some sun appears to be shining on the retail sector. With the holidays just around the corner165 days until Christmasback-to-school season is already underway and might just be a blockbuster, according to data released Thursday by the National Retail Federation. During the July through September period, which is the second-most important sales season for retailers, consumers are expected to spend $83.6 billion, 10% more than last year, a survey from the NRF and Prosper Insights and Analytics found. Shopping lists will be topped by electronics like laptops and tablets and shoes, according to the survey.
“Consumers are in a much better position compared to the last several years,” said Ellen Davis, senior VP- research and strategic initiatives at the NRF. She noted that workforce and wage numbers have improved and led consumers to open up their wallets. “They’re splurging on some itemsthey didn’t feel comfortable doing [that] a few years ago,” she said.
Some retailers are already reaping the rewards. Amazon’s Prime Day on Tuesday was the retailer’s most successful yetsales grew 60% over last year. On Thursday, Target raised its sales outlook for the second quarter, citing improved store traffic and sales in recent weeks. The Minneapolis-based retailer is focusing on new in-house brands, like the recently launched Cloud Island baby offering, and testing new delivery methods like a curbside delivery test.
Life under capitalism is a spiritual battle to keep feeling something, to stay in the emotional game, to hang onto your emotional heartland as a fully functional human being.
Mystical revelation and epiphany, the secret moments of lovers, the times when art simply clicks, the hushed whispers of plotters and conspirators, donning the black mask and running through the streets, transforming the urban design from a locus of power into a space of creation, recreation, redesign, renewal. What can we say of experiences like this other than that they are moments in the truest sense of the word, a time that moves against time, an undisciplined time, a time that scrambles the coding of time under postmodern endlessness.
Experiences that move against, push back, unleash divergent paths, breed mutant orders and non-orders, are indicative of critical breaks in the now. Capitalism and the state are profoundly conservative formations, parasitic formations designed to constantly colonize the future by imprisoning it in the dismal cage of the past. So while we can say that there are no organic states of being or authentic experience, can we not speak of states of being – or better yet, becomings – to come, of future kinds of experience? These are moments whose outline we can perhaps glimpse, and have even engaged with to a certain extent, but with an ultimate unfolding and outcome that we cannot possibly know. Why let the bored dictum “it’s all been done before” reign supreme? There is an entire world, and perhaps even a cosmos, to move through – but only if we set ourselves the task of breaking down the moulding that discipline has lent to this world and this cosmos.
Can such a situation arise from simply reforming capitalism, by opening up the apparatuses of the state or by pursuing a majoritarian democracy? This seems doubtful. Generating the very capacity for new sensations forms a fundamental part of the infrastructure of a new earth – a transvaluation of values, as Nietzsche would say. From the perspective of power and its language of standardization, homogenization, and efficiency, the impulse to break experience from time, activity from its particular coding, intention from efficiency, so on and so on, might appear as little other than a mad proposition, or more properly, a proposition for madness. And that is precisely what it is! “One day, perhaps, we will no longer know what madness was.”
-Kono for the Blackspot Collective
Planetary Endgame
Ad Age “Media Guy” columnist Simon Dumenco’s media roundup for the morning of Wednesday, July 12:
Today’s media scan has everything: death panels (see No. 2, below), an apology (No. 5), a witch hunt (No. 6), a Category 5 hurricane (No. 4) and even cornichons and castelvetranos (No. 3). Let’s get started, shall we?
1. Rage Against the Media Machine: “The snowballing revelations about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during last year’s presidential campaign have broadsided the White House, distracting from its agenda as aides grapple with a crisis involving the president’s family,” per Jonathan Lemire and Julie Pace of the Associated Press, whose report leads Time.com’s homepage this morning. “The public has not laid eyes on the president since his return from Europe Saturday. But in private, Trump has raged against the latest Russia development, with most of his ire directed at the media, not his son, according to people who have spoken to him in recent days.”
It’s summer in England, and that means tennis at Wimbledon, where spectators enjoy matches along with strawberries and cream (and it usually rains). To add to the excitement this year, Johanna Konta is the first British woman to make it to a semi-final at Wimbledon since 1978.
Her success is good news for General Mills. The marketer signed up Konta as part of a big push on tennis this summer across its Nature Valley and Haagen-Dazs brands.
Konta stars in a campaign themed “#The Court is Yours” for Nature Valley’s protein bars, spearheaded by a humorous video from agency Space showing amateur players of all ages, shapes and sizes trying their hands at tennis — with varying degrees of success.
Apple will establish its first data center in China to speed up services such as iCloud for local users and abide by laws that require global companies to store information within the country.
The new facility, which will be entirely driven by renewable energy, will be built and run with local partner Guizhou-Cloud Big Data, Apple said in a messaged statement. Apple aims to migrate Chinese users’ information, now stored elsewhere, to the new facility in coming months. The data center is part of a $1 billion investment by the iPhone maker in the province of Guizhou.
The data center was partly driven by new measures that bolster control over the collection and movement of Chinese users’ data, and can also grant the government unprecedented access to foreign companies’ technology. Forcing companies to store information within the country has already led some to tap cloud computing providers with more local server capacity.
WPP has bought one of Germany’s top five independent agencies, Thjnk, whose clients include McDonald’s, Ikea, Audi, Jack Link’s and Germany’s second biggest bank, Commerzbank.
Thjnk has sold 100% of the agency to WPP. There are 26 partners in the business, who all agreed the deal.
The move is positioned by the world’s largest communications group as part of its strategic response to Brexit. As the U.K. prepares to leave the European Union, WPP is expanding its power base on the continent outside Britain (its home country), and securing access to global talent who may not be able or willing to work in the U.K. in future.
Facebook is taking another stab at turning its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset into a mass-market phenomenon. Later this year, the company plans to unveil a cheaper, wireless device that the company is betting will popularize VR the way Apple did the smartphone.
VR hardware currently comes in two flavors: cheap headsets that turn smartphones into virtual reality players, like Samsung’s $130 Gear VR, and high-end gaming rigs like Facebook’s $400 Oculus Rift that hook up to $1,000-plus desktop computers.
Facebook’s new headset is designed to bridge the gap — a device that will sell for as little as $200 and need not be tethered to a PC or phone, according to people familiar with its development. It will ship next year and, if Facebook has its way, represent an entirely new category.
PepsiCo has put its flagship soda brand in creative review in the U.S., but the brand is only considering a handful of Omnicom Group agencies, according to people familiar with the matter.
The marketer has a long relationship with Omnicom, but in recent years has moved assignments around, including handing some work to non-Omnicom shops such as the independent agency Mekanism. The review signals that Pepsi could be returning to a lead agency model. Its restriction to participants from Omnicom is good news for the agency holding company, although there could be winners and losers within it.
“Omnicom has been our longstanding partner because we value the diverse array of agencies and talent they have under one roof,” said a PepsiCo spokeswoman. “We continually evaluate the best ways to market our brands, and in the U.S. on brand Pepsi, we are once again looking within Omnicom for custom creative solutions.”
Ad Age “Media Guy” columnist Simon Dumenco’s media roundup for the morning of Thursday, July 13:
1. I just want to note that when I went to the Chicago Sun-Times’ website to get the story (from the horse’s mouth) about its change of ownership — “Union group led by Eisendrath outduels Trib owner to acquire Sun-Times” — the site threw up an interstitial labeled “Answer a survey question to continue reading this content.” And the first question was:
Question 1 of 7 or fewer:
Google only recently opened up its header bidding alternative to publishers selling ads through DoubleClick, but already its future is looking uncertain.
The ad-tech companies that many publishers use to plug into Google’s DoubleClick and other systems systems say a number of factors have turned out to be likely deal-breakers.
Among them is a 5% cut that Google charges publishers for every transaction through its header bidding alternative, now simply dubbed Exchange Bidding, according to several executives with direct knowledge of the program.
After 32 years with Interpublic Group’s Hill Holliday in the U.S., financial services company Manulife, which operates as John Hancock domestically, has hired Deloitte Digital’s Heat as its global creative agency. Hill Holliday did not participate in the review.
All eyes have been on the big consultancies as they continue to encroach on traditional ad agencies’ territory, particularly in media, but this could be a sign that the creative space is no safer.
“Heat’s creative was by far the strongest,” said Manulife Global CMO Gretchen Garrigues. “They got customer feedback on the creative they were developing [in the pitch] and it was very thoughtful and innovative. They probably benefit from the relationship they have with Deloitte because it helps them add structure to the creative side of the world in terms of research.”
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