Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: AI offers us the ability to interact with customers on their terms 24/7, but can it really create rich, relevant advertising on a customized basis?
TGIF. We made it all the way to another summer Friday. This week’s Agency Brief has a lot of new things: talent, offerings, accounts, offices, campaigns and more. It even has a little something about 100 new beers.
Alright, enough teasing. On to the news…
Getting crafty
Jerry Della Femina’s reputation as a funnyman and a wiseguy have made it difficult for the ad industry to take him seriously. “I think about that all the time,” Jerry admits to me in a video interview prior to his induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame.
“I’m working on my speech and I’m working very hard not to say just three words — ‘It’s about time,'” he says with a laugh. “Actually, most people thought I was in the Advertising Hall of Fame. … Yes, I want to be known as somebody.”
Jerry points to the fact that he’s been connected to many marketing and client successes, such as Isuzu, Meow Mix, Air Wick, Beck’s beer and Blue Nun wine as a reason for the assumption. “You don’t get these accounts and you don’t move these accounts where they went and where they are by being just a funny guy. There had to be some thinking behind it. And I had wonderful people. I had the best staff anyone has ever had.”
If you’re passing by Times Square today, don’t be surprised to see statues of kids made of sugar — well, something that looks like sugar, and it’s to make a point. Kind wants you to know kids are taking in too much added sugar — while also promoting one of its products, Kind Fruit Bites.
Kind’s installation is meant to highlight that the average U.S. child consumes about 64 pounds of added sugar a year in foods and drinks, roughly the weight of an average nine-year-old. Along with the statues that resemble children is a temporary art installation that looks like 45,000 pounds of sugar, “the amount that U.S. kids eat every five minutes,” says Drew Nannis, head of integrated communications at Kind. (The statues have the look of sugar without the actual sugar so that there’s not a swarm of insects.)
The snack bar company has long relied on fruits, nuts, and seeds for its products, but it too is no stranger to sugar. Many of its snack bars contain sugar and some also have glucose syrup. “We have nothing against sugar,” Nannis said.
When Brian Wieser strolls the Palais during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, he flies under the radar. “I’m not a celebrity in the industry. I’m definitely B-list,” he says.
While he may go unnoticed at industry events, his analyses are anything but unheeded. When Pivotal Research analyst Wieser speaks, everyone from small investors to holding company titans like WPP’s Martin Sorrell listen. His recommendations and reports can lift or sink an advertising or media company stock.
Just ask Snap. When the company launched its initial public offering on March 2, trading opened at $24. That very day, Wieser valued the stock at $10, saying it was “significantly overvalued given the likely scale of its long-term opportunity and the risks associated with executing against that opportunity.” Poof went the price: Snap shares as of mid-August traded around $13, down nearly 46% from the opening.
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LinkedIn will start to look even more like Facebook as the business networking site rolls out an option for the sharing of videos on mobile phones. The feature, dubbed “native video” by LinkedIn, will be integrated in the coming weeks.
Videos will autoplay without sound and the company hinted it may ultimately offer brand’s the option to promote video posts. Meanwhile, pre- and mid-roll advertising is also on the table and users shouldn’t be surprised if they’re eventually greeted with something called “LinkedIn Live.”
“Live video is an interesting possibility down the road because it helps people add a whole different dimension,” says Pete Davies, group product manager at LinkedIn. “There aren’t plans today, but there are a lot of interesting features that we’re going to look at.”
Tronc, the paper’s parent company, installed Ross Levinsohn, a former executive at Fox and Yahoo, as the publisher and chief executive of The Times.
When we come together, we dance in circles. We move as one, and celebrate the individual who takes the center. Unity and individuality come alive. Let’s live how we dance. Let’s #LiveInLevis
Being a father means to live a lot of emotions and some surprises, but for this one they weren’t expecting. Watch the video and find out what happened.
To the good old Brazilian style of advertising, the campaign, which brings illustrations that support the text, plays with slang and popular expressions in an irreverent way, giving them a double meaning and showing in a playful and humorous way, as a common gift Is not up to par with our parents. A light and humorous campaign, with a clear and direct concept, that summons the public to action.
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