Hasta La Creative!

Luxury chocolate brand Green & Black’s is launching its first ever TV campaign tonight to promote its new Velvet Edition range.

As the zombie apocalypse drama returns for Season 8, the AMC series is looking to rebound from a stretch of storytelling shenanigans that alienated viewers.

Gerber wants parents to know it’s come a long way, baby.

The 89-year-old brand, which has been losing share to upstart brands, is unveiling an overhaul of its packaging, advertising, flavors, and personalized parental advice. There’s also a new tagline, “Anything for Baby” and a focus on not-the-usual flavors, like acai and kale.

Gerber has even updated its logo for the first time since 2006, but that shift is a lot more subtle, as Gerber tries to strike the right balance between its brand heritage and its more modern cues. So for its updated look, Gerber went back to its original Gerber baby sketch from 1928. Now, the baby’s head pops out of a blue circle.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Finding myself among the 145 million American’s who personal information was compromised by the gargantuan Equifax data breach, I welcomed the chance to talk with cybersecurity expert Norman Guadagno, senior VP of data security company Carbonite. Our conversation was both scary and enlightening as Guadagno pointed out how poorly Equifax handled the crisis, the inevitability of having your personal and company data hacked and, most important, the little-known fact that ever-growing marketing tech stacks are creating even greater security threats.

Let’s start with the Equifax data breach. How big a deal is this really?

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Mr. Weinstein submitted his resignation during a meeting with the company’s remaining board members, who had convened to affirm his earlier firing.

Almost exactly one year after concluding a 29-brand review by consolidating all digital work with SapientRazorfish, food giant J.M. Smucker has launched a new review.

This one is more limited, applying only to the CRM portion of the business.

“We are conducting an RFP to identify a CRM partner to only a few select organizations,” a spokesperson confirmed today.

A SapientRazorfish representative deferred to the client for comment. According to two parties close to the review, the aforementioned organizations include both the incumbent and Omnicom’s RAPP. The latter agency declined to comment.

The review, according to the party who first alerted us, stems from changes in the organization following the Sapient Razorfish merger. While the original six-month review concerned web design, SEO, CRM and ecommerce work in addition to digital creative, SapientRazorfish has handled less of that work over time. The company has also gone through a series of leadership changes during the same period.

Creative and media for the brand remain with Grey and Carat.

According to Kantar Media, J.M. Smucker spent $86 million on paid media in 2015. It’s unclear how much of that spend went to digital.

-Grey New York, DJ Dipha Barus, Vince Staples and the Marriott took a musical trip to Bali.

-Austin agency Door Number 3 hired Noah Davis of The Swizzle Creative as its new executive creative director last month.

-Anomaly Amsterdam won a pitch to promote IKEA’s sustainability work. We’re still angry at them about last Sunday afternoon, when we spent three fucking hours assembling a chest of drawers.

-Accenture Interactive acquired yet another agency, buying French retail shop Altima for an estimated $100 million-plus.

-AdAge talked to the creative director at Sean Combs’ Blue Flame Agency.

-Why is Amazon the brand labeled “most authentic” by consumers? No, really: in what fucking way could a mass retailer that primarily sells storage space possibly be seen as keeping it real?

-WPP retail agency SET promoted Alasdair Lloyd-Jones as its new CEO.