Hasta La Creative!

2. Netflix/Narcos Season 2 promotion “Spanish Lessons,” by Alma: The Omnicom shop’s promotions for Netflix series “Narcos” about drug lord Pablo Escobar won 10 Lions at Cannes. Polar says “Spanish Lessons,” in which the show’s lead actors teach their most-used Spanish phrases like Escobar’s “Coma mierda,” is fun and all about entertainment, while at the same time solidly building Netflix’s business.

3. Major League Baseball’s “Ponle Acento” (“Put an Accent on It”), by LatinWorks: Recognizing that 27 percent of the league’s players are Hispanic, and that correct spelling of many of their names calls for accents and tildes, LatinWorks added an accent to the MLB logo, and to players’ names on the back of their jerseys.

“It brings awareness to something that could be completely lostthe way we write Spanish words,” Polar says. “This campaign feels like recovering not just the accents, but identity. Even though it’s a little [accent] sign, it means a lot.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

2. Netflix/Narcos Season 2 promotion “Spanish Lessons,” by Alma: The Omnicom shop’s promotions for Netflix series “Narcos” about drug lord Pablo Escobar won 10 Lions at Cannes. Polar says “Spanish Lessons,” in which the show’s lead actors teach their most-used Spanish phrases like Escobar’s “Coma mierda,” is fun and all about entertainment, while at the same time solidly building Netflix’s business.

3. Major League Baseball’s “Ponle Acento” (“Put an Accent on It”), by LatinWorks: Recognizing that 27 percent of the league’s players are Hispanic, and that correct spelling of many of their names calls for accents and tildes, LatinWorks added an accent to the MLB logo, and to players’ names on the back of their jerseys.

“It brings awareness to something that could be completely lostthe way we write Spanish words,” Polar says. “This campaign feels like recovering not just the accents, but identity. Even though it’s a little [accent] sign, it means a lot.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

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UPDATE: After this post went live, a spokesperson for The Weinstein Company disputed TMZ’s claim, writing, “The interpretation of the contract is not correct. The contract speaks for itself.”

The representative declined to go into specifics regarding the disagreement.

You probably want to dismiss TMZ as a gossip site obsessed with reality TV stars, but it has become a reliable source for legitimate items about people who happen to be rich and famous. Harvey Levin broke the news of Prince’s death, for example, and he also correctly reported on the heart attack that later led to Tom Petty’s passing. Check out this 2016 New Yorker profile if you have doubts.

This is relevant only because yesterday afternoon TMZ ran a story about the contract Harvey Weinstein signed in 2015 with his own company. More importantly for our audience, the report names WPP executive vice president and head of North American acquisitions Lance Maerov as the person who negotiated the specifics of that contract.

According to the somewhat inflammatory account, the decision to fire Weinstein after The New York Times and The New Yorker published stories about his alleged decades of sexual misbehavior may have been illegal as per the agreement in question. This is because the deal essentially said that any accusations of misbehavior made against Weinstein would be OK as long as they were settled.

According to the unnamed TMZ writer who claims to have seen the contract first hand, Weinstein could keep his job after being sued an indefinite number of times for sexual harassment or other such “misconduct.” He would only be required to make specific reimbursements to the company.

They ran as follows (again, allegedly): $250K for the first such incident, $500K for the second, $750K for the third, and $1 million for each instance thereafter. These payments would amount to a “cure” for the conduct in question.

The report then claims that the contract named a very small number of specific offenses that could lead to Weinstein losing his job: an indictment or conviction for a specific crime or a finding of “material fraud against [The Weinstein Company].”

In other words, as long as he paid agreed-upon settlements to his accusers, he could theoretically retain his job no matter how many women filed suit against him.

This is relevant to WPP because the company has been a minority shareholder in The Weinstein Company since 2005, and Maerov is one of the few remaining members of its board of directors along with Weinstein’s own brother. Earlier this week, Adweek ran a story noting that WPP is in the process of considering whether to stay on the board and continue its relationship with the company. At the time, a spokesperson for the holding group said that this decision depends upon the future makeup of that board, implying that Weinstein needs to bring on more women to help oversee its business or risk losing WPP as a partner.

As we also noted on Tuesday, the company has begun reaching out to agencies in the interest of rebranding itself.

WPP declined to comment about the TMZ report today.

This week, the three biggest ad industry trade groups finally agreed on something: ads need to suck less.

On Wednesday, the leaders of IAB, ANA and the 4A’s wrote a letter to the coordinator of the Coalition for Better Ads, the organization founded about a year ago by Google and a bunch of other companies in the interest of improving the online ad experience for users and hopefully reducing the use of ad blockers in turn.

This may seem like a contradiction for Google given that the company recently began testing its own ad blocker for Chrome, but make of that what you will. (Also note the absence of Apple from the group’s list of members.)

In short, the letter calls for new, universal standards regarding digital ads. The Coalition has yet to release such guidelines after more than a year.

“While we have welcomed this discussion, we believe that members and other stakeholders are eager for the Coalition to finalize the elements of a self-regulatory framework that will enhance marketplace adoption of the standards and make a difference for consumers,” it reads.

If every platform develops its own standards, they could throw the larger ad ecosystem into chaos while also screwing up the creative process for both agencies and clients, the argument goes. As an example, the parties call out Apple and the “heavy-handed cookie standards” it announced last month for Safari. Those standards limit cookie-based retargeting windows to 24 hours.

“This private, walled-garden approach to Internet advertising and content regulation is untenable,” the letter reads, though many Apple fanboys seem to disagree.

The list of demands essentially says that all group members should agree to adhere to this as-yet-unreleased set of standards—and that browsers and platforms must then prevent the use of blockers:

The Program will offer a “safe harbor” from blocking, filtering, or other obstruction by participating browsers and delivery technology companies to any publisher, brand, agency, or technology infrastructure provider that: (i) is a member of one of the Coalition’s participating associations; (ii) voluntarily chooses to comply with Coalition standards; and (iii) attests to same (“Certified Company”).

It goes on to ask for a universal method by which to resolve disagreements and asks that participating companies violating these standards be removed from the coalition if the parties can’t agree.

An executive at Digital First Media called the letter “somewhat confusing,” but we read it as asking the Coalition to hurry up and get to the damn point already.

This is a pressing issue for media companies and advertisers alike. If the user experience continues to be anything like the one documented in this sad tweet, ad blockers will remain very popular.

I feel terrible for journalists who invest time and effort into doing a hard job well only to have it presented like this. pic.twitter.com/jIZxuJqVAq

— Jeff Long (@banterability) October 5, 2017

Ugh, dude. Ugh.