Hasta La Creative!

Learn about how blockchain, AI, VR and other tech will affect marketing in 2018 by attending the Ad Age Next this Wednesday and Thursday in New York. Check out the full agenda and all the speakers.

Web Summit attendees last year were blindsided by Donald Trump’s victory in the vote for U.S. president, which took place during the conference. One year later, they haven’t moved on.

At last week’s 2017 Web Summit, many people shared stories along the lines of, “I remember exactly where I was when I found out.” Others made political appeals in light of subsequent events.

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Here’s the way I see it: The difference between old and new media publishers (or traditional and digital-native publishers, if you prefer) is that, while both struggle to stay afloat, some new media companies just don’t quite realize it yet.

I’ve been thinking about the economics of all publishing in recent weeks as more and more bad news has come out of medialand. Cond Nast, for instance, announced it was shuttering the print edition of Teen Vogue and cutting back the frequency of many of its glossies (e.g., Architectural Digest and GQ will go from 12 issues per year to 11).

There was also some extreme bad news that came out of the digital-native world: Local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist (which DNAinfo had acquired only in March) abruptly shut down. But the bottom line there was obscured by some high drama.

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The simmering debate over whether big internet companies are breaking antitrust rules to extend their dominance has a new frontMissouri.

The state’s attorney general announced Monday he has opened an investigation into whether Alphabet’s Google manipulated search results to benefit its own products over those of its competitors. He is also looking into whether Google scrapes information without permission from competitors like Yelp to use for its own search results.

“We are looking at allegations that Google has lifted information from competitors’ own sites,” Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said in a press conference broadcast on his Facebook page. “This misappropriation hurts business and it threatens to drive Google’s competitors out of the market.”

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Film
momondo

Do you believe there is hope for the future? The world can be beautiful and open, if we want it. These children from around the world came together and discovered they are more alike than they ever imagined. In the film Dear mom and dad, we document what happens when 48 children from 12 different countries meet at a CISV camp funded by Momondo and run by CISV. We asked the children to write to their parents how they see the world in the beginning and the end of the camp. We are proud and honored to have been able to document the beautiful feelings and thoughts shared by the children. They don’t come from the same culture, speak the same language or wear the same clothes, but none of that matters: jokes are shared, hearts are opened and friendships across borders are made. Momondo supports CISV International, a global non-profit organization dedicated to educating and inspiring action for peace. By educating the next generation, and through building intercultural friendships based on cooperation and understanding, CISV aims to help children and youth to develop the skills they need to become informed, responsible and active global citizens, able to make a positive difference in their communities and the world. Our collaboration with CISV and the Dear mom and dad campaign are part of Let’s Open Our World; an invitation to cross boundaries, embrace our differences and open our world. Find out more about Let’s Open Our World, our collaboration with CISV, and download free school kits at letsopenourworld.com.

Advertising Agency:Co+, Copenhagen, Denmark
Director:Mads Hemmingsen
Producers:Allan Stenild, Anders Toustrup Darre
DoP:Nicholas Bluff
Editor:Mikkel Stenild
Colourist:Nurali Kushkov, CAMEO
Music:Dennis Lee
Sound Design:Dennis Lee
Production Company:&Co. Productions

Trusted brands can now double down on their relationships with customers and advertisers to build everlasting value.

A relative unknown prepares to follow Graydon Carter, who embraced the role of celebrity editor during his 25 years at the helm.

Publicis Groupe has seen the future, and it looks increasingly like production and post-production work.

Last week, the network announced that it has acquired Harbor Picture Company, a New York-based studio that works on film, TV and commercial projects. Moving forward, that operation will become part of Prodigious, the holding company’s in-house production unit.

Publicis North America CEO Andrew Bruce announced the news in an internal email last week. The specifics of the deal were not disclosed.

“Prodigious, the cross-media production platform of Publicis Communications has acquired HARBOR, a New York based production company specializing in high-end, talent-driven production and post-production for feature films, episodic series and commercial communications,” said a Publicis spokesperson. “Prodigious is driving to build the premiere global creative production and post-production network.”

Harbor Pictures is a seven year-old company that has worked primarily with fashion brands on the commercial side, based on its Vimeo page.

Prodigious officially launched in 2013 as a consolidation of Publicis-wide print, digital and video production entities. At the time, it was framed as a way to further separate the creative and production aspects of the holding company’s work.

The production division is also part of the larger Publicis Communications unit announced by future CEO Arthur Sadoun back in January 2016, which includes all of the creative agencies within the network (Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, BBH, etc.)

Since then, PG has taken several steps to grow the global footprint of Prodigous while expanding its offering. For example, Prodigious offices recently opened in India and Vietnam, and in August it acquired the language services company Translate Plus.

The underlying goal here is to reduce overall expenses by handling more of the production work in-house. Production and post-production is, by many accounts, the most profitable element of the entire agency equation, and holding companies aim to boost those totals. As analyst Brian Weiser put it back in 2013, all the major groups have “placed a heightened emphasis on the production decoupling business as well,” estimating that they can save 20-30 percent of total expenses via “labor arbitrage” or outsourcing the work.

In short, the competition between the Big Five holding companies to own a greater share of the production and post-production work on all their agencies’ campaigns continues apace.

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