Hasta La Creative!

Marketers watching the postmortem of Facebook’s role in last year’s election mess are getting a new appreciation for the social networkand some new worries.

Facebook hasn’t suffered financially since it said Russian front groups used it to sow discord and misinformation around the presidential election. Last week, it both sent its general counsel to testify before critical members of Congress and reported record ad revenue: more than $10 billion in just the third quarter. But advertisers are starting to wonder whether they’re creating a monster.

“What we’re seeing is a rare peek behind the curtain,” says one executive at an agency holding company, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Whether you’re pro-Trump or

Continue reading at AdAge.com

See Shelly Palmer lead an interactive discussion to help you visualize the future — and then prepare for what you’ve envisioned — at Ad Age Next, taking place Nov. 15 and 16 in New York. Other presenters will represent major players in what’s next, including Google, Amazon, Procter & Gamble, Burger King, IBM, Walmart, The Washington Post and Wayfair. See the full agenda here.

What you’re about to read is going to sound like a love letter to Apple. So, just to level-set, I stand by my assertion that “Imitation Is Not Innovation.” Apple’s high-end smartphone offerings are now feature-competitive with high-end Android devices. If you’re an iOS person, this review will make you joyful. If you’re an Android person, you are going to wonder what all the fuss is about. With that in mind, here are my thoughts about Apple’s new iPhone X.

THE AWESOME

Continue reading at AdAge.com

If there’s been one consolation about President Trump’s Twitter obsession, it’s been that his tweets, because they’re tweets, are over so quickly.

Trump famously rambles on in his speeches and extemporaneous comments IRL, but on Twitter he would shut up more or less quickly because he had towe all had to. (Sure, he sometimes went on tweetstorms, but those were over pretty quickly, too. A five-tweet tweetstorm of 140-character tweets, after all, was still just 700 characters.)

Now Twitter, in expanding its tweet-length limit from 140 to 280 characters, has effectively invited the world’s most notorious Twitter addict to double down. It’s as if the bartender, upon seeing the drunk drain his Stoli, has said “One more for the road?”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Brad Parscale emerged with a busted lip after an on-stage interview with Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo, about his role in helping Donald Trump win the presidency.

To be clear, Isikoff and Parscale did not trade any physical blows Thursday at the Web Summit in Lisbon, but there were certainly some verbal jabs by Isikoff — some arguably unfair — that drew cheers from the 10,000-plus members in the audience. Instead, it seems that at some point during the interview Parscale, who serves as Trump’s digital media director, bit his bottom lip.

Parsdale is widely credited for helping Trump win the November election by serving highly relevant ads with precision targeting to swing-state voters on platforms like Facebook.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

MCI, the global events network, has launched a UK experiential agency headed by Kim Myhre, former managing director at FreemanXP.

Like a twisted version of the producers of an unscripted TV show, Kremlin-linked trolls used fake personas to provoke very real drama.

This Friday, 10 November, is Equal Pay Day. It’s the day that marks the point in the year when women effectively stop being paid relative to men, thanks to the gender pay gap, which means that, on average, women are paid 18.4% less than men.

Sonos, the smart speakers brand, is creating its first European concept store that replicated a home environment.

President Donald Trump tried it out; he was not among the test group that has had it for weeks. We can’t help but wonder: Without a 140-character limit, would Trump have created the catchphrase “sad!”?

The Twittersphere provided surprisingly few clever or creative uses of the new 280 limit. Although we did enjoy this one:

Sued

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Following the success of his Instagram account, MediaCom’s Tom Curtis has released a book featuring his kids’ drawings in a bid to encourage children to unleash their creativity.