Hasta La Creative!

Who needs broadcast television when you have your own mini network of celebrity athletes? Visa, an Olympics sponsor, is running a 60-second spot ahead of the Winter Games next month, and using its roster of 54 Olympic and Paralympic athletes to promote it. In recent days several Team Visa participants have used their social media accounts to tease digital versions of the campaign.

“When it came time to launch the film, we couldn’t have asked for a better medium than the athletes’ own social media channels,” said Lynne Biggar, chief marketing and communications officer at Foster City, California-based Visa, in a statement.

The commercial, called “Resetting Finish Lines,” and set to Irving Berlin’s “Anything You Can Do,” features the likes of snowboarder Chloe Kim and skier Mikeala Shiffrin preparing for the competition as they pay for various things with, no surprise, their Visa cards. One athlete even uses a Visa pin as payment, highlighting the brand’s wearable payment technology.

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David Schwimmer feeds Skittles to, and yells at, an animatronic sandwich in one of four 15-second teasers for Skittles’ 60-second Super Bowl spot that the brand will show to just one teenage fan. Schwimmer will also star in the 60-second ad. “I got a kick out of participating in what I think is the most-exclusive…

It’s been 23 years since David Schwimmer starred in a TV commercial. Now, he’s the star of four teasers for a spot we’ll (supposedly) never see.

The actor, best known for his role as Ross Geller on “Friends,” is starring in the commercial Skittles says it will show during Super Bowl LII to a single fan, teenager Marcos Menendez of Los Angeles.

Schwimmer says he embraced the chance to star in a Skittles ad.

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The market leader in video on demand experienced record growth in subscribers, beating analyst expectations.

Adam Williams, the former UK sales director and managing director of Spotify, has been appointed by influencer marketing platform Takumi to the new role of chief revenue officer.

(TrendHunter.com) A famous Tokyo capsule hotel has been completely redesigned by Schemata Architects.

Capsule hotels originally became popular in 1970s Japan, offering a cheaper travel alternative while still…

Natural Light is making a new appeal to cheap beer fans by offering some student debt relief. The Anheuser-Busch InBev economy brand will run a Super Bowl spot in 10 local markets to plug a new program in which it’s giving away $1 million to help people pay off student loans.

Because this is marketing, there’s a catch, of course. To enter the contest, drinkers must post a video on social media describing their “inspiration for going to college” that includes a shot of a green pull-tab from cans of limited-edition Natty Light packs now hitting stores. There’s a special hashtag, too: #nattystories. For all that work, folks get the chance to be one of 25 winners chosen by the brand to get $40,000 each to help pay off debt.

The ad, by Vice Media-run creative agency Virtue, is decidedly low-budget. It depicts a bunch of college kids doing the slip-and-slide down a college dorm hallway.

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Out-of-home advertising can boost market share by more than a third, according to a new report written by marketing analyst Peter Field.

Ashley Parker, a Washington Post White House correspondent, has gotten her hands on excerpts of an upcoming (Jan. 29) book about the Trump Administration written by Fox News host Howard Kurtz, and it sounds like Team Trump won’t be happy about it. Parker writes,

The White Houseand the politerati diaspora has just barely stopped reeling from author Michael Wolff’s account of life in Trump’s West Wing, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” and now another life-in-the-White-House book is about to drop, this one from Kurtz. Like the books that came before it, and almost certainly like the ones still to come, Kurtz’s book, “Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War Over the Truth,” offers a portrait of a White House riven by chaos, with aides scrambling to respond to the president’s impulses and writing policy to fit his tweets, according to excerpts obtained by The Washington Post.

Among the book’s revelations, per Parker:

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The Creativity Awards are adding one more new honor this year, the Q Award, created in partnership with sponsor Quantcast.

The Q Award will recognize a team of up to 3 people who challenge the status quo, question everything and strive to break conventional wisdom. The winning team will have discovered new insights and implemented a new strategy, campaign or product that ultimately resulted in increased brand awareness, growth and sales.

This award is open to teams whose roles include:

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