Hasta La Creative!

So that was kind of amazing: Not only did the first post-“Fire and Fury” edition of “Saturday Night Live” enlist former cast member Fred Armisen to play Michael Wolff, but original cast member Bill Murray showed up to do Steve Bannon. The set-up was that both were guests of Mika Brzezinski (Kate McKinnon) and Joe Scarborough (Alex Moffat) on a spoof of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” as part of the “SNL” cold open. In the segment, Armisen’s Wolff reveals a thing he left out of “Fire and Fury” (spoiler: Oval Office baby races!) while Murray’s Bannon talks about what’s next for him (spoiler: he’s working on a new line of wrinkled barn jackets called Frumpers for Guys, plus a skincare line called Blotch).

Bonus right at the end: Leslie Jones is Oprah.

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Marketers around the world following the Consumer Electronics Show this year might have been wondering whether to double down in their dealings with Google or Amazon. But any product manufacturer that is focused on its long-term relevance needs to be praying Samsung’s approach is the one that wins out in the end.

The press coverage coming out of CES 2018 this month made it seem like Google and Amazon were all that mattered at the show. Google’s marketing blitz, featuring flashy digital billboards outside hotels such as the Cosmopolitan (a haven for marketers) and 20-foot-tall voice-activated prize machines led some to name it the show’s unofficial champion. TechCrunch gushed before the show started, “Google Has Planted Its Flag at CES,” while the show concluded with Recode wondering, “Did Google Assistant Win CES 2018?” The coverage of the Google-Amazon rivalry was everywhere, with Wired saying that “the war is on,” Yahoo Finance describing how the two “duke it out” and Mashable declaring that the “arms race is heating up.” If that was the top story at CES, it was a very slow year given that Amazon released its Echo in 2014, and Google released its Home hardware and Assistant software in 2016. I kept reading the coverage and wondering if the press only now discovered that the two U.S. technology titans compete with each other.

What’s particularly disappointing with the coverage is that while some outlets took the liberty of decrying Apple’s lack of visibility at CES, they neglected to mention Samsung’s strategy as an alternative. Consider The New York Times, which answered readers’ mail. In addressing a question about Apple, the Times wrote, “This year, Apple doesn’t seem very relevant here. The show now revolves around Amazon and Google and their battle for domination with voice assistants.” Those two may be the biggest winners, but they’re not the only options.

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These days, Astral Tequila piques Jonathan Goldsmith’s interest. The dapper, bearded pitchman, who long portrayed Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World, appeared in a teaser and a subsequent Columbus Day spot for Davos Brands’ Astral last year. Today, he returns in the first three installments of a 10-spot campaign by agency Erich &…

Skittles is creating a 60-second spot for the Super Bowl but the ad won’t air during the Big Game on Feb. 4. Instead, one teenage fan of the brand–Marcos Menendez from Canoga Park, Calif.–will see the ad and we’ll be able to see his reaction to the ad via a livestream on Skittles’ Facebook page….

If Facebook’s announcement last Thursday that its News Feed algorithm was being altered to favor posts from friends and family over those from publishers and pages came as a surprise to anyone, it probably shouldn’t have. A source at the social network even said, “We’ve been openly discussing the decline in organic reach for a…

NPR is adding its voice to the chorus of ad campaigns from journalistic organizations over the past year that emphasize the importance of the truth, and the search for it, in the age of Trump and fake news. New ads for Morning Edition, NPR’s nationally broadcast morning show, were created by MALFor Good, the social…

Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than seven million smart TVs. The ads here ran on national TV for the first time yesterday.

A few highlights: A group of girls running a bake sale won’t take no for an answer from an adult who says “I don’t have my wallet”pointing out that he can use the Zelle digital payment network through the Wells Fargo app to buy treats with his phone. GAC Motor says helloin multiple languagesto the American market. (“After years of teases and promises, China’s Guangzhou Automotive Group announced firm plans to enter the U.S. market,” Ad Age’s sibling publication Automotive News reports, “and it plans to recruit dealers at the upcoming NADA [National Automobile Dealers Association] convention.”) And Uber wants you to “get your side hustle on”i.e., make some cash in your spare time by driving for Uber.

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