Hasta La Creative!

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Recent research suggests that smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home will be in 55 percent of all U.S. households by 2022. That’s a lot of skills. To help us digest these numbers, Doug Robinson, CEO of Fresh Digital Group, joins us on this episode of Ad Lib.

“Amazon is clearly winning,” says Robinson, whose company has built some 400 voice-assistant skills for a wide swath of brands and non-profits. “The reality is from a distribution standpoint, they have the market share. Who’s smarter? Google.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The final numbers are in, and the past holiday season was indeed one of the best since the last recession — even if everyone didn’t partake in the good fortune.

Sales rose 5.5 percent to $691.9 billion during November and December, the National Retail Federation said Friday. The results exclude spending on cars, gas and restaurants. E-commerce and other sales that occur outside stores jumped 11.5 percent.

“Whether they shopped in-store, online or on their phones, consumers were in the mood to spend, and retailers were there to offer them good value for their money,” Matthew Shay, chief executive officer of the NRF, said in a statement. Before the season began, the trade group had estimated growth of 3.6 percent to 4 percent.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Lucozade Sport and IBF World Heavyweight champion boxer Anthony Joshua are to host an outdoor exercise class as part of a campaign to get people exercising.

The Brooklyn Brothers has appointed Academy Films’ Duncan McRobb to managing director of its London office.

Pepsi is looking to its past as it revives its 1992 TV ad starring supermodel Cindy Crawford, brings back its retro packaging and tours the US with pop-ups about its 120-year history in pop culture.

-VCCP launched its first campaign for Cadbury with the broadcast spot “Mum’s Birthday” (video above).

-90s singer-songwriter Edwin McCain is back to sing to you about Denny’s delivery.

-Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar shares “3 CES Takeaways.”

-The Drum lists the top @AgencyQuotes of 2017.

-Stagwell founder Mark Penn says digital agencies are “undervalued.”

-Campaign explains “What Facebook’s news feed changes mean for brands and publishers.”

(TrendHunter.com) Technology is constantly increasing in accessibility, and wearable technologies have even blurred the lines between the digital and fashion worlds. There have been many ways that companies have…

For the past couple years, several media companies have snatched up many of YouTube’s most popular personalities to create content for their own linear and/or digital properties in an effort to attract their rabid millennial and Generation Z fans to their own platforms. However, only a fraction of those YouTube stars have been able to…

Gaffe

Chinese authorities are punishing a foreign brand — Marriott International — by shutting down its China website and app for a week. What happened?

Marriott’s wording on a customer survey upset the powers that be. In a user survey, the hotel chain “listed Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan as options under the question ‘Which country are you from?'” as the Xinhua news agency reports. China claims sovereignty over all four places. Marriott apologized and posted a message on Chinese social media. Here’s an English version.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The backlash to the lack of women at CES reflects the fact that equality is a business imperative.