Hasta La Creative!

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OMD Group strengthens its lead at the top of the media new-business rankings, while Asda and Diageo have been in touch with agencies.

Dentsu’s global profits dropped in the fourth quarter of 2017 despite the fact that its overall revenue continued to grow. And executive officer (not CEO) Arinobu Soga attributed the disappointing results on the holding group’s attempts to rein in the “culture of overwork” that created a major PR disaster last year.

According to this morning’s report in Nikkei Asian Review, Dentsu’s profits dropped nearly 2 percent while its revenue rose 10.8 percent.

This is at least partly due to the 13 billion yen ($120 million) dedicated to “work reforms” over the year as the company attempts to come back from the story of a young employee who committed suicide in late 2015, attributing her own death to “karoshi” or overwork.

Former CEO Tadashi Ishii later resigned just over a year ago.

“Under the circumstances, continuing to chase the top line would be difficult,” Soga said on the company’s earnings call in referencing the aforementioned reform efforts.

According to the Nikkei report, these projects involved hiring more staff members and automating certain unspecified office operations in order to reduce the number of hours worked overall.

And the company is getting closer to cutting total yearly hours to “under 2,100 per employee” in an attempt to reach 1,900 by 2019. These employees also used nearly 10 percent more of their paid leave over the past year than in 2016, though the number was still only 64 percent.

It won’t surprise many to learn that Americans are also taking less of their paid leave, but then 46 percent of U.S. employees took every one of their paid days last year. (We presume none of the people in question worked for ad agencies.)

Because of all these changes, Dentsu has to rely more heavily on mergers and overseas acquisitions for new revenue—and it is consistently either in first place or running a close second to WPP in surveys that track such matters.

A certain subset of the media world was stunned yesterday when Jarrod Dicker, the vice president of innovation and commercial strategy at The Washington Post, said he was packing it in after about two years to become the CEO of something called Po.et. According to its website, Po.et is “an open, universal, and immutable ledger for managing the ownership and licensing of the world’s creative works.” It runs on the blockchain technology that powers Bitcoin.

That Dicker, one of the media industry’s leading engineers and creative strategists, would leave one of the world’s top newspapers while on a winning streak got people’s attention. The media model is broken, he says, shocking no one. If he were to build it from the ground up, Po.et is what it might look like.

Confused? He can explain it a lot better than we can. Our conversation has been edited.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A certain subset of the media world was stunned yesterday when Jarrod Dicker, the vice president of innovation and commercial strategy at The Washington Post, said he was packing it in after about two years to become the CEO of something called Po.et. According to its website, Po.et is “an open, universal, and immutable ledger for managing the ownership and licensing of the world’s creative works.” It runs on the blockchain technology that powers Bitcoin.

That Dicker, one of the media industry’s leading engineers and creative strategists, would leave one of the world’s top newspapers while on a winning streak got people’s attention. The media model is broken, he says, shocking no one. If he were to build it from the ground up, Po.et is what it might look like.

Confused? He can explain it a lot better than we can. Our conversation has been edited.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Pepsi’s viral “Uncle Drew” ad campaign featuring NBA star Kyrie Irving is taking new form: a full-length movie slated for release June 29.

It remains to be seen just how much the Pepsi brand will be woven into the script, but a new preview offers some clues, such as a Pepsi sign at an outdoor basketball tournament.

The Uncle Drew campaign, which cast Irving as an old man who can seriously hoop, debuted in 2012 as a five-minute online video promoting Pepsi Max. As reported early last year, PepsiCo’s Creators League studio has been working with Temple Hill Entertainment to get the character on the big screen. Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment is also involved.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

If a robot were to write sonnet, what would it sound like? And, perhaps more importantly, what would it feel like? This Valentine’s Day, teams of developers and designers at Brooklyn-based agency Huge wanted to use technology to help star-crossed lovers stay out of the Hallmark aisle. During a one-day employee hackathon, the winning team…

Pepsi’s viral “Uncle Drew” ad campaign featuring NBA star Kyrie Irving is taking new form: a full-length movie slated for release June 29.

It remains to be seen just how much the Pepsi brand will be woven into the script, but a new preview offers some clues, such as a Pepsi sign at an outdoor basketball tournament.

The Uncle Drew campaign, which cast Irving as an old man who can seriously hoop, debuted in 2012 as a five-minute online video promoting Pepsi Max. As reported early last year, PepsiCo’s Creators League studio has been working with Temple Hill Entertainment to get the character on the big screen. Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment is also involved.

Continue reading at AdAge.com