Hasta La Creative!

Anya Hindmarch, the luxury fashion label, has suspended giant red heart-shaped balloons over London landmarks.

Team WPP won creative and media duties for Office Depot, following a review which did not include incumbent Zimmerman Advertising.

Adweek identified Y&R and Mediacom as among the agencies who won the assignment but noted that a source identified it as part of a larger WPP pitch in line with the kind of dedicated units the holding company has formed for clients such as Ford, Target and Bose.

Office Depot moved its creative and media accounts to Zimmerman without a review about a year ago. The chain had worked with IPG agencies McCann New York and UM since 2014. Zimmerman formerly handled the brand’s creative account, beginning in 2011. Last summer Zimmerman launched a campaign for Office Depot reviving the 1974 Bachman-Turner Overdrive song “Takin’ Care of Business” as the brand’s theme song.

Office Depot spent over $62 million on measured media in 2016 and $47 million in the first nine months of last year, according to Kantar Media. That’s down significantly from the over $100 million the chain is estimated to have spent yearly when McCann won the account in 2014.

In a CNBC appearance on Monday, New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson discussed the company’s recent positive financial resultsand also, when pressed, addressed the inevitable moment in the future when the paper discontinues its print edition.

“I believe it’s many years in the future,” he said. “And by the way … we think our print product is a wonderful product. We’d love it to survive and thrive as long as it can. I believe that at least 10 years is what we can see in the U.S. for our print product. And we’ll decide that … simply on the economics, when, you know, the print platform continues to make sense. As I say, though, the key thing for us is we’re pivoting, so we’re not reliant on the print product, and in 2017, we grew the company’s total revenue, we grew its profitability, even though the print side of the business is still somewhat challenged.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

It’s that time of year again: TV networks and digital publishers will begin making their annual pitches to media buyers and marketers in an arms race to snag dollars for next season.

Viacom-owned Nickelodeon will kick things off in March, followed by Hallmark Channel parent Crown Media. Traditional TV behemoths will continue to emphasize their growing ability to more precisely target audiences, the better to resemble their digital rivals, while touting their premium and brand-safe content, which they’ll argue sets them above digital.

Non-traditional upfront players like Twitter and Conde Nast will continue to try to steal market share from TV stalwarts during the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual Digital Content NewFronts. But time the two-week pitchfest in New York City has been cut to just a week, complemented by a new West Coast version planned for a week in the fourth quarter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Oprah Winfrey and the National Football League sizzled on Facebook in January, while holidays were on the brains of Instagram users, specifically Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Valentine’s Day, according to Facebook IQ’s lists of Hot Topics for the month. Winfrey and Kevin Gates dominated discussion about people on Facebook, while Instagram users discussed…

It’s that time of year again: TV networks and digital publishers will begin making their annual pitches to media buyers and marketers in an arms race to snag dollars for next season.

Viacom-owned Nickelodeon will kick things off in March, followed by Hallmark Channel parent Crown Media. Traditional TV behemoths will continue to emphasize their growing ability to more precisely target audiences, the better to resemble their digital rivals, while touting their premium and brand-safe content, which they’ll argue sets them above digital.

Non-traditional upfront players like Twitter and Conde Nast will continue to try to steal market share from TV stalwarts during the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual Digital Content NewFronts. But time the two-week pitchfest in New York City has been cut to just a week, complemented by a new West Coast version planned for a week in the fourth quarter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com