With automation and robots now part of humanity’s inevitable future, we are in a position to come up with answers that have the potential to “make everything great or turn everything to shit”.
Secret Cinema is planning to take over Gunnersbury Park in West London with a summer event.
Less than a week after Discovery Communications finalized its acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive, the combined company has unveiled an upfront strategy in which it will be going to market as a unified ad sales team. Scripps ad sales chief Jon Steinlauf is overseeing ad sales for the new company–it’s officially known as Discovery, Inc.–as…
Discovery Communications and Scripps Network employees were prohibited from speaking to each other while the companies’ merger proceded, until it was finally completed last week. But later this month the newly formed Discovery Inc. will make its first unified pitch to advertisers during a seven-city road show.
“The challenge was trying to pull all of this together without being able to talk,” says Jon Steinlauf, a Scripps executive who became chief U.S. advertising sales officer for Discovery.
The deal added Scripps’ HGTV, Food Network and Travel Channel to Discovery Communications networks such as Discovery, Animal Planet, TLC and ID. Immediately after it closed, more than two dozen people met in a conference room for seven hours to run through every element of the presentation, going over which on-screen talent will attend, the networks that will be featured and the overall messaging, says Laura Galietta, senior VP of ad sales marketing and branded entertainment at Discovery. She previously held the same title at Scripps.
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What people are talking about today: Sunday brought the return of “American Idol” to Disney-owned ABC, and a handful of critics used the exact same phrase to describe the new rendition: “kinder and gentler.” When judges let candidates down, they did it tactfully, without the snark of the Simon Cowell era. Vulture’s reviewer gives the reboot three stars out of five and calls it “a fresh, Disneyfied startunless, of course, you consider the recent sexual assault allegations from Ryan Seacrest’s former stylist Suzie Hardy.” (Seacrest has denied any wrongdoing.) So, why watch? As Variety writes: “Who are we kidding? It’s all about Katy Perry.” She’s straight-talking, meme-worthy and, as Variety says, “never misses an opportunity for glitter.” Also, she gave one 19-year-old contestant his first kiss. Gripe: On Twitter, there was some complaining about how many ads ran during “Idol.”
Scientology TV
Google, which recently announced a multiyear sponsorship deal making it “The Official Cloud of the NCAA,” has begun the first ad campaign for its cloud computing product with commercials in March Madness coverage.
Google Cloud already serves powerhouse companies such as Apple, Snapchat, Spotify and Coca-Cola, but it’s hoping to expand by taking complex topics such as cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence and make them relatable to a wider audience.
Questions such as “Do players dunk more if they have 50,000 followers?” and “Are math majors better at analyzing the court?” are featured in two 30-second spots created by San Francisco-based agency Eleven, says Alison Wagonfeld, VP of marketing at Google Cloud.
Just two months after awarding its creative business to New York-based Badger & Winters, JC Penney is debuting a new tagline and creative campaign. The Plano, Texas-based retailer is now pushing a “Style and value for all” message in its all of its marketing.
Marci Grebstein, who joined JC Penney as chief marketing officer last year, says that the company researched consumer perception of the 116-year-old brand and found that many shoppers did not think of JC Penney as a fashion destination.
“While we really stood out in the value play, we ran short on style and inspiration,” says Grebstein. “We need to explain to her that it’s both.”
Uber, the taxi and food delivery app, has created a dining experience at the top of a double decker bus at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, to promote its Visa card.
A test carried out by News UK uncovered huge levels of fraudulent advertising inventory being sold on programmatic exchanges.
The UK automotive industry is under the pump, with sales of diesel vehicles collapsing and consumer confidence in decline. Alex Brownsell asks car marketing experts how the sector should respond.
Maternity Action, the charity that fights against maternity discrimination, created its biggest ever campaign with an exhibition involving 54,000 white carnations.
The & Partnership London has apologised after an email sent to the whole of its London agency listed the ‘Top Five’ and ‘Bottom Five’ female employees by their looks.
Cigarette ads were evil, creatively brilliant, and taught me that advertising held the power to drive major social change, writes Macmillan Cancer Support’s top marketer.
Facebook has reached a deal with Major League Baseball for exclusive rights to stream 25 afternoon games on the social network in the U.S.
It’s the first time a major U.S. league has agreed to show regular season games exclusively on Facebook, which has been building a portfolio of live sports. MLB owners unanimously approved the move, the league said. Neither MLB nor Facebook disclosed the financial terms.
“Much like the migration of sports from broadcast to cable, you’re reaching these milestones where the combination of the financial incentive and the audience allow you to make the next great leap,” said Lee Berke, an industry consultant. “This is part of the next great leap.”
We can be so concerned about what values we want our business to reflect to the outside world that we forget to really look inwards at individuals.
Keith Weed’s speech at the US IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in California last month has been given enthusiastic support by some marketers – but the impact it will have on the industry has been called into question.
When did it become acceptable to treat what we do as just a means to make money, rather than create marvellous things that people love?
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My neighbors must have wondered why I was jumping around my living room on Jan. 31. Well, that was the day I finally won the free mobile game “HQ Trivia.” As a former three-time “Jeopardy!” champion, I’d been waiting for years to cash in again on my semi-vast store of knowledge. Yet outside of free beer and the occasional door prize at pub trivia nights, there hadn’t been an opportunity.
When “HQ,” a live trivia game show developed by Vine creators Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll, appeared in the fall of last year, it started a free-to-download mobile app trivia frenzy. I’ve played several of them, and am always blown away by the numbers that appear on the screen: “Cash Show” consistently draws more than 100,000 players and gives away a total of $20,000 a day on weekends ($9,000 on weekdays); “The Q,” a hilariously ramshackle app out of Charleston, South Carolina, gets approximately 10,000 players going for as little as $100 per quiz; “Quiz Biz,” on the popular live-streaming app Live.me, gives away up to $50,000a popto tens of thousands of players. “HQ,” which on Oscar night gave away a total of $50,000 and drew more than 2 million players, has more than 5 million users worldwide, according to Jonathan Briskman, an analyst for Sensor Tower.
This is a golden time for seasoned trivia players. Lee DiGeorge, a New York schoolteacher who will appear on this year’s “Jeopardy! Teachers Tournament,” has won “HQ” 12 times for a total of $473, “Quiz Biz” six times for another $274, and other apps several times for smaller payouts. While that’s no fortune, it’s enough for him to keep a spreadsheet of his wins and losses.
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