Hasta La Creative!

A new global database aimed at unveiling female talent in the ad industry hopes to finally raise the amount of women holding creative director positions–which today remains at just around 11 percent. The site, called inVisible Creatives, is claiming to do something its predecessors, including Where Are the Boss Ladies?, didn’t: spotlight junior, mid-level and…

AT&T is nodding to Alexander Graham Bell in the name of its nascent advanced advertising unit: Xandr.

Led by CEO Brian Lesser, until now using the placeholder name “AdCo,” Xandr combines AT&T’s various advertising and analytics businesses, including its AdWorks addressable division and the newly acquired ad tech giant AppNexus.

AT&T announced the brand name for the unit on Tuesday at its Relevance Conference, taking place this week in Santa Barbara, California.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Under Armour has hired Alessandro de Pestel, a fashion vet who most recently spent nearly a dozen years heading global marketing, communications and consumer insights at PVH-owned Tommy Hilfiger, as its chief marketing officer.

De Pestel’s appointment comes two months after the unexpected resignation of Adrienne Lofton, a senior VP of brand management who had been with the brand for three years. The brand’s most recent CMO, Andrew Donkin, left last November after just 15 months.

Also on Tuesday, the Baltimore-based brand announced the hire of Ann Funai, formerly of PeopleAdmin, a talent management company, as senior VP of engineering, working on the ways consumers interact with the brand on digital platforms.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

It took some time for me to experience the oft-discussed “runner’s high,” but when I did, there was no turning back. High-intensity exercise releases serotonin, endorphins and dopamine to the brain, giving a person the same euphoric feeling that drugs do. Leaning into that point, Swedish sports fashion brand Bj?rn Borg and agency Nord DDB…

Under Armour has hired two new executives to lead its global marketing efforts as the company competes with rivals Nike and Adidas. Alessandro de Pestel joins the Baltimore, Md.-based athletic wear brand as chief marketing officer while Ann Funai will be svp of engineering. The former brings his extensive experience in fashion to the position,…

Pinterest opened up its Shop the Look visual search tool to creators and small and midsized businesses last week, enabling them to create shoppable Pins via a self-serve tagging tool. The tool can be used to tag any product in a Shop the Look Pin and direct people to sites where they can purchase the…

The race is on to provide brands with software that paints a complete picture of their customers and what they want, sometimes before they even know it. It may sound like CMO fan fiction, but cloud computing service providers such as Salesforce, Adobe, SAP, Amazon and Microsoft are all hoping to make it a reality, sometimes spending billions in the process to perhaps achieve that goal.

To that end, Salesforce announced Customer 360 ID on Tuesday at Dreamforce, the company’s mega-conference in San Francisco that attracts some 170,000 people each year. The new offering will help brands identify who their customers are and how they previously interacted with them through a universal ID. It will also enable companies to access information on those customers through Salesforce Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud.

Recognizing customers

Continue reading at AdAge.com