Hasta La Creative!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Signet Jewelers has lined up some new agencies to bring in the bling.

The retailer said Tuesday it has tapped WPP’s MediaCom for media buying and planning for its Kay, Jared the Galleria of Jewelry, Zales and Piercing Pagoda brands in the U.S. At the same time, Signet appointed Zimmerman as its creative and strategic agency for Kay; and tapped Badger & Winters as its agency-of-record for Zales. The marketer said the appointments are part of its “Path to Brilliance” transformation plan to make it more customer-first, omni-channel, agile and efficient.

Omnicom’s OMD and Publicis Media’s Digitas previously handled media for the 3,500-store chain.

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(TrendHunter.com) German camper van manufacturer La Strada has taken advantage of the ongoing CMT 2019 event by launching an innovative new vehicle that is designed to offer an unbeatable blend of comfort, utility…

We told you what we thought of the ads during this year’s Super Bowl. But don’t leave it us to be the only folks weighing in. We put the ads on Instagram and asked: Did you like these? Red means negative, green means positive, yellow means you couldn’t decide. Here’s what you said: Bon &…

Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. You can get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Search for “Ad Age” under “Skills” in the Alexa app.

What people are talking about today

Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast was the least-watched in 11 years. And is it any wonder? The New England Patriots-Los Angeles Rams matchup was a slog. Ad Age’s Anthony Crupi says the game was “tedious” (the blah Maroon 5-led show at halftime didn’t liven things up, either) and reports that, going by Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, CBS’s broadcast averaged 98.2 million viewers and a 41.1 household rating. That made it “the least-watched linear TV broadcast of a Super Bowl in 11 years, and the lowest-rated in 16 years,” Crupi writes. Then again, it’s hard to get a good handle on the number of viewers compared to previous years; read Crupi’s full story for an explainer on why Super Bowl ratings still have a big asterisk attached.

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Fast, accurate and no typos! Bloomberg News, The Washington Post and The Associated Press test out machine-generated journalism.

The current strain of schadenfreude coursing through the digital-publishing ecosystem regarding BuzzFeed is entirely understandable. Not particularly helpful, but entirely understandable.

In late January, the Wall Street Journal reported that BuzzFeed was cutting 15 percent of its global workforce, resulting in about 250 layoffsand plenty of anger directed at BuzzFeed’s leadership (as well as lots of sympathy for the fired workers). It hasn’t helped that, as various outlets have reported, the layoffs were staggered over several days, leaving many staffers in an agonizing state of uncertainty.

The truth, though, is that BuzzFeed has been operating in a vaguely agonizing state of flux for quite a while now.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The current strain of schadenfreude coursing through the digital-publishing ecosystem regarding BuzzFeed is entirely understandable. Not particularly helpful, but entirely understandable.

In late January, the Wall Street Journal reported that BuzzFeed was cutting 15 percent of its global workforce, resulting in about 250 layoffsand plenty of anger directed at BuzzFeed’s leadership (as well as lots of sympathy for the fired workers). It hasn’t helped that, as various outlets have reported, the layoffs were staggered over several days, leaving many staffers in an agonizing state of uncertainty.

The truth, though, is that BuzzFeed has been operating in a vaguely agonizing state of flux for quite a while now.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

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Before she became a creative force in the advertising industry, Lisa Topol–now co-chief creative officer at DDB New York–was dead set on becoming a professor of religion and 19th century Victorian literature. But while the topic was fascinating to her, it became unfulfilling. “I just felt like I’d never be doing anything that engaged with…