Hasta La Creative!

Facebook set a goal of being water positive by 2030, meaning that it will return more water to the environment than it consumes for its global operations. The company said in a Newsroom post Thursday that it will turn to a combination of water restoration efforts starting in regions that are highly water stressed, along…

It wasn’t that long ago that the Information Age transitioned seamlessly to the Digital Age. But now we are firmly in the Data Age. The ad tech industry—and  advertising in general—has been undergoing perhaps the first seismic shift of this era ever since Google announced that its leading Chrome browser would stop accommodating third-party cookies at the end of this year. 

In June, Google turned the industry on its head once again when the tech giant announced a reprieve from third-party cookie deprecation. But according to Elizabeth Brennan, Permutive’s head of advertising strategy, there’s no need to wait for the cookies to crumble before devising a better alternative to third-party data. 

During a Q&A at the Ad Age In-Depth: America’s Hottest Brands virtual event last month, Brennan counseled the industry to not surrender to fear of the unknown. “Technology should facilitate the connection between publishers and advertisers, so data owners retain control of their data and user privacy is protected,” Brennan said, stressing that because so many companies are operating in a legacy way, they are wholly unprepared to adapt to a privacy-safe ecosystem.

First to the party

Brennan acknowledged that this legacy way of working is deeply ingrained in the advertising industry as we know it, and untangling that methodology in the face of the privacy juggernaut tumbling towards us is no small task. A good starting point is understanding what first-party data you already have access to, and considering strategic partnerships with other first-party data owners—including retailers and publishers. 

Taking a holistic approach to audience strategy is more important than ever, said Brennan. For example, advertisers could continue to rely on third-party cookies from Chrome, but Firefox and Safari have already removed cookies from their browsers. While they account for just 40% of internet usage, that is still a significant number, and Firefox and Safari users tend to spend more, according to Permutive. That potential ROI is worth restructuring now. 

Building better, more open relationships with customers

When considering the consumers themselves in the privacy-first world, transparency should be at the forefront. “It’s about explaining to people how your data is being collected, how your data is being used and also being incredibly clear on the value exchange,” Brennan said. 

Brennan said companies should be clear and say: “We are going to use your email for marketing. If you don’t want that, opt-out here.”

“When that transparency isn’t there, people make up their own truth, and that’s where a lot of the confusion comes from,” she said.

Brennan explained that in this new marketing landscape, partnerships may not look the same, and the rules will be different. Because the ecosystem today is built on efficiency (as in, “How can we hit this benchmark and when?”), the balance of power is tilting back toward the consumer—and the stakeholders that consumers trust with their personal information.

Publishers back in the driver’s seat

“It’s the data owners who really have the control, and those people tend to be publishers [because] they have this first-party relationship with everyone who comes to the site,” Brennan said. 

For advertisers, that means they will be forming much more direct relationships with publishers than ever before, which can be facilitated and strengthened in large part by agencies. Whereas agencies used to play a role more focused on deliverables and driving their customers toward CPAs, their role will now shift toward becoming more of an adviser to advertisers on who to form strategic data partnerships with—and how. 

Change in the data ecosystem is nothing to fear; in fact, it is ripe with opportunity. 

“For advertisers who want to safeguard their businesses from the macro-trends around privacy, it’s about taking control of what they can right now,” said Brennan. 

The sooner advertisers embrace first-party data, the more it will set them up for success in the age of the data reset.

Drive-thru ordering surged during the Covid-19 pandemic when indoor dining was closed, but now that people can get out and about again, McDonald’s has found a new way to catch hungry customers in their tracks. The fast-food brand has erected a billboard in London that doubles as a walk-thru service offering free McFlurries, its signature…

We have dammed, diverted and managed water resources for centuries and yet many regions in the world are still trying to increase access to water supplies. With severe droughts, increasingly erratic rainfall and other worrisome weather events expected to become the norm in the future, some worry that techniques and technologies that intentionally affect atmospheric forces will become more common. With farmers calling for cloud-seeding to water crops, is weather modification (aka “precipitation enhancement”) the ultimate solution for dealing with an increasingly unsettled water cycle? Could clouds become a commodity in the coming decades? Will richer nations disrupt other countries rainfall patterns in other to monopolise precipitations? Will they fight over clouds and the water they contain? Who has the right to control the atmosphere?

A boater gets an up-close view of the “bathtub ring” on the Lake Mead reservoir— evidence of its low water level — while touring Hoover Dam. Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

These questions and many more emerged in discussions that followed Maxime Berthou‘s presentation at the Metaboles art event in Marseille, France, a few weeks ago. The artist wasn’t trying to solve the most pressing agricultural or air-cleaning problems. His investigation looked at the implications of cloud-seeding as an artistic gesture.

Cloud seeding, a technology designed in the 1940s, involves infusing clouds with particles of -usually- silver iodide to turn lightweight water droplets into heavy droplets of rain or snow. A more recent techniques consists in zapping clouds with an electric charge. But what matters for Berthou is not the technique, it is the fact that, at the moment, cloud moisture does not have a clearly defined status. It is suggested that international law should elaborate a jurisdictional regime that takes into account both the particular nature of clouds and the implications of new technologies.

Maxime Berthou (aka Monsieur Moo), Paparuda (still from the film), 2011

Maxime Berthou (aka Monsieur Moo), Paparuda (still from the film), 2011

During Métaboles, the artist showed us extracts from Paparuda. The video documents a public performance in which he artificially provoked artificial rain.

Paparuda is a deity from the Romanian mythology, probably pre-Roman. It was invoked by groups of women during periods of drought in the hope that the deity would trigger the rain. By giving this name to the performance, the artist intertwines ancient rituals of rain dance and current forms of geo-engineering, fantasy and scientific manipulation of atmospheric rhythms.

Maxime Berthou (aka Monsieur Moo), Paparuda, 2011

Maxime Berthou at Metaboles. Photo: Luce Moreau

The performance took place above a boreal forest on the border between Canada and the United States. Using weather balloons ordinary used to study climate, the artist launched 15 kg of silver iodide in the Canadian sky to seed clouds going in the direction of the United States. The seeding basically meant that Berthou attempted to “steal” clouds heading to the US and make them rain over Canada. This artistic gesture hinted at the possibility of geopolitical disputes arising between neighbour countries over the ownership of clouds.

Before embarking on the project, the artist tried to obtain a licence to climate change under the mandate of the treaty RQC-P43, r1 from the Ministry of the Environment in Canada. This decree legislates the provocations of artificial rain in North America. It had never been solicited before which means that the request puzzled the relevant authorities in Canada. Berthou decided to carry on with the performance anyway, clandestinely and with the support of scientists.

It took 3 years and a number of collaborations with lawyers and research centres before the artist managed to achieve the performance. The result of the artistic gesture, rain, might look mundane and insignificant to us. However, if we pause to think about the recent floods in Western Europe or the ongoing drought and fires across the planet, it’s hard not to speculate on how cloud-seeding might shape geopolitics in the future.

Maxime Berthou and Mark Pozlep, Hogshead 733, 2015-2020

Maxime Berthou and Mark Pozlep, Hogshead 733, 2015-2020

Maxime Berthou and Mark Pozlep, Hogshead 733, 2015-2020

Maxime Berthou and Mark Pozlep, Hogshead 733, 2015-2020

Maxime Berthou and Mark Pozlep, Hogshead 733, 2015-2020

In 2015, Berthou confronted even more rain for another performance. Together with Mark Požlep, he sailed a 1941 wooden fishing boat on her last 733-mile (1179,65 km) journey. It took the artists 4 weeks and 20 stops along the way to sail from from Trébeurden in Brittany to Islay, an island on the ‘whisky coast’ of west Scotland. Once arrived at their final destination, they cut the boat’s hull and used the wood to make whisky barrels. The casks were then used to finish Bunnahabhain’s peated Moine single malt whisky that had been maturing since 2003. 733 bottles were released for sale.

Every stage of the adventure offered the artists an opportunity to explore the poetics of a specific practice of traditional manual labour: restoring a wooden boat, braving the elements on a small vessel, dismantling a boat, crafting barrels (that’s called coopering), producing whisky, etc.

Maxime Berthou‘s moonshine tasting evening at Metaboles. Photo: Luce Moreau

Maxime Berthou & Mark Pozlep, Southwind, 2019–ongoing

Maxime Berthou & Mark Pozlep, Southwind, 2019–ongoing

Maxime Berthou & Mark Pozlep, Southwind, 2019–ongoing

Maxime Berthou & Mark Pozlep, Southwind, 2019–ongoing

Maxime Berthou & Mark Pozlep, Southwind, 2019–ongoing

Maxime Berthou & Mark Pozlep, Southwind, 2019–ongoing

Berthou and Pozlep’s next navigational adventures saw them sail the Mississippi River on a 6-meter restored steam-powered paddle boat.

The trip started on 2 September 2019, one month after the upper Mississippi had been hit by six months of flooding. Many of the cities along the river had been washed away, marinas had been devastated and the infrastructure along the river abandoned. Local populations were struggling with the economic, environmental and sanitary consequences of the floods.

It took the duo almost 2 months to cruise the Mississippi River from its source in Minnesota to its mouth in Louisiana. The trip was punctuated by stops imposed by the limited capacity of the boiler. “We needed a lot of wood,” Pozlep told a journalist. “For one day of travel with the steam, one third of the boat was full of wood.”

These wood cutting breaks were the pretext to meet local farmers and collect corn produced in each state crossed by the river. The artists gathered around two tons of corn, 42 varieties in all. The cereals were then sent to a distillery in New Orleans to produce Moonshine, the illicit liquor of the prohibition. At the end of his presentation at Metaboles, Berthou invited the public to a moonshine-tasting session of the alcohol produced in New Orleans.

Just like Hogshead 733, the project fuses together adventure, craft, anthropology and art. The setting was very different though: a mythical river that features so powerfully in Hollywood movies and in the history of the United Stated. The expedition attempted to reveal the many layers of American history associated with Mississippi: enduring racial inequality, colonialism, monocultures, pesticides and GMO seeds as well as the adventurous stories of Mark Twain.

Source

The weed directory and delivery service has a new partnership with the Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures and an iOS ordering app.

Depois de convocar todos os brasileiros para se tornarem seus sócios no ano do centenário, Guaraná Antarctica agora coloca no ar uma edição especial de sua lata, que foi cocriada com os consumidores a fim de traduzir toda a brasilidade do dia a dia.  “Guaraná Antarctica está comemorando 100 anos ao lado dos consumidores e …

Leia Guaraná Antarctica lança lata comemorativa para o seu centenário na íntegra no B9.

David Droga will succeed Brian Whipple as the chief executive officer of Accenture Interactive while also holding the role of creative chairman. Effective from Sept. 1, Droga will take over from Whipple who has led the creative division within the consultancy for the last decade. In the newly created role, Droga, who sold his agency…

The pandemic has renewed interest in virtual reality. Facebook is trying to capitalize with a new virtual meeting room service.

New Balance, Groupon, and GoFundMe are among those with new initiatives.