Welcome to First Things First, Adweek’s daily resource for marketers. We’ll be publishing the content to First Things First on Adweek.com each morning (like this post), but if you prefer that it come straight to your inbox, you can sign up for the email here. Motel 6 Fires The Richards Group After Agency Founder Calls…
Just in time for Halloween, Dunkin’ today unveiled its new Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut, capitalizing on a savory trend typically associated with more savory fare like chicken nuggets, sandwiches and tacos. It’s the latest menu entrant in the spice wars heating up between the major fast food and coffee chains. Most recently, McDonald’s followed Wendy’s…
Mindshare’s global CEO and founder Nick Emery has been let go. According to its parent company, WPP’s GroupM, he has “left the business with immediate effect following a clear breach of the company’s code of conduct.” GroupM CEO Christian Juhl is taking on the role of interim CEO at Mindshare until a permanent successor is…
First, the National Basketball League partnered with Clorox. Now, Major League Baseball is getting in on the disinfection game, announcing a partnership with Lysol. The multiyear deal comes almost a week before the league’s World Series championship, aiming to “reinforce and promote healthy habits and disinfection protocols for the league’s players, staff and fans,” the…
Motel 6, a longtime client of The Richards Group, has abruptly ended its relationship with the Dallas-based independent agency. The firing comes days after the agency’s 88-year-old founder, Stan Richards, referred to a campaign idea for the brand as “too Black” during an internal meeting that the client did not participate in. Richards also insinuated…
For years now, restaurants have been displaying the nutritional value of their meals on their menus. But did you ever wonder what the carbon footprint of that bowl of Broccoli Cheddar Soup you were eating the other day was? Well, fast-casual chain Panera is now going to tell you. The purveyor of baked goods, sandwiches,…
The Fifth Annual Shorty Social Good Awards will be presented in a virtual ceremony Thursday, Nov. 19 at 5 p.m. ET, and the finalists were revealed Wednesday. The five most popular categories that brands built campaigns around, according to the Shorty Awards, were: Environment and Sustainability (second consecutive year as the top category) Public Health…
Perhaps instead of spending Halloween in the pumpkin patch while awaiting the arrival of the Great Pumpkin, Linus should have just opened Yelp. The business directory and crowdsourced review forum shared details Wednesday on its five most popular flavors for fall 2020: Yelp Pumpkin and pumpkin spice: Yelp said searches for pumpkin spice lattes were…
Welcome to First Things First, Adweek’s daily resource for marketers. We’ll be publishing the content to First Things First on Adweek.com each morning (like this post), but if you prefer that it come straight to your inbox, you can sign up for the email here. Ryan Reynolds Doesn’t Understand 5G, But Mint Mobile Is Giving…
Recognizing the increased importance of providing customer experience solutions to clients, Havas has launched a global customer experience network called Havas CX. Havas CX is comprised of 1,200 employees from 20 of Havas Creative’s global agency groups and local agencies, including digital transformation agency Ekino, customer experience agency BETC FullSix and customer engagement agency Havas…
Last week, The Martin Agency took to Twitter to announce some job openings. While promoting new roles in social media is not an uncommon practice, what made this unique was the agency’s approach to gamifying the available positions and the brands on which the talent would work. The Martin Agency didn’t reveal specifics about its…
The rescheduling of professional sports in the spring due to Covid-19 brought fans a cornucopia of content in the last several weeks: the NHL’s Stanley Cup was finally awarded in late September, the NBA Championship came three months late in early October, and the culmination of Major League Baseball’s shortened run coincides with the first…
Mailchimp is formalizing its network of freelancers and agencies that use the platform on behalf of clients through a program that offers perks, educational resources and financial incentives to those who participate. The program, Mailchimp & Co, is officially launching with a campaign created by R/GA called “Beautiful Mess” that features vibrant images of real-life…
The coronavirus pandemic has placed every news organization in a difficult spot. But CBS News had an extraordinary disadvantage relative to its competitors: It was without a home for several months. During Tuesday’s Adweek Convergent TV summit, CBS News president Susan Zirinsky discussed her network’s “creative adaptivity” during these surreal times, especially in the several…
Delta Airlines lost more than $5.3 billion in Q3 as the Covid-19 health crisis continues to decimate the travel industry. Although the loss is dramatic, it’s a shade better than last quarter, which saw the airline down $5.7 billion. In total, that’s almost $11 billion since the pandemic first hit the U.S. in March, as…
Facebook is donating ?1 million (nearly $1.3 million) to help keep Bletchley Park in the U.K. open to the public. Bletchley Park, in Milton Keynes, was where nearly 10,000 people–75% of them women–worked to change the course of World War II by cracking the secret code used by the Nazis to communicate. Facebook chief technology…
Key Insight: Twitch is emerging as an important platform for some GOTV organizations. In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, several major social media platforms threw their hands up and said they wouldn’t take political advertising. While these companies are sticking to that promise, a handful of them are making exceptions for ads that…
New York City’s once seemingly indomitable hospitality industry sustained another blow this week when the owners of the historic Roosevelt Hotel, a 96-year-old Midtown institution, announced that the 1,025-room hotel will cease operations on Oct. 31. Named for President Theodore Roosevelt, the hotel opened in the fall of 1924, and its Italian Renaissance fa?ade of…
Six years ago, a staffer from Kelly Wearstler’s studio stopped by Alfred Coffee in West Hollywood to fetch a bunch of cappuccinos and vanilla lattes for the office. This was nothing especially out of the ordinary, since the indie coffee shop and the headquarters of the acclaimed furniture and interior designer were just a few…
Kroger is using visual recognition AI to help people make better use of the leftovers in their fridge. The grocery chain and agency 360i recently launched a Twitter account called Chefbot that can identify up to three foods in user-submitted images and search a database of recipes for the best match. The makers claim the…
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