GroupM Is Forming a Coalition to Help Brands Better Reach Multicultural Audiences

GroupM is forming a coalition that it says will help brands better adapt to changing U.S. demographics and “assist in developing their audience planning and media strategies accordingly.” Disney, Google, iHeartMedia, Meredith Corporation, NBCUniversal, Twitter, Univision and Viacom are joining the collective effort, which GroupM has dubbed the New Majority Ready Coalition. New Majority Ready…

Viral App Highlights the Insensitive Logic of a System at the Heart of the Current AI Boom

As facial recognition software becomes inescapable in everyday life, the developers behind a new web app-slash-art project want to show people exactly how they look in the eyes of AI–and the revelations are often jarring. The tool, called ImageNet Roulette, detects human faces in any uploaded photo and assign them labels using ImageNet, an academic…

How the U.K.’s Fastest-Growing Plant-Based Food Brand Keeps Sustainability a Priority

This story is part of a weeklong series on climate change and sustainability. It’s in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative to cover climate change in the week leading up to the U.N. summit on climate change in New York on Sept. 23. Click here to learn more about the initiative and…

Culturally Relevant Ads Drive Brand Growth, ANA Study Finds

It’s kind of a no-brainer, but now we have the data to back it up: When someone feels as though an ad they’ve seen accurately reflects culture, they’re more likely to buy products from the featured brand. A new study by the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, an arm of the Association of National…

Apple Remains the USA’s Most Relevant Brand for the 5th Year, While Nike Plummets

For the fifth year in a row, Apple has been named the country’s most relevant brand in the annual Brand Relevance Index from Prophet. Showing how committed people are to their smartphones, fellow phone brand Android grabbed the third-place spot, while Spotify came in second place. Rounding out the top 10, in order from Nos….

Blue Acorn iCi Acquires Mediotype and Will Expand Western Office

Just five months after merging with two ecommerce and digital customer experience partners, Blue Acorn iCi said today it’s acquiring Mediotype Commerce, adding a team of engineers to its growing ranks. Based in Boulder, Colo., Mediotype will expand its facility and become Blue Acorn’s western headquarters. The company has not announced whether staffing will increase….

HP Debuts First Personal Computer Made With Ocean-Bound Plastics

This story is part of a weeklong series on climate change and sustainability. It’s in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative to cover climate change in the week leading up to the U.N. summit on climate change in New York on Sept. 23. Click here to learn more about the initiative and…

Why It Took Lay’s 2 Years to Redesign a Bag of Potato Chips

Eighty-seven years ago, a Nashville entrepreneur named Herman Lay began selling chips out of the trunk of his Ford Model A. Things were relatively simple back then. Until Lay began popularizing his salty snacks around the Southeast, potato chips were a delicacy confined to the precincts around Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where (as the most credible…

Facing Climate Change and Overtourism, Norway Shifts Its Marketing

This story is part of a weeklong series on climate change and sustainability. It’s in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative to cover climate change in the week leading up to the U.N. summit on climate change in New York on Sept. 23. Click here to learn more about the initiative and…

Innovid Acquires Herolens, Proving Ad-Tech Mergers Are Still Going Strong

Despite a series of recent regulatory knocks, data breaches and privacy regulations, the ad-tech space continues to rack up more mergers and acquisitions. On Tuesday, connected TV-centric ad-tech outfit Innovid announced it would acquire the programmatic creative agency Herolens. The deal–which comes on the heels of a $30 million funding round for Innovid, will allow…

Unilever Is Using 100% Renewable Electricity on 5 Continents

This story is part of a weeklong series on climate change and sustainability. It’s in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative to cover climate change in the week leading up to the U.N. summit on climate change in New York on Sept. 23. Click here to learn more about the initiative and…

Brands Are Closing Their Doors In Support of the Global Climate Strike

This story is part of a week-long series on climate change and sustainability. It’s in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalism initiative to cover climate change in the week leading up to the U.N. Summit on climate change in New York on Sept. 23. Click here to learn more about the initiative and…

This Company Wants to Be the U.K.’s Answer to Rent the Runway

Since Rent the Runway’s 2009 debut, clothing rental has become a major U.S. retail trend. Rent the Runway, for example, entered unicorn status after hitting a billion-dollar valuation in March and has since expanded beyond solely selling special-occasion wear to offering unlimited subscriptions for everyday basics. And challenger brands aren’t the only ones embracing the…

Seinfeld Has a New Home; Nat Geo’s Climate Change Strategy: Tuesday’s First Things First

Welcome to First Things First, Adweek’s new 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. Top Story: Netflix Snaps Up Seinfeld With Netflix losing…

With Whimsical Film, Lego Unveils Its First Global Brand Campaign in Decades

Give a kid some Lego bricks, and chances are they’ll use their imagination to concoct a far-fetched creation like a firefighter using an elephant’s trunk to put out some flames. That’s at least the premise behind the brand’s latest campaign, which rolls out today. According to Lego, this will be the Danish company’s first global…

How Heinz Created America’s (and Ed Sheeran’s) Favorite Condiment

The internet, as most of us know by now, tends to blow up over ridiculous things. This is why, in March 2017, the web was abuzz not with actual news like the impeachment of South Korean president Park Geun-hye or the landslide in Addis Ababa, but with the tattoos of Ed Sheeran. Specifically, the Heinz…

Over Half of UK Business Leaders Are Not Prepared for Brexit

As Brexit looms nearer–as of now, the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union is still set for Oct. 31–economists and executives continue to present an uncertain forecast for the country’s business future. The Institute of Directors (IoD), a long-running organization for senior U.K. business leaders, published a new survey this week that calls Brexit…

Critical Mass CCO Conor Brady Is Leaving the Agency

After more than five years as the chief creative officer at digital experience design agency Critical Mass, Conor Brady is stepping away from the industry An avid cyclist, Brady plans to embark on a biking trip; past that, his next career move remains up in the air but will focus on his passions for design,…

Adweek Is Spotlighting How Sustainability and Climate Change Intersect With Marketing

Leaders from around the globe will convene in New York next week with U.N. Secretary-General Ant?nio Guterres to discuss taking action against climate change. In the lead-up to that summit, Adweek will publish a series of stories each day this week that highlights the different ways in which climate change and sustainability intersect with the…

McDonald’s Taps Wieden + Kennedy New York as Its New Lead Creative Agency in the U.S.

On Friday, McDonald’s announced Wieden + Kennedy New York as its new lead creative agency in the U.S. The news is a setback for DDB, which was the QSR giant’s sole creative marketing partner after beating out Publicis for the business about three years ago. “We are confident the talented team at Wieden + Kennedy…