Perfection is out. We want our heroes flawed, our romantic comedies realistic and our images un-retouched. But does this mean the world’s biggest brands are ready for a traveling exhibit called the Museum of Failure that showcases their unloved products? “No,” laughed Samuel West, the project’s founder and an organizational psychologist by trade. “Nobody wanted…
Being a chief strategy officer is the most fun Martin Ekechukwu has had in a long time. Ekechukwu leads strategy for A-Frame Brands, a Los Angeles-based holding company that builds solutions for underrepresented and underserved groups. It launched Kinl? Skincare with Naomi Osaka and baby care line Proudly with Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade. Being…
When IPG-owned performance marketing agency Reprise Digital began using a form of the same AI that powers ChatGPT a couple of years ago, it started with a test. The firm pitted its OpenAI-powered copywriting software, Transcribe–paired with human editors–against internal and external teams of copywriters to write digital content for financial clients. Each team’s results…
High inflation has made buying everyday goods–from yogurt and ketchup to trash bags and laundry detergent–more taxing on households across the country. As a result, a growing number of shoppers are reaching for store brands, also known as private labels, to help ease the cost of keeping their refrigerators full and pantries stocked. Last year,…
Google didn’t get to be the world’s most visited website by making mistakes. And that’s much of why CMO Lorraine Twohill’s 2022 address at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was something of a needle-scratch moment. When it came to diversity in its marketing, Twohill admitted, Google had goofed. “We weren’t getting it right,”…
Accessibility is a long word, and in an industry that loves truncating titles–KFC, BMW, UPS, REI–we need to embrace a11y. This numeronym (where numbers form an abbreviation) conveys that in between the A and Y of “accessibility,” there are 11 more letters. For many nondisabled people, accessibility can seem like a foreign concept that requires…
Much like management consultants lean on tried-and-true project frameworks to solve problems, so does the IPG Mediabrands agency Initiative. For several years, agency leaders called the agency’s go-to approach Cultural Velocity. Last year, after elevating performance media expert Dimitri Maex to the global CEO role, Initiative rolled out a new, modified framework that replaced Cultural…
Ten years ago, Gale did not exist. Five years ago, the Stagwell-owned agency did not have a media practice. And last year, it delivered a billion dollars in media billings and scored nine-figure revenue, growing at an astonishing 133% year over year. While Gale was shortlisted for Adweek’s 2022 U.S. Agency of the Year award–which…
For decades, heritage media agencies grew in power by managing clients’ buys on television, radio and print. But to stay on top of 2023’s omnichannel world, a media agency must be able to see the entire media map, locate every consumer on it and navigate it like a trailblazer. Starcom comes from heritage–it traces its…
People shopping for everything from shampoo to furniture to life insurance look different today than they did a decade ago. Between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of U.S. residents who identify as white fell from 63.7% of the total population to 57.8%, according to the Census Bureau. With more of everybody else, marketers have an…
The executive behind global campaigns for hit shows such as House of the Dragon, The White Lotus and The Last of Us didn’t even plan on a career in marketing. Pia Barlow, evp of originals marketing at HBO Max, has been in the business for 18 years. But long before that, she first began her…
Any company can launch programs and blast out marketing and social media messages for February’s Black History Month–as well as Pride Month, Hispanic Heritage Month or other similar periods of DEI recognition. But if the brand isn’t creating change within its workforce, policies, customer interaction or overall culture, it’s “writing a fiction story,” according to…
For more than a decade, performance marketers distinguished themselves with their skill in stringing together the perfect set of keywords for Google or picking the right attributes for a likely-to-purchase audience on Facebook. But as both platforms lean more heavily into automation, marketers say these skills are becoming less relevant, in favor of chops in…
If there’s a single Italian recipe that generations of cooks fuss and disagree over with equal relish, it’s tomato sauce. Do you use fresh tomatoes or canned? Olive oil or butter? Let it simmer for an hour or a day? It always depends. If there’s any agreement among foodies about marinara sauce, it’s probably this:…
Serena Williams exited professional tennis last September, following one final U.S. Open run, in a blaze of branding glory–with a pair of powerful ads from longtime partners Nike and Gatorade honoring and cementing her legacy as the sport’s GOAT. But while Williams has long been one of the industry’s most coveted spokespeople and brand partners–after…
It’s a reasonable bet that most senior-level marketers would like–even if it’s just once–to lead the creation of a Super Bowl ad. After all, who wouldn’t want to work with a budget that lets them drop $7 million on the most prime TV time there is? What CMO doesn’t dream of having 100 million-plus consumers…
The Consumer Electronics Show, the tech industry’s premier trade event, is famous for its sampling of flashy gadgets and glimpses into a far-flung future, but marketers in Las Vegas last month for CES 2023 had little appetite for flying cars or robot butlers. With budgets pared down to brave a looming economic downturn, brand leaders…
For decades, b-to-b brands have formed their visual identity and logos based on “professional” tones and styles. We’ve all seen them: blue or red text splashed on a plain white background with minimal additional color, often devoid of any personality or flair. Appropriate for a corporate audience? Sure. Effective in attracting today’s social-first audience? Not…
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