With at least 18 months on the clock until Google withdraws support of third-party cookies in Chrome, 2022 is shaping up to be the year the marketing and media industry really kicks the tires on alternative identifiers. While identifiers’ viability for targeting audiences is on the docket, the consequences–intended or otherwise–of a global push for…
May 17, 2021, was one of the media industry’s most transformative days in years. That day, on which AT&T announced it would merge its WarnerMedia arm with Discovery Inc., teed off what will likely become the media industry’s next tectonic shift. While the deal isn’t expected to formally close until midyear, the newly merged company–which…
What’s the purpose of an ad agency? It’s a bit of a loaded question for agencies and industry observers. Agencies are so much already, and in 2022, they will continue to expand their services to creatively solve their clients’ business needs through marketing. There are 13,000 ad agencies in the U.S. alone, doing everything from…
Whether it’s ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or iPhone emojis, stained-glass windows in a medieval cathedral or ads in a glossy magazine, humans have a long history of producing artifacts designed to communicate. As an art history major, school counselor and now marketer at a Fortune 500 company, Ryan Riess’ diverse experiences have taught him that the…
Christa Pitts didn’t know a career in sales would give her the entrepreneurial foundation to run a global company beloved by families. Pitts–along with her twin sister, Chanda Bell, and their mother, Carol Aebersold–heads up The Lumistella Company, which makes The Elf on the Shelf brand of books, toys, entertainment and immersive experiences that has…
In certain American cities, the time between craving a bag of pretzels or bottle of Gatorade while lounging on the couch and having the items appear at the front door has never been shorter. Ultrafast grocery delivery startups such as 1520, Jokr and Gopuff–which is currently valued at $15 billion–are making the idea of instant…
Discovery and its streaming service Discovery+ are known for their wealth of unscripted series. For the holidays, though, the company’s streamer is trying out something new: its first-ever step into scripted fare with Candy Coated Christmas, a holiday movie featuring Ree Drummond of Food Network’s Pioneer Woman fame. “We’re doing a bit of an experiment,…
If you had asked Philadelphia 76ers president Chris Heck about crypto a year and a half ago, he jokes he would have thought you were talking about a Superman comic. But cryptocurrency has since become something of a quarantine obsession for the NBA team executive. After spending around a year poring through research on the…
If you grew up in an American suburb during the 1980s, there is no way you don’t know Piercing Pagoda. Maybe you never got your ears pierced there, but odds are you saw your share of other mullet-capped teens getting it done at that beige mall kiosk, just down from Waldenbooks, KB Toys and Chess…
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) technology, a financial tool sweeping the digital retail ecosystem, has found its way to the media industry, leading to improved conversion rates, higher average order volume and, ultimately, increased revenue for publishers. Media organizations including BuzzFeed, Bustle Digital Group, Gallery Media Group and Leaf Group have all adopted the payment…
As Kristen Cavallo and I flashed our vaccine cards and pulled down our masks at Bryant Park Grill a few blocks away from Madison Avenue in New York last month, I couldn’t help but marvel at how things change. Four years ago, I was leading our coverage of the #MeToo movement, which led to shake-ups…
For those in the marketing world who have been singularly focused on the 18- to 49-year-old age demographic, you might want to look around. The silver tsunami is well and truly upon us as roughly 70 million baby boomers live–and often work–longer, making up a larger portion of the population than ever before. And these…
“The work” and “the grind” have become synonymous–so much so that when students are learning about advertising as a career option, they’re being taught less about the job’s day-to-day and more about the obstacles they’ll face. The focus has shifted from how to produce “the work” to how to suffer through “the grind” to meet…
After two years of a pandemic that has completely altered how business is done, disruption has become a constant in the advertising industry. TBWAWorldwide saw that disruption as a chance to grow. The global collective, a unit of Omnicom that proudly touts itself as a “disruption company,” feeds on a level of chaos that fuels…
The Covid-19 pandemic introduced a myriad of complex issues for brands, forcing them to grapple with their purpose and relevance during a global crisis. The circumstances led Bram Westenbrink, global senior director at Heineken, to issue what he calls “the hardest brief ever given in my life.” Realizing the brand needed to show up differently…
The Martin Agency’s chief creative officer, Danny Robinson, knows the agency has always produced strong television work. Just look at the success of Geico’s “Scoop! There It Is!” spot featuring Tag Team. The remixed song bled into pop culture with the infectious lyrics “French vanilla, rocky road, chocolate, peanut butter, cookie dough–and sprinkles” (and after…
Few advertising agencies would see an impromptu endorsement on social media as a chance to create a new product line–especially not an endorsement that promises to show viewers how to achieve a “smooth ass hoo-ha.” Most would have considered teen creator Carly Joy’s viral TikTok about her personal shaving routine–which effectively doubled as an ad…
This is the story of a famous brand that makes a famous wine. That famous wine is also an integral ingredient in a famous cocktail. However, before we can talk about Martini & Rossi vermouth, we must address a certain cocktail commonly ordered by a man named Bond–James Bond. Ian Fleming’s swashbuckling MI6 agent was…
The National Retail Federation (NRF) projects holiday sales in the U.S. will increase 8.5% to 10.5% to as much as $859 billion in 2021 despite persistent supply chain bottlenecks. That’s in part because retailers like Walmart, Target and Lowe’s began stocking up “months ahead of schedule” to ensure they have sufficient inventory, per an NRF…
LONDON–Phil Young, founder of outdoor lifestyle agency Mighty Mighty, has loved spending time outside since the first time he hit the ski slopes as a teenager. After that experience, he became a snowboarder, cyclist, trail runner and skateboarder, and even co-hosted a snowboarding TV show. But over time, a realization dawned. “I’ve always been the…
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