The best advice someone gave me as a newly minted executive creative director was this: Find your heroes in the industry. So I went hunting for the best among us. I wanted to find those who I could look up to for their work, of course. But I also really wanted role models who were…
On the third floor of Gap Inc. in San Francisco, near the western terminus of the Bay Bridge, a bank of 14 big-screen monitors displays web visits, order volumes, sales funnels and other real-time analytics to a constantly rotating team of employees. This is Mission Control, the beating heart of Gap’s customer experience group. Here,…
After UnReal’s critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated debut in 2015, the Lifetime drama–about two women who produce a Bachelor-like reality show called Everlasting–weathered a backlash during its bumpy sophomore season. The show lost ratings and alienated critics with polarizing storylines including a Black Lives Matter-inspired police shooting and an assault on lead character Rachel by her…
Accenture released its Accenture Technology Vision 2018 report this month, the firm’s annual forecast of the technology trends unfolding over the next three years. In an age where there is little daylight between the office and the living room, where we are always connected to a device, easily accessible through email and Facebook, Twitter and…
The next round of big-budget media reviews has begun, and beneath it lies an existential threat to the established agency business model. Last summer’s rumored wave is now a real-world tsunami encompassing billions in RFPs from brands like Marriott, Mars, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Mondelez and more. But clients have learned from past mistakes; this time they’re…
Sport-bike racer, six-patent holder, biometric lab creator–these are just a few of Walter Geer’s self-earned epithets. But his actual title is vp and creative director at Verve Mobile, where he creates and delivers “high-impact ad formats” to companies. Geer graduated college in 1999 with a completely different career trajectory: He started in web design. Additionally,…
Just like any relationship, marketers and agencies need to cultivate and maintain their union–and not just during the honeymoon phase. New research from Provoke Insights shows that while cost is the biggest factor driving account reviews, several potential problems can result in agency-marketer relationships being on the rocks, including agency responsiveness and access to research….
On Oct. 20, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was aboard a C-17 Globemaster military plane bound for Libya. While waiting for takeoff, Clinton–wearing a pair of dark sunglasses–began pecking at her smartphone, her face a mask of determination. Alert to an iconic moment, a Reuters photographer clicked his shutter. National media picked up the…
Every podcast fanatic’s favorite host probably reads an ad for Sleep Number, MVMT Watches or Harry’s at least once per episode–and that’s because of Ad Results Media, which claims to be the world’s most profitable podcast advertising agency based on IAB industry revenue estimates. Born out of a merger between Ad Results Advertising and Brown…
Live sports has been the bedrock of linear television in the digital era. As everything else in entertainment has been disrupted and disintermediated, broadcast and cable networks have paid dearly to keep sports as appointment television. But changing viewer habits and new business opportunities are upending those assumptions, creating a new mobile-first paradigm for sports…
It should come as no surprise that covering media and marketing in this era of universal transformation is no small endeavor. Change arrives at a breakneck pace and leaves disruption, broken business models and obsolescence in its wake. Let’s be honest, it can be frightening and the anxiety is often palpable across our entire coverage…
In mobile Darwinism, every app fights for a consumer’s undivided attention and home screen, but the reality is they tend to stick with their go-to apps. And in fact, social media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat are the dominant species, comprising five of the top 10 free apps in the iTunes App Store. But it’s…
Innovation is a powerful force for business success, but big companies can sometimes be too slow to adapt. Corporate red tape, endless rounds of approvals and a general fear of failure foster cultures reluctant to give up on established ideas and solutions, even when they no longer serve the enterprise and its needs. Illustration: Alex…
From LeBron James to Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook to Stephen Curry, the level of play and talent that exists in today’s National Basketball Association makes the product as captivating as it’s ever been. The games are intense, exciting, fast-paced, and the on-court rivalries–between teams and even individual players–are fierce. The NBA is separating itself…
On a Friday in June 2016, MediaCom CEO Stephen Allan got the call no agency leader ever wants: The shop had unexpectedly lost the global business of Volkswagen, a client since 1996 that was one of its top three revenue generators with an annual marketing budget between $2 billion and $3 billion. “You feel completely…
Whether by choice or by fate, IPG’s MullenLowe Mediahub has long played second fiddle to larger, more recognizable networks. But the little agency that could has spent years building its capabilities in the hope of becoming a formidable industry player, and in 2017 those efforts finally paid off. The shop won an impressive 14 out…
“Let me start out by saying that here, creative is an adjective,” says 360i chief marketing officer Abbey Klaassen when describing her agency’s approach to media in 2017. “It’s not a noun, like, ‘that’s the creative.’ We are all creative.” Before war rooms, viral tweets and voice specialties, when the phrase “social media” was still…
Thanks to those pricey commercial spots, the Super Bowl is nearly as famous for hosting brands as football teams. But there’s one brand that the big game–that professional football, period–has planted so deeply in the national consciousness that millions of Americans know it, even though they don’t own it and it’s not for sale in…
Sandy DerHovsepian, vp, associate creative director, Cramer-Krasselt, and Adweek CEO Jeff Litvack. Refinery29’s Shannon Gibson and Amy Emmerich. (L. to r.) Christina Miller, associate channel director, VML; Maciej Szamowski, social media manager, Samsung; Shannon Pruitt, president, The Story Lab. Ivor Crotty, deputy creative and innovations director, RT; Gleb Burashov, head of creative social media strategies,…
For years, Microsoft’s most emotional and engaging ads–specifically, inspirational Super Bowl spots celebrating tech’s impact on people’s lives such as “Empowering Us All” (2014) and “Braylon O’Neill” (2015)–had an element of mystery. At the time of their release, Microsoft had credited “in-house” talent. But now, the mastermind behind the ad is talking. Andrew Panay, a…
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