How Sports Betting Companies Are Trying to Reach Women

For every woman who bets on a sporting event in the U.S., there are four men exchanging high fives in the sportsbook around her. For women who want to place bets, the gender imbalance they encounter among sports bettors has deep roots in its illegal, male-dominated history. For gaming companies and their marketers, it’s a…

2023 Will Put the Ad Industry’s Relationship With Fossil Fuels on Trial

Throughout 2022, agency leaders faced activists hellbent on holding firms accountable for the work they do for major polluters. In 2023, policymakers are joining the chat. Much of this year’s activity was seen at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. The ad industry returned to the French Riviera for the first time since the beginning…

Making Great First Impressions: Why Creatives Wish They Could See These Ads for the First Time Again

Repetition and frequency are drilled into every advertiser as key to winning eyeballs and new consumers. Ads are notorious for being more effective after many viewings, as repeating a message multiple times can increase brand awareness and consumer recall, if done correctly. But some ads make great first impressions. They grab the viewer immediately and…

Resale Exploding Is Not an Automatic Win for the Climate

More people are buying pre-loved items as they make greener choices, but there’s a long way to go to fix the fashion industry’s climate ills. Between 2021 and 2022, brands’ adoption of resale grew by more than 300%, according to a report by resale platform thredUP, with dozens more apparel companies expanding their online stores…

How Vacation Rentals Are Tapping Into Fandoms to Spur Bookings

Not many of us will get the chance to sit by the fire in a cave full of Whoville delicacies like Who Pudding during the winter, or ghost hunt in a firehouse equipped with proton packs for Halloween. These unique worlds have been transformed into a reality through rental spaces where fans’ favorite stories are…

Brand Loyalty and Broad Experiences Give These First-Time CMOs a Fresh Perspective on Marketing

Kristyn Cook has never served a day as a company’s chief marketing officer. When she assumes that role for State Farm on Jan. 1, 2023, however, she’ll do so having lived with parents who were State Farm agents since she was 11, opening her own State Farm agency in Chicago 15 years ago and helping…

As the Platforms Stumble, Some Publishers See Increased Ad Spend

For nearly a decade, the digital advertising ecosystem has been dominated by a handful of social media platforms, whose data-rich targeting, ease of use and reliable performance revolutionized the field. But according to proprietary data collected for Adweek by executive research firm NewtonX, a confluence of emerging factors has loosened the platforms’ stranglehold on the…

For Crypto Publishers, Boom and Bust Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

Over the last two years, as the value of the cryptocurrency market reached dizzying new heights, publishers that covered the industry shared briefly in its wealth, with exchanges like Coinbase, Crypto.com and FTX spending lavishly on advertising to acquire new customers. But since April, declining adoption and waning consumer trust in the technology have led…

Home Depot Built Its ESPN College GameDay Sponsorship to Last

The Home Depot first sponsored ESPN’s College GameDay in 2003, when the majority of U.S. viewers watched broadcasts on bulbous cathode-ray tube televisions. At the time, Home Depot centered around professionals and homeowners. It had offshoots like The Home Depot Supply, the Home Depot Landscape Supply and Expo Design Center aimed at a growing housing…

The Modern Agency CMO Must Balance Brand Building, Business and Culture

The modern agency C-suite is one of rapid change. The typical top-down structure is slowly flattening and the roles of each C-suite position are constantly being altered. Adweek has dedicated a series of stories analyzing what being a modern agency C-suite member entails, talking with people holding those positions at agencies big and small, and…

Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Goal for 2023: Get Digital

Anheuser-Busch InBev has had quite a year. The planet’s biggest brewer, which claims to make one out of every four beers sold around the globe, was named Creative Marketer of the Year at Cannes, top advertiser by marketing intelligence firm WARC and most effective marketer by nonprofit Effie Worldwide. “Our creative marketing capabilities continue to…

Variety Notches Best Year of Revenue in Its 117-Year History

Entertainment trade publisher Variety, part of Penske Media Corporation, has notched a year of record revenue and reach, partly thanks to capitalizing on heightened consumer interest in the rapidly transforming film and television industry. The publisher posted the highest-ever revenue of its 117-year history in 2022, according to its co-editors in chief Ramin Setoodeh and…

How BBDO Is Supercharging the Creative Process With Generative AI

At BBDO, creatives have begun looking to a new creative partner to flesh out storyboards or brainstorm visuals for campaigns: artificial intelligence. The Omnicom-owned agency is exploring how cutting-edge image generation can play a role in its production process with a version of the popular tool Stable Diffusion, which it has tapped to workshop ideas…

A Dim Economy Could Price Out Most Sustainable Shoppers

As inflation reshuffles budgets, the nice-to-haves tend to land on the chopping block. And for about a third of U.S. consumers, that includes the sustainable products that cost a little bit more, according to a report from market research company Savanta. The report, which surveyed more than 12,000 adults from the U.S., U.K. and Canada…

Keurig Dr Pepper Demands 360-Day Payment Terms in PR Agency RFP

Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) completed a U.S. PR review of its water, tea and juice portfolio this week after kicking off the RFP process on Oct. 3. Now the brand is facing scrutiny for stipulating that pitching agencies either agree to exceptional 360-day payment terms or obtain financing from a third-party bank. KDP declined to…

Fake Brand Accounts Are Also a Problem for Twitter’s Emerging Rivals

Following Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter and the subsequent layoffs and policy changes that have followed, impersonator brand accounts have been on the rise. But it’s not a unique issue to the bluebird app. Twitter’s emerging challengers also host fake accounts posing as global brands. As users consider life without Musk’s version of…

Condé Nast Unveils New Commercial Products for 2023 to Diversify Revenue

As businesses prepare for a new calendar year, Cond? Nast has unveiled a number of new commercial products, as well as enhancing existing ones, with the aim of making it easier for clients to work with the publisher amid an uncertain economic climate. The offerings fall into two camps, according to Deborah Brett, global chief…

‘Tis a Holiday Season of Uncertainty—So Why Are Shoppers Still Spending?

At no other time of year are consumers beset with as many choices and decisions as the holiday shopping season. Consider the following: At press time, Walmart was advertising a cashmere padded leather coat for $79.99. Then there’s the other end of the gifting spectrum: For those with finer tastes and deeper pockets, Overland Sheepskin…

These Brands Sold One Thing. Then They Changed Completely

A few weeks ago, Walmart announced the relaunch Secret Treasures, its $1 billion sleepwear brand. The revamped line will feature trendier styles and even sell under a new brand name: Joyspun. The sleepwear category, said evp of apparel and private brands Denise Incandela in a statement, is “undergoing a significant transformation,” and it only made…

How Clif Bar Shows Up Thoughtfully as a Sports Sponsor

There are a couple of ways to learn how to ride a half pipe or bowl when you’re new to skateboarding. You can start at the bottom, rolling from ramp to ramp as you build speed and eventually make your way up to the coping edge at the ramp’s summit. Or you can start at…