Table of contents for January 8, 2018 in Adweek

YouTube star Logan Paul faced massive backlash after posting a video of an apparent suicide victim he found in Japan’s Aokigahara Forest, also known as “suicide forest.” “Yo, are you alive?” Paul joked in the video, which appeared to show the body of a man hanging from a tree. The video garnered over 6 million views and reached No. 10 on YouTube’s trending list before Paul took it down and apologized. Thousands of social media users criticized not only Paul, but YouTube, which didn’t take action despite its policies forbidding graphic, gory content.…

Most brand experiences will be delivered through AI by 2025. The only question is whether your brand will still exist. Some perspective: When Ray Kroc walked into the McDonald brothers’ restaurant in 1954, he was taken aback with the efficiency and replicability of the facility. That evening “visions of McDonald’s restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through [his] brain.” McDonald’s lore never mentions what Kroc thought of the actual food, because he wasn’t selling food. He was selling consistency. Kroc eventually fulfilled this dream, launching a franchise operation that spread McDonald’s all over the country at the same time the Interstate Highway Act was being passed. Just when Americans were hitting the roads in droves, Kroc was there with a dining experience that was consistent whether you were…

Each January, tech experts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas peer into their crystal balls and declare that “this is the year of something.” For about 10 years, it was the “year of mobile.” After that it was the “year of connected cars,” which was then eclipsed by “the year of smart devices.” Now, some say 2018 could be the year of virtual reality. In fact, nearly 170 VR-related companies of varying types and sizes are expected to pitch their products on the crowded CES showroom floor, up from 70 last year. While the annual electronics show is largely focused on hardware, on Wednesday the CEOs of Hulu and Turner will take the CES stage to discuss the future of media, focusing in part on VR content—what might…

THE LABYRINTH Pac-Man wasn’t the first maze game (Atari had Gotcha), but the Pac-Dots gave it an added challenge. THE MAN Pac-Man’s name is based on the Japanese word “pakku” (to munch or chew), while the shape was inspired by a pizza with a slice removed. THE GHOSTS Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde weren’t just the pursuers and the pursued—they were an early example of how AI could add realism to a game. Dick Clark’s American Bandstand had more than its share of cheesy guests over the years—bands that lip-synced their tunes in front of a TV audience under orders to cheer. But few acts quite equaled Buckner & Garcia, two friends who’d met at Perkins High School in Akron, Ohio, and managed to write a song that, by March…

Whether it was his brief meeting with Tupac at age 16, his experience as Iowa’s only hip-hop radio DJ in the early ’90s or his time working on the first televised Brown and Black Presidential Forum for Democratic candidates to address young minority voters’ concerns in 2000, Ryan Ford realized at a young age that he wanted to make his living at the intersection of hip-hop, politics and pop culture. Now, 25 years later, he leads creative at Cashmere Agency, Los Angeles’ go-to shop for brands looking to reach those core consumers who closely follow every development in the byzantine world of rap music and its expanding subcultures. Ford’s official entry to that universe came in a traditional way via an internship at The Source, also known as “the bible…

While autonomous cars won’t be in every garage anytime soon, today’s vehicles have never been more connected. That’s leading marketers, agencies and automakers to transform cars into the next media and marketing platform. Radio once held drivers hostage as the only form of in-car entertainment, said Scott Symonds, managing director of AKQA Media, adding it was ideal for the frequency and localization of messaging. “[It] was a great advertising opportunity that’s sort of fallen out as terrestrial radio has shrunk a little bit,” he said. Cars won’t be functioning as mere extensions of phones or laptops with ads on the dash, but Symonds thinks marketers will make cars and the brands inside them more useful. That could mean increasingly localized ad buys on maps, ad-sponsored charge-ups for electric vehicles or…

Over the holidays, it seemed as if every one of my family members, and every one of my friends got a similar gift: A Smart TV, or a streaming box–like Roku, Google Chromecast, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire Stick. Put another way, it seemed as if the hottest gift of the year was OTT, premium video content delivered via the internet. As well it should be! OTT combines linear TV and digital distribution, and that’s a big deal. We often hear about the Golden Age of Television, but we really should be talking about the Golden Age of Distribution–the content you want, when you want it, on the device you want it on. In that sense, OTT represents the greatest marriage in media and entertainment since Jay-Z and Beyoncé. But…