Table of contents for January 16, 2017 in Adweek

1 (L. to r.) The Chainsmokers’ Alex Pall, iHeartMedia national programming platforms president Tom Poleman, The Chainsmokers’ Andrew Taggart and iHeartMedia entertainment enterprises president John Sykes arrive at the iHeartRadio Live party, featuring a performance by The Chainsmokers. 2 Popsugar founder/CEO Brian Sugar and founder/president Lisa Sugar flank singer-songwriter Debbie Gibson at a private dinner for Popsugar. 3 Thrive Global founder/CEO Arianna Huffington and Kevin Plank, founder/CEO of Under Armour, speak at a keynote event. 4 Interpublic Group chairman/CEO Michael Roth (l.) and MediaLink chairman/CEO Michael Kassan pose for a photo at MediaLink’s Executive Dinner. 5 Shaquille O’Neal tries on a pair of Snapchat Spectacles during a live telecast of the NBA on TNT. 6 (L. to r.) Men’s Health editor Matt Bean, Under Armour gm, connected fitness Will Phillips,…

To demonstrate their ability to do the impossible, GE engineers set about to disprove pieces of conventional wisdom, taking a well-known idiom—say, “It’s like talking to a wall”—and then countering it through technology. In this particular instance, the GE team repurposed a device normally used to detect microscopic vibrations inside defective machines and attached it to one side of the Berlin Wall, where it was sensitive enough to pick up the vibrations caused by someone speaking on the far side. The films launched on Inventors’ Day, the anniversary of the birthday of GE founder Thomas Edison. It may seem almost unfair that this entry won, given that it is a feature-length documentary from the legendary director Werner Herzog. But to be fair, it was the brainchild of NetScout CMO Jim…

‘There’s a little kid driving a truck, but at the same time, there’s a serious message about the truck.’ Fredrik Klevenfeldt, Volvo Trucks The Volvo FMX 18-ton construction truck bills itself as “built for the toughest working conditions on earth.” Volvo Trucks and agency Forsman & Bodenfors set out to prove that claim in a unique and effective way: by letting an adorable and fearless 4-year-old girl take it for a test drive. The film, “Look Who’s Driving,” which launched in December 2015, puts bespectacled kid Sophie at the proverbial wheel, driving the truck through a construction site using a remote control device. As Volvo’s testers look on, Sophie excitedly pilots the vehicle through mini-explosions, a water-filled trench and other obstacles. At one point, the truck tumbles over a ravine…

Looking to shore up weak brand affinity when it had significant brand awareness, Canadian theater chain Cineplex turned to ZAK and Hornet. The film tells the story of a little girl and her backyard snowman who can perform cinematic shadow puppet shows. It serves as a reminder from Cineplex to “See the big picture,” and attracted 30 million online views (21.8 million in the first 10 days alone), was shared over 620,000 times and was the most viewed ad on YouTube in Canada in December 2015, while Cineplex saw a 37 percent jump in brand affinity. As Amazon readied to premiere the second season of The Man in the High Castle, about a fictional America in which the Nazis won World War II, CNN Courageous chose to focus on a…

When it comes to brand storytelling, advertisers can start small and build big. It is possible for your branded digital video series to become the next network success. Consider the case of Sound Advice, the web series by Jonah and Vanessa Bayer (Saturday Night Live) that Above Average produced and initially distributed. Featuring Vanessa as an aloof media coach who gives misguided advice to real musicians like Drake, it garnered millions of views in its first season. That performance attracted Hyundai to sign on to exclusively sponsor and integrate within season two. When the 12-episode second season was later licensed to IFC’s online comedy portal, Comedy Crib, Above Average and IFC worked with Hyundai and its agency, Innocean USA, to create branded integrations both in the web series and in…

As we exit the grand era of interruptive advertising, brands—if they want to remain relevant—need to become part of the storytelling ecosystem. Freed from the limitations of traditional communications, clever brands will make breakthroughs in becoming embraced members of true fandoms. Here’s how Fullscreen defines a fandom: Fans talking to each other about something they love. We have studied the consumer journey and the rise of influencers through six years of deep behavioral data from 6 billion social video views per month on the Fullscreen Creator Network and billions of data points and engagements on Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook/Twitter from tens of thousands of branded social posts through clients of Fullscreen Brandworks and McBeard. What we found was simple: Chasing fleeting relevance through the hashtags of the moment can be perilous and empty.…

Viewers today are drowning in a sea of content. Now more than ever, it’s critical for marketers to break through the noise and make real, meaningful connections with their consumers, wherever they watch. To do this, marketers need the right collaborators—partners who can tell new kinds of stories, identify key insights, drive attention to their brands, and fuel their larger marketing strategies. It ultimately comes down to experience. Brands want to be programmers and publishers and deliver the type of content that people want to watch. They need content that entertains and also delivers the brand narrative they need to get across to their audiences. Plus, they need to understand the intricacies of what works and what doesn’t on different digital and linear platforms—they can’t simply be everywhere with the…

Back in the ‘90s, it was easy to maintain a high Content IQ—an understanding of what viewers watch, where they’re watching and where to advertise. There were a handful of big hits on four major networks. If you wanted to reach a massive audience and be a part of the national water cooler conversation, you could simply buy ad time on NBC’s Thursday “Must See TV” lineup. Today, millions of viewers have shifted their focus away from scheduled, programmed TV to on-demand online video. 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and its billion users watch hundreds of millions of hours of content on the platform every day. Snapchat gets 10 billion video views per day and Facebook gets over 8 billion. Then there’s Instagram, Twitter, Twitch…

Showtime’s eagerly anticipated revival of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks finally has a premiere date—Sunday, May 21. The 18-episode limited series will debut that evening with a two-hour premiere, Showtime Networks president and CEO David Nevins told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif. The revival will consist of “18 unforgettable hours,” said Nevins, who has seen the entire season. (He said Lynch, who directed every episode, provided doughnuts and coffee for him before each screening.) There are no plans for additional Twin Peaks seasons, added Nevins, describing the new series as “a closed-ended, one-time event.” Lynch himself also made a rare appearance at TCA, answering reporters’ questions in his typical enigmatic style—i.e., not really at all. –Jason Lynch…

As they try to break through the Peak TV glut and grab viewers, broadcast networks have been relying heavily on new shows based on popular intellectual property (IP), like Lethal Weapon, MacGyver and the upcoming Training Day and Taken. But The CW’s new drama Riverdale—based on the Archie Comics characters—offers the season’s most intriguing test as to whether IP can truly help launch a show, even if its intended audience will likely have very little knowledge of the source material. Riverdale, which premieres Jan. 26, finds Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead entangled in racy storylines miles from the world of the squeaky-clean comics book, which launched in the ’40s. The premiere episode alone features a murder, a hush-hush student/ teacher affair and dark secrets galore. “It’s an interesting conundrum: the…

As marketers suit up for Super Bowl LI, some brands were already busy capitalizing on another rabid football audience: college bowl fans. The largest college bowls, known as the New Year’s Six games—the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, PlayStation Fiesta Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl by Northwestern Mutual, Allstate Sugar Bowl and Goodyear Cotton Bowl—were played this year from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2. Sponsorship efforts, say bowl brands, tend to pay off handsomely. “Our research shows that [college football] fans are two times more likely to purchase Goodyear if they’re aware of our Cotton Bowl sponsorship,” noted Seth Klugherz, North American director of marketing at Goodyear, which sponsored the Cotton Bowl for the third consecutive year. After the Super Bowl and NFL playoffs, college bowl games are the most…

‘The story was the perfect metaphor for what it means to have the right insurance behind you.’ Susan Golkin, BBDO New York Growing up is hard. When you throw in unforeseen complications like those things we call “dreams,” it gets even trickier. On Father’s Day last year, American Family Insurance, by way of a spot from its agency BBDO, embraced that reality with a touching mini-story with a twist called “Dad Insurance for Fearless Dreams.” “This spot takes us back to remember some of our first dreams, and the empowering feeling of possibility that comes from having others there to support and inspire us along the way,” says Telisa Yancy, CMO of AFI. In the ad, a young boy named Mateo is seen daydreaming in his bedroom while he watches…

In China, many young women face intense pressure to be married by their mid-20s, especially if they choose career over matrimony. The term sheng nu (“leftover women”) was coined to describe them. Chinese skin-care company SK-II tackled the stigma by sponsoring a “marriage market” in Shanghai, its mission to show career women who choose to be single in a positive light. It’s been going on for a while now (winning an Adweek Media Plan of the Year Award in 2015), yet General Electric’s “Fallonventions” remains wildly popular as a TV sketch as well as on the awards circuit. In December 2015 and April 2016, a GE-branded TV lab set up shop again on NBC’s Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, showcasing smart kids and their inventions. With the aid of heavy…

Herzog told me the internet was not interesting enough. It simply didn’t grab him. In the rainforest. Wearing a bandana and a loincloth, and wielding a chainsaw instead of a machete, he knew exactly what to do.” Werner paused and took a sip of wine. “The Peruvian native tied the bandana around his thigh, pulled the knot tight, pulled the throttle on the chainsaw and cut off his leg above the knee.” Looking with earnest concern, I manage to utter, “Really?” Werner smiles, “He lived.” If you haven’t seen the film Fitzcarraldo, you should. It’s not just about the vain and misguided attempt of a wayward Irishman to build an opera house in the Peruvian jungle; it’s the story of Werner Herzog, world famous director. When I made this observation…

Specs Who Co-founder, CEO Joe Speiser and president, COO Gretchen Tibbits What Branded content studio Where New York From tasty bacon hacks to soldiers’ homecomings from overseas, publisher LittleThings has become a hub for useful and meaningful videos since 2014. After starting out as an ecommerce site for pet products, LittleThings expanded to mom-targeted branded content, with a focus on the buying power of women. The audience was “passionate about storytelling and watching inspirational content,” explained co-founder Joe Speiser. In a bright office located near New York’s Penn Station, LittleThings, with its 100 employees, creates instructional or emotionally resonant editorial posts and video series that connect with brand sponsors like Crisco, Applegate Farm and eBay. Eggland’s Best recently sponsored a recipe video for “yummy egg bread bowls” on the website.…

When we commissioned a Gen Z study, we expected to arrive at a handful of core findings that crunched down into tweetable sound bytes—the same way millennials have been crystalized (or over-simplified) into notions like “the trophy generation” or “nerds are the new jocks.” What we found, instead, was something counter-intuitive. It seemed as if this next generation was not teen-like at all. They were more like mini adults, skipping directly from childhood into adulthood, trying to miss those angsty, messy, clique-y, self-expressive, rebellious, awkward, fumbling, wonder years. Way back when, the generation that screamed for Elvis and The Beatles in many ways invented the modern idea of “the teen age.” Then came Gen X , which sharpened youth angst like a weapon. Millennials in their turn extended adolescence. Gen…

Fans of AMC’s Better Call Saul, and its lauded predecessor Breaking Bad, got a particularly tasty treat last week—a perfectly insipid fake commercial for Los Pollos Hermanos, the fictional chicken chain run by one of Breaking Bad’s most notorious characters, Gus Fring. We haven’t seen Fring since a certain explosive incident at the end of Breaking Bad’s Season 4, but fans of the show, and its prequel, are thrilled they’ll soon learn his backstory in the upcoming Season 3 of Better Call Saul. –Tim Nudd…

Two and a half years after launching its first paid ads, Pinterest is finally ready to compete head-on with Google, Facebook, Snap Inc. and others for big brand dollars. Specifically, the San Francisco-based player has spent a couple of years building a measurement and data tool, search-like targeting and video ads to make the case for bigger brand budgets. But Pinterest’s ad business has been slower than others to catch on—it reportedly made $300 million in 2016—partly because its 150 million monthly users are small potatoes to behemoths like Google or Facebook. “I think people have crossed into a threshold where they’re really paying attention and seeing us as a platform where they need to invest in the same way that they have to invest on Google and Facebook—I didn’t…

It’s no secret that storytelling is a key tool for brands and marketers that want to connect with consumers—and boost sales. “There’s plenty of popular demand for good stories, if binge-watching, binge-listening, and binge-reading statistics are an indicator,” explained Ilya Vedrashko, svp and director of research at Hill Holliday’s consumer research arm, Origin. “Stories move not only people, but they also move product.” But just how much? To find out, Origin created a series of experiments in which consumers were shown items paired with either standard descriptions or more detailed stories—from user reviews to creator bios, and even fiction. The results were clear. “Every time the product that had a story pulled in more money than the same product without one,” said Vedrashko. “That’s a lift on no additional investment.”…

At their best, marketing campaigns define a brand, inspire consumers and, yes, sell things. But sometimes, they become so much more than that—like a reflection of who we really are, for better or worse. The Mexican beer brand Modelo had dramatically grown its business in the U.S. over the last few decades and sought to drive brand awareness while telling the story of a community here that had come together despite its differences during a time of much-publicized racial and cultural division. The place that was chosen to spotlight: Garden City, Kan., population 30,000, a town where more than a dozen languages are spoken, where diversity is seen as a strength and that “represents the best vision for the future of America.” The resulting campaign, “Fight for Better,” was a…

Last April, Garret Madison set out to ascend Mount Everest for the seventh time. The world-class American climber, who had previously guided 37 others to the summit, again found himself leading a group into the most dangerous journey in the mountaineering world. Only this time, Madison and his team were seeking to capture the climb in a way that had never been done before—in virtual reality. Today’s technological breakthroughs are providing storytellers with a new set of tools to engage and inspire viewers in innovative ways. Makers have only started to scratch the surface on the capabilities of immersive formats such as virtual reality, putting viewers in places they’ve only dreamed of visiting in real life. Capturing Everest, a multi-part docuseries that will make its debut at Digital Sundance this…

Every brand is trying to figure out how to speak to millennials, so it’s little wonder that Snapchat has quickly moved to the top of their list for driving authentic conversations with this high-in-demand demographic. The challenge for many brands, however, is coming up with ways to take full advantage of Snapchat’s platform to build audience and engagement. What makes Snapchat so desirable? Most obviously, there’s the sheer volume of the audience. Snapchat attracts 150 million daily active users (spending 30 minutes daily on the app) who are sharing more than 10 billion videos per day. That’s an incredible amount of user interaction—users who are engaged in a new form of storytelling that’s highly personal, mobile and modern. Snapchat users log in to watch stories. And every marketer knows how…

There’s incredible diversity and power in today’s brand storytelling. But there’s a problem: Great storytelling requires attention. And with the proliferation of media across digital platforms and a huge increase in dollars being spent on content, the commodity of attention is becoming scarce. At Fox Networks Group and true[X], we’ve got front-row seats to what’s changing. We see that we live in a world where consumers are empowered to choose when, where and how they consume content. We have media overload… ad-free subscriptions like Netflix and HBO…and ad-blocking browser extensions. New technologies have changed the rules of engagement and pushed media to be both interactive and on-demand. The big questions going forward: What type of storytelling will persist? And what are advertisers’ roles and responsibilities in continuing to fund important…