Table of contents for January 15, 2018 in Adweek

Shortly before noon on the second day of CES, staff suggested visitors head to the solar-powered outdoors due to a partial blackout inside the Las Vegas Convention Center, where around 180,000 attendees previewed the future of technology. Some brands made light of the situation; in a callback to its Super Bowl tweet about dunking in the dark after the lights went out at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Oreos entered the fray with a CES blackout tweet. The power came back on after about an hour, but it just goes to show: Even tech experts have issues sometimes.…

In 2018, consumers have largely accepted that marketers use an online log of their behaviors and spending habits to target digital audiences with relevant ads. A Pew Research Center study found last year that most Americans determine their online privacy rights case by case, with 47 percent saying they’re comfortable with retailers tracking their purchases to deliver better deals. Now major brands, including Cost Plus World Market, Netflix and Spotify, are testing the waters by using their troves of user data to drive not only the targeting but the creation of their ads. Many of these campaigns seem like experiments designed to determine just how much of their own data people are willing to tolerate. “At what point do you creep someone out?” asked Ian Mackenzie, executive creative director at…

Sound is a powerful tool that can trigger specific memories or emotions. It’s a staple for marketers who have used jingles (think, “I’m a Toys R Us Kid”) to connect emotionally with consumers, whether on TV or radio. But as technology like Amazon’s Echo or the Google Home Assistant become more embedded in our daily lives, it’s becoming increasingly important for brands to create those same emotional connections without visuals, just sound. Cue sonic branding—or the “use of sound to reinforce a brand identity,” as Audrey Arbeeny, founder and executive producer of sonic branding agency Audiobrain, described it. Visa found that sound could make consumers feel safe and secure in their transactions, and that 81 percent of shoppers would have a more positive reaction to Visa if it incorporated sound…

When Day One Agency opened its doors in March 2014, its main mission was to “stop the world in its tracks with stories that connect,” according to agency CEO Josh Rosenberg. That’s happening more on mobile for a lot of brands, including some of Day One’s clients: American Express, Chipotle, Nike and Victoria’s Secret. The 50-person shop, with offices in New York and Los Angeles, specializes in shaping, sharing and fueling brand narratives by crafting the best stories, choosing the right social channels to share them on and finding the best publications to cover them through the agency’s public relations arm. “In today’s mobile-first world, I think how a brand can relate, and [storytelling] really needs to be super specific and compelling,” Rosenberg said. Recently, the agency helped Chipotle with…

For Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena, becoming a cultural icon began on WWE Monday Night Raw. It’s the longest-running weekly episodic program in TV history, and will celebrate its 25th anniversary show live from New York on Jan. 22. Raw consistently ranks as the top cable entertainment show on Monday nights, and is one of the highest-rated shows on all of cable TV among adults 18-49. Raw is also the primary reason why USA Network is one of the most-watched cable networks in prime time. But the road to success hasn’t been without some bumps along the way. The Vince McMahon-owned WWEat that time known as WWF (World Wrestling Federation)—battled the Ted Turner-owned WCW Monday Night Nitro franchise from 1995-2001. After Turner’s deep pockets lured multiple WWF stars…

There’s a fine line between authentic representation and exploiting a minority group, and many brands steer away from that space entirely. Others fear they’ll lose customers by getting into “political territory.” However, the times, they are a-changin’, and consumers are making it known: The public is more than ready for LGBTQ representation in their ads, and they want brands to get on board. Gay social network Hornet commissioned a Nielsen study of 800 people to determine the impact of LGBTQ ads on consumers, and the ads passed with flying (rainbow) colors. “With this study, we hope to help brands improve their marketing and advertising as it relates to the LGBTQ community, a highly desirable consumer demographic,” said Hornet president and co-founder Sean Howell. “We identified missed opportunities and areas where…

January is an interesting month for storytelling. At the outset you have the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This annual behemoth of a conference has traditionally focused on products and gadgetry. Notably, as computing power steadily increases and the promise of 5G connectivity floats tantalizingly on the horizon, brands will increasingly have the power to effect near one-to-one marketing via things like AI and IOT. But the promise of such personalization will only really work with a good brand story—and one told in concert with the consumer’s own narrative created by, you guessed it, technology. The bookend of the month is Sundance. This is the place where storytelling meets empathy and the spot where brands can showcase data-driven, non-interruptive creativity. Two years ago, Adweek saw this trend…

While art and writing go hand in hand, they’re typically thought of separately in the advertising industry. Agencies have copywriters, and they have designers; those roles rarely cross. But that’s not the case in Nadine Chahine’s world. The U.K. type director at Monotype beautifully combines words and designs to deliver some of the most identifiable brand typefaces. Chahine is a Lebanese type designer specializing in Arabic letterforms and legibility research. She was the first to create a typeface (Koufiya) with matching Arabic and Latin parts. Koufiya was a project Chahine completed as part of her master’s program at the University of Reading. She started designing the typeface in 2003 and didn’t finish until 2007. In her 18-year-plus career, Chahine has collaborated with the London Underground, directing the remastered design of…