Table of contents for Sep-21-15 in Adweek

Actor-turned-politician-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the host of Celebrity Apprentice when it returns to NBC for the 2016-17 TV season, the network announced last week. He’ll be replacing former host Donald Trump, who stepped aside from the long-running competition show when he entered the GOP race for the White House this past summer. (NBCUniversal also cut business ties with Trump for what it called “derogatory comments” he made at his campaign launch event in June.) On Tuesday, Trump heaped praise on his successor, tweeting, “He’ll be great & will raise lots of $ for charity.” The first decision the Terminator will have to make: finding a new catchphrase. Prepare for “Hasta la vista, baby”— or, our personal favorite, “I’ll be back, but you won’t.”…

Attention Twitter users: According to a class-action lawsuit filed in a San Francisco court, your Direct Messages may not be as private as they seem. The suit claims that Twitter “surreptitiously eavesdrops” on its users’ DMs by using algorithms to intercept the messages and replace any hyperlinks with its own custom links. This allegedly benefits Twitter by allowing the company to identify itself as the source of traffic to the linked site and, as a result, negotiate better ad rates.…

Virtual reality is an extraordinarily hot topic right now in media and technology circles. We’ve seen some amazing developments in recent years, but for the purposes of marketers, technology has not caught up with needs. Beyond functioning, we need it to scale and affect consumer behavior. This will likely happen in time, but many years from now. To understand why there is so much buzz in adland about VR and why expectations need to be contained, it’s worth taking a look back. In the 1990s, there was a spike of interest on the subject. Books like Snow Crash and movies like The Lawnmower Man ignited the imagination, and virtual reality games started popping up in arcades. And then, unlike most major innovations of that era, it seemed to fizzle out.…

MANAGEMENT Horizon’s Internal Incubator Dunes of Dreams / Horizon Media Horizon Media wanted to be at the forefront of innovation, while also encouraging its employees to discover their inner entrepreneur. The independent agency launched invention development program Dunes of Dreams, which will be held twice yearly, with the hope that employees will seize the opportunity to push creative boundaries. Any employee can submit an invention plan—for anything from a mobile app to a program to benefit the agency either internally or externally—in hopes of scoring startup funding and resources to bring their idea to life. Senior agency executives narrow the pool down, and a panel of judges alongside agency employees vote on their favorite ideas and select six winners. Once the agency names the lucky six, those groups have four…

THE MUPPET SHOW The breakthrough ’70s series spoofed variety shows. MUPPETS TONIGHT Their last prime-time series debuted in 1996. PRODUCT PITCHMEN In 2014, the Muppets appeared in ads for Subway, Toyota and Lipton. THE MUPPETS The comeback: The 2011 movie grossed $165 million worldwide. ABC PROMOS Stars like Scandal’s Kerry Washington helped promote the new show. DENISE Kermit’s rebound girlfriend was the talk of the summer.…

9.28 Advertising Week New York A complete run down of what not to miss at the industry’s biggest meeting of the minds SPECIAL SECTION SOCIAL MARKETING GUIDE 10.5 Young Influentials Twenty-five up-and-coming superstars from media, marketing and tech — all under 40 years old, and blooming fast. 10.19 Brand Genius Issue Honoring the year’s boldest and brightest brand marketers. 10.26 Ad Tech Issue All the “need to know” data on the latest developments coming out of the ad technology sector, including who’s doing what and who’s doing it the best. Featuring HOT LIST FINALISTS 11.2 Adweek 50 50 muscle men and women in advertising, marketing, media and tech who are indispensable to their organizations and key to keeping the wheels of the business spinning. SPECIAL SECTION EMAIL MARKETING 11.9…

What’s the first information you consume in the morning? Coffee. Then I read the Huffington Post, The New York Times, Salon, Slate, BBC News, probably in that order. Now that I’m a modern girl and am trying to keep up with my young co-stars, I also check Twitter and figure out if I have something pithy or promote-y to say. How long have you been on Twitter? Not that long. Maybe a couple of years. Until recently, I had no activity at all; I had a Twitter account just to have it. But then I signed on to do [Scream Queens] with a myriad young people, Internet stars and bloggers, and in doing so, I feel I am now required to participate in social media in a way that I…

Facebook made two dramatic course changes in just a matter of hours last week. After years of users asking for an alternative to the “like” button, CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed that the social network is working on ways to let people express more negative sentiments. The company also announced the introduction of an ad-buying option that would let marketers pay for promos only when the entire unit appears on a viewer’s screen. In the past, brands could be charged when any piece of an ad appeared on-screen.…

Passionate Viewers The most passionate and engaged fans gather on Twitter while their favorite shows air. Attention shifted to Twitter during major TV events Impressions during major events in 2015 Super Bowl 2 billion views SNL’s 40th Anniversary 188 million views Empire’s Season 1 finale 112 million views The Voice, #VoiceSaves Episode 30 million views The new TVxTwitter Playbook, research from Twitter compiled using its own internal data as well as data from Nielsen and others, reveals TV Twitter users’ reach has real-time and potentially very profitable results. “The TV conversation on Twitter strongly influences mainstream media as well as consumer attitudes and behaviors,” said Twitter global media and agency research director Anjali Midha. “As the research in our TVxTwitter Playbook demonstrates, there are actionable strategies and tactics that can…

MARKETING Balancing Board and Boardroom True Wetsuits for Quiksilver / TBWA\ Hakuhodo Surfing is one of Japan’s most popular sports, but the pressures of professional life lead most wave riders to trade their boards for boardrooms. TBWA\Hakuhodo of Tokyo wanted to challenge that pattern with the help of client and top global surf brand Quiksilver, so the agency created True Wetsuits, the only suits that work both on the shore and in the office. These suits are real, 100 percent waterproof and massively popular—the 2015 line sold out within three days of its launch. The agency didn’t just conceive of the outfits themselves. It also created a Surfer’s Market Report linking the day’s ocean forecast to that of the local stock market—and masterfully combining business with leisure. The project was…

THE SHIELD Porsche’s iconic logo, created in 1952, is based on the coat of arms of the Weimar-era Free People’s State of Württemberg, Germany, and the coat of arms of the city of Stuttgart. THE STALLION Stuttgart, Porsche’s base of operations, was founded in 950 as a stud farm. The stallion has come to symbolize power, speed and — given Porsche’s customer base through the years —masculinity. THE CREST/ COLORS The antlers and black-and-red stripes are traditional symbols of the German region of Baden-Württemberg. On Sept. 30, 1955, James Dean lost his life behind the wheel of a Porsche 550 Spyder. Zipping down a stretch of California highway at dusk en route to a race in Salinas, Dean’s car, nicknamed “Little Bastard,” plowed into a Ford coupe at the junction…

New York-based cable operator Cablevision has agreed to sell to Altice Group, a European telecom company controlled by French cable entrepreneur Patrick Drahi. Altice will pay $34.90 a share, making the deal worth $17.7 billion including debt. It’s the second U.S. deal for Altice this year, following its agreement to acquire Suddenlink Communications in May. Altice says that with Suddenlink and Cablevision combined, it will be the fourth-largest U.S. cable provider.…

There are few sure bets in television—unless you’re talking about Shonda Rhimes. The uberproducer is overseeing four shows this season under her ShondaLand production company. She is creator and showrunner for hits Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy, while also executive producing last year’s freshman smash How to Get Away With Murder, as well as a new midseason drama, The Catch. ABC has once again given Rhimes an entire night of programming—its wildly successful TGIT (Thank God It’s Thursday) lineup—which last year accounted for three of broadcast TV’s top 10 scripted shows in adults 18-49, and three of ABC’s top four shows in the same demo. When ABC Entertainment president Paul Lee told Adweek earlier this year that ABC’s successful season was only partly due to Rhimes, Jimmy Kimmel took him to…

In the world of cocktails, everything old is new and trendy again. And yet, few products have been revived as dramatically as bitters. Despite the relative obscurity of the flavorful extract that is a staple of drinks like the Manhattan over the last century, the craft cocktail movement has inspired dozens, possibly even hundreds of upstart brands of bitters. First, some history. Bitters are rooted in both herbal medicine and bar culture. Before the advent of pharmaceuticals, bitters were commonly sold as cure-alls. “None of them were disease-specific,” said Sother Teague, beverage director of the bitters tasting room Amor y Amargo in New York. But the line between medicine and recreation was blurry, at best. Bartenders used bitters to make drinks more complex, but prescriptions for booze or specific cocktails…

What were the challenges you faced when you joined Organic three years ago? The company needed a reboot when I stepped in. When you look at what wasn’t working, it was pretty much all about retention. With a focus on bottom line we were chasing the dollars rather than inspiring our talent to produce amazing work that drove impact for our clients. There was a great base of clients, but we were seeing too many turn over, and that led to disruption and high staff turnover. We were seeing nearly half of the talent leave on a yearly basis and all of this contributed to poor financial results. What was your first order of business then? The first year I reoriented the company around talent and turned off the new…

Flyte Levitating Light $299 By now, you’ve probably seen countless “smart” lightbulbs promising to do everything from playing music to boosting Wi-Fi signals to changing colors with your mood. But can they float in mid-air? Flyte can. Designed in Sweden, this lamp-slash-art installation features an LED bulb that uses magnetic levitation to hover over a wooden base. The bulb is powered by induction, so there are no batteries required, and lasts for up to 50,000 hours. Flyte’s wooden base also doubles as a wireless charging pad for your smartphone. Available in October: flyte.se Snap to It! DxO One Camera $599 Until recently, the only options for improving upon your iPhone’s built-in camera were to attach an external lens or to carry around a separate wireless sensor. The DxO,…