Indice dei contenuti per May 14, 2018 in Adweek

Members of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee have released over 3,000 of Russia-linked Facebook ads, providing a closer look at how outside actors used the platform during the 2016 presidential election—and who they targeted. Bought by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA), the ads date back to 2015 and seem to have targeted users with a vast array of interests and demographics. While the trove of information is likely to help paint a more detailed picture, it doesn’t include the 80,000 pieces of organic content shared on Facebook by the IRA. However, a statement from the committee said members expect to release that information in the future. “The only way we can begin to inoculate ourselves against a future attack is to see firsthand the types of messages, themes and…

‘Facebook provides an unprecedented number of tools to make using its ad platform easy to navigate for even the most novice business or advertiser.’Chris Ruberg, senior social media specialist, Empower The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a small performance venue in New York, needed a better way than print to advertise its shows. Daniel Gallant, the cafe’s executive director, said he was spending too much money on print without verifiable results, and he couldn’t make last-minute changes. Facebook, even before it catered to small and midsize businesses (SMB), solved his problem. He began using Facebook organically before his business could even buy ads. Now, the tools are so comprehensive that it’s “far and away the most effective and powerful means of connecting content with spectators that will benefit from it,” Gallant said.…

‘[Brands] are at a disadvantage if they do not have these direct relationships with their end consumers.’ At February’s Interactive Advertising Bureau annual Leadership Meeting, the trade organization’s CEO, Randall Rothenberg, opened the three-day event by walking the audience through the history of branding, starting with what he says is the beginning of the consumer economy, Procter & Gamble’s Ivory soap, from 1879, and culminating with the term du jour, “direct brand”—the new model that allows, he says, brands to connect directly with the end consumer. “D-to-c [direct-to-consumer] in most people’s minds is about delivery of a product to a home,” he says. “This is bigger than a delivery to the home. It’s about two things. One: this open-source, or rented supply chain, and the ability of companies to access…

‘Anyone who knows me knows I would do this job for free. I look forward to Monday through Friday as much as I look forward to Saturday and Sunday. What a gift.’ As the average creative account win shrinks and clients across the brand spectrum move more work in-house, media continues to be the most important part of the global agency equation. In 2018, bold leadership and creative thinking in media is critical for any marketer looking to reach the right customer with the right message in the most effective place and time. For those reasons and more, this year’s All-Stars will lead the industry forward. Our Executive of the Year, John Moore, helped transform MullenLowe’s Mediahub from an upstart into a contender with innovative solutions to the business needs…

‘I tell younger employees all the time, never run away from something, always run to something.’ When Mullen and Lowe merged in 2015, Alex Leikikhwho had been named global CEO of the combined creative entities—had to think strategically about what to do with the new network’s media assets, Mullen’s Mediahub and Lowe’s Profero. Leikikh wanted the two shops to integrate and expand globally, and he appointed John Moore, then chief media officer of Mediahub, to execute on that vision. Moore, who is now global president of Mediahub, a unit of MullenLowe, had prior experience running most of the media shop’s offices, including its Boston headquarters; he also led the launch of its Los Angeles division. Now, it was time to truly put his skill set to the test. Moore admits…

Evan Hanlon graduated from Harvard in 2008 after studying filmmaking, but in 2011 he was working as a marketing and brand communications strategist and, as he says, still figuring out what he really wanted to do. His sister, playing the role of career matchmaker, introduced him to someone in her book club who turned out to be Christina Beaumier, then vp of client services at Xaxis. After that fortuitous connection, Hanlon says, “everything sort of fell into place.” That same year, Hanlon went to work at the WPP ad targeting company and later worked his way up to vp of strategy and investment. In 2016, he joined media network GroupM as a director of strategy and platforms, quickly gaining a reputation for his ability to reimagine and reengineer how the…

Just over six years after splashing onto the media agency scene, Deidre Smalls-Landau has already created tidal waves. She spent most of her career on the creative side after starting as an account executive at FCB, where she worked on Nabisco and AT&T. As media grew “sexier,” she decided to take a leap into the evp, managing director role at IPG Mediabrands’ multicultural shop Identity in 2011. Last June, Smalls-Landau was elevated to evp and global chief cross-cultural officer at UM Worldwide while retaining her Identity role. “When I was growing up in advertising, everything was focused more on quantified, less creative solutions,” Smalls-Landau says. “I came on [to IPG] during the full data explosion and with a great organization that’s committed to data and creativity.” She says her role…

After noticing that more brands were turning to social media stars and influencers to pitch their products and create campaigns, Kerry Perse saw an opportunity to create a data-backed score that could grade influencers on their effectiveness with marketers. In December, Perse and her 22-person team unveiled the OMD I-Score. The tool helps marketers dig through profiles to find the right influencers to work with based on the type of content that they create. According to Perse, I-Score is akin to Hollywood’s Q Score that ranks the popularity of celebrities. OMD says some 15 clients now use I-Score, which has led to a 40 percent increase in influencer revenue. Three factors are used to discern credible influencers: a rating from the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) that checks brand…

Assembly CEO Martin Cass knew his long and frustrating search for a managing director to lead Midwest operations was over the minute he had breakfast with Kendra Mazey. “In walked this force of nature with the enthusiasm and toughness I wanted,” Cass said in a statement. “After an hour I had not eaten. If my attention was that captured, imagine how great she’d be with clients.” He didn’t have to imagine for long. Even before Mazey’s first day, she began preparing to pitch Red Robin. She and her team won the offline account, and 12 months later Red Robin consolidated all of its media duties at Assembly without a review. According to Red Robin’s fourth-quarter earnings statement, the company’s 2017 performance was its “best in over 5 years,” with Q4…

When Greg March launched his independent media agency, Noble People, in 2011, he did so with a singular purpose: to challenge the status quo. March, along with partners Lindsay Lustberg and Todd Alchin, wanted to demonstrate that media companies could do well by doing “good” work, combining transparency and creative thinking. The pivotal moment arrived, says March, when Noble People began working with PayPal in 2014. The partnership, which came at a time when the agency consisted of “a handful of people,” proved “transformative” in helping March and his team gain a reputation as “good for disruptive companies.” Greg Fisher, vp of global marketing at PayPal, describes March as “someone who asks the right questions to distill the conversation into a simple human truth.” The executive, who spent seven years…

The first thing you notice about Ikea’s “Sömnig” print ad is the aroma. The ad, concocted by Memac Ogilvy Dubai and featured on the back of United Arab Emirates’ Good magazine issue for April, promises that “everything about Sömnig is designed to help you sleep better.” The ad itself is printed with lavender ink, because the scent is “known to relax muscles, slow down your heartbeat and improve sleep quality,” according to the ad copy. But most dramatically, you can remove the ad, fold out some tabs, plug the whole thing into a USB to charge, and then use it next to your bed as a white noise speaker.…

If small and midsize businesses aren’t using Facebook to advertise, they’re probably tapping into Google. “While it may be more expensive to advertise on Google, Google is more worth it in our eyes because you gain more visibility and, therefore, higher ad value,” said Joseph Crea, marketing manager of Dumbo Moving and Storage in Brooklyn, N.Y., when explaining why he chooses Google over Bing or Yahoo. Sam Eitzen, co-founder of photo experience company The SnapBar, favored Google, as well, saying, “If we do a premium listing on The Knot or Wedding Wire, we appear next to all sorts of other competitors, and it becomes a race to the bottom for pricing. We never wanted to pitch our service as the cheapest Groupon special. We wanted to command more premium pricing.”…

Anyone who follows the NBA knows what shoes their favorite athletes are wearing, whether it’s Lebron James (Nike), James Harden (Adidas) or Steph Curry (Under Armour). Now add Peter Fader to that list. Fader isn’t a world-class baller. He’s a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business who invented a way for brands to calculate customer lifetime value. He’s also a co-founder of Zodiac, a consumer data analytics startup acquired by Nike in March for an undisclosed sum. Data scientists like Fader may soon be as important as star athletes in ensuring the success of companies like Nike, which is in a footrace with Adidas and Under Armour for using data to enhance the customer journey. “Acquiring Zodiac brings a team of world-class data science talent,…

Customer data is rapidly becoming the dominant currency of the modern marketplace. Recent IAB research credits first-party data as the driver for “all significant functions of the enterprise, including product development, customer value analysis and pricing.” It’s impossible to achieve the critical goals the market now demands—empathy, fluid conversation across touch points, personalization—without nimble, proficient command of customer data. However, many digital marketers have unwittingly relinquished ownership of data to third-party providers. Lack of access to first-party data has weakened their ability to use data strategically to drive business outcomes. The power struggle over data needs to be resolved. Now. Whose data is it anyway? In today’s digital world, data is the source of performance advantage. Specifically, first-party data, which is defined as the information that a brand or company…

Advertisers are reawakening to the benefits of Radio in the continually shifting media landscape. The fact is that Radio reaches more people per week than any other medium and delivers outstanding ROI for advertisers. While other media usage has been massively disrupted, Radio is far and away the #1 source for audio among all key demographics. And, as part of the media mix, Radio significantly amplifies the performance of the plan as a whole. To help advertisers and media planners understand the power of Radio, Entercom—the #1 creator of original, live and local audio content in the U.S.—along with research partner Nielsen provide the 2018 guide to enhancing your media plan with Radio. Billion-dollar advertisers are re-discovering the power of Radio and how it can augment, supplement, and amplify their…

“Whatever you see on TV or on the internet, I play a part in it.” That’s how Alexis Toney describes what she does all day to her parents. Yet, the two-year veteran of digital-first agency Laundry Service also reveals that she, like so many in her generation, is a dedicated cord-cutter. “The last time I paid for cable was when I lived at home,” she adds. Who better, then, to help guide brands through the new media ecosystem? “The most interesting part of my job is being able to play with stories,” says Toney, countering the idea that media work isn’t creative. As an example, she cites Papa John’s, which recently consolidated its media and creative accounts with Laundry Service after several years with Grey. She adds that such an…

As head of GroupM’s Multicultural Marketing Analytics unit, Mebrulin Francisco says her chief goal is to help connect consumers who are often “misrepresented, mislabeled and undervalued” to her clients—a list that includes Target, NBCUniversal and Chevron. Franciso’s vision of inclusion has proven to be a winning strategy. Her five-person team, comprised of female data strategists drawn from diverse backgrounds, is among the largest multicultural media agencies in the U.S. And its revenue reportedly increased by 62 percent between 2013 and 2016. “She always understood what we wanted to achieve,” says Gonzalo Del Fa, president of GroupM Multicultural, “and she also added this layer of how to make these things business-driven, but easy for people to understand. There’s nobody with more passion and more heart for this business, but always with…

Brian Krick arrived at Essence in 2013 as head of search and biddable for North America, armed with an extensive background in search engine marketing at major agencies including Razorfish. One year later, he was overseeing a team of over 100 across 18 global offices, and in 2017, the agency promoted him to evp of planning. Since then, Essence has allowed Krick to “reinvent” its planning department “with a platform specialist’s point of view.” For instance, recent work for Google included helping the search giant “road test” its tools for measuring audiences and platforms. “There are few and far between who understand performance media this exceptionally,” says Kevin Murakami, Google’s global lead for paid search and biddable media, noting Krick’s keen ability to understand the specifics of direct response. Under…

In March, when Erica Schmidt was promoted to become Cadreon’s first female global CEO, a great weight was suddenly placed on her shoulders. She says, “I feel pressure from eyes looking down on me [saying], ‘OK, you’re the first woman CEO. What are you going to do?’” Luckily for Schmidt, she’s always been one step ahead of everyone else. At 6 years old, she taught herself basic computer programming. When she entered the advertising industry in the late 1990s at a Boston shop that placed help-wanted ads in newspapers, she was told not to encourage clients to put them online “because they hadn’t figured out the business model for that.” So, she left to join a digital agency and never looked back. “I remember thinking at the time: ‘Gosh that…

When Omnicom-owned Hearts & Science became AT&T’s media agency of record in 2016, the win was both an evolution of the telecom’s longstanding relationship with the world’s second-largest holding company and a huge $3 billion bet. Instead of spreading its media budget across a variety of agencies, AT&T was now placing its massive ad spend in just one place. “It was kind of a referendum,” says Hearts & Science president Ralph Pardo. “On the agency model and even holding companies overall. You have a large company that said: ‘What I have now is not working.’” Pardo’s vision for managing the account was to place a premium on hiring people with more technical backgrounds within the agency and balancing them with strategists that have a more “ambidextrous skill set.” Not only…

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Martin Sorrell refuses to go quietly. In keeping with his bombastic personal style, the now-former CEO of WPP told more than 100 attendees at New York’s Techonomy conference that he won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. On Tuesday morning, both the Financial Times and PRWeek reported on the event at which Sorrell said, “I’m going to start again. I’m not going into voluntary or involuntary retirement.” The conference comes just over one month after news broke that WPP’s board of directors was investigating allegations of “personal misconduct.” Less than two weeks later, he abruptly stepped down.…

Marketers are awash in all different types of data, but often have a hard time making heads or tails of what to do with it. And in an increasingly personalized world, consumers expect their customer experiences to be customized—and that’s where an effective data strategy comes in. According to stats compiled by Accenture Research, the majority of global business leaders say the most important factor in customer experience is ensuring their staff has access to customer data. Additionally, 59 percent of companies that use business analytics say it gives them a competitive advantage. But despite such promising numbers, a whopping 88 percent of marketers aren’t using data to its full potential. “Some brands are swimming in data, but it’s not the right data to achieve marketing objectives,” said Jeannine Falcone,…

COCA-COLA Researchers at the University of Tennessee analyzed Facebook data to identify bars and restaurants that were good candidates for purchasing Coke products. The more check-ins and likes an establishment’s Facebook page received, the better prospect it was, allowing the beverage giant to prioritize its sales efforts. BEST EGG The online lender discovered that people who visited the site’s third-party reviews page signed up for loans at nearly twice the usual rate, so it optimized content to drive more visitors to those pages. RALEY’S SUPERMARKETS The California-based grocery chain used loyalty data to determine what product attributes were most important to its customers, then launched a unique labeling program allowing consumers to choose foods based on their nutrient value and environmental impact.…

THE FACTS ABOUT RADIO Radio is America’s #1 reach medium. 270+ million weekly listeners Nielsen Audio-State of the Media: Audio Today, June 2017, persons 6+ Radio delivers superior ROI. $10:$1 Average across major categories. Nielsen Studies 2014-2016 $23 Grocery $21 Auto Aftermarket $17 Department Stores $15 Mass Merchandisers $14 Telecom $9 Home Improvement $6 Snacks $4 Beer $3 Candy $3 QSR $2 Soft Drinks People in new cars choose radio over streaming 13:1. 13x Higher share of total listening than all streaming combined. Edison Research, Share of Ear Study, 2017, Listening Habits of New Car Buyers (2015-2017 car models), Adults = P18+ Radio is both mass appeal and diverse. Monthly Reach 95% of Millennials 97% of Gen X 94% of Teens 98% of Boomers 96% of Hispanics 12+ 98% of…

Sargi Mann wants to prove that understanding the complexities and sophistication of digital advertising is about more than buying Facebook or Snapchat ads. Instead, she wants agencies to think like business analysts who have the strategic chops to examine a brand’s broader business objectives. Mann joined Havas Media last year after working at shops like Vizeum and Carat and has been instrumental to a string of recent wins, including a chunk of French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi’s reported $1 billion global media spend, as well as Orbitz and Bristol-Myers Squibb. “When we talk about digital strategy, it quickly defaults to a media execution,” she says. “Our approach and thinking around that has been very different—when we look at any project, we look at how does digital as a capability deliver more…

THE PLANT Easy to grow, chia is a member of the mint family. Many tout its health benefits, but Chia Pet owners are advised not to eat the sprouts from their planters. THE POTTERY Terracotta (literally: “baked earth”) is a red clay that’s sculpted and then fired. Originally made in Oaxaca, Mexico, Chia Pets are now produced in China. THE CREATURE This is a Chia Puppy, one of many animals that Joseph Enterprises sells. Glazing the head keeps the seeds from growing there. One afternoon in March 1977, a man named Joseph Pedott was walking the floor of Chicago’s McCormick Place, surveying the millions of goods on offer at the annual International Home + Housewares Show. Pedott was a man on a mission. A few years earlier, the Chicago native…