Indice dei contenuti per July 23, 2018 in Adweek

A string of negative Papa John’s headlines sparked by a Forbes exposé has left America’s fourth-largest pizza chain and its founder John Schnatter with few defenders in the marketing world. After Adweek reported on a large wave of layoffs at AOR Laundry Service that were attributed to “client attrition” across multiple accounts, Forbes reported the agency had resigned the business after Schnatter used the N-word and made other insensitive statements during a May training call designed to help him avoid controversies. A contentious back-and-forth between Schnatter and the agency then ensued, with the now former chairman confirming these reports but claiming that Laundry Service had pressured him into the conversation and tried to “extort” the company for $6 million. An internal memo from agency leaders called the charges “completely false”…

Pharma marketing is complicated. The task of promoting medicine presents regulatory risks and financial uncertainties unlike those in any other commercial space, yet some notable agency networks dedicate their entire business to the practice. Why? Simply put, it’s where the money is. “Pharma clients have tended to be profitable for agencies because they really need the freshest and best thinking to cut through a highly cluttered, litigious and complicated marketplace,” said Greg Paull, co-founder and principal at international consultancy R3, adding agencies can charge a premium for the specialized service because “not everyone is qualified to write breakthrough ideas on psoriasis.” The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow pharma companies to advertise drugs, and according to a Statista study, paid media expenditures for the industry…

Oonie Chase, executive creative director at Frog Design, likens design to being in a relationship. Relationships, like design, are not just the big romantic moments, but the small “unsexy things you do everyday to make sure the relationship has integrity,” she says. Design, she argues, is foundational to a brand’s success, central to how a business grows and stays resilient. Adweek spoke with Chase about design’s role in “brand purpose,” whether it should be seated at the C-level table, and some of the UX pain points she deals with when working with clients. Adweek: What would you say is the role of brand purpose and how does design fit in? Oonie Chase: Design puts the proof in the purpose. Brands don’t get to declare their purpose anymore; they don’t get…

1 JEFF BEZOS CEO, chairman, president, founder, Amazon Revenue: $177.9 billion This year’s installment of The Power List, our fourth annual ranking of the top players across advertising, marketing, media and tech, sees Amazon’s Jeff Bezos return to the prime position, placing first for the second straight year. He outpaced Alphabet’s Larry Page (No. 2) and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (No. 3)—though all three continue to drive us headlong into the future. It’s also worth noting that, for the first time, no holding company chiefs placed among the top 10, while honchos at consultancies, CRM firms, cloud providers and gaming concerns came on strong. To formulate the list, the editors considered numerous criteria. These included company value, revenue and growth, market performance, consumer reach, standing among rivals, industry accolades, media buzz…

AT&T AT&T ads have been promising “More of Your Thing” lately, and the cinematic new spots aimed at moviegoers definitely deliver. “Surprise” begins with a lovers’ dramatic reunion aboard an airplane. But wait ... how did she get past security? The ad soon takes a dark turn, and we realize what began as a romance has become a horror. Created by BBDO, the spot delightfully mashes up two genres to convey the idea of getting more. Another ad in the series, “Bus,” blends a nail-biting suspense storyline with a foot-tapping musical. With deft direction from rising ad industry star Daniel Wolfe, the spots are sure to keep audiences guessing.…

At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in June, Unilever CMO Keith Weed, a leader in the ad industry’s attempts to tackle a fragmented and opaque ad environment, gave brands a warning: lose trust and risk it all. “Trust is everything for a brand,” Weed proclaimed. A brand without trust, he added, is simply a product. It’s been another tough year for brand safety. Whether it’s on YouTube or Facebook, within a mobile app, or even alongside a piece of news content, brands must determine how to protect against appearing next to objectionable content when advertising on digital media. DoubleVerify president and CEO Wayne Gattinella said that the problem is becoming harder to address as video content, mobile advertising and social media have complicated a once-simplistic digital advertising ecosystem. Advertisers…

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, finding a single Star Wars T-shirt for women was harder to find than Luke Skywalker. Women and girls who loved the franchise instead settled for a small men’s shirt, a predicament that voice actress for Star Wars: The Clone Wars Ashley Eckstein was fed up with. That’s how she came up with the idea in 2010 to create Her Universe, a geek fashion company. As more digitally native brands start to home in on underserved consumer niches, like targeting hair-loss shoppers or cheaper shaving products for women, these upstarts can learn from geek fashion and beauty brands such as Crunchyroll, Her Universe and Shiro Cosmetics, which not only launched in the early days of ecommerce but also managed to stick around.…

We’ve all seen it, the good, the bad and the ugly of consumer experience marketing. The good is a seamless interaction with a brand that approaches shopping with a trusted friend and creates a sense of fulfillment. The bad is getting parked in a digital cul-de-sac by a brand’s nascent and fumbling direct-to-consumer play. And the ugly is disruptive marketing dressed up like experience that comes off as robo stalking to the end user—you. Or who they kinda think you are. Kinda. Brand marketers are struggling with experience-based interactions with consumers who have come to demand a true omnichannel and omniplatform flow from marketing. If customers don’t get it, they will revolt—and then they ghost you. In this, the ninth and penultimate Digital Transformation Playbook in partnership with Accenture Interactive,…

At Nike’s new concept store in West Los Angeles, the digital and the physical converge. Nike by Melrose’s 4,557 square feet of retail space is designed to create an experience that blends mobile app convenience with high-touch human connections. As shoppers enter the store, they receive personalized offers via Nike App at Retail. If they see a shoe or shirt they like, they can scan a QR code to summon a salesperson (Nike calls them “athletes”) to bring it in a different size or color. Customers can book a 15- or 30-minute consult with an athlete, get recommendations, then try out their new kicks on a treadmill in the Trial Zone. Or they can skip the store entirely and order gear via Swoosh Text SMS, then have it stored in…

‘By offering seamless services and communication across touch-points, your brand can offer ease and even bring moments of joy to a person’s daily life.’ Building an ecosystem that supports connected experiences is technologically complex and strategically multifaceted—but, ultimately, it’s about fostering human connections. By adopting a customer-centric mindset and ensuring you have a connected technology platform to drive marketing performance, companies can harness complexity to build enduring relationships. Here are five basic principles to help marketers and technologists on their path to building a solid foundation with customers. Single view of the customer Today, many brands are sitting down at a figurative 10th anniversary dinner with their loyal customers, behaving like they’re on a first date. They’re asking the same “getting to know you” questions. Personalization no longer means chasing…

THE STRAPS Birkenstock makes some 80 styles—all still made in Germany—but the classic is the Arizona sandal, easily spotted for its two thick suede straps. THE FOOTBED A signature component that molds to the wearer’s foot, it’s a layered sole made of jute fiber and molded cork, which is elastic and supportive. THE NAME Birkenstock is a family name that goes back to 1774, when company founder Johann Adam Birkenstock began making shoes near Frankfurt. Early in the summer of 1990, the British photographer Corinne Day took a then-unknown model named Kate Moss onto the beaches of Camber Sands for a photo shoot. As Day popped off her shutter, a pencil-thin Moss crouched in the sand, smoked cigarettes and regarded the camera with that no-makeup, no-hairstyling, no-enthusiasm look she was…

Welcome to Fantasy Island! From 1978-84, ABC owned Saturday night, thanks to Aaron Spelling’s doubleheader: romcom series The Love Boat and the decidedly dark Fantasy Island, where the mysterious Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalbán, left) and his sidekick Tattoo (Hervé Villechaize) offered guests a chance to live out their fantasies—but always at a price. Adweek (USPS 458870, ISSN 1549-9553) is published weekly: 34 times a year with 1 issue in December; 2 issues in July and August; 3 issues in January, February, March, April, May, June and November; and four issues in September and October. Publisher is ADWEEK, LLC, 825 Eighth Avenue, 29th floor, New York, NY 10019, (212) 493-4100. Subscriptions are $249 for one year, $449 for two years. Canadian subscriptions are $299 per year. All other foreign subscriptions are…

The European Union fined Google $5.1 billion for violating antitrust law by exploiting its power in the mobile phone market. EU authorities say that Google—whose Android operating system owns about 80 percent of the smartphone market—unfairly favored its own products, forcing device manufacturers to pre-install Google’s apps rather than others while also preventing them from running an altered version of Android. The fine comes as the EU moves to place greater regulations on the giant tech companies in several areas including privacy. In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company plans to appeal the decision and argued that the ruling prevents the company from fairly competing.…

According to a June report from Integral Ad Science, 27.1% of desktop display impressions on risky pages serve next to violent content, and 19.4 percent of desktop display impressions on risky pages serve next to adult content. (“Risky pages,” according to IAS chief strategy officer David Hahn, is any content generally considered unacceptable for most of the brands IAS works with.) Year over year, brand safety violations in 2018 were up 25% according to DoubleVerify. Media and advertising company Oath found in an April study that 99 percent of advertising decision-makers were concerned about brand-safe environments, and that 58% were more concerned about brand safety than last year. A June consumer survey from Edelman found that 47% of people think a brand’s own values are reflected in the points of…

Entrepreneurialism and experimentation are usually the domain of the Davids, not the Goliaths. The digital era has largely been defined by scrappy startups challenging incumbent industry leaders by being more creative, more inspired and more consumer-friendly. That’s how we got brands like Dollar Shave Club, Netflix, Warby Parker and, yes, even Amazon. But now, established consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies are facing a retail landscape that requires them to borrow a page from the scrappy startup playbook to survive. It’s a fitting plot twist, as the world of ecommerce has always been full of surprises and contradictions. For example, there’s supposedly a retail apocalypse underway, even though retail spending is up year over year. Conversely, many ecommerce brands are launching pop-up shops and physical stores because millennials actually like the mall. For…

Marketing technology is increasingly enabling marketers to be more strategic and direct their investments more effectively. But marketers also face challenges as they implement new strategies and integrate new technologies. More than half feel “overwhelmed” by the sheer amount of mar-tech data they’re now confronted with, according to Accenture Research. Meanwhile, only about a third of marketers globally believe the CEO of their company recognizes the revenue and cost-saving potential of investing in mar tech, and the majority think the mar-tech industry itself is evolving faster than their company’s use of it. Still, nearly seven in 10 marketers are turning to mar tech to increase overall ROI, and nearly half are doing so to improve their marketing efficiency. Jim LaLonde, head of marketing platforms, North America, Accenture Interactive, said that…

When Jasmin Rubinovitz isn’t at work, you might find her “playing with mud.” Rubinovitz spent her undergraduate years studying computer science and ceramic design. There, she came to an epiphany—the different disciplines balance each other out beautifully. Computer science is new, exact and technical. Ceramics, an ancient, imperfect art form, reminds Rubinovitz to remain patient and focused. “If you hurry, you could ruin weeks of work,” she said. “When I am on a pottery wheel, I have to be extremely focused on only what I am doing. There are no shortcuts.” Rubinovitz combines her passions for art and technology as the lead creative technologist at Fake Love, the experiential ad agency that The New York Times’ branded content arm, T Brand Studio, acquired in 2016. Rubinovitz is tasked with executing…

Who Dave Peterson, founder and lead creative, and Courtney Vincent, creative director What Indie creative agency Where Minneapolis 1 During its 22-year relationship with Target, PMH created the brand’s iconic bull’s-eye. Peterson calls Target “our first love,” adding, “We cut our teeth on that brand.” 2 Supporting one of its own staffers who founded the nonprofit Council of Contributors, PMH recently rolled out merchandise, a website redesign and more. 3 The agency’s “Make Love” campaign for Gap highlighted pairs who “spread love through action.”…