Table of contents for November 18, 2019 in Adweek

Brand purpose matters more than ever Over the past few years, brands—particularly legacy brands—have undergone a reckoning and realized that a brand not only needs a purpose, but it must stick to that purpose. It’s a vision that Target’s CMO, Rick Gomez, emphasized, as he pointed out how the company pushed for more inclusive sizing from its designers. “When people come to our stores, they feel included,” Gomez said. Other legacy brands, like Gap, are also coming to terms with their changing relationship to the consumer. Gap’s CMO and svp, Alegra O’Hare, spoke about getting the brand back to its basics and celebrating items like the iconic Gap hooded sweatshirt and doubling down on denim. By going to its roots, O’Hare said, the brand can reach new customers and keep…

DO Put in the legwork to double-check the comments on an influencer’s posts for real engagement. DON’T Assume that all reach is good reach. While algorithms from influencer tech companies might be good at squaring away a potential client based on numbers alone, they aren’t necessarily good at deducing whether that reach is real or rife with bots. DO Work with the influencer in some sort of one-on-one capacity. As Wiley explained, there’s a lot of “hand-holding” and guidance that needs to happen with rookie influencers. DON’T Leave an influencer entirely at the mercy of a programmatic platform.…

What’s one thing you’ve learned about leading marketing for a hyper-growth brand? Both companies [formerly Lyft, now Hims] were creating new categories, so it is important to not only educate consumers about the brands themselves but also how the product actually works. When you’re in a new territory and bringing a new category to market, you can’t underestimate the importance of product marketing and investing in education. ‘Taking a direct but bold approach to branding has allowed us to break the ice with guys and bring serious topics to light.’ What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for DTC brands? Direct-to-consumer brands offer a consumer-centric experience and a quick feedback loop, two things lacking in today’s healthcare landscape. Since we’re able to receive direct feedback from our customers, we’re also…

We’ve heard it ad nauseam: The agency model is broken. Consulting companies are coming for us, and Big Tech is stealing our best people with cafeterias that promise carving stations and kombucha on tap. As an agency based in San Francisco, we don’t see doom; we see an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. Silicon Valley is where the world comes for ideas, and we’ve spent the last few years scouring these companies for behaviors and attitudes that we can apply to our business model. Rather than complain about tech companies stealing our people, we wanted to see what we could steal from them. Assume you’re doing it wrong In advertising, we come in every morning with the assumption that we know what we’re doing; that we’re doing “it” right. But in…

Unless a package fails to arrive, the business of shipping and delivery isn’t a topic most people think about—even though, as the holiday shopping season nears its kickoff, something on the order of 2.1 billion parcels will land on American doorsteps. And while the parcel-delivery industry generates a whopping $380 billion a year, the job of doing the actual delivering is a difficult and even dangerous one. In October, a ProPublica investigation revealed the enormous pressures faced by drivers for Amazon and the serious and even fatal accidents that apparently resulted. As it turns out, the hardships of the job are nothing new. In 1908, the National Child Labor Committee hired photographer Lewis Hine to document the lives of working children in the United States. Among his more affecting images…

IBM’s AI Explainability 360 A library of open-source algorithms for building models that are easier to understand. PwC’s Responsible AI Toolkit A set of frameworks, tools and processes designed to facilitate AI adoption in an “ethical and responsible manner.” Accenture’s Responsible AI Framework A best practice guide to implementing algorithms in an “ethical, transparent and accountable” way. Microsoft’s InterpretML A software toolkit for developers to experiment with integrating more explanation into their AI models.…

There’s no shortage of great talent in the fields of entertainment, marketing, media and tech, but each year, we endeavor to identify the people who insist on setting the bar even higher—for themselves and their respective industry. Our picks for this year’s list of under 40 Young Influentials define what it means to be an overachiever, whether it’s turning a one-woman stage show into an unexpected Amazon hit and multiple Emmy winner (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), making the case for change through poetry (Cleo Wade), bringing precision to the way brands target customers (Google’s Justin De Graaf) or striking game-changing sports partnerships for one of the world’s largest social platforms (T.J. Adeshola of Twitter). We begin our coverage with Jay Shetty, who flunked business school, became a monk and is now an…

On Friday, Nov. 28, 1924, The New York Times carried an item on page 15 about Santa Claus making an early seasonal appearance: “With a retinue of clowns, freaks, animals and floats, the bewhiskered man in red … arrived at 9 o’clock yesterday morning.” The story, measuring just a few column inches, was a throwaway. Only in retrospect is it clear what a seminal event was in the offing: The modest procession floating down Broadway on that chilly Thursday morning was the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The publicity folks at Macy’s tell us that the parade is “the nation’s most cherished holiday tradition”—which, if that’s an exaggeration, isn’t much of one. It is true, for instance, that 98.2 million people watched the Super Bowl this year. But 50 million…

NETFLIX Binge for almost all shows. AMAZON PRIME VIDEO Binge for almost all shows. HULU Case-by-case basis, depending on the program. CBS ALL ACCESS Weekly for almost all shows. DISNEY+ Weekly for all initial shows. APPLE TV+ Weekly for most initial shows. HBO MAX Weekly for most initial shows. KELSEY SUTTON IS ADWEEK’S STREAMING EDITOR. SHE WAS PREVIOUSLY A MEDIA REPORTER AT MIC AND POLITICO. @KELSEYMSUTTON…

Behind influencer marketing’s glossy exterior, there’s a lot of sweat, tears and time spent. For some buyers—particularly those on smaller campaigns with smaller budgets—ad tech is the answer. Recent months have seen a boom in influencer platforms, an emerging tech that promises to do everything from weed out the perfect microinfluencer for your campaign to scaling that campaign across the web to keeping tabs on engagement. And thanks to the burgeoning popularity of the microinfluencer crowd, more marketers are programmatically plugging in than ever before. “Today, a lot of advertisers are looking for the seamless experience of what it’s like to buy an ad on Facebook and Google,” explained Angelo Damiano, CEO of programmatic platform PowerSpike. What they don’t want to do is reach out to talent, negotiate contracts and…

1 HIRE TRAINED AUDIO REPORTERS “The breakthrough with The Daily and the audio team … is the radio professionals that understand their medium who were hired and trusted to create the thing rather than newspaper people [dictating] the terms of it,” Barbaro said. 2 PROVIDE A WINDOW INTO THE REPORTING PROCESS The Daily shows what reporting looks like at the NYT in a time where the media industry is under attack. “I don’t think we understood we were going to be operating in that environment, but that’s the environment [into which] we were born,” Barbaro said. 3 RETHINK HOW STORIES ARE TOLD News has broken on The Daily, like when the NYT reporter Megan Twohey was the first to talk to the women who corroborated journalist E. Jean Carroll’s claim…

Jay Shetty is not your typical celebrity. Sure, he looks like a laid-back model with his crystalline green eyes and perfectly coiffed hair. He shifts effortlessly in his seat as he locks in with the camera lens. “Somehow I knew you’d be easy to shoot,” our cover photographer says. To prepare for the shoot, she’s watched Shetty’s snackable, wisdom-laden content, as have millions captivated by his presence and purposeful message. Shetty’s a storyteller, life coach and friendly face all wrapped up in one—a younger, hipper, more mainstream Deepak Chopra. He signs off on his emails “with gratitude.” He relates to people like an average Joe—if Joe were a 32-year-old highly purpose-driven British Indian who is the dictionary definition of influence—“an emanation of spiritual or moral force”—and of influencer. But Shetty…

‘It’s been 10 years and been a lot of fun and I’m really grateful to be in the position I am.’ Ten years ago, Marques Brownlee was a 14-year-old high school junior in suburban New Jersey, who used his allowance to buy a new laptop for school. The laptop fell short of his expectations, so he taped a review of the unit and uploaded the video to YouTube. Now at age 25, more than 9 million subscribers later, Brownlee’s become a wellknown tech reviewer on the platform, even winning creator of the decade at the 10th annual Shorty Awards in 2018. Known by his moniker on his YouTube channel—MKBHD—Brownlee creates videos around tech reviews, makes explainers about features like portrait mode and puts together a retro tech series on products…