Table of contents for May 8, 2017 in Adweek

It started quietly last summer, when social media watchers began buzzing about it. Tweens had struck on a recipe for a mucilaginous, stomach-turning substance and were posting videos of themselves playing with it. The slime trend had hit. In fact, slime’s now bigger than ever. Devotees of the glutinous gunk—easy to make by combining glue, water and borax—have posted some 2.8 million images and videos of the stuff on Instagram. Search “slime” on YouTube, and you’ll get 11.9 million results. Which is (mostly) good fun for kids who, to many parents’ delight, have actually found something analog to do. But slime’s biggest impact isn’t on kids at all: It’s on the bottom lines of brands that sell or make the ingredients for it. Craft store colossus Michaels, for example, has…

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‘I believe strongly in continuing to try new ways of doing things.’ “I’ve never worked in what you would call ‘traditional media,’” says Andrea Millett, a self-described digital native who became a media planner at Arnold Boston in 2000 after beginning her career at JWT Detroit. Since then, she has moved steadily upward within the Havas Media organization, becoming U.S. COO and president of its largest “village” in New York nine months ago, just as the network moved through a comprehensive global restructuring amid persistent rumors of a potential merger with Vivendi. Since assuming that position, Millett has specialized in both internal operations and new business initiatives, playing a key role in a streak of late-2016 wins that ushered in an estimated $700 million in new media spending and spearheading…

Technically speaking, McDonald’s media business wasn’t on the menu last year when the fast-food giant held a review of its U.S. account. Even so, Omnicom’s ability to bring buying and planning strategies to the table—managed and articulated for half a decade by Michael Solomon at OMD—helped the holding company gobble up the assignment. “We laid down the data-driven foundation, enabling the new level of insight and understanding about customers that was at the core of the overall Omnicom solution,” says Solomon, who’s overseen McDonald’s media at OMD since 2011, and worked on the business for more than a dozen years. During the review, Solomon helped “define the role of data in the new agency model,” says Anja Carroll, McDonald’s senior director of global media and digital marketing. “His thought contribution…

 Adam Potashnick grew up in a family of attorneys. He thought his destiny was to be a sports agent, and he idolized Jerry Maguire, the hard-charging agent played by Tom Cruise in the 1996 Cameron Crowe film. Like Maguire, he prides himself in never giving up, and often applies sports metaphors to agency life. ‘He’s both a creative thinker and skilled negotiator at the same time.’ Dina Gowar, Dell Technologies “Jerry found love in the win and the game and the fight, and that’s what I do on a day-to-day basis,” Potashnick explains. “I want MediaCom to be more distinct than every other agency. If there’s a wall, I’m going to run through it. If there’s a problem, I’m going to get us around it.” That perseverance helped him land…

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All agencies and clients are feeling the pressure to double down on data overnight. As these organizations race toward data nirvana, they often stumble. Unfortunately, very few people talk about all the false starts, frustration and anguish that come with trying to move organizations to use more data to inform decisions. In my experience, there are three big reasons why data initiatives often lead to a dead end. I’ll give my advice for solving those common mistakes. Problem: The relevant data is not in one place and people don’t usually want to share it. Eighty percent of the challenge in leveraging data is getting all the right data in one place and in the right format. Invariably, this is the step that has very little to do with math, but…

‘With the pace of change that’s happening now, you’ve got to be able to create and spin up your own ways of doing planning quickly.’ Scott Hagedorn took an interest in advertising earlier than most. By age 15, he had his first summer internship at an agency—a Tampa, Fla., shop called Stokes, Epstein, Moore. But it’s a school paper that he wrote when he was even younger—at only 11—that most strongly suggests he was fated to become a marketer. “Is there a future for advertising?” reads that sixth grade essay. “Will there be any job openings in the coming years? Is advertising still a big deal? The answer to all of these questions is yes. Ads are also popping up in new places every day … With these thoughts in…

He’s worked on nearly 300 social campaigns. If one of the A-list stars of Captain America: Civil Wars, like Chris Evans or Robert Downey Jr., sent you a personal video message on Twitter, chances are you’d share that with, well, everyone you know. How often does a superhero reach out to a mere mortal, after all? In fact, the idea was an industry first from digital marketing maven Darnell Brisco, who decided to use the platform’s then-nascent feature, Conversational Ads, to promote the action drama last spring. The program, which came together in only three weeks, produced more than 1,100 customized videos sent via auto-reply to fans who chose their side in the movie battle (#TeamCap or #TeamIronMan). At launch, the program had an opt-in rate of 83 users per…

‘Clients trust her … she takes that trust and grows business.’ Sanjiv Gajiwala, vp, marketing, Mark Anthony Brands What a difference a few years—and the right manager—can make. When Julie Lee took the reins at GroupM’s Maxus Chicago office in June 2015, the unit was reeling from the recent loss of a major client. “As a result,” she recalls, “we had to go from an office of nearly 50 people down to 12.” After finding homes for the disenfranchised staffers within the broader WPP-owned organization, Lee’s focus turned to rebuilding via organic growth and aggressive new business development. “It gave us the opportunity to redefine the culture of the office, our approach to new business and fully focus on what we all wanted to do next: prioritize collaboration and make…

‘It is a much deeper conversation with your audience.’ Over the past decade, Shreya Kushari has not only observed but also had an active hand in the evolution of search and social since long before Google ever set up an auction. Kushari, who oversees media for the New York and Atlanta regions, along with search and paid social for all of North America (with clients that include Delta and American Express), spent her early years at Morpheus Media and Reprise Media before joining Digitas in 2013. She and her team of more than 100 people have witnessed another recent shift in what clients are asking for and what’s working: These days, it’s all about the audience. “It is a much deeper conversation with your audience and a much longer journey…

During the 2016 election, the term “fake news” became an important part of the national discourse—and, in the process, helped increase the public’s awareness of a larger fake economy. “Consumers have been confronted by fake news, fake online reviews, fake phishing emails, fake applications that install malware, fake accounts on social media platforms—and the list goes on,” explained consumer psychologist Kenneth Faro, Ph.D., who worked with Origin/ Hill Holliday on a new study that explores how the fake economy is affecting brands. “There’s one big learning here, and it’s the fact that we are seeing the emergence of a new consumer need—the need for truth.” Faro recommends that brands view this need as an opportunity, not a challenge. “Valuing ‘truth’ can be a differentiating brand platform and a point of…

‘We really are an extension of their [NBCU] team. That’s how we think about all our clients.’ Nathalie Con’s presence at Giant Spoon is much larger than her associate director of strategy title suggests. “She treats our company like it’s her company, like she’s a partner,” says Marc Simons, one of Giant Spoon’s co-founders, who hired Con in 2014, about six months after the company’s start. “She applies that approach to how she works with the clients.” Case in point: NBCUniversal. “We really are an extension of their team,” says Con. “That’s how we think about all our clients. We want to help them to think smart and stay ahead of the game.” She helped NBC strategize the marketing push behind This Is Us, the most successful of all freshman…

Crossmedia has placed some $350 million via programmatic. Redbox is more than just a kiosk version of a Blockbuster store. In fact, if you ask Crossmedia, an independent, alternative creative media agency, Redbox isn’t about renting DVDs at all. Lee Beale, Crossmedia’s managing director, helped design the shop’s Redbox analytics system to communicate to clients with complete transparency what their media buys can accomplish. Beale wanted to design an analytics program that would be immediately recognizable to any CMO who started using it and put the client’s mentality at the forefront of its design. “I saw a disconnect between the engine and the tires of the ad industry,” explains Beale. “We’re not here to give lip service to clients, and some of the time we end up optimizing ourselves out…

 Coming up with a new approach to media planning is no small feat. Implementing and customizing that approach across every piece of business that your media agency runs? Seems impossible. But that’s what Lynn Lewis, East Coast president and CMO of IPG Mediabrands’ UM, has been doing since she helped craft the data-driven, moments-based planning tool and dedicated shop, J3, for Johnson & Johnson in 2011. So far it’s led to a slew of new business wins, including Accenture, Hulu, GoPro, Fitbit and even Coach. At the end of 2016, UM’s year-over-year revenue increased 9 percent globally and 12 percent in the U.S. ‘She’s … the most wonderful collaborator I may have ever met.’ Kasha Cacy, president, UM “The product that Lynn piloted on J3 is the product that is…

While other agencies have spent the past few years catching up with the colossal move from laptops and desktops to smartphones, Travis Johnson is keeping IPG Mediabrands’ dedicated mobile shop Ansible not just squarely ahead of the competition but flourishing. Instead of focusing on mobile media—primarily controlled by behemoths Facebook and Google—Johnson and his team are taking clients like Kia, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson to the next level by busily building next-generation voice apps, chatbots and virtual reality. “Because we are so multifaceted, we’re growing where others who are just doing mobile media are getting absorbed by trading desks,” says Johnson. Longtime IPG vet Johnson took over control of Ansible as global president in July 2015 with the challenge of growing the agency’s global footprint from 70 employees in…

Musician Tyler Williams had nearly snared a plum job, especially for Las Vegas. In a city where the prevailing professions are housekeeper and casino cashier, Williams had made it to the final interview for a position as a drummer in the Blue Man Group. There was just one problem: He didn’t really want the gig. Williams had been watching videos by Vegas-based business mystic and Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, whose convention-defying wisdom operates at the spiritual center of his e-tail footwear site, which Amazon snapped up in 2009 for a tidy $1.2 billion. Hsieh’s ethos boils down to 10 values, stuff like: “Deliver ‘Wow’ through Service” and “Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded.” Williams liked what he heard. But he’d also heard something else. “I read online that it was harder…