Table of contents for October 26, 2020 in Adweek

Fragmented consumption of media is driving the need for agencies to be smarter with how they manage campaigns, from adjusting strategies on the fly down to the minutia of calculating costs and billing clients. “If we’re going to run something that’s omnichannel … you have to have all of the back-end sorted in order to be able to do it,” said Daniel Chapman, managing director of products and solutions at Havas. Deciding whether to go in-house or find a planning and billing platform provider has become an important question for media agencies since brands now have these same tools at their fingertips. If a brand can analyze consumer behavior across platforms and then optimize campaigns on its own, where is the value in a media agency? Procter & Gamble chief…

EMBRACE YOUR COMMUNITY One of our values is “put members first” and we do that in everything we do [and] every decision we make. This is the first time that we are elevating them in a major paid brand campaign. These are real people in their real homes, sharing their real experiences, interacting with our brand. We always say that people don’t join Peloton for the community, but they inevitably find it. This campaign is showcasing one of the most valuable elements of our brand that many people don’t see until they’re fully immersed in the Peloton experience. MAKE YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE My own personal philosophy is “structure enables creativity.” In order to accomplish the things that I want to accomplish professionally and personally, discipline, structure and systems play a role…

Ahead of Disney+’s debut last November, Disney executives needed a showstopping original series to convince even more consumers—not just kids and families who were already likely to subscribe—that their new streamer was a must-have service. With Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, they got exactly what they wished for. Written and executive produced by Favreau—Adweek’s TV Creator of the Year—the show marked the first time the Star Wars franchise had expanded into a live-action TV series. It was another first for Favreau, who despite acting in, directing and producing big-name projects like Iron Man and last year’s The Lion King, had never previously written for television. With Pedro Pascal as the titular Mandalorian and the power of the Star Wars world behind it, the space western was highly anticipated and marketed, but…

Whether Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey intended to or not, he and his company set new standards this year for how social media platforms moderate hate speech and misinformation. In this presidential election year, with an international health crisis and social unrest thrown in for good measure, the conversation has played out online, with sometimes hateful and misleading or false rhetoric, in ways that have real-life consequences. Dorsey—Adweek’s Digital Executive of the Year—has made a point not to stand for it. His tough decisions have already put immense pressure on Twitter’s peers to clean up the misinformation and hate speech on their platforms—even when it comes from the president of the United States. As Dorsey recently explained, he and his company intend to learn from their past mistakes. “It…

George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Tamir Rice. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Eric Garner. Trayvon Martin. The New Yorker, a magazine known as much for its rich imagery as its storytelling, implored readers, with breathtaking visuals, to say their names. In artist Kadir Nelson’s June 14 cover, Floyd, the most recent Black victim of police violence at the time, looms large, his body populated with the faces of other Black victims and icons, including Martin Luther King Jr., Emmett Till and Rosa Parks. The cover gained traction online, leading to 8.3 million social impressions, and the National Civil Rights Museum requested a copy of the magazine for its collection.…

HOTTEST STORY OF THE YEAR Pandemic Coverage HOTTEST CONVERSATION STARTER O, The Oprah Magazine HOTTEST IN BUSINESS NEWS The Wall Street Journal HOTTEST IN CELEBRITY/ENTERTAINMENT People HOTTEST IN SPORTS The Athletic HOTTEST IN HEALTH The New York Times HOTTEST IN FOOD Allrecipes HOTTEST IN NEWS The Washington Post HOTTEST IN SOCIAL MEDIA The Washington Post HOTTEST IN PODCASTS Spotify HOTTEST IN BRANDED CONTENT Mel Magazine HOTTEST IN SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES The New York Times HOTTEST IN ECOMMERCE GQ HOTTEST IN HOME AND LIFESTYLE Good Housekeeping HOTTEST SERIES IN A NEW FORMAT The 1619 Project and the Pulitzer Center (The New York Times) HOTTEST MEDIUM EXPANSION Explained (A Netflix series from Vox Media Studios) HOTTEST B-TO-B PUBLICATION JAMA HOTTEST B-TO-B NEWSLETTER Law360 HOTTEST B-TO-B USER EXPERIENCE Politico Pro…

THIS HALLOWEEN had a lot going for it in terms of being an optimal day for spooky celebrations. The holiday lands on a Saturday with a full moon, for starters. Plus, daylight saving comes to an end in the wee hours of Nov. 1, giving revelers an extra hour to stay up late eating candy and bingeing horror flicks. This convergence of events is so rare that it won’t happen again for at least another century and a half, according to the Halloween Industry Association, a trade group formed to promote the holiday. Unfortunately, the current public health crisis has dampened the Halloween spirit. To help slow the spread of Covid-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned against traditional trick-or-treating. Haunted houses, hayrides with strangers and crowded…

A post, like or retweet from a famous face can not only move products, it can also move markets. Since an 18th-century British potter leveraged an endorsement from Queen Charlotte to sell his pottery, influencer marketing has relied heavily on the powerful currency of celebrity. The world has shifted. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic and rising conversations about social justice, a younger generation is craving authenticity and action, challenging what we want to hear from influencers and when. The influencer ecosystem is being forced to evolve. What does influence mean? How should influencers use it? Here’s what we are seeing: THE RISE OF INFLUENCER ACTIVISM Today, influencer activism is more essential than controversial, with fans expecting influencers to speak out on societal issues. Gone are the days where…

When she filmed her first movie at 14, Reese Witherspoon certainly didn’t think she’d stumbled upon her lifelong career. “I didn’t know how viable it was to really consider being an actor. I grew up in a practical family of doctors and nurses,” she recalls. But three decades later, Witherspoon has not only amassed a resume that includes several hit films and an Oscar, she’s created a second, even more influential, parallel career path as one of the industry’s most groundbreaking producers—an achievement that has led to her being named Adweek’s Media Visionary. After early film successes like Election and Cruel Intentions, Witherspoon had her first smash hit with Legally Blonde and later won the Best Actress Oscar for Walk the Line. But when the quality parts started drying up—as…

Even before the pandemic, TLC was gearing up for a great year. In the first quarter of 2020, the cable network, known for hits like Say Yes to the Dress and Cake Boss, held the No. 1 spot in prime-time adsupported cable among women 18-49 and women 25-54, with some of TV’s most well-known television franchises, including smash hit 90 Day Fiancé and long-running Little People, Big World. When the many challenges brought on by Covid-19 came into focus, so did the opportunity for TLC president and general manager Howard Lee, Adweek’s TV Executive of the Year: Lockdowns meant more downtime for the cable network’s fans, and those viewers would want updates on the colorful cast of characters who comprise TLC’s already robust unscripted programming slate. “The TLC talent has…

It wasn’t even a year ago that Sarah Cooper seriously thought about once again setting aside her dream of making it big as a comedian and heading back into corporate America for a steady gig. Then the former UX designer at Google downloaded TikTok at the height of the pandemic and hit record. The rest, as they say, is history: Cooper is now a near household name for her wide-eyed, exaggerated lip-syncs of President Donald Trump on the video app—as well as other platforms like Twitter and YouTube. The viral videos quickly catapulted her career, leading in rapid succession to a guest-hosting spot on Jimmy Kimmel Live, a prime-time appearance at August’s Democratic National Convention, a Netflix comedy special (Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine) debuting Tuesday and a TV series in…

Even in a conversation, albeit over Zoom, Jeffrey Goldberg is first and foremost an editor: “There would be a comma there, by the way. Sorry, I tend to punctuate my sentences, and sometimes I go out loud.” “When you join The Atlantic … and, you know what, let me word this right.” “Tell me when I’m rambling off the rails here.” That attention to detail has served Goldberg well during his four years as The Atlantic’s editor in chief, a position he landed after proving himself time and time again as a talented reporter and remarkable writer. Adweek’s Editor of the Year has led by example, continuing to write thoughtful, provoking stories that break national news (including his explosive September report that President Trump had called Americans who died in…

When Covid-19 threw a huge curveball at the events sector, Axios was quick to adapt, producing more virtual events in 2020 than it had in the prior two years combined. Of the 56 events the company had produced as of Sept. 30, 52 were virtual, with big-name participants including Cory Booker, Jeb Bush, Mark Cuban, Amy Klobuchar, Kevin Mc-Carthy, Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Yang. The pandemic didn’t keep the sponsors away, either, as large brands including Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Pfizer and Lilly, Qualcomm, Salesforce and Slack reached for their virtual checkbooks.…

Adweek: How did you come up with the concept for Prose’s first-ever national brand campaign? Birla: The concept was a partnership with our creative agency, Red Antler. As this is our first 360 campaign, we wanted to achieve two things: Explain how Prose’s personalized hair care offering works and highlight how Prose is setting a new beauty standard by celebrating personalized products while educating consumers. What have you been up to lately and what’s in the works for you? At the beginning of July I gave birth to a wonderful baby boy. He’s my first! So I’ve been embracing and enjoying being a first-time mom. I’m looking forward to going back to work and reconnecting with my team. Over the past few months I’ve realized that being a mom has…

Misha Green finds new ways to terrify viewers with each episode of Lovecraft Country—from a haunted house to demonic twins—but the creator herself doesn’t frighten easily. “I very rarely get scared,” says Green. Well, except for one thing: “I guess stasis scares me: the idea of not growing, not challenging yourself, not being surprised.” Certainly no one who has seen Lovecraft Country will ever accuse Green, Adweek’s Game Changer of the Year, of not challenging herself. Every episode of her HBO series, which is based on the 2016 Matt Ruff novel about two intertwined Black families in 1950s Jim Crow America struggling against racism while also facing off against untold supernatural horrors, swings for the fences. One episode takes the audience on a lavish journey through space and time, another…

With its remarkable journalism, The Atlantic grew its subscriber base in a single year nearly three times what the periodical had projected to reach in two years. In the pandemic’s first two months, it added 70,000 subscribers, reached more than 200,000 subscriptions by June and now has 650,000 total subscribers. With coverage that ranged from how to stop a civil war at the beginning of the year to its own Covid-19 tracking project, The Atlantic has remained a clear, concise and accurate voice providing context and perspective while navigating a tumultuous year.…

NPR’s in-office concert series, a YouTube staple that throughout the years has featured artists including Alicia Keys, Lizzo, Yo-Yo Ma and Maggie Rogers giving intimate performances in a cramped space, has seamlessly pivoted from putting on concerts in NPR’s D.C. office to showing performances from artists in their creative at-home setups. Six months after NPR announced it would be streaming performances from home for the foreseeable future, the BTS Tiny Desk (Home) Concert set a record in first-day views within its first 25 minutes. And just 10 days after that September BTS show, NPR Music’s YouTube subscribers increased by 10% to more than 4.8 million.…

In honor of Halloween, it’s time to tell the strange story of how one of America’s favorite candies got its big break. In 1981, Steven Spielberg was getting ready to start shooting E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. One of the critical scenes involved Elliott, the movie’s kid star, winning the trust of the wrinkled little space alien by offering him some candy. But Universal Studios had a problem: M&M’s had turned them down. The consensus now is that Mars Inc. wasn’t interested because the plot was a little too, well, weird. So Universal decided to approach its second choice, Reese’s Pieces. At Hershey’s headquarters, director of new product development Jack Dowd was happy to take the call. In the three years since Reese’s Pieces launch, sales were slipping. So Dowd was eager…

When the internet began clawing at publishing’s business model a generation ago, subscriptions to newspapers and magazines weren’t the only things to suffer. So did the newsstand. A century ago, Newsdealers Association president William Merican proclaimed the newsstand essential to city life. Working people, he said, “buy newspapers to make them forget their misery. If the public cannot get their newspaper from a person on the street, they will find the inconvenience intolerable.” Judging from the plethora of reading options shown in this 1963 photo, he was probably right. But Merican never foresaw the day when commuters could read articles on their smartphones. Newsstand sales of magazines and newspapers have been falling about 10% yearly since 2007. Odds are the newsstand will hang on, though older consumers fondly remember the…