Table of contents for Oct-19-15 in Adweek

BuzzFeed has launched a new native advertising venture built for presidential candidates and policy groups. Those who participate will appear in BuzzFeed-style videos, which will be clearly marked as advertisements, created in conjunction with product and branded video teams from BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. The launch of native video ads comes as the candidates are looking to find ways to reach millennial voters, who are increasingly moving away from traditional TV. –Tim Baysinger…

MAGAZINES, MEDIA AND MARKETERS…

SPIRITS CATEGORY Name Lee Applbaum Brand Patrón Title Global chief marketing officer Results Market share has grown from 60 to 70 percent under his watch. Two years ago, when Lee Applbaum joined Patrón Spirits as CMO, the casual observer might have thought he had a breezy job ahead. After all, in the ’90s Patrón had already accomplished the hitherto impossible task of getting tequila—the dorm-room and Sunday brunch choice for high-potency margaritas—onto the top shelf. With its hand-numbered bottles trimmed in silk ribbons and fitted with round head corks, plus aged, small-batch varieties like Patrón Reposado, the company recast tequila as a complex liquor worth savoring—and ponying up $49 for. Consumers bought in, and Patrón achieved a market share in the 60 percent range. But Applbaum, as it turns out,…

APPAREL CATEGORY Name Adrienne Lofton Brand Under Armour Title Senior vice president of global brand marketing Results Under Armour honored with Clio Sports Brand Innovation Award. While Adrienne Lofton has worked as a marketer for global brands like Levi’s and Target, it’s experience from her college years that gives her an edge. In the mid-’90s, Lofton was captain of Howard University’s NCAA Division I volleyball team. Marketing, she said in a 2010 interview, “is no different from being an athlete—knowing your path, setting it early and accomplishing it.” Lofton’s athletic drive has never served her better than at her current gig as svp of global brand marketing for Under Armour. Much like Lofton, the brand was an underdog that worked hard and made it big. The company got its start…

TOY CATEGORY Name Michael Moynihan Brand Lego Title Vice president of marketing Results This year’s Oscar activation amounted to $7.5 million in free advertising. If there was moment at the 2015 Oscars that turned more heads than host Neil Patrick Harris in his underwear, it was how Lego turned an Academy snub into the marketing moment of the year. Though The Lego Movie, a fan favorite and $468 million blockbuster, earned not a single nomination in the animated feature category, the 83-year-old Danish toy company proved it didn’t need one. During a two-and-a-half-minute rendition of “Everything Is Awesome,” dancers fanned out through the audience to hand yellow Oscar statuettes (made from Lego bricks, naturally) to the likes of Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood and, most memorably, Oprah Winfrey, whose look of…

DIGITAL BRANDS JUST DANCE TV SPOT ‘This is really the first time we’ve had a campaign that led with a product-feature message.’Linda Murphy, senior brand manager at Just Dance parent company Ubisoft The wand-waving and arm-flapping that defined a Wiiinspired generation of gamers are going out of vogue—and that’s a problem for Just Dance. The video game built up a following of 54 million users who depended on motion-control technology—which game consoles from manufacturers like Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox no longer offer. So like any good tech marketer, Just Dance has adapted to the disruption with a feature to fill the void, launching a mobile app that lets consumers boogie down while using their iPhone or Samsung Galaxy. To generate awareness for the app, on Oct. 20 the brand…

Y&R BAV Worldwide asked consumers to choose their favorite brand in specific categories. “Consumers of all ages want brands to feel personalized and meaningful to them,” said Y&R BAV president Michael Sussman.”If a brand isn’t resonating with a particular age group, it’s helpful to look at the entire brand landscape to see which brands are reaching those customers and why. Then, ask: ‘Is there something I’m not communicating about my brand that these specific consumers appreciate in other brands?’” We looked at four categories surveyed—sunglasses, rental cars, airlines and food—to see where loyalties lay.…

James Wilson, the legendary founder of The Economist, probably had very little idea how many of his readers favored or opposed the Corn Laws. Nor did he likely have a clue how many people picking up the magazine were casual readers and not subscribers. He didn’t need to. The Economist, which began publishing in 1843, has thrived for over a century and a half on the strength of its excellent journalism. It is one of the sterling brands of publishing, a must-read for serious people who are globally curious. But the old publishing formulas that worked for The Economist and other legacy publications pack a lesser punch in the Internet Age. In an era when everyone is a publisher and a world of articles is at everyone’s fingertips, it is…

ALWAYS (L. to r.) Images from “Like a Girl”; photographer Lauren Greenfield, with camera. ‘I NEVER GRASPED WHAT SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WAS UNTIL I STARTED WORKING ON THIS ONE.’—MICHÈLE BAETEN CPG / PERSONAL CARE CATEGORY Name Michèle Baeten Brand Always Title Global associate brand director Results “Like a Girl” has been viewed more than 90 million times online and has won every major advertising award. It’s typical for brands to generate tons of buzz from a Super Bowl spot. It’s less frequent that a brand gets to use a Super Bowl ad to question gender roles and to all but eliminate harmful stereotypes. But that’s what happened with “Like a Girl,” the 60-second commercial from Procter & Gamble personal care brand Always. And global associate brand director Michèle Baeten played a…

TRAVEL CATEGORY Name Tim Mapes Brand Delta Title Senior vice president of marketing Results This year Delta made Fortune’s list of the most admired companies. In recent years, airlines have become a staple on those lists of things Americans love to hate. Search for any airline on Twitter and you are guaranteed to find the usual griping about late flights, missed connections and tiny, uncomfortable seats in coach. According to the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, in fact, airlines are among the most despised businesses in the country. Don’t tell that to Delta Air Lines. Last year, the carrier publicly pledged to reinvent air travel, a category that had become overrun with added fees for everything shy of a trip to the rest room. As fuel prices dropped and the number…

MEDIA CATEGORY Name Jen Neal Brand E!, Esquire Network Title Executive vice president of marketing Results E!’s Q2 ratings up 35 percent in women 18-49. The U.S. and U.K. press were in a frenzy last March, and it was all Jen Neal’s doing. E!’s stunt to promote the new series The Royals—uploading a “tourist” video that appeared to show a naked man climbing out of a window in Buckingham Palace—had gone viral, and dozens of news outlets were covering the video and debating its legitimacy. “When they started talking about ‘Is it Prince Andrew’s window?’ those were moments when you thought, wow, this is working,” says Neal, evp of marketing at NBCUniversal’s E! and Esquire Network. “It was so hard to sit on our hands at that moment, but we…

As they often are, the statistics that sparked the action to address them are as heartbreaking as they are frightening: Of the 289,000 women who die every year as a result of childbirth—that’s one woman every two minutes—98 percent could have been saved by basic access to transportation, supplies and education. Enter Every Mother Counts. Founded in 2010 by model and social entrepreneur Christy Turlington Burns, Every Mother Counts (Everymothercounts.org) is a nonprofit organization focused on making pregnancy and childbirth safer across the globe. For its work on behalf of mothers everywhere, Adweek has named Every Mother Counts the 2015 Brand Genius, Brand Save recipient. Proceeds from a silent auction, conducted in partnership with Brand Genius honorees and held during the Brand Genius gala in New York on Tuesday, Oct.…

Five years ago, BASF discovered it had an image problem—among its own people. Following a survey of 17,000 North American employees, the chemical manufacturer learned that many held surprisingly negative perceptions about company benefits, from salaries to insurance to professional development programs. By and large, workers didn’t believe BASF was keeping pace with other players in the tech and industrial space, even though third-party research suggested it was. What’s more, many workers didn’t fully understand what the company had to offer. Recognizing that the situation could undermine its ability to retain and attract talent, BASF enlisted the brand consultancy Monaco Lange to come up with a solution. “What they needed to do was create something that was going to be long lasting and holistic,” said Monaco Lange managing director Jennifer…

BEVERAGES CATEGORY Name Morgan Flatley Brand Gatorade Title Chief marketing officer Results “Be Like Mike” reboot, part of 50th anniversary celebration, got 500 million impressions. For Gatorade CMO Morgan Flatley, celebrating the brand’s 50th anniversary meant doubling down on the thirst quencher’s heritage in a huge way. Starting on Christmas Day 2014, Gatorade unveiled a riveting, 60-second ad featuring 50 classic sports moments from the past 50 years. Tellingly, the narrative began and ended with Gatorade. The exploits of the New York Yankees, Boston Celtics, New England Patriots and other teams and athletes were bookended by the brand’s 1965 founding at the University of Florida and footage of the University of Florida Gators from today. By stylishly linking the brand to an entire half-century of sports, the spot drives home…

AUTOMOTIVE CATEGORY Name Kim McCullough Brand Jaguar Title Vice president of marketing at Jaguar Land Rover North America Results The hashtag #GoodToBeBad in the brand’s first Super Bowl ad was the game’s most tweeted. For all of Kim McCullough’s childhood memories, two remain especially strong. The first was spending her allowance money on Matchbox cars. The other was watching in awe as her father (an advertising exec at the legendary DDB) pulled into the driveway in a succession of Porsches, Audis and other client rides. “The love of cars seems to be part of my genetic makeup,” McCullough says. “From as early as I can recall, I just thought they were so cool.” McCullough would go on to have a 20-year career in automotive marketing. In September 2014, she was…

CPG/FOOD CATEGORY Name Gary Osifchin Brand Honey Maid Title Portfolio lead, Mondelez Results “This Is Wholesome” videos were viewed 24 million times. It always seemed strange to Gary Osifchin that the characters in traditional advertising were so, well, traditional. “There was the Caucasian female lead, with the French manicure,” Osifchin says, “or the black guy in a secondary role only.” TV spots had been this way for years, but Osifchin recognized a problem with it. “How,” he asks, “can consumers connect with [your brand] if that’s all you’re showing?” That nagging question led Honey Maid and its agency Droga5 to break with decades of standard practice. In 2014, packaged foods giant Mondelez sought to overhaul Honey Maid, a household name and a staple in American pantries. Getting consumers to take…

Upshot is known as “The Seamless Marketing Agency”—yes, it’s trademarked—producing advertising, branding, media, environmental design, even shopper marketing for clients like Google, Kraft and New Balance. Now revamped, the 20-year-old agency assigns holistic, seamless marketing teams to each client. “We’re nimble enough to run circles around the big agencies while delivering great creative in a timely, cost-effective manner,” said president and CEO Brian Kristofek. For instance, in May 2014 the shop kicked off Corona’s “Fill Your Summer” campaign, which took aim at millennials. For 18 weeks, consumers entered to win trips and Corona swag by submitting summer-themed photos to Corona’s site. The campaign was a hit: Over 48,000 photos were uploaded, and the shop improved engagement for the brand more than 70 percent from the previous year. Specs Who (L.…

During her ’70s TV series, there was nothing that Wonder Woman, played by Lynda Carter and based on the DC Comics character, couldn’t do—including switching networks and fast-forwarding three decades. When the show first premiered on ABC in 1975, it was set during World War II, where the Amazon princess and her alter ego, Diana Prince, fought Nazis and other Axis foes using her Lasso of Truth, invisible jet and bulletproof bracelets. But when it moved to CBS for Seasons 2 and 3, the action was shifted to present day 1970s, becoming more of a detective drama. Wonder Woman aired alongside The Incredible Hulk, and four decades later, TV is in the midst of another superhero renaissance, thanks to The Flash, Arrow, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and another DC Comics…