Table of contents for December 2, 2019 in Adweek

Super Bowl LIV is still two months away, but Fox Sports’ ad sales team scored a surprising early victory: It has already sold out the entire in-game advertising inventory of 77 spots, with advertisers paying as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds, according to Seth Winter, evp of sports sales. It’s the earliest a Super Bowl has been sold out in nine years, since 2011’s Super Bowl XLV, which also aired on Fox, wrapped its in-game sales in late October 2010. In recent years, networks haven’t announced sellouts until just hours or days before the game. For brands left on the outside looking in on Super Bowl Sunday, Fox still has pre- and post-game inventory available.…

Marketers have always chased eyeballs. Now, they’re chasing influencers across the far corners of the internet. Better to fish where the fish are than to cast a line into the void. And where these fish are—the social platforms—marketers are finding that the water is welcoming if they understand how influencers treat each platform. “Right now, we’re seeing brands just putting all of their dollars in Instagram. And while Instagram is amazing, a single platform strategy isn’t a great one,” said Daniel Schotland, COO of influencer marketing platform Linqia. While Instagram is the king of social media, it’s not the only game in town. A recent report from The Observer found that younger influencers are turning their noses up at Instagram in favor of TikTok’s sillier point of view. Meanwhile, other…

JCPenney has previously run ads during Countdown to Christmas, but the retailer brought its commitment to a new level this year with a wide-ranging partnership around the original movie Christmas at Dollywood, premiering Dec. 8. The movie’s star, Hallmark Channel mainstay Danica McKellar, will host six custom vignettes (produced by Crown Media Productions) talking about her own past and present Christmas traditions. They will air during the premiere, all in first position with other JCPenney spots airing throughout, and across Hallmark Channel’s and JCPenney’s digital and social platforms. The partnership, which was negotiated during this year’s upfront, also includes co-branded in-store displays rolling out this month, featuring the retailer’s products and promoting Countdown to Christmas. “Hallmark movies are filled with traditions and joyful moments. Our overarching 2019 holiday campaign is…

In a world… I hope you read that first line imagining a deep and dramatic voice. Good, because what I am going to tell you requires the kind of gravitas that creates spine-tingling anticipation. In a world where “skip ad” is an advertiser’s worst enemy, where fast-forward is the death knell of the 30-second TV spot, where streaming and on-demand services leave agencies out in the cold, animated stickers for messaging are the hero that the ad world needs right now. Let me tell you why. For the first time in history, technology and animation are sophisticated enough to come together to bring the branded mascots, characters and content that we’ve come to know and love right within messaging and, therefore, within our conversations. I have some experience in the…

LEGO, ONE OF THE world’s most beloved brands, has an internal agency that handles much of its creative output. But when it came time to launch a massive global brand campaign, the Danish toymaker’s first in 30 years, it was BETC that Remi Marcelli, Lego’s svp and head of its 500-person in-house agency, hired to get the job done. The campaign, which involved a Tom-and-Jerry-esque chase around a city made of Lego bricks, was a highlight of BETC’s year, but hardly its only piece of standout work. Twenty-five years since its inception, the Paris-based agency that’s arguably best known for putting the Evian babies on the map is stronger than ever. Armed with an eclectic mix of local and international clients, Adweek’s 2019 International Agency of the Year is in…

Adam Reed invented Reindeer in Here after realizing the popular Elf on the Shelf would “scare the crap out of my daughter.” While the Elf functions as a kind of North Pole policeman—surveilling kids for bad behavior—the Reindeer is a “Christmas friend” who isn’t reporting back to Santa. Proudly sporting mismatched antlers, Reindeer also espouses diversity and tolerance. And this holiday season, he’s for sale at nearly 2,000 retailers. The only question is: With Elf on the Shelf (and Mensch on a Bench) already in the mix, do shoppers need another holiday helper? Read more at adweek.com.…

IT’S NOT EVERY DAY THAT—in the midst of an unprecedented crisis—one of the world’s largest auto companies turns to a creative shop of around 100 that was launched a little over a decade ago. When Volkswagen named Johannes Leonardo as its lead brand agency, it was a defining moment for agency and client alike. At the time, Volkswagen was still reeling from an emissions scandal, with consumer sentiment at an all-time low. “When the world’s biggest car brand comes to an agency like us with such a huge problem, it’s really a sign for us that Johannes Leonardo has come of age,” observes co-founder and CEO Jan Jacobs. That the agency was able to rise to the challenge with a campaign that turned around brand sentiment and drove summer sales…

From top-performing emojis to the best shade of blue for a carousel ad, AI is helping direct social media strategy. Pattern89, whose AI-based software aids marketing on social media, analyzed ads over six months. It found certain patterns and features that can maximize ROI, reduce costs and enhance creative performance, like the optimal number of faces (16) or even beards (eight) in an ad. “When you begin with data-driven strategies, you improve your overall campaign performance because it is distinct from other campaigns and publications, algorithmically unique and fresh for customers,” explained R.J. Talyor, founder and CEO of Pattern89. “AI can find patterns and outliers while humans make ads more ‘human,’ and this combination will ultimately make marketers more successful in 2020.” Talyor also said real-time and predictive data could…

The Rise of the Dorkmobile Of all the adjectives one might apply to the minivan, “hot” and “stylish” are not likely to be among them. Three decades ago, however, such praise is exactly what this magazine heaped on the likes of the Dodge Caravan by including it on its list of Hot Products of 1989. In fairness, Adweek—which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year—had ample reason. By the late 1980s, minivans had singlehandedly reversed Detroit’s sliding fortunes by answering the demand for a capacious family ride with better mileage than a station wagon; some 850,000 minivans were driving off the lots yearly. “Baby boomers are out in force,” we reported, “but they have abandoned their parents’ land yachts for more stylish and better handling minivans.” As things turned out,…

A decade ago, as upstart Hallmark Channel struggled to make a name for itself in a cluttered cable landscape, the network decided on a bold move: turning its fledgling original Christmas movie output (the first of which aired in 2002, one year after the network launched) into a holiday event called Countdown to Christmas. Getting audiences to expect holiday-themed content whenever they turned on the network would give it “a competitive advantage,” reasoned Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Crown Media Family Networks—but success was far from guaranteed. Still, the network thought, “even if our ratings slipped in some places because we went 24/7, it was still worth it because we are creating a destination and becoming synonymous with holiday,” said Abbott. “It was a risk at the time—and a…

Ever since the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 passed in late December, merchants have been counting down the days until ecommerce platforms and payment providers made it easier to sell, fulfill and operate a CBD business. Over the past few months, BigCommerce, Shopify and Square started rolling out capabilities, both on their platforms and in payment processing, to make it easier for their merchants to freely sell cannabidiol (CBD) across their platforms. Now, with some of those biggest hurdles removed—such as unstandardized rules in running an online store or merchants being able to use only high-risk processors to help with payments—CBD merchants are starting to operate as normal businesses. While some of these brands want extra help from ecommerce platforms and in using marketing tools available on Facebook and Google,…

FIND YOUR STORY The No. 1 question that people ask in an interview is the No. 1 question you prepare least for, which is: “Tell me about yourself.” … We’ll Google that company, the person interviewing us, we’ll learn everything about them, but we’ll never take a minute to take a piece of paper and talk about the story I want to tell. Every single one of us can tell a story, but are you hitting on the points that matter to you? For me, I started thinking about every single moment in my life as a chapter. It sounds incredibly strategic—it genuinely is—and I encourage you to do the same thing. DO SOMETHING YOU LOVE A bit of advice I was given when I was about 20 years old…