Month: June 2018

CANNES, France–As the celebration of global creativity winds down at this year’s Cannes Lions, lauded work is seeing bright exposure and a deserved spotlight. However, when digging a little deeper, especially with the top winners, one notices that these aren’t necessarily “global” campaigns or ideas. “Most global advertising doesn’t work,” said Sir John Hegarty, founder…

CANNES, France–The #MeToo movement has rallied women worldwide, including women in the advertising industry. In a panel moderated by chief creative officer Karin Onsager-Birch of FCB West, Tarana Burke, founder of Me Too and global CMO Jennifer Sey of Levi Strauss & Co. discussed the origins of the movement and simplicity of the phrase that…

Every once in awhile you stumble across an ad so outlandish you wonder if it’s actually a fever dream. Ikea Canada’s recent Pride spot, which features drag queens strutting down the runway in nonclothing Ikea products, is one of those ads–but it’s very real. The campaign is a collaboration between the furniture giant and Toronto-based…

A campaign from the Ritz Carlton and Hearst Magazines Digital Media will choose five directors to film short videos imagining a stay at a Ritz Carlton hotel. “The Stay” kicked off today, with a call out to screenwriters and directors to submit screenplays imagining what happens after two people check into a Ritz Carlton hotel….

A survey by “Research Intelligencer” and Pollfish finds that most believe TV’s standard-length :30s and :15s commercials are the ideal length, not the six-second and shorter units being tested and
researched by the advertising and media industry. For television, 46.5% of respondents cited 30-second and 26.5% cited 15-second commercials as the optimum length to engage with advertising.

Rapid advances in technology compel marketers to take a good look at how the evolution of platforms is affecting customer interactions, with analysts expressing doubts about the future of brands’ mobile initiatives. Amid mounting costs for marketing non-game applications and the rise of alternative digital channels like progressive web applications, Gartner forecasts that 20 percent…

Former WPP chief executive Martin Sorrell took to the stage at the Cannes Lions festival on Friday to “interview” journalist and author Ken Auletta about his new book on the ad industry, “Frenemies”.

But as expected by many at the festival this week, Auletta did his best to flip the interview around, and to probe Sorrell on his recent departure from WPP and the circumstances that led up to it. Sorrell proved a determined foe, doing his best to bob and weave around any pointed questions about his unceremonious exit from WPP, but Auletta eventually forced him to address “the elephant in the room.”

“It was in the best interest of clients and shareholders that that was the case,” he said. “The situation had become untenable. When you have leaks of that nature at highest levels of the company it’s very difficult thing to maintain… I was shot.”

Here are Sorrell’s main talking points from the session, and from a short press conference that followed:

On claims that he was verbally abusive to people he worked with.
“Am I an easy person to deal with? No. Am I demanding? Yes. But I don’t think that was fair. I think I demanded high standards but I think if you look at overall record… over the last six, seven, eight weeks I received numerous emails which would contradict that.”

On misappropriation of company funds at WPP:
“It was strenuously denied.”

On allegations allegations in the press that he used company funds to pay for a prostitute:
“We dealt with that by strenuously denying it. It’s not true.”

On his new holding company S4:
“S4 is a peanut in comparison [to other holding companies]. But I have to admit some people do have peanut allergies… S4 is going to focus totally on the new stuff. It’ll come totally from the digital angle.”

On the threat to agencies from consulting companies:
“Accenture is 1.5 times bigger than all 6 holding companies put together. I think the model, with what [the industry] is going through, may become a more and more significant idea. The lines are blurred… If you look around where the investment is being made at cannes, the biggest investment here is from consulting companies. That is where the challenge is to agencies. But they don’t compete with us head-to-head, they go upstairs.”

On the relationship between agencies and Facebook and Google:
“If I follow money, the media agencies are increasingly investing in Google and Facebook. If they were frenemies, they’re not frenemies any longer. They’ve become partners. I see Amazon as a third force. But Amazon is in the foothills.”

On allegations of agencies ripping off clients:
“We’ve never seen any specificity at all, It’s all been general innuendo. Nothing has been proven in the U.S.”

On the Cannes Lions festival:
“Last year we were quite open on what we thought about the spending here. June and Cannes may not be — with all due respect to the people here — the best place for our industry to be seen and heard given its challenges.”

The post ‘I was shot’: Martin Sorrell on his departure from WPP and the future of the agency business appeared first on Digiday.

We did it, reader! We made it to the final day of Cannes. And this is the one you’ve been waiting for. The festival draws to a close with a big awards gala tonight, when the holding company, network, agency of the year, Titanium winners and more will collect their gold Lions. (We’ll also see…

The conversation quickly turned into a verbal brawl, largely over Auletta’s recent book “Frenemies” that documents adland’s struggles and Sorrell’s refusal to address his scandal-plagued exit from
WPP.

While many advertisers are shying away from news content due to brand safety concerns, News UK is making the case that buying ads alongside emotionally charged content drives stronger results. The publisher of The Sun and The Times loaded its version of News Corp.’s News IQ platform with data about readers’ opinions, emotions and preferences.… Continue reading »

The post Emotion-Based Buys: News IQ’s UK Version Goes For The Heart appeared first on AdExchanger.