Month: June 2021

The index will tap a 15,000-consumer database to offer its members monthly rankings of the top 20 brands in each category. According to the ANA, consumers are queried on brand familiarity, purchase intent, environmental and social impact, and level of trust in brand governance, as well as a range of demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral segmentation questions.

Several of the holding company media agency groups have already publicized their own efforts to guide clients toward more socially responsible investments. WPP’s GroupM recently outlined its Responsible Investing framework that declared five areas of focus to “provide a comprehensive roadmap for reducing brand risk and creating a more sustainable media ecosystem,” as it spelled out in a report co-authored by global CEO Christian Juhl and global president of business intelligence Brian Wieser.

And almost exactly a year ago, IPG’s Mediabrands unit declared its 10-point Media Responsibility Principles, and earlier this spring, announced a Responsibility Index.

Notably, ANA’s index will not question advertisers on whether they’re holding themselves accountable with their media investments, unlike Mediabrands’ survey, said Joshua Lowcock, chief digital officer, UM and global brand safety officer with Mediabrands.

The ANA ESG Index considers purchase intent as a “measure of success,” he continued, adding it would be interesting for brands to go a step further to see whether “there’s a macro impact on purchase intent and what action people expect brands to take.”

As an example, Lowcock posited whether environmental concerns depress purchase intent — and how consumers expect brands to make environmentally conscious decisions, in the form of reduced packaging or making carbon neutrality commitments.

“Marketers should look at where they rank (or don’t rank) and ask themselves, are they investing media in a way that undermines public perception,” he said. “Indexes like this have value in giving clients a goal to aim for – but should be considered in line with formal measures and commitments. Perception doesn’t equal reality. Brands must walk the talk.”

If there were any doubts Americans are ready to hit the road again, they were obliterated over the Memorial Day weekend, when the Transport Security Association screened more than 7 million people — the busiest period for the airlines since the pandemic struck. Likewise, businesspeople are also taking to the skies, among them marketing professionals who have been waiting for the moment they could resume meetings with clients, prospects and their own employees from city to city.

A recent survey by the Association of National Advertisers found that 77% of vaccinated marketers said they would be willing to travel domestically for either personal or business reasons, compared to 23% surveyed in February. The study also found that an increasing number of companies are now allowing business travel for executives.  

Jacqui Gifford, editor-in-chief of Meredith Corp’s Travel and Leisure, said other signs point to business travel coming back, including rising prices for hotel rooms and airplane tickets and hotels getting booked for everything from small meetings to large conventions (Gifford is attending one in Las Vegas this August). There’s more of a comfort level with business travel now than there was even just a couple of months ago, she pointed out. “Is it going to feel exactly like 2019? Probably not,” she added. “But things are changing so quickly.”

Aside from DePauw, another marketer getting back in the swing of things is Andy Nathan, founder and CEO of Boulder, Colorado-based creative agency Fortnight Collective, who visited Santa Monica, California last week — his first trip since last February. “Summer is back, traveling is back, opening the country is back, marketing campaigns targeting the intrepid traveler are back, all in a very big way,” said Nathan, whose clients include Patagonia and Yo! Sushi.

Jessica Hong, head of content at the global creative shop Stink Studios, which has done work for Google and Peloton, said the difference between travel now and a trip she took to California for a shoot back in December — a flight memorable for a lack of food, tiny sips of water under two masks, and being jostled by passengers’ every cough and sneeze —is striking. Now, six weeks past her second Moderna shot, and she’s back on a plane for another production, wearing just one mask, drinking water at “normal human intervals” and catching up with colleagues on Slack with coworkers thanks to pretty decent WiFi on planes. “I don’t know if it’s normal, but it feels good,” she said. 

That doesn’t mean there still isn’t wariness on the part of some marketers. “Our teams are feeling the same about resuming business travel as they are about resuming in-person work, a bit of anxiety but also pragmatism borne of the pandemic,” said Eric Moore, CEO of IPG’s Elephant, with clients including Kia and Beats. 

High levels of productivity during the pandemic have the agency’s leadership, like that of so many other companies, wondering whether the travel it sustained previously was, in all cases, business-critical. Moore recalled that prior to last March, he made regular trips between the firm’s U.S. offices, creating an imbalance in his life and an outsized carbon footprint to boot. “The pandemic taught us that the conventional way of doing business was broken, inclusive of travel, and out of balance,” he said. The agency’s approach to business travel will now be “highly discriminating,” he said, and voluntary. “At a fundamental level, we thrive on human interaction, we’re not robots, but we don’t need to use travel as a crutch for lack of focus, individual rigor and hard work,” he said. “Achieving the right balance will be key.”

Cost is, of course, another factor as bosses and clients eye a return to the road. Barry Lowenthal, CEO of The Media Kitchen, a division of the Forsman & Bodenfors collective and part of MDC Partners that has done work for Vanguard and Loews Hotels, said that while technology has shown everyone there’s a way to stay connected even when we’re homebound, it’s also demonstrated how much doing business in person matters — when it is called for. “Just think about how much clients and agencies will save in travel and expenses, which I’m sure will translate to more competitive rates,” he said, adding, “I imagine travel budgets will be a fee negotiation in 2021-2022.”

Howie Kleinberg, president of the New York content marketing agency Glow, whose clients include Showtime and TBS, said a rebalance in business travel is overdue. “In the old way of doing things, we’d jump on a plane at a moment’s notice, fly across the country and burn a few days in L.A. client meetings. But that comes at a cost. Not only does saying yes to every business trip burn productivity and take hours away from the creative product, but it also takes employees away from their personal lives and families. Today, we have a new responsibility to create the future of how we want to work.”

“Going forward, I can see why it doesn’t make sense to travel for every little occasion, for both environmental and practical reasons,” said Sander Volten, global CEO of Amsterdam-based 180, which has created campaigns for Sony’s PlayStation and Lululemon. “However, I still believe there’s incredible value in meeting a client, a colleague or a potential partner in person. It builds bonds that translate in stronger collaboration and ultimately more positive outcomes.” 

Steve Miller, executive creative director, vp and partner at FUSE Create in Toronto, whose clients include CIBC and Ricola, added: “When you’ve got clients outside of your own backyard, face time, the meet and greet, and the ability to build and strengthen the relationship in person far outweigh the inability [to do so] via Zoom. And with the right health precautions— masks, washing hands, vaccinations — I think the client face time and conversation is important enough to get traveling again.”

Steve O’Connell, partner and co-chief creative officer at Philadelphia-based Red Tettemer O’Connell + Partners, whose clients include Under Armour and Planet Fitness, said he has tons of travel on the books. “Although we’ve all been living in fear for so long, it’s going to take a while to shake off the feeling that we’re doing something we shouldn’t,” he said. That caution – or paranoia, depending on one’s point of view – will remain a defining characteristic of agency shoots, he predicted, noting that at a recent shoot he had to take three COVID-19 tests within 48 hours. 

“I’m sure those kind of safety measures will stay with us for a bit,” he said. “But given the past 14 months, I have no complaints. Bring on the nasal swabs.” 

Vox Media has been on something of a shopping spree over the past two years. After acquiring Epic to boost its TV production business, New York Media to expand its publishing portfolio and Coral to add to its publishing technology, in April the media company picked up Cafe Studios — the podcast company co-founded by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara — to round out its podcast network. However, for both Vox Media and Cafe Studios, the motivation behind the deal extends beyond the world of audio.

“There’s lots of things we’re thinking about and planning on, not just continuing additional audio podcasts [including narrative series] in the future,” said Bharara, who was joined by Vox Media Studios president Marty Moe, in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. The companies are also looking to extend Cafe Studios into documentary television and live events. 

Meanwhile, Cafe Studios moves its new parent company further into the subscription business. Vox Media already sells subscriptions via New York Magazine and dabbles in donations via its news publication Vox. But Cafe Studios, which sells subscriptions through its Cafe Insider program, introduces it into the world of subscription-based podcasting.

“One of the attractive things about Cafe is learning from [Cafe Insider] and learning how we can potentially extend that to more of our podcasting business, but frankly how we can connect it to and use learnings for other parts of our subscription business,” said Moe. 

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why Cafe Studios sold to Vox Media

Bharara: There are teams of people, including revenue folks and sales folks and audience developments folks, who are really helping us craft the way that we can expand and grow, not just the current shows but also how we think about the subscription model, also how we think about joining up with other people and, probably most importantly for the purposes of now, the big launch of “Now & Then,” [a current events-meets-history show hosted by Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman].

How Vox Media has built up its podcast network

Moe: [The acquisition of Cafe Studios] reflects the work that we’ve done at Vox Media, over the last three years and change, to build up our audio business and capabilities to begin, in a real way, to scale. We started selling [Cafe’s podcasts to advertisers] in May and have our first programs already underway. We’ve built an infrastructure for launching new shows internally, managing lots of staff and managing advertisers and marketing of shows so that now we’re in a position to actually bring in a company like Cafe and just have it plug into our system seamlessly.

How podcasts can be adapted into other forms of media

Moe: We’re definitely already doing it. It’s still something that’s very early in playing out and determining all the different ways in which something that might start out as a podcast can become something that’s a scripted series, a documentary. It can become an event. It can become a piece that text is written off of. All of those things really are there in Cafe already.