Month: June 2021

Other holding company agencies, including WPP’s GroupM, IPG Mediabrands and Publicis, have already made moves to support minority and diverse media through efforts including commitments to spend a percentage of client dollars. However, it remains to be seen if OMG will be able to convince Black-owned publishers that these steps will resonate in any meaningful or long-term way.

With a projected universe at the launch of over 10 million creators, the Diverse Creators Network plans to plug OMG clients directly into content from Asian, Black, LatinX, and LGBTQ+ creators horizontally across platforms. The goal is to eliminate barriers to investment, rather than establishing quotas to fill while building new pathways for clients to access and activate on this inventory. OMG’s media agencies Hearts & Science, PHD and OMD will be the exclusive media agencies handling activation and execution.

The media agency group will house and operate the network through its Omni data unit, tapping into its newly launched 2-million-person consumer panel, Omni Signal, to eliminate bias at the inception point of planning, Hagedorn explained.

“We’re expanding the definition of a diverse publisher to include a new generation of self-publishing media entrepreneurs,” he said. “In making these creators’ content accessible and actionable, we’re exponentially expanding the reach and impact of our clients’ media investments.”

Creators range from stars such as director Ava Duvernay, actor Will Smith and singer Jason Derulo, to Internet-famous creators including Spencer Polanco Knight (@SpencerX on TikTok with 53.4 million followers), Shayla (@makeupshayla on Instagram with 2.7 million followers) and Ali Kabbani (aka Myth, a Twitch streamer with over 7 million followers).

Clients haven’t been directly briefed yet, said Hagedorn, but he said he’s encouraged by initial feedback: “The reaction from the account teams is always the best indicator of expected client interest and investment. By that barometer, we‘re expecting a high level of participation as the launch rolls out.”

There’s a programmatic twist to the rollout of the Diverse Creators Network, as well, as OMG looks to overcome the built-in bias toward major publishers among the major supply-side platforms. Often, smaller minority publishers end up at the bottom of the programmatic bidding consideration set. That’s why OMG is also partnering with SSPs like minority-owned Colossus, and others, to aggregate diverse digital publishers into a programmatic private marketplace (PMP) where they will sit at the top of the heap.

“Omnicom has a keen appreciation of our inclusive approach to supply — connecting savvy marketers with a cross-section of audience who value brands supporting their community and diverse content,” said Lashawnda Goffin, CEO of Colossus.

“Our goal is to go beyond the agency spending target solutions that have been offered to date,” added Hagedorn. “While well-intentioned, they don’t address the critical need: removing the structural barriers in the media ecosystem that have kept diverse publishers and creators at a disadvantage for far too long.”

It seems everyone in the industry has flexibility on their mind. As CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Dave Cohen talked about a forthcoming update of the IAB’s terms and conditions. The new terms and conditions could see changes to the IAB’s flexibility standard governing cancellations. Cohen said we can look forward to an announcement at some point in 2022.

We sounded out speakers throughout the forum about what they’d like to see built into the IAB’s new T&Cs. Dave Sederbaum, evp, U.S. head of video investment at Amplifi, spoke about creating a more level playing field with consistent terms and some degree of uniformity to offer buyers flexibility. Other speakers emphasized the need for a more tiered understanding of flexibility. “I think I would rather not have standardization, because I think there are clients that don’t necessarily need so much flexibility and there are clients that need a ton of flexibility,” said Lisa Herdman, svp, executive director of strategic investments at RPA.

In the meantime, buyers and sellers are creating new frameworks to ensure flexibility for buyers while ensuring a minimum degree of predictability for sellers. So-called “endeavor” deals are one example, where buyers commit to a minimum guaranteed spend but can unlock additional benefits by leveling up their spend. However, the buyer can still opt out of the extra spending if performance fails to justify the spend or other circumstances arise.

Cohen said the long-term viability of these deals will rest on performance and productive relationships between the parties involved. “If you have an endeavor, you need to be in good faith, try to get to that endeavor,” he said. “If you don’t, you won’t be able to do that many times because people don’t believe your endeavor.”

In other cases, consolidation of services is allowing for simplified transactions between buyer and seller, but still leaving buying agencies and clients with flexibility over how and where to allocate spend. “From our clients’ perspective, it allows us to use data to transact in different ways, but not necessarily have to go strike 25 different deals to do that,” said Nicole Whitesel, evp, advanced TV & client success at Publicis Media.

Stephanie Zuroff, director of business development & content partnerships at Samsung TV Plus, said the shift to streaming she saw during the pandemic shows every sign of holding. That compels advertisers to continue moving a growing proportion of budget to CTV. “Ninety percent of TV Plus users do not have another connected device plugged into their TV, so these are users that are not watching traditional cable,” Zuroff said. “They’re users that advertisers can’t reach if they’re not buying CTV inventory.”

Client concerns around brand safety have eased significantly, according to Katie Watson, vp, technology & activation group, Spark Foundry. However, residual concerns remain around viewability, safety and effectiveness, though the specific issues will vary from client to client. And it pays to learn how to explain CTV to clients, said Dick Wechsler, CEO of Lockard and Wechsler Direct. Wechsler thinks of CTV as akin to direct mail campaigns, and one effective plank of a sophisticated multi-channel strategy.

Critically, advertisers are discovering that the ability to measure things like store visits and offer claims via CTV is one of the most compelling arguments for investing in the space. Allergan’s senior marketing manager, Myles Dacio, said the shoppability that can be built into CTV campaigns with QR and SMS codes has a direct impact. “That was a game changer for us, seeing that we aren’t only driving awareness, but lower funnel tactics as well,” Dacio said.

More people are streaming than ever, but CTV audiences haven’t necessarily given up traditional viewing habits. “A couple years ago people were thinking everyone wants to be on demand,” said Samsung’s Zuroff. “But really I think we’re seeing a lot of users who don’t know what they want to watch when they come.”

Although upfront survived the crisis of 2020, there are legitimate questions about how the marketplace will look a few years from now — or if it will still exist at all. IAB’s Cohen said he believes specific types of scarce assets will always support an upfront approach — sports and tentpole events, for example. “But there’s a whole lot of other stuff …. that is being fed into linear broadcasts, CTV outlets, that will become far more automated than it is today,” Cohen said. In the long run, the continued ascendancy of programmatic is all but inevitable.

Rising costs are also affecting the upfront market. Amplifi’s Sederbaum acknowledged the expense, but said there’s still a lot to like about the upfront market, conditional upon flexibility parameters being built in to protect buyers. “As long as you are making sure that it’s delivering on your overall business objectives, it’s the most cost effective way to purchase linear television,” he said. 

TV doesn’t have a cookie problem like the broader programmatic advertising space does, but it does have its own identity issues. Open AP’s announcement of its new Open ID identifier appears to be a step towards standardization, but there’s much work still to do. Samantha Rose, svp, advanced TV & video solutions at Horizon Media, discussed Horizon’s own identity framework, blu, which they’re integrating with Open AP and other partners.

“I do feel like we’re at a pivotal point now where it’s not just theoretical, but there is progress being made,” Rose said.

Debates also continue around optimizing the targeting mix. Unlike mobile, CTV is often centered around household-level targeting. We heard from a number of speakers about how rich data sets can allow CTV to achieve a high degree of granularity, but just because you can target a highly specific viewer doesn’t mean you should. Clients have to remember that multiple people could be watching in one household, and that’s an especially important consideration when children are involved.

“We have blu and it’s been enriched with so many different data sources, we can get pretty granular,” said Rose. “But obviously we want to balance that with making sure that it’s right for a media buy.”

Transparency is still an issue, particularly when buying through streaming aggregators. The emergence of new walled gardens is another development that could impact transparency, but Rose believes there are reasons to be both nervous and hopeful.

Rose said that streaming services that were born out of traditional TV networks should have few grounds for apprehension around greater transparency. “They understand the kind of information that people are looking for and clients and advertisers and agencies are looking for and they’re willing to share it because that’s the kind of information that we’ve always been able to get on the TV side,” she said.

The scatter market exists to allow a degree of ad-hoc purchasing within the generally rigid upfront market. Upfront purchases are made months in advance, committing the advertiser to a specific slate of spots aimed at a targeted demographic. The scatter market is used to sell the remaining space, giving advertisers an opportunity to buy placements at short notice. Scatter advertising is typically sold at higher prices than upfront, but pricing isn’t everything — the buyer may be motivated by a desire to hedge against other purchases or to take advantage of a favorable market or economic climate. The scatter market was huge in 2020, and continues to offer buyers flexibility that is otherwise lacking within upfront.

• “If 2020 taught us anything, it was that every single dollar that we invest has to have a return on it.” — Dave Sederbaum, evp, U.S. head of video investment, Amplifi

Sederbaum spoke bout ROI in the context of building flexibility into the upfront market in linear TV. His take was that the upfront is basically a good way of buying, but the process needs to be modernized. With linear audiences declining, flexible terms give the buying agency a way to ensure they obtain value from their investments. “I don’t mean to imply that two years ago as an investment lead I just wasted money,” Sederbaum said. “But meaning that when things become economically challenging, you need to make sure that you’re delivering on everything you do.” That’s a mindset that could serve buyers and sellers well as we move past the pandemic.

• “You need to make sure that your message is connecting with consumers on a more personal level, your message needs to be creative, it needs to be innovative and it needs to provide value versus being that creepy annoyance that sometimes happens in this space.” — Stephanie Geno, CMO, Innovid

From a content delivery perspective, personalization is at the heart of so much of CTV’s value proposition, with algorithmically-powered recommendations, curated watch lists and so on. Geno said advertisers have to apply the same instincts to create messaging that resonates with audiences. Don’t lean on reach alone to secure ROI, because it won’t happen. Geno admitted that diving into personalization can feel like “boiling the ocean,” but she said Innovid’s investments in advanced creative have delivered impressive returns.

• “We have to establish a new lexicon and we need to create measurements and goals that make sense within a business model, because ultimately what matters is ROI.” — Dick Wechsler, CEO, Lockard and Wechsler Direct

One of the biggest challenges the industry is facing is agreeing on how we talk about advertising, performance and measurement. Wechsler discussed how clients still lean on traditional metrics like cost per point long after it has been rendered irrelevant in local markets by the collapse in linear TV audience. Communication breakdown makes it harder for everyone to do business, and Wechsler said agencies and sellers need to shift the conversation and invest time in helping clients understand CTV to build their willingness to test and learn.

However, the industry continues to cry out for some standardization of terms and measurements. “Nielsen made our lives really easy for a long time,” Wechsler said. “Nielsen was the whipping boy we loved to hate. But the reality was it was the currency, it was the language, so we were all speaking the same dialect and we were able to communicate.”

Innovid’s Geno said the company’s CTV testing has seen advanced creative perform significantly better than standard pre-roll advertising. “We saw advanced creative do a 309 percent lift in engagements and an average of 34 seconds of additional time earned,” she said. “Interactive CTV generated an incremental 63 seconds of time earned, so that means that people are choosing to actively spend a minute plus with your brand above and beyond that standard 30-second spot.”

While Dimond declined to disclose ad spend or specifics, she noted that earned media is now a significant part of the brand’s media strategy after the pandemic shuttered in-person brand activations. To support earned media efforts, Pumpkin Pet Insurance has a separate budget for fixed marketing costs that includes agencies, per a spokesperson for the brand. A major part of the brand’s ad spend is otherwise made up of search and affiliate marketing.

Per the brand’s website, Pumpkin Pet Insurance has been featured in the New York Post and various veterinary news outlets.

“Now that we’re in [a culturally sensitive time] and coming out of the pandemic, when information had to be translated and disseminated very quickly, that’s where we saw earned media play more of a role,” said Erica Samadani, who leads the public relations practice at IPG sister agency MullenLowe. 

Over the last year, the pet insurance brand has rolled out at least three major efforts to gain media traction and boost brand awareness. Last Halloween, Pumpkin launched a digital pet costume generator, prompting a spike in website traffic. In January, the pet insurance brand hosted a virtual Inauguration Day party for President Joe Biden’s German shepherd Major Biden. With that organic traffic to Pumpkin’s site significantly increased during the campaign and landed them an ad equivalent of $14.2 million, according to a spokesperson for the brand, who noted press coverage for the event reached an aggregate readership of 7.5 billion.

“It’s been really about how do we think more creatively to get the media to cover Pumpkin even if it’s a little bit outside of our core pet insurance offering,” Dimond said.

Originally, the brand planned to launch last year with in-person events and on-site activations with veterinarians. But once the pandemic lockdown set in, it pivoted to digital efforts.

“When we launched the brand, we thought it would be relatively easy to get [coverage] for our brand. But we found out that it’s actually more challenging than we had originally anticipated,” she said, noting that they found stiff competition with the hard news of 2020.

Overall, earned media became an increasingly important part of brand awareness strategy during the pandemic, according to Samadani. Approximately 75% of the agency’s clients have increased their spending on communication efforts over the past year, per Samadani. It points to tightened marketing budgets due to the pandemic and earned media acting as a quick and cost-efficient media channel, especially compared to increasing digital ad costs, she said. 

“We think that the industry was going in this way in terms of needing to move at the speed of culture,” Samadani said. “The pandemic made [earned media] not just a nice to have but a necessity.” 

As vaccine rollout continues and the pandemic lets up, Samadani suspects earned media will continue to be a “means to an end,” at least until the marketplace stabilizes.

But while the update has cleared up that particular gray area, it doesn’t render return-to-work policies any easier for employers. Unless you’re a legal expert or have a penchant for nosing through dense legal documents, across not just the EEOC but other relevant regulatory bodies, things can start to get easily tangled. Here’s a break down of key things to know. 

Quick fact recap on the EEOC update:

• Employers can legally mandate that their workers get vaccinated, but they must accommodate those who, for religious, health or disability-related reasons, either cannot or choose not to be.
• Vaccine incentives are legal and uncapped for employers that don’t administer the vaccine themselves (which is most of them). 
• Employers can ask workers to disclose their vaccination status, but that information can’t then be shared. 
• People who can provide proof that they have health-related or religious reasons that prevent them being vaccinated, can wear masks or observe other safety requirements. 

No more fence sitters 
A bunch of businesses have contemplated whether or not to mandate vaccinations for returning workers, but hadn’t been confident it was legal, according to independent consultants spoken to for this article. Now the EEOC has confirmed it that it is, those businesses will likely go all-in on mandating vaccines. “These are tricky waters to navigate, so those businesses that were leaning into it [mandating vaccines] now have a fallback position — that the EEOC says it’s OK,” said Nancy Hill, CEO of independent consultancy for agencies Media Sherpas, and former 4As president. 

While many business owners are still reluctant to mandate vaccines, others strongly believe it’s a critical part of getting business back on track. “Without a healthy workforce, there is no business,” said Rick Wilson, CEO of e-commerce tech firm Miva. “If we are rightly mandated by law to provide basic public safety precautions, such as building codes, fire prevention, why wouldn’t we also provide protection from a virus which is transmitted person-to-person through the air? I would be letting down our workers and clients if I didn’t do everything in my power to protect my workplace with it [vaccine],” he added. 

Mandating vaccinations risks hurting diversity and inclusion progress 
Although the EEOC has said employers cannot reveal a worker’s vaccination status, if that employee has to wear a mask or be subject to different rules, it’ll become pretty clear what their so-called status is to others. That may cause resentment or mistreatment. It could certainly result in people who haven’t been vaccinated, being left out of meetings and projects. Some businesses are already trying to protect employees who are vaccinated and back at work, versus those who aren’t vaccinated. For instance, some ad agencies have stipulated that if a group of staff are to meet a client, those who haven’t been vaccinated can’t ride in the same car as those who have, according to Media Sherpas’ Hill. That’s only going to increase now businesses are legally backed to mandate by the EEOC.

“Vaccine mandates can create an environment of the haves and have nots,” said Mark Piazza, 4A’s, svp, Business Intelligence & Insight Group. He stressed the importance of businesses considering each employee’s situation in order to come up with a solution to their concerns, in a way that can meet both the company and the employee’s interests. “Be consistent to avoid creating irregularities,” he added. He also advised that agencies speak with their legal counsels before implementing a vaccine policy.   

Brian Dolan, CEO of tech platform WorkReduce, said it’s a very difficult situation for employers, who have to try and balance the health risks for their staff, with respecting people’s personal choices. His own cousin caught the coronavirus from a woman in his office who flouted mask guidelines, and so was off work for three weeks while he recovered. “That’s a terrible outcome for both him and his employer,” he said. “In general, employers are best served by staying out of their employees’ personal lives as much as possible, but this is one area where it gets really tricky.”

If you employ, for example, transplant recipients for whom the vaccine doesn’t seem to work well, the last thing you want to do is create further risk for them by exposing them to COVID-19, said Dolan. “Those might be employees you’d like to have in the office,” he added.

Most employers prefer the carrot to the stick 
One of the reasons businesses have pressed the EEOC over the last few months for guidance on whether they can legally offer incentives is so they can opt for the carrot rather than stick approach. After all, employers are already grappling with the challenge of how to incentivize people to return to the office, let alone wanting to dabble with controversial and sensitive topics like whether or not to mandate vaccines.

For many, it’s a choice they’d rather not have to make. In this case, the carrot is the trusty incentive. Some businesses have been bold enough to already offer incentives, with the most common examples being additional PTO, bonuses, gift cards, or entries into prize lotteries. It’s an approach that seems to be working: 40% of employees across 400 businesses polled by legal firm McKinsey, said initiatives would significantly increase their likelihood of getting vaccinated. 

Businesses like ad agency holding group WPP have said they have no plans to mandate vaccines, despite the update. “We fully support the global vaccination effort and encourage our people to take the opportunity to be vaccinated by providing flexibility in working hours to do so,” said a WPP spokesperson.

In some ways, employers may be better off avoiding mandates for now. Law firms are closely monitoring proposed legislation that prohibits “vaccine passports” or vaccination requirements, according to Hayley Geiler, labor and employment attorney at Dinsmore. “There is legislation pending in multiple states, which, if passed, would prohibit employers from requiring employees to become vaccinated, prohibit employers for asking employees to disclose vaccination status, and prohibit employers from taking adverse action against an employee due to their vaccination status,” she added. That’s an area employers will also need to monitor.

Vaccination incentives raise ethical issues 
The EEOC has said incentives can’t be deemed “coercive” but they haven’t actually capped them or stated explicitly what constitutes coercive. For that reason, they’re not without risks, and employers must ensure that incentives are not overly coercive or discriminatory,” said Dinsmore’s Geiler. This may include granting accommodations to employees who cannot become vaccinated. Employers also need to ensure that they comply with confidentiality requirements regarding collecting and retaining vaccination records, she added.

It’s not uncommon for regulatory laws to be vague, but in this instance that could create some confusion over what’s acceptable, according to Steven Ludwig, partner at Fox Rothschild law firm. “There is a lot of internal debate on this currently. For instance, does it mean employers should retroactively pay all the staff who have already been vaccinated [after receiving incentives]? But also it can make things uncomfortable for the employer given the primary reason to get a vaccine is to protect yourself and others, and not have them get sick,” he added.

“So why should there be some need for inducement for people to do it?”

Mozilla Foundation yesterday called out TikTok for failing to adequately police paid political content on its platform. The nonprofit organization behind the Firefox web browser called for TikTok to offer self-disclosure tools for creators to label paid partnerships or sponsored content — as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have done — and also called on TikTok to update its policies and enforcement on political advertising.

The presence of posts on TikTok that are tinged with political messages, but not marked with any sort of disclosure despite a possible material relationship are “exactly why there needs to be more tools available to researchers and the public [from TikTok] to see how influence is spreading,” said Brandi Geurkink, Mozilla’s senior manager of advocacy. The organization said it has been talking to TikTok about political messaging and ad transparency since January.

“Political advertising is not allowed on TikTok, and we continue to invest in people and technology to consistently enforce this policy and build tools for creators on our platform,” said a TikTok spokesperson. “As we evolve our approach we appreciate feedback from experts, including researchers at the Mozilla Foundation, and we look forward to a continuing dialogue as we work to develop equitable policies and tools that promote transparency, accountability, and creativity.” 

TikTok says it expects people in the U.S. posting videos on its app to abide by FTC guidelines requiring that they disclose clearly and prominently any type of relationship they have with a brand, whether it be through payment, employment or a personal or family relationship. The platform provides a tool for influencers to label sponsored posts, but it’s unclear how widely available the tool is.

It is likely that Locke’s posts mentioning Turning Point USA were organic rather than directly compensated by the organization, the group’s spokesperson Andrew Kolvet told Digiday. Turning Point USA , a 501c3 nonprofit, aims to “saturate social and traditional media markets with the message of freedom and limited government” through its influencer program. However, while Kolvet said the group does have paid contractual relationships with some social media influencers, he said, “We don’t compensate the ambassador program,” which Locke and some others posting political messages on TikTok and other platforms appear to be part of.  

A demand for transparency

In February, Mozilla conducted an analysis of U.S. political influencers — conservative and liberal — on TikTok. The research, published yesterday, highlights TikTok posts from several conservative content creators including Locke and states that they “appear to have been flown out to TPUSA-sponsored conferences and festivals, including a Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida on December 20, 2020.” Kolvet told Digiday that Turning Point USA does not mandate that people who attend its events or receive stipends to help with travel expenses post to social media.

In its report, Mozilla argues the posts are examples of how “dark money” funds messaging that influences voters, and states that because TikTok “doesn’t actively monitor and enforce its rule that influencers disclose paid partnerships, nor does the platform label sponsored posts as advertising,” it is “very difficult to monitor political influencer ads on TikTok.”

As more and more issues become politicized and groups like Turning Point USA walk the tightrope between paid political speech and loosely affiliated idea dissemination, it may not be clear even to content posters what needs disclosure. Plus, what is and is not deemed political, and what falls under the umbrella of misinformation is murky, too, even for human moderators to navigate. 

TikTok has “thousands” of people around the world moderating its content and the company regularly updates criteria based on the dynamics of current events and local language, Dave Byrne, global head of brand safety and industry relations at TikTok, told Digiday in May. “When the AI system can’t make a determination, that’s when a human moderator can step in and make that moderation,” he said.

When Locke posted a video on TikTok in April claiming, “no one cares if you got the Covid-19 vaccine,” it may have had political influence or helped fuel misinformed theories about the vaccine, though it was not labeled in any way.

By contrast, when she wrote on Facebook in a Covid-19-related post that “Hydroxychloroquine : works,” Facebook accompanied it with a disclaimer stating, “some unapproved Covid-19 treatments may cause serious harm.”

Additionally, Locke claimed yesterday that Instagram blocked a post she had tried to upload referencing news coverage of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leaked COVID-19 related emails because the post violated the platforms’ community guidelines.

With Sweetgreen’s first Atlanta location opening next week on Tuesday June 8, the chain is employing OOH in the city for the first time. At the same time, the chain recently unveiled a rebrand and partnered with tennis superstar Naomi Osaka; new OOH ads in various cities featuring Osaka touting her new salad bowl and the rebrand. 

It’s unclear how much more the chain is now spending on OOH overall versus other channels as Ru did not break out how Sweetgreen spends its media dollars. In 2020, Sweetgreen spent $223,000 on media, down from $751,000 in 2019, per Kantar data; those figures exclude media spending on social channels as Kantar does not track social spending.  

As far as the chain’s marketing strategy for expanding into new markets, Sweetgreen uses a “combination of a lot of community marketing” as well as digital and OOH, noted Ru. “We do a lot of work with our retail teams on the ground and encourage a lot of our team members in the restaurants to be great marketers themselves along with digital marketing and a lot of OOH.” 

Previous community marketing initiatives have included going to farmer’s markets in new areas to spread the word that Sweetgreen was opening in the area as well as hosting events like the Sweetlife Festival, a music festival that was previously held in Columbia, Maryland and hosted the likes of Blondie and Grimes, among others. 

“As we scale it’s important to continue to show up that way while also having that added layer of social media, OOH and things like that,” said Ru. “What’s really important for us is how we can generate trials via word-of-mouth, community and grassroots marketing. We don’t want to lose that as we get bigger.” 

Focusing on community marketing and building affinity for the brand rather than a singular product makes sense to Nik Sharma, DTC investor and advisor and founder of Sharma Brands. 

“It’s really about going toward this concept of building a movement which can then create a platform for them to do anything,” said Sharma, adding that community marketing will typically come from the brand marketing budget rather than performance marketing. “Building a movement is tough to do, but doing so can be a defensible moat to Sweetgreen [competitors like Just Salad or Chop’t]. It creates a platform for them to build on.” 

The chain is still balancing what it can and can’t do with regard to in-person community marketing events. “As things open up, we have plans to do tastings in restaurants before opening — people love that, being able to taste the menu before we’re open and hosting events that way — so we’re starting small,” said Ru. “Once people feel more comfortable we’ll do more of that.” 

Aside from community marketing and OOH, Sweetgreen has also changed up its approach to marketing this last year by building an in-house agency. The chain’s in-house shop now has 26 full-time employees working on creative, brand production and social media. 

“We wanted to do it so we could almost market at the speed of culture,” said Ru. “To continue to tell our stories that are still connected to culture and do it faster.”

Now, as a companion piece to Acxiom’s and Digiday’s report ‘WTF is identity for marketers in 2021?’, this new infographic unpacks the elements that make up identity and how it works in 2021. From fragmentation to the pursuit of identity solutions it highlights the roles of first-party data, the value exchange and the advertiser’s quest for the identity graph. 

Explore this new infographic to learn more about:

• Why pursuing identity is challenged by a fragmented ecosystem
• How identity solutions rely on the exchange of value for data
• What’s in an identity solution