Author: rssmasher

“Tide cleaned up,” says Jonathan David Lewis, vice president of McKee Wallwork & Co., an ad agency in Albuquerque, N.M., that organizes the annual Ad Bowl.

After almost a year behind bars, Lee Jae-yong, the de facto head of Samsung, walked free Monday after an appeals court reduced his sentence in a corruption scandal that ensnared the country’s former president.

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“Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer’s point of view. Today’s column is written by Tony Ralph, director of data and marketing technology at Intuit QuickBooks. With at least one notable exception, nearly all researchers predict the inevitable convergence of the mar tech and ad tech ecosystems. Predictions aside, as a… Continue reading »

The post How Can Brands ‘Converge’ Ad Tech And Mar Tech? appeared first on AdExchanger.

Alexa lost her voice. Peter Dinklage rapped to Busta Rhymes. Eli Manning and Odell Beckham, Jr. did some Dirty Dancing. And Mr. Clean did his… oh wait, that was a Tide ad. But the Old Spice guy… sorry, also a Tide ad. Here’s the ultimate 2018 Super Bowl ad mash-up: all of the commercials, with…

Patriots vs. Eagles turned out to be another classic Super Bowl, with little separating the teams–and a Hail Mary at the end that could have sent it to OT. This was good news for advertisers, who could count on eyeballs throughout the game, and particularly for Tide, which aired four brilliant commercials across four quarters…

Broadcom plans to announce the higher offer on Monday, a person familiar with the matter said, a move aimed at increasing pressure on the takeover target in what would be the largest-ever technology deal.

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pitch-Perfect How did Amazon make sure that the tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices in living rooms around the country didn’t activate during its Super Bowl ad featuring Alexa? It turns out, Amazon has been working on ways to keep Alexa from being activated… Continue reading »

The post Amazon Keeps Alexa Quiet; Telstra Writes Off Its Ooyala Investment appeared first on AdExchanger.

At the Digiday Hot Topic UK: Data-Driven Publishing event last November in London, we sat down with over 20 media-buying executives from major agencies across the country to discuss trends such as media-buying transparency and ad fraud. Check out our earlier research on addressable TV’s role in a post-GDPR world here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Top findings:

• Communication between clients and agencies was cited as the largest transparency-based issue in digital advertising.
• Seventy-one percent of media buyers don’t believe ads.txt is a sufficient solution to ad fraud.

Digital advertising is beset by transparency issues that have left brands skeptical about its effectiveness. The process of buying and tracking ads is notoriously overcomplicated, burdened by technology and laden with acronyms that few understand. However, Digiday’s research found that the most common contributor to the lack of transparency was human interaction, not technical challenges.

The post Digiday Research: Communication is at the heart of media transparency problems appeared first on Digiday.

The #MeToo movement has led to high-profile departures across the business world and a re-examination of workplace processes. In the ad industry, which has seen big-name exits such as Gustavo Martinez at JWT, Joe Alexander at The Martin Agency and, just this week, Mike Germano at Vice Media’s Carrot Creative and Ted Royer at Droga5, policies on interoffice dating are getting a new look.

Digiday spoke with a combination of 23 agencies, human resources consultancies and marketers, several of whom asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the subject, about their existing or nonexistent dating policies. Across the 11 ad agencies Digiday spoke to, views vary on whether they should enforce a dating policy or if one would have any effect on sexual harassment. Out of the 11 ad agencies, five agencies have dating policies and are revisiting them. Six agencies say they’ve have never had such a policy, and they question their effectiveness.

“Dating polices are not a new phenomenon, but with the renewed conversation around harassment in the workplace, we are seeing ad agencies take a moment to consider whether they need one or how they might update one,” said Annick Miller, director of HR consulting at Namely, an HR software platform that also consults on companies’ HR strategies.

“We’ve been thinking about adding a dating policy,” said one HR director at an independent ad agency, who requested anonymity. “Not that we have a large issue with dating, but we want to do everything we can to make sure we are protecting ourselves when it comes to situations that could open ourselves up to sexual harassment issues.”

Other independent agencies that have dating policies are looking into aligning them with their sexual harassment policies.

For instance, two months ago, one HR director said its agency changed its dating policy to include a reference to sexual harassment. It now states that “supervisors cannot date subordinates under any circumstances because it can compromise the ability to enforce the sexual harassment policy.”

Some agencies are leaving their dating policies intact but changing their sexual harassment policies instead. The Jun Group just updated its employee handbook to include additional examples of what sexual harassment can look like. (The agency wouldn’t say which examples it’s adding.) 

Ad agencies can seem like breeding grounds for relationships. Employees work long hours, work closely together in small teams and attend lots of parties where alcohol is abundant. Many times, healthy relationships develop. Other times, such an environment can lead to what one junior agency employee calls a “cesspool.” This person said several fellow employees have dated each other, and everyone is aware of it. Another agency employee said office relationships create drama and distract from work.

Many agencies are OK with employees dating each other as long as their work isn’t impacted. On the extreme end is a “non-fraternization” policy that bans employees from dating at work.

The most common cause for concern is with manager-subordinate relationships, which is why at Omnicom agencies such as BBDO, DDB and TBWA, office dating is permitted as long as neither person has authority over the other.

At Interpublic Group agencies, such as The Martin Agency, R/GA and McCann, all employees are supposed to abide by a code of conduct that threatens “disciplinary action” if employees do not report a relationship where one party has authority over another, according to an IPG spokesperson. The spokesperson said fears about sexual harassment “absolutely” play into the policy.

Policy or not, relationships between supervisors and underlings are inevitable. In part given that reality, while most holding companies have dating policies that extend to their agencies, six of the eight independent agencies Digiday spoke to have none at all. At Los Angeles-based independent agency Dailey, “the expectation is that things be handled professionally and that it be nondisruptive,” said Heidi Williams, svp and director of HR there.

It’s a similar case at independent agency RPA, said Laura Small, vp and human resources director at RPA. “People work very closely with each other for extended periods of time,” she said. “There are lots of opportunities to socialize. Personal relationships are part of the fabric of advertising and communication.” Small acknowledged that junior-manager relationships can “get complicated very quickly,” but said a dating policy isn’t the solution.

There is data that backs up this thinking. According to CareerBuilder’s annual survey published last week, out of 809 workers surveyed across industries, 22 percent of them have dated their boss, up from 15 percent last year, and 41 percent of them had to keep their romance a secret.

It’s questionable how effective the dating policies are at holding-company agencies.

“Holding companies drag out those corporate policies the moment the media gets hold of the fact that someone is suing them,” said Cindy Gallop, previous chairman of BBH, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn and an advocate of gender equality. “They are used purely as protection.”

Employees might not even be aware if dating policies exist at all. Of the eight ad agency employees Digiday spoke with, six employees had to check with their HR director to find out whether or not their agency had a dating policy. One account manager at a well-known agency said imposing dating policies can be difficult to do at agencies. “Everyone wants to believe that agencies are full of cool young people and anything goes,” this person said.

“What agencies need are living and breathing policies that are part of an agency’s culture and communicated clearly,” said Gallop.

Small agreed. Instead of writing up a code of conduct, she said agencies need to make actionable efforts to get the message across to their employees. Barbarian agency not only has a dating policy everyone signs and reads, but it also has a lawyer come in every six months to speak to the agency about sexual harassment in the workplace and how supervisors should not date subordinates.

This past Monday, RPA held a training around sexual harassment for all its officers that went over best practices for dating in the office. “It’s not about a policy,” said Small. “It’s about a way you conduct yourself. It’s about education.”

The post Agencies rethink their dating policies in the #MeToo era appeared first on Digiday.