Eric Hippeau has been riding the media wave for almost three decades–from running Ziff Davis throughout the 1990s to serving as the chief executive of the Huffington Post during its 2011 sale to AOL. Since then, Hippeau has served as managing director at Lerer Hippeau Ventures, the venture capital company whose fingerprints are all over…
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The 22 Most Engaging Pieces of Brand Content on Social Media in 2017
Now that social media is so supremely essential in brand messaging, there are a lot of layers underneath what makes a successful post, video or tweet. This year, brands tried to utilize the popularity of emerging formats like video, and they kept politics in mind when creating assets while inspiring their fans through acts of…
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Why Influencers Love and Hate the New 280-Character Tweets
I’ve always loved the concept of microblogging and the challenge of fitting a thought into 140 characters–it encourages creativity and sharpness. But Twitter isn’t what Twitter used to be back in the day when conversation was a hallmark. Now it’s an endless stream of news and rants. And let’s face it: Some celebrities and politicians…
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US Creative Works: Featuring Barkley, Sleek Machine, Bailey Lauerman and more
Welcome to The Drum’s US Creative Works, in partnership with Workfront.
This section is dedicated to showing the best creative work in North and South America and gives our readers the chance to decide which work we feature as our ‘Creative Work of the Week.’
For project information, creative credits and more, click on the project to expand to full screen and click on the stars to vote. To submit work for our US Creative Works section, fill out this online form.
To vote for your favorite, click on the project and make sure you click on the stars. The winner will be chosen based on the average rating and the number of votes cast. This is our last US Creative Works before the new year. Thanks to all our readers for continuing to vote and bring attention to the region’s best campaigns. Voting closes on Wednesday, January 3, 2018.
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McCann New York: Mucinex ‘Mr. Mucus Misinforms’
Agency: McCann New York
Client: Mucinex
Date: December 2017
In Mucinex’s latest ‘Let’s End This’ creative by McCann New York, animated germ Mr. Mucus is back and trying to trick people into believing that regular cold medicine is a good as Mucinex, which lasts 12 hours. The idea started with a fact: 70% of people want long-lasting relief, but they stick with products that only relieve for four hours. The latest iteration features him showing up in contextually relevant media with creative design around consumer’s passion points.
On the Weather Channel, Mr. Mucus will show up on the live set to interfere with the anchor. On Twitter, he will show up in costume and recommend against taking Mucinex. One day he’s a mucusy meteorologist, the next he could be an anchorman delivering you “the news”. The campaign compliments the content viewers are about to watch, and plays into the role of Mr. Mucus and his constant goal to discredit Mucinex and its superior relief.
‘Mr. Mucus Misinforms’ will run through February 2018, the months with the highest cold and flu incidence in the 2017/18 season. It will be delivered across TV, digital and social with augmented reality on the Weather Channel. In addition to national broadcast on The Weather Channel, social will include Twitter and YouTube.
Credits:
Rob Reilly, Global Creative Chairman
Chris Macdonald, President, McCann NY
Leo Tarkovsky, President, McCann Humancare
Tom Murphy and Sean Bryan, Co-Chief Creative Officers
Katie Boyko, Producer
John Danbeck, SVP Group Account Director
Zulay Tomasiello, SVP Group Planning Director
Elissa Aguirre, VP, Strategy Director
Nic Howell, Creative Director
Geoff Bentz, Creative Director
Haley Cole, Senior Art Director
Jillian Menor, Senior Copywriter
Claire Hogan, Account Director
Lauren Galasso, Account Executive
Megan Flannery, Project Manager
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Laundry Service: Michelob Ultra ‘We Are Anti-Resolution’
Agency: Laundry Service
Client: Michelob Ultra
Date: December 2017
Michelob Ultra’s ‘Anti-Resolution’ is a part of the brand’s holiday campaign. From the beer brand that celebrates those who live an active, balanced lifestyle, ‘Anti-Resolution’ challenges consumers to rethink their New Year’s Resolutions by showing them that you don’t have to wait until the New Year to live fit and fun.
The new spot stars fitness influencers: Kenny Santucci (@kennysantucci), April Sutton (@suttonstrong), and Brad Kolowich (@bradkolowichjr). The spot pairs footage of each member of the trio writing out a resolution with a photo collage showing how they’ve already fulfilled those resolutions in 2017. At the end, each of them rips up their ‘resolutions’ reminding viewers that they can #LiveULTRA every day.
Credits:
Agency: Laundry Service
Client: Michelob Ultra
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Phenomenon: Flywheel ‘F*’
Agency: Phenomenon
Client: Flywheel
Date: December 2017
Flywheel Sports, a boutique fitness company, partnered with LA-based business transformation agency Phenomenon on an ad campaign titled, ‘F*,’ in tandem with Flywheel’s high-performance at-home-bike and streaming content platform, Fly Anywhere.
The campaign reminds riders to fly beyond the things that are holding them back – be it distractions, shortcuts, Monday mornings, or the perception of their own limitations – in the pursuit of a more full life fueled by a great workout. The 360 campaign includes video and digital components that will run in Flywheel studios and across paid social, pre-roll and digital media. The campaign is rolling out through 2018.
Phenomenon also played a key role in the Fly Anywhere product design, including early involvement in product and design strategy, features, UX and UI design, and brand experience continuity.
Credits:
Agency: Phenomenon
Client: Flywheel
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The Library of Congress to stop archiving all tweets from 2018
The Library of Congress will soon acquire tweets on a selective basis from 2018 having previously held all tweets that were public.
The Library of Congress revealed in a blog post that its decision to be selective was due to the evolution of the social media landscape, with new platforms, an explosion in use, terms of service and functionality shifting frequently and lessons learned about privacy and other concerns.
The Library further mentioned in its white paper that it will focus its efforts on preserving the Twitter collection for future generations.
It also wrote: “Throughout its history, the Library has seized opportunities to collect snapshots of unique moments in human history and preserve them for future generations.”
In 2010, the Library of Congress announced the acquisition of entire archive of public tweet text beginning with the first tweets of 2006 through 2010, and continuing with all public tweet text going forward. The Library took this step to acquire and preserve a record of knowledge and creativity for Congress and the American people.
What Can Dislodge Tencent as King of the Videogames?
Predicting the success of videogames is a bit like predicting how movies will fare—much relies on the fickle winds of public taste. How, then, has China’s Tencent—now the world’s largest games company—survived and prospered?
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Agencies and management consultants are not from different planets
Never before has the advertising landscape looked so volatile. Advertising is less trusted than ever. Digital media is the solution to many marketers’ growth asks but is simultaneously facing up to its own challenges around quality and transparency. Facebook and Google are eating up any growth and Amazon is looming large on the scene.
The Big Four, namely GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) quartet of frenemies dominate business headlines and there are some common factors in their continued growth: thinking five-10 years out, investing significant amounts back into research and development, and constant experimentation in to adjacent sectors. Meanwhile, closer to home, Accenture has become the fastest growing agency group with impressively deep digital capabilities. Whilst the Big Five consultancies also have deep pockets and are fast evolving their capabilities, arguably they still lack the requisite strengths around understanding consumer behaviour and building brands.
That said, never before has the opportunity been bigger for agencies. As brands all prioritise their own flavour of digital transformation, the opportunity presents itself for agencies to act in a more consultative way to support the shift to a data driven, content-powered future. The regular focus of client and agency conversations today is around connecting audience data sets to inform paid (increasingly addressable), owned and earned media activation and content creation that maps to a customer journey.
It’s one integrated conversation yet on the brand side can involve more than a handful of departments, and agency engagements across planning and activation can easily enter double figures.
Few CMO’s would claim they are fully ready for this brave new world, so the agencies’ task is to lead, to outline the blueprint. This demands different skills and starts with solutions that either unlock growth or address business problems. Account management evolves into a more T-shaped, strategic marketing skillset, tasked with knitting together squads of specialists, technologies and partners and orchestrating multiple stakeholders. Sound familiar at all?
The closest analogy I can think of is that of a Managing Partner in a consultancy who oversees C-Level stakeholder management whist orchestrating their many different disciplines to deliver multi-faceted recommendations. Where a consultancy comes unstuck is they over-index on infrastructure and organisational design but lack the human, or customer, angle. Importantly most rarely go as far as execution, so they are unable to close the loop in a way that agencies can; that advantage is however not leveraged anywhere near as much as it could be by agencies.
We find ourselves at a fascinating tipping point; most businesses now recognise “what” they need to do to transform their business for a digital world, but are grappling with the “how”.
In the main, brands lack the necessary skills and resources internally or find it challenging to retain this talent. When looking for support from the outside, there is arguably no single partner today able to provide both the answers and the specialist deployment skills. Consultancies excel in creating digital experiences and deploying cloud and mobile led solutions. Agency groups are rich with an eclectic mix of planners and specialists, but more must be done to better orchestrate and integrate that talent to align with higher level business priorities.
The agency community must also admit that there remains a skills gap in adland for this brave new world. There are just not enough T-shaped strategic client leaders that get digital, data, content and tech. These will only be created if agencies invest both in developing the leaders of tomorrow from within, whilst also bringing in hybrids from non-agency backgrounds.
To come out on top, agencies must also borrow from the wider business (and consulting) world. Agencies need to be closer to the board table more frequently, which means spending less time obsessing around big ideas and social media and more talking the language of business, commerce and transformation. Elevating the conversations back to a place where marketing investment is seen as a proven driver of growth is business critical. This demands a laser focus on effectiveness in business terms, not through the self-fulfilling lens of its own industry awards.
The consulting firms are well schooled in focusing on business outcomes and in the intersection of business and technology. They are however, yet to master the art of long-term brand building. For me, the nirvana lives in the intersection of brands mastering technology to better serve people’s needs and deliver hyper-relevant services.
To navigate these current stormy waters, agencies must act more like businesses themselves. Fame is oft chased with no roadmap for converting that engagement into fortune. Often for good reasons, agencies allow an unreasonable client or new business prospect to take them off course. If the media industry, in particular, continues the current race to the bottom on price, rather than focusing on business value, it will forever be a commodity. Agencies are superb at staying close to the developments in their own industry but at worst could be judged as being overly insular. To compete with the likes of Accenture or Deloitte, agencies must invest in deepening their knowledge of the industry verticals their clients operate in. At all levels, agencies need team leaders to operate more like business owners and apply these skills as portfolio managers and growth architects to the advertisers they serve.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating that the ad industry should aspire to being accountants or even management consultants; the industry’s strengths must be retained but never has evolution been more urgent. As I mentioned in part one of this essay , I believe this is not an “either/or” conundrum, but about combining business acumen “and” creativity. Creativity is one of the 21st century’s most critical business skills but it is more potent when it can be measured, replicated and scaled systematically. Technology, data collection and consistent process make that much more achievable today. In my humble opinion, to counter trust issues and competition, the agency community must pivot rapidly to become more consultative, business-focused and accountable. It must do this whilst protecting its unique culture of human understanding and flair for storytelling and brand building.
Doomsayers may argue that destroys the essence of what our industry is about, but over the last decade the landscape has already dramatically changed and the future of advertising looks very different.
CMO’s are no longer seeking just brilliant comms; they seek more than advice, namely tangible support in experimenting with and executing new models. Agencies enjoy two major advantages here; they have both the ear of the CMO and the resources to deploy and deliver change, not just theorise about it. Agencies are experts in helping brands transform their image and refresh their consumer offering. Isn’t it about time they turned these skills on themselves? With today’s perfect storm and a brave new world in front, agencies must reflect and take some time to think more about the long-term.
What will marketing look like in 2020, when 70% of media spend is digital, predominantly delivered programmatically and consumed on a small screen? Now is the time to re-imagine the model. Agencies still have time to define the stretch role that they can play to retain their position as trusted advisor to the CMO and grow beyond it to influence the wider board. Adland today looks down its nose at management consultants as if they are from Mars, but in the future, they may well be co-inhabiting the same atmosphere. The next 18 months is going to be just fascinating.
Paul Frampton, was chief executive of UK and Ireland at Havas Media Group
Former Bush-Era Economists Considered for Fed’s No. 2 Job
The White House has interviewed two economists who served in senior positions in the George W. Bush administration to serve as the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
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PureGym's CMO on why the fitness firm's latest campaign champions people, not six-packs
Low-cost fitness chain PureGym has overhauled its marketing strategy to move on perceptions that it is simply a budget brand, and instead show the impact its services have on consumers’ day-to-day lives.
The company, which has over one million members in 200 locations, has unveiled a fresh campaign which is centered around the ethos that ‘People Are Incredible’.
As it looks towards the next stage of growth, PureGym’s chief marketing officer Stephen Rowe told The Drum that the brand is taking cues from the likes of Premiere Inn which has leveraged its marketing to move up the value chain and create a deeper connection with consumers.
Until now, Pure Gym has relied on competitive pricing, a no annual contract policy and 24-hour access to attract sign ups; but now is it looking to get customers to emotionally invest in the brand too.
As such, its latest campaign comprises several films juxtaposing ordinary equipment such as the humble exercise bike against a backdrop of gritty ‘This Girl Can’-style footage showing people working out. This footage is shown alongside other films which reveal what effect going to gym has on members’ day-to-day pursuits.
The campaign will run over the busy post-Christmas and New Year period, with fresh takes on the proposition to come in 2018.
While it would be easy to plump for tired tropes about having eaten too many pigs in blankets over the festive period, or imagery focused on physical results, the brand wants to instead show the role it can play in people’s everyday lives.
“These aren’t stories about the ‘before and after’ reveal or people with six packs,” PureGym’s chief marketing officer Stephen Rowe told The Drum, “these are ordinary everyday people that really value healthy lifestyles and the role Pure Gym can play in that.
The firm’s recently appointed creative agency BJL worked closely with PureGym’s in-house team to develop a number of iterations that will run across TV, digital and social, CRM, in-club and a range of other recruitment communications.
Accompanying the campaign is a series of social videos which tell the real-life stories of some of PureGym’s members, including Abbie who took up running as a way to cope with grief and firefighter Lenny.
PureGym, which was recently acquired by US investor Leonard Green & Partners, has been one of the driving forces behind the budget gym boom since its launch eight years ago.
Rowe said that social trends focused around fitness, nutrition and the positive impact exercise has on wellbeing have also influenced the brand’s latest turnaround. “People are more conscious of exercise,” said Rowe, “particularly in younger audiences.”
According to non-profit health body UK Active, close to 15% of UK consumers now stump up for a gym membership.
Snapchat courts Ed Sheeran fans with lens to promote new lens
As part of a promotional strategy for Ed Sheeran’s latest album, Snapchat has introduced its World Lens featuring Ed Sheeran as a Bitmoji, as reported by Billboard.
Users can make Sheeran Bitmojis sing his latest song ‘Perfect’ as many times as they want by opening the front facing camera and then selecting any lens from the bottom.
They can then select the lens with the blue divide symbol featured on Sheeran’s latest album to make him sing the song. Sheeran fans took to Instagram to share their enthusiasm for the Bitmojis.
Snapchat has recently released a new feature; its Sponsored Animated Filters, to help brands engage their audience.