Marketing news

• Twitter doing away with egg avatar in favor of faceless head

  31-03-2017 22:16
  
  Twitter hasn’t received much recent love for its egg avatar, the one assigned if you don’t upload a profile picture. That’s why a blog by the company today (March 31) said that Twitter will be “rethinking” its default profile pic.
   
  The blog, by Twitter Design, said that the egg had been a playful way to reference how “eggs hatch into birds that send all the Tweets you see on Twitter!” Now, continued the blog, it is time for something new from the c
  
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• Mini drones try (and fail) to deliver labels in this funny April Fool’s Day ad for OnlineLabels.com

  31-03-2017 21:37
  
  This year, many brands have tried to capitalize on April Fool’s Day buzz with pranks that mock society’s obsession with gimmicky technology: T-Mobile and Quilted Northern both rolled out campaigns that make fun of wearables, KFC created a voice-activated “smart” bucket and Honda unveiled a line of car horn emojis. 
  A little-known brand called OnlineLabels.com is also getting in on the action with a tongue-in-cheek video that promotes the debut of its so-called &
  
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• Vin Farrell named EVP global head of R/GA Studios

  31-03-2017 20:51
  
  R/GA New York has announced that Vin Farrell is returning to R/GA as EVP, global head of R/GA Studios to lead R/GA’s global studio capabilities. 
  In his new role he will operationalize workflow, training, and collaboration to strategically leverage the talent and learnings across each studio offering.
  In addition, Farrell will manage a global team of producers, content creators, developers, and designers in creating culturally-driven content designed for current and emerging platforms
  
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• Top trends from the month: Featuring March Madness the Pope's hat and Pizza Hut shoes

  31-03-2017 20:42
  
  Every month at Taykey we dig into our massive trove of online conversation data to understand more about leading trends and their implications.
  In March, we saw that March Madness lived up to it’s name, driving the highest amount of conversation over the past month. The tournament, constantly created new headlines and new topics for people to discuss. Other top trends of the month touched on more unexpected territory, ranging from The Pope to Teletubbies. 
  March Madness Lives Up to Th
  
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• Snapchat launches Stories search tool with potential for advertisers

  31-03-2017 20:05
  
  Snapchat has unveiled the first major product update since its parent company's IPO, revealing it's adding a search function to the Stories feature of its app. 
  The move marks the messaging service's first foray into the search arena, with the feature poised to be rolled out to its 158-million-strong userbase in order let them search through a catalogue of public videos.
  More than one million public Stories – which are chronological slideshows featuring videos and photo
  
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• SuperAwesome vows 'contextual approach' to brand safety for kids with new targeting tool

  31-03-2017 19:22
  
  Self-styled 'kid-tech' marketing platform SuperAwesome has unveiled a new tool designed to provide advertisers with a deeper understanding of what exactly young people are engaging with online in order to ensure brand safety – a topic that is increasingly coming to the fore in the media landscape. 
  The outfit, which runs a child-friendly content platform, works with the likes of Cartoon Network, Hasbro and Lego, with its new feature – Awesome Content Targeting (ACT)&nb
  
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• Vevo pitches 'safer' buy to advertisers but holds back from calling out YouTube

  31-03-2017 18:42
  
  Vevo is quickening plans to win round the advertisers reassessing their relationship with Google, but the music video giant appears to be treading carefully so as not to bite the YouTube-shaped hand that feeds it.
  Vevo is one of YouTube’s largest content partners, but in light of the furore around Google’s brand safety the music video platform has positioned itself as an “oasis in the desert”.
  In a timely pitch to advertisers this week, chief sales officer Kevin McGu
  
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• Even low interest brands can make a big impact in social

  31-03-2017 18:15
  
  The NHS website has an entire section on managing your finances; money (or the lack of it) is the top cause of stress in the UK. 
  But the thing is, the financial sector has yet to seize the opportunity that digital technology allows in the field of emotional engagement. Maybe there’s something about spreadsheets; the cold hard rational approach to digits doesn't lend itself to the emotional connectedness at the heart of successful communication.
  The most accurate financial tools are u
  
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• The future of content marketing is rooted in the past

  31-03-2017 17:20
  
  It’s daunting to predict the future; I always get it kind of sort of half right. 
  Let me explain.
  During my career, I’ve been fortunate to be connected to a number of firsts. I was part of a team that sold one of the first one-gallon plastic paint cans in the U.S. I worked for a startup that became one of the first HMOs in the country. I was part of teams that created the first banners on the Web and the first tablet magazine apps. 
  At every career stop, I believed that I w
  
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• Carhartt renews ‘Strikeout for Vets’ campaign to benefit Helmets to Hardhats

  31-03-2017 16:51
  
  Workwear brand Carhartt is expanding its “Strikeouts for Vets” campaign for 2017 by creating a Carhartt Starting Rotation, which includes MLB pitchers Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom, Felix Hernandez, Corey Kluber, and Michael Fulmer. For every strikeout recorded by each of the five pitchers throughout the 2017 baseball season, Carhartt will donate $100 to Helmets to Hardhats, a national nonprofit program that helps military service members successfully transition back into civilian life by
  
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• Making sense of the digital terms moving into mainstream marketing

  31-03-2017 16:37
  
  Co-op Digital’s agile methodology enables projects to change with requirements and market conditionsLast year was notable for a sense of realism. In 2016, Coca-Cola closed its startup incubator, Unilever moved to zero-based budgeting and McDonald’s signed a zero margin deal with Omnicom.
  A year of broader tumult may have caused marketers to refocus, bringing a semi-backlash against many bright, young marketing technologies.
  Commentators such as Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein, adv
  
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• Business on the Move: Mattel, Welsh Government, Glasgow 2018 and more

  31-03-2017 16:30
  
  Mattel Creations has appointed ProjectFirst and Little Dot Studios in Russia and France respectively, to manage AVOD platforms and grow channel subscribers for Mattel’s brands Barbie, Hot Wheels, Monster High as well as cultivating new digital channels for Thomas & Friends.
  ProjectFirst, a multi-channel YouTube network that creates, distributes and promotes family-friendly content in multiple languages, will manage and grow Mattel’s presence on AVOD 
  
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• Timing is of the essence in social media marketing

  31-03-2017 15:50
  
  Oreo’s famous 2013 Super Bowl Twitter ad was one of the most iconic moments in social media marketing. The power went out during the halftime show, and Oreo tweeted an ad that said: “You can still dunk in the dark.” This opportunistic marketing play is still being deemed as best-in-class years later.
  How Oreo achieved this was not a secret. Most marketers know that being timely and responsive on social media is critical because relevance is essential in the crowded on
  
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• New-look Sunday Times launches ad campaign and Classic FM tie-up

  31-03-2017 15:44 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  News UK is introducing a new-look Sunday Times this weekend featuring a streamlined design with easier navigation between sections and a higher story count per page.
  
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• Watch: Should the ad industry use quotas and targets to tackle gender inequality?

  31-03-2017 15:43 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  Campaign asked industry leaders at Creative Equals Future Leaders Conference whether quotas and targets should be used to tackle gender imbalance.
  
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• EasyRoommate appoints Navigate Digital to work on global affiliate programs

  31-03-2017 15:36
  
  EasyRoommate appoints Navigate Digital to work on global affiliate programs on a global scale, covering three networks, eleven different key markets and over 1,200 publishers promoting the brand.
  With a service across 24 countries in eight different languages and with nearly 200,000 live listings globally, EasyRoommate are the world’s number one flatshare and room rental website today. EasyRoommate connects landlords with tenants and helps flatmates find great rooms to rent and aim to
  
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• Marriott turns to 'Snapisodes' to promote loyalty scheme

  31-03-2017 15:30
  
  Marriott Rewards has introduced its broad portfolio of properties and loyalty scheme to social media with a four-part original Snapchat series called  ‘Six Days, Seven Nights’.
  Despite a recent study claiming that some native brands profiles on Snapchat have been lying dormant, Marriott has teamed up with Snap to create content for its rewards scheme.
  Shot using Snapchat Spectacles, the three-minute episodes allow users to explore new experiences around the world with
  
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• Samsung, Santander, Snickers: 5 things that mattered this week

  31-03-2017 15:05
  
  Snickers takes ‘first steps’ on diversity journey
  Snickers is focusing its marketing on the LGBTI community for the first time, using its online advertising to tell consumers they should “be who you are”.
  The Mars-owned brand partnered with online publisher Gay Star News to launch Gay Star Support, a new section of the Gay Star News website that will provide resources for anyone in the community who is struggling with accepting themselves or coming out.
  With Sni
  
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• The rise of independent PR: Part two - How we got here

  31-03-2017 15:00
  
  Founder and CEO of Radix Collective Nicole Jordan thinks that public relations is undergoing disruptive shifts largely driven by the booming freelance, or independent, movement. In a three-part series, she examines how this movement is impacting PR as we know it and why she believes the independent PR market segment will emerge to become an industry lynchpin in the next ten years. Check out part two of her series below. 
  In part one we took a quick look at sample statistics around freelance
  
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• People on the move: Featuring Above+Beyond, Prophet, BBDO and more

  31-03-2017 14:45
  
  This week has seen another wave of appointments and departures at brands, media owners and agencies. The Drum has rounded up the key moves from the EMEA, APAC and North America regions below.
  EMEA 
  Above+Beyond
  Above+Beyond has appointed Karmarama’s planning director Matt Sadler as its first head of strategy.
  In this new role, Sadley will head up the agency’s strategy team, strengthen its "agency for the audience age" plans and navigating its key accounts like Amazon, Betway, Me
  
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• Sainsbury’s and Suzuki marketers call out agency hierarchy

  31-03-2017 14:40
  
  Senior marketers at Sainsbury’s and Suzuki have called out the hierarchy in agencies as among one of their biggest bugbears, believing it can undermine any relationship if people don’t “pick up on the cues” of when it's not constructive. 
  During a panel session on how agencies can help clients to grow at The Drum’s Agency Acceleration Day yesterday (30 March), Rachel Eyre – head of marketing propositions at Sainsbury's – discussed the impo
  
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• April Fool's Day 2017: which brands found the funny this year?

  31-03-2017 14:32 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  It's that time of year again, so Campaign has picked out the best April Fools work from brands, which tickle customers' funnybones.
  
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• Netflix France invites users to explore the phone of '13 Reasons Why' protagonist Hannah

  31-03-2017 14:22
  
  Netflix's new teen drama "13 Reasons Why" centers on Hannah Baker, a high school student who committed suicide after feeling isolated and being bullied. Ahead of the series' worldwide release on 31 March, Netflix France launched an interactive web experience for mobile devices that lets fans explore the content of Hannah's phone. 
  At 13reasons.fr, users have access to Hannah's messages and contacts, her Instagram account, her browser history and more. They can read the last text messages sh
  
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• Netflix launches the Iron Fist Challenge, a mobile experience that lets fans test their strength

  31-03-2017 14:20
  
  Danny Rand, the protagonist of Netflix's new Marvel series "Iron Fist", is a martial arts master whose right fist can punch through walls, split sabers and even cause earthquakes. Fans of the series now have the opportunity to test the strength of their own fist by playing 'Marvel's Iron Fist Challenge', a mobile experience that launched a few days after the series landed on the service on 17 March. 
  The experience is available at MarvelsIronFistChallenge.com and only works on mobile device
  
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• Does tune-in matter in today's TV advertising? Showtime's new ads test the principle

  31-03-2017 14:14
  
  Whether a show is on a broadcast network, cable network or streaming platform, there's rarely out of home advertising that leaves out tune-in information. Showtime decided to go another route with its reboot of the insanely popular Twin Peaks. 
  The show, which has been off the air since 1991, only had two seasons but still has a massive fan base and culture.
  To encourage the show's biggest fans to talk about the return Showtime launched eight billboards in Twin Peaks-specific neighborhoods
  
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• Quilted Northern has created a wearable belt that tracks bathroom visits for April Fool’s Day

  31-03-2017 14:00
  
  Society has become so obsessed with wearables that even dogs now have their own personal activity tracking collars. To poke a little bit of fun at our fixation with tracking everything from steps to REM cycles, toilet paper brand Quilted Northern has created a bathroom visit tracker called uSit for April Fool’s Day.
  Created by Droga5, the uSit belt purportedly collects bathroom data like frequency, duration and exertion levels. According to Quilted Northern, the tracker also lets
  
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• Premier League launches its first ever ad campaign to promote education drive linking football to learning

  31-03-2017 13:33
  
  The Premier League has launched its first ever ad campaign to promote its new community programme that aims to work with schools to help educate children across a range of subjects from maths and English to teamwork and sport.
  The Premier League Primary Stars campaign has been created by Y&R London and aims to support 10,000 primary schools in England and Wales by 2019, before rolling out to every primary school in both countries by 2022.
  The 60-second ad shows primary school children i
  
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• Coca-Cola admits 30% of its ads are not as effective as it wants

  31-03-2017 13:33
  
  Coca-Cola is looking to improve the effectiveness of its digital advertising after admitting consumers are growing ever more impatient and it is “missing a trick” when it comes to ad optimisation.
  Speaking at the Neuromarketing World Forum yesterday (30 March), Coca-Cola’s senior insights manager for Western Europe, Adam Palenicek, said the brand spends more than £300m every year on media in Western Europe alone, and tests in excess of 170 ads a year.
  Through testing the
  
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• Valenstein & Fatt poaches Lee Barber from BD Network to reboot activation proposition

  31-03-2017 13:24
  
  Valenstein & Fatt, the agency formerly known as Grey London, has poached BD Network’s strategy boss Lee Barber to help reposition its shopper marketing arm.
  Barber, who was chief strategy and creative officer at the independent network, joins the business as planning director and will work across the shopper marketing arm that was GreyShopper as well as the wider creative business.
  His remit is to help Valenstein & Fatt put a different slant on shopper marketing, one that makes the
  
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• Pornhub and YouPorn move to adopt HTTPS protection as open season is declared on US browser data

  31-03-2017 13:13
  
  Pornhub has stepped up its efforts to protect the intimate browsing habits of its many users by adopting HTTPS encryption with sister site YouPorn to also make the leap April 4.
  The announcement comes days after Congress eroded the web privacy of US consumers, allowing web companies to buy the internet browsing histories of web users.
  The adoption of HTTPS will not hide the fact the porn site has been visited but will obscure the particular section of the website that’s been tapped into, u
  
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• Ad school grads spotlight products created by refugees by harnessing the power of stickers

  31-03-2017 13:13
  
  Two students from the Miami Ad School in New York City have embarked on a guerrilla marketing campaign highlighting the cultural impact of refugees in the west, applying stickers that read Made By Refugee to everyday items such as books and foodstuffs.
  Kien Quan and Jillian Young have been roaming New York surreptitiously ‘hijacking’ items with their labels, including sriracha sauce (brought to US from Vietnam), Bob Marley (from Jamaica) LPs and a copy of Sigmund Freud’s (from
  
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• Battle of the banks: Who's seeing the best digital returns out of RBS/Natwest, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds?

  31-03-2017 13:06
  
  Banking has been ‘online’ for some time now and in a world where governments of all persuasions have been driving greater competitiveness the ‘big four’ (RBS/NatWest, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds) banks have invested heavily not just in online banking but also online acquisition of new customers.
  In this week’s infographic, The Drum’s Mystery Shopper reviews the online performance of the ‘big four’ high street banks to see if incumbency is really thre
  
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• A warning from CMOs: The ad industry has been too complacent about brand safety

  31-03-2017 12:13
  
  Lenovo global director of marketing, Gary Milner, says it is important for companies to have fewer tech providersEvery industry event in recent weeks has been taken over by conversations around brand safety, transparency and the effectiveness of digital advertising and the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas last week was no different.
  At the event, brands and agencies agreed that the ad industry has taken the issue seriously enough and that, while it might not be a new problem, the scale of the problem
  
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• Five start-ups that shine a light on the future of tech

  31-03-2017 12:11 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  JWT Intelligence's Marie Stafford picks out the start-up firms she believes are poster-kids for the era to come.
  
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• Why Bugaboo is no longer just for babies

  31-03-2017 12:10 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  Premium pushchair brand Bugaboo has launched its first global brand campaign to launch its new product line - luggage. Kate Magee speaks to the company's global chief marketing officer Madeleen Klassen to explain the move.
  
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• Fabula closes after five years and blames 'tough' market for small indies

  31-03-2017 11:31 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  Ad independent Fabula has made the decision to close its doors to business after management questioned its future as a small independent in a "tougher", "more project based" marketplace.
  
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• Snap like a native: Think Jam on mastering the art of Snapchat

  31-03-2017 11:30
  
  Last week, myself and Think Jam’s team of content experts hosted a Snapchat Masterclass at Youth Marketing Strategy 2017, to a room full of marketers who were keen to understand the value of this rapidly growing, diverse platform.
  The aim of our session was to demystify and contextualise Snapchat’s role in a brand’s social media strategy.
  Here are five takeaways from our masterclass session…
  1) You can use your brand voice to speak directly to your audience on
  
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• Guardian boss David Pemsel linked with Channel 4 head role

  31-03-2017 11:19
  
  Guardian Media Group’s chief executive, David Pemsel, is reportedly in line to become the new boss of Channel 4.
  The broadcaster confirmed its current chief executive, David Abraham, would step down at the end of the year, but has yet to confirm a successor.
  Abraham said he intends to depart from his role in order to develop personal plans to launch a media enterprise in 2018. 
  According to reports in the Telegraph, industry sources claim Pemsel has emerged as a potential successor an
  
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• Sky acquires digital content producer Diagonal View

  31-03-2017 11:17 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  Sky has acquired Diagonal View, a producer of social content, known for its popular online channels, including Alltime10s and The Football Daily.
  
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• Google ad ban: IAB Australia urges brands to “get their hands dirty” with brand safety

  31-03-2017 11:16
  
  Australia is the most recent market to join in the Google ad ban fray, with big spending brands pausing activity on the platform over fears around brand safety.
  According to reports, Toyota and many other top spending brands said they were pausing spend on YouTube, joining a sleugh of brands in the UK that have done the same.
  The concerns around brand safety on YouTube first emerged after news reports in the UK revealed that major brands were having ads served against content about religious ext
  
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• The Unlimited Group chairman calls on London ad scene to get out of the 'Soho bubble' and see Brexit as 'an opportunity'

  31-03-2017 11:14
  
  The Unlimited Group's chairman, Tim Bonnet has described Brexit and the triggering of article 50 as "an opportunity" for Britain to find a way to internationalise its service sector including marketing, and warned that the London industry needs to "look outside of the Soho bubble" to understand the issues that led to the referendum result. 
  On the week that prime minister Theresa May began the process of taking Britain out of the European Union, Bonnet, who was speaking at The Dru
  
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• News Corp CEO slams Google and Facebook dominance as it seeks to win media spend dollars

  31-03-2017 11:05
  
  News Corp’s ongoing criticism of the control that Google and Facebook exercise over digital advertising continued this week with the publisher’s chief executive Robert Thomson labelling the two a “digital duopoly”.
  The Rupert Murdoch-controlled media empire has made no secret of its desire to challenge Google’s dominance of the advertising industry as it pursuits a larger slice of advertisers’ media spend. Thomson this week again verbalised his own disdai
  
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• Verizon to launch online TV service with dozens of channels later in 2017

  31-03-2017 11:01
  
  US wireless carrier Verizon is rumored to be gearing up for the nationwide launch of an online TV service hosting dozens of channels later in the year.
  The communications giant has been quietly snapping up streaming rights from television networks, a sign that any launch could be near, but it has yet to comment publicly on the speculation.
  A streaming service would make sense for Verizon however which has had to tackle the growing issue of ‘cord cutting’ where subscribers cancel trad
  
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• MIPTV 2017 Preview: Sam Barcroft, CEO, Barcroft Media

  31-03-2017 11:00
  
  The below is written by Sam Barcroft, CEO, Barcroft Media, and is part of Found Remote's MIPTV 2017 preview series. Found Remote will again be at MIPTV with Applicaster (come say hi at the booth: Palais R7.J15).
  Broadcasters find themselves in the middle of a double whammy - viewership is dissipating, and the shows that are rating tend to be more expensive.
  So this year, MIPTV will be dominated by big-ticket drama and major entertainment formats.
  Channels want to halt the decline
  
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• Tech giants who want to 'organise the world’s information' need to face up to their responsibilities as media owners

  31-03-2017 10:52
  
  It’s been a difficult few months for Google – the poster boy, as it were, of digital marketing – and for YouTube, the search giant’s video sharing platform.
  Last year the country’s favourite search engine got a good kicking in the court of public opinion (and at the House of Commons select committee), which exposed the cosy hypocrisy between a corporate mantra to “do no evil” around the world and a corporate structure designed to pay as little tax a
  
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• McCoy’s display Midas touch with ‘gold crisp’ campaign

  31-03-2017 10:28
  
  Snack food brand McCoy’s are hitting our TV screens again to relay news of a £10,000 cash prize on offer for the lucky discoverers of a ‘golden crisp,’ five of which have been secreted away within anonymous bags of ridged crisps.
  McCoy’s hope their ‘Win Gold’ ruse, conceived by WCRS, will spark a gold rush in corner shops up and down the land, as snackers dig deep for salty nuggets without damaging their teeth.
  To convey the message a TV ad and social fi
  
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• Nissan issues siren call to consumers with Micra launch campaign

  31-03-2017 10:00
  
  TBWA\G1 and Nissan have become partners in crime for the pan-European launch of the new Nissan Micra with the release of a short film tracking the exploits of three ‘accomplices’, the car and the couple, as they make a never-ending getaway from officials.
  Directed by Joachim Black, the advert makes great use of Chilean landscapes to bring the vehicular pursuit to life, backed up by a rendition of Bonnie and Clyde soundtrack and Brigitte Bardot.
  Jean-Pierre Diernaz, vice president mar
  
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• Wins this week: Tim Hortons, Unicef, Dulux

  31-03-2017 09:46 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  Campaign's weekly round-up of account moves across advertising and media.
  
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• EE's new campaign tours UK to trumpet 4G benefits

  31-03-2017 08:40 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  EE is launching a multimillion-pound brand campaign trumpeting its 4G coverage with the return of Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon, alongside Gogglebox and I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here star Scarlett Moffatt.
  
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• H&M to launch upmarket fashion brand Arket with opening of London store

  31-03-2017 07:42 via campaignlive.co.uk
  
  Retail group H&M is to launch its eighth fashion brand, with plans to open a store in London under the new banner Arket, which means "sheet of paper" in Swedish.
  
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