The unstoppable march of digital ad spend is a well-documented tale, with IAB recently noting “landmark” growth of more than 20% year over year. With many of the new dollars migrating from TV, it’s obvious this spend will carry brand-building goals and not just direct-response goals. While the relevancy of this bifurcation is debatable — I’d say that if your logo is on a direct-response ad, it’s also a brand ad — it’s helpful to understand how these dollars will be justified by marketers.   The truth is that digital brand measurement hasn’t matured as fast as the digital ad industry as a ... read more

The Reach category awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity were handed out on the third day of the event (19 June), and FCB took home two of the coveted Grand Prix Lions, while Nike earned yet another. FCB New York took center stage for the Burger King ‘Whopper Detour’ campaign, taking the Grand Prix Direct, Retail Lion. The campaign was a hit amid Burger King’s push to promote new order-ahead features of its redesigned mobile app by selling Whopper sandwiches “at” McDonald’s for only a penny, for a limited time. The app geo-fenced McDonald’s restaurants so that the Whopper Detour ... read more

Its former head of US marketing once suggested that influencers could replace ad agencies, but Samsung’s global chief marketing officer has voiced concerns and said the brand is rowing back on its investments in that area. Under Marc Mathieu – who left the business in March – the smartphone maker siphoned millions of dollars into forging relationships with social creators. One of the biggest was with Casey Neistat – a YouTuber with 11.3 million subscribers and a combined four million on Facebook and Instagram – who Mathieu hailed as the brand’s "creator in chief" after he made and starred in ... read more

Verizon’s Pride efforts found the communications company partnering with PFLAG, an organization uniting families and allies with people who are LGBTQ+, for a campaign that shows stories of real families that have been torn apart and reunited through better communication and understanding. Director and LGBTQ supporter Lee Hirsch came on board for a film that showcases how a bad first call doesn’t have to be the last. In ‘Love Calls Back,’ LGBTQ people tell their stories of how their families either didn’t understand their orientations or how they reacted poorly to learning their brothers, sisters, sons and daughters were LGBTQ. The touching ... read more

Good things come to those who wait. Often times, this is absolutely the case. Patience is, indeed, a virtue. But when it comes to your business, you might be surprised at just how much more important it is to be quickthan it is to be perfect. What is ‘perfect’, though? It’s losing precious time ensuring every detail down to the minutiae of your plan or proposal is totally, incontrovertibly, 100% accurate — even when they don’t really need to be at this stage. So how can you make sure you’re optimising for accuracy whilst ploughing on for that all-important speedy turnaround?   An ever-changing ... read more

Summer may bring more hours of daylight, but research shows that four out of five Americans don’t have enough time to enjoy it. So, on 20 June, L.L. Bean, working with experience agency Jack Morton, is launching several outdoor campsite popups across major cities, allowing more consumers to ‘get s’more out of summer.’ The retailer will partner up with Uber in Boston, Buffalo, Madison and New York City to bring customers to the backyard-inspired events, going as far to offer free rides to encourage more time outside. “Rather than sit at home and have something delivered to you, together, we’re ... read more

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Six months into his role as chief executive of Unilever, where he replaced Paul Poleman, Alan Jope is a marketer who has, perhaps surprisingly, stepped from president of beauty and personal care to run the 130-year-old (in his estimation) company and is clearly passionate about the role purpose must place from its history within the business. Fresh off stage at the Cannes Lions Festival, where he has called out brands claiming to stand for a purpose without delivering, he relays why purpose is so vitally important to Unilever — revealing that he has a note written by founder William Lever, ... read more

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is under way and the several categories of winners has been announced. One of those categories was Pharma Lions, and one of the jury members on the panel was Emily Spilko, executive creative director at Evoke, a marketing, media, and communications firm that serves the health and wellness industry. Spilko gave The Drum an exclusive look into the life of a first-time judge at the festival. Before she left for Cannes, Spilko was excited about her opportunity, especially getting a closeup look at her industry. “I’m really curious to see the global takes ... read more

Pepsi’s obsession with pop culture is by no means new. However, its marketing chief has spent his first year in the top job finetuning the strategy to make sure the conversations the brand now enters are measurably valuable, and appropriate. If you see Todd Kaplan, Pepsi’s vice-president of marketing, strolling down La Croisette in Cannes, don’t ask him about the Kendall Jenner ad. Firstly, he had nothing to do with it – the marketer took on the top colas role at the company in August 2018, 16 months after the retracted commercial was first aired. Secondly, given that his PR team ... read more

Two years ago, Disney’s presence at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity focused on social inventory within the Disney Digital Network. This year, Disney has a lot more to pitch, with its refined data strategy, audiences available across all of its different properties, theme parks included, the acquisitions of Fox assets like National Geographic... Continue reading » The post Cannes 2019: As TV Broadcasters Make Their Pitch, Linear Is The Next Frontier appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

Extinction Rebellion has been at Cannes Lions this week urging the ad industry to to act on the climate and ecological emergency facing the world. But its mission has turned sour after scrapes with security during a peaceful protest at the festival. According to the group, 12 protestors were arrested on the steps of the Palais. The environmental activists last month wrote a strongly-worded letter addressing the advertising industry, demanding brands and agencies use their powers of persuasion to tackle the global climate and ecological emergency. The letter's author – William Skeaping, a former creative strategist at ad agency McCann London and a prominent player within ... read more

Stand on the corner of Christopher and Gay in New York City today, and you might notice something different. The signs that read Christopher Street and Gay Street still remain, but ten more have been installed below them in colorful letters, adding ‘Lesbian,’ ‘Bisexual,’ ‘Transsexual,’ ‘Queer,’ ‘Intersex,’ ‘Asexual,’ ‘Non-Binary,’ ‘Pansexual,’ ‘Two Spirit,’ ‘+,’ and ‘#Acceptance’ streets. This change was implemented on 17 June by Mastercard as an expression of the company’s support for the LGBTQ+ community during World Pride month. The effort was sanctioned by the city’s Human Rights Commission and crafted by the company that makes signs for New ... read more

Sign up for the Cannes Briefing for daily updates on what Digiday is doing this year at Cannes delivered every morning. Whether Quibi will succeed or not has been a frequent topic of conversation along the Croisette in Cannes. On Wednesday, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman rolled into the Palais to announce that Quibi has booked more than $100 million in ad revenue, and six big launch partners, ahead of the service’s April 2020 debut. Advertisers that have agreed to ad commitments with Quibi include Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, Walmart, Anheuser-Busch, Progressive and Google, according to Katzenberg and ... read more

Industry insiders were largely puzzled when LinkedIn said it would buy cross-device linkage company Drawbridge in May. LinkedIn buried the announcement in a blog post, and the LinkedIn-Drawbridge synergies weren’t obvious, so it made sense to assume the purchase was either an acqui-hire or a fire sale. But, according to two AdExchanger sources, LinkedIn paid... Continue reading » The post LinkedIn Paid Just Under $300M For Drawbridge appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more