Predictions that brands are useless constructs soon to be bypassed by algorithms relies on a narrow view of the role brands play and the multiple ways they are built. Shann Biglione, head of strategy at Publicis Media explains. Few people would tell CMOs to their face that brands are a dying breed. Of course, this isn’t the kind of prediction Scott Galloway would shy away from. In his well-known interview with Mr Purpose and former P&G CMO Jim Stengel, he summarized very sternly his long-held prognosis for brands: we have entered the “post brand era” which, in Scott Galloway speech, ... read more

Arishi is a collaborative and consultative brand who aim to help their customers reach the right solution for their technology needs. Their history has seen them work with many organisations, agencies, and startups and have always strived to find the best, most technically straightforward and robust way to support them. Seen as the ‘technical go-to‘ for many companies, they are more than capable of the technical heavy lifting that can be hard to achieve in-house. For a tech startup, Arishi can recommend, build, and customise the most appropriate technological solution precisely. Arishi helps agencies take incredible ideas and turn them ... read more

Despite diversity and inclusion initiatives, the workplace is still a hostile environment for millions of people. As part of The Drum’s Agencies4Growth festival, ad veterans Sue Unerman and Kathryn Jacob sat down to discuss their new book, which tackles belonging in the workplace and offers practical advice on how to overcome barriers.  You’re more likely to become a chief exec if you’re called Steve, than if you have a uterus. Women and minorities make up only 34% of the boards of Fortune 500 companies. One in three of the working population in the UK feel they don’t belong in work. ... read more

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Quibi Bites The Dust Quibi will shut down its service a mere six months after launch, becoming one of the first – and most spectacular – casualties in the video streaming wars. It is a remarkable flameout for a company that had raised $1.75 billion before... Continue reading » The post Quibi Flames Out; Pinterest Pushes Diversity And Transparency appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more

During Pam Forbus’ first week on the job as Pernod Ricard’s CMO — she joined from Walt Disney this past summer — discussions as to whether or not to join the Facebook boycott took place. Like many marketers, Forbus had to figure out what to do about the boycott as well as how to pivot the alcohol giant’s marketing amid the coronavirus. Forbus went on to refocus the company’s marketing on traditional media as well as boosting e-commerce capabilities. At the same time, the company has worked to create a new initiative for marketers looking to curb hate speech ... read more

Marketers are notoriously wary over where their ads appear online. But the ongoing pandemic and societal upheaval have brought those issues into sharp focus. At the same time, those same marketers are increasingly expected to take a stand on potentially brand-busting landmines like politics and civil unrest. Being a progressive safety first marketer shouldn’t be an oxymoron in the current climate — but it is.  While there’s an abundance of automated ways to keep ads away from incredibly unsafe content, it’s harder for advertisers to identify content at the margins of their standard brand-safety strategies. Each advertiser’s threshold ... read more

If you work at a publisher you probably don’t get any time off to vote in the 2020 elections — but a majority of agency employees do. A survey of 198 professionals working at publishers, agencies and brands found that more than half of agency respondents, and nearly half of brand respondents, said their employer was giving them time off to vote in next month’s elections. Even bigger percentages of agency and brand employees were encouraged to vote this year by their bosses, while just four in ten publisher respondents said they got similar signals. ... read more

Under one of the more dramatic session titles of this year’s virtual ANA Masters of Marketing conference — Turning Mayhem into Momentum — Michelle Peluso, svp of digital sales and CMO at IBM, on Wednesday underscored the need to link technology platforms like artificial intelligence and natural language processing, or NLP, with human management traits to push past the struggles of the coronavirus crisis. With it’s Watson platform, IBM certainly has the technology and data processing heft to lead that charge forward. But Peluso said she sees a more nuanced future that includes leadership agility — that can quickly act ... read more

Google on Wednesday published to GitHub results of experiments it has been running to test how Chrome’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposal could work in practice to allow interest-based advertising to function in a more privacy conscious way and without the need for third-party cookies. Early signs are promising, Google suggests. Google said it is now hoping other companies can begin experimenting with the algorithms and also vet its findings. The FLoC proposal was first published last year to Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox, where the separate Chrome team has published a number of suggestions for APIs (application programming interfaces) aimed ... read more

In a trendsetting movement, The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has announced a framework for Covid-19 related advertising. The advisory has been laid down by the leading Indian self-regulatory body, to safeguard consumers from a slew of misleading pandemic-related claims that many brands might be making. The move announced by ASCI, could have far-reaching implications in providing the necessary guard-rails, especially in the current vulnerable situation. The key caveats of the new advisory include:   Claim on virus removal Brands have been advised to avoid claiming destruction or removal of any virus other than coronavirus (Covid-19) in order ... read more

An advert from the Indian jewellery company Tanishq recently became the subject of intense social debate because of its creative depiction of an inter-religious household. Tata Group ultimately pulled down the film in the face of the outrage. Anil Nair, chief executive officer of VMLY&R India writes about the larger implications of this incident on the creative business and what could be the way forward. You wake up like it’s a regular workday. You switch on your phone. And then you get an avalanche of message alerts from your colleagues about your latest creative work trending on social networks. Ideally ... read more

The shift to streaming is now complete. Around the world, people are spending as much time or more with streaming as they are with linear. With fewer cable boxes and fewer streaming sticks attached to TVs, the smart TV platform is becoming more critical to marketers and advertisers than ever before. But there are significant differences between Dallas and Düsseldorf, and between Melbourne and Mumbai, from population numbers to viewers’ approaches to content. For advertisers, it’s crucial to understand how user adoption varies across the globe.   To start telling the story, Samsung Ads analyzed data from 100 million Samsung ... read more

You may not be anywhere near the office water cooler right now, but we still want to spotlight the most talked about creative from the brands that should be on your radar. Today, everyone is talking about Greenpeace's Rang-tan sequel, 'There's a Monster in My Kitchen'.  According to the latest Greenpeace analysis, over the last year, an area almost equivalent to the UK has been burned down across Brazil's Amazon rainforest.  Alarmed by the velocity at which the world is shedding its vital forests, Greenpeace and Mother London created 'There's a Monster in My Kitchen' - an animated film that takes ... read more

Data shows that UK ad spend has dipped dramatically for the third quarter in a row as marketers grapple with Covid-19 restrictions, Brexit and economic uncertainty. The Drum delves deeper into the numbers presented in latest Bellwether report from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).  In the three months to October, UK ad budgets were reduced drastically, representing the second-biggest decline since records began. Though reductions softened slightly in the third quarter of the year (after hitting the nadir in Q2), the figures show the severe pressure facing marketers as they navigate coronavirus-related lockdowns, declining consumer confidence and the ... read more

For the past couple of months, Google has been actively testing its Privacy Sandbox proposal for interest-based cohorts, and the preliminary results are in. The proposal, dubbed FLoC – aka, “federated learning of cohorts” – calls for using on-device machine learning to group people based on their common browsing behavior as an alternative to third-party... Continue reading » The post Google Releases Results From Early Tests Of Cohort-Based Advertising appeared first on AdExchanger. ... read more