Innholdsfortegnelse for October 24, 2022 i Adweek

After many months of companies dealing with higher costs and consumers struggling with inflated prices for everyday goods and services, Procter & Gamble trimmed its marketing spend during its most recent quarter. “Absolute dollar advertising spending is down,” P&G chief financial officer Andre Schulten said. P&G now allocates more than 50% of its media spend to digital, where the manufacturer is using its first-party data to deliver tailored ads with more efficiency. The company has also increased its investment in advertising by $1.2 billion between 2019 and 2022. The Cincinnati-based maker of Gillette razors, Tide laundry detergent and Charmin toilet paper reported organic sales growth of 7% during the three-month period ending Sept. 30 compared to the same time in 2021. This result was largely due to charging shoppers higher…

The leaves are changing, temperatures are dropping, and everywhere you look are ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, black cats, boogeymen—and marketers conjuring up some wicked fun of their own. While Halloween has spiritual significance, the mainstream associations with the holiday are rooted in consumerism. A National Retail Federation survey showed Halloween spend is projected to rise 5% this year, up to $10.6 billion—last year’s spend was a record-setting $10.1 billion, surpassing pre-pandemic years—with 69% of consumers predicted to participate. It seems that with the increased Covid-19 vaccinations in the U.S., more people feel safer to go out and celebrate All Hallows Eve with friends and families. “[This year is] the least pandemic-influenced Halloween season we’ve had since 2019,” said Julie Roehm, chief marketing officer and chief experience officer at Party City. “So for…

If it feels like you’re seeing more sponsored content in your social feeds, it’s true: 51% of influencers are creating more branded posts this year versus 2021, with 30% posting sponcon more than once a week. Those are just some of the findings in a survey of 550 influencers by SheSpeaks, the largest community of female influencers and creators in the U.S. Compensation is up for 64% of influencers, as is creative freedom (44%) and being involved in planning campaigns (32%). It’s a welcome trend for both sides, according to SheSpeaks CEO Aliza Freud. “Influencers understand their audience better than anyone since they engage and interact with them all the time,” Freud said. “Brands should lean into this insight from the influencer and be careful not to dictate too closely…

In the realm of irreverent brands, Wendy’s stands apart from its fast-food peers. The brand’s marketing has real bite, taking its tweets viral so often that when it coined National Roast Day in 2018, other brands lined up for the QSR brand to crack jokes at their expense. Meanwhile, fans of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty eat a lot of fast food: 70% of Rick and Morty’s audience consume QSR food weekly, and 50% of the same audience eat QSR breakfast weekly, Spark Foundry determined after reviewing custom research and Google Analytics data. It’s not just the food, but the brand’s cheekiness and relative impropriety on social platforms that attract a similar smart humor, not unlike the animated show they love. “There’s a protectiveness around the Rick and Morty brand…

Coinciding with the launch of Disney+’s Loki series, General Mills’ Lucky Charms tapped into a classic meme for its “Loki Charms.” Fans have long since recognized the similarities between Lucky the Leprechaun and the Marvel’s Loki, from their prankish attitudes to their green and gold outfits, so the brand utilized this buzz by releasing a limited-edition cereal box. Sporting a Lucky-style animation of Loki looming over a bowl of “Loki Charms,” the unique boxes were limited to 3,500 units. Since it was unavailable in stores, fans were required to visit a microsite to secure their own. The brand also developed a game that required a Loki-inspired magic encryption password to access, making presales available to the first 1,000 customers who cracked the code. The product drop featured an animated spot…

From local mom-and-pop diners to commercial chains, restaurants of all kinds were slammed by the pandemic. In need of creative ways to make dining out fun again, Applebee’s tapped Walker Hayes, the country singer responsible for the song “Fancy Like.” Featuring the line, “Fancy like Applebee’s on a date night,” Applebee’s used TikTok to release a couple of song and dance videos, encouraging fans to interact by posting their own videos. This soon became a viral campaign, with the brand broadcasting fan videos on TV and award shows like the CMT Awards in conjunction with Hayes’ live performances. With celebrities like Amy Adams and Shaquille O’Neal taking part in the dance on TikTok, 885,000 videos were created. After a rough start to the pandemic that could have seen the end…

With the mission of pairing job seekers with employers, Indeed noticed a glaring disparity within the film industry. With only 15% of directors identifying as BIPOC, despite making up more than 42% of the U.S. population, “Rising Voices” was born. Investing $1 million in 10 marginalized filmmakers with the mission of producing 10-to 20-minute short films, the brand teamed up with the Tribeca Film Festival to offer the same hype to short films by debut directors that’s allotted to studio-backed ventures on the Tribeca lineup. Screening via the festival and working with IMDB to build profile pages for the filmmakers was only the beginning of a plan that made “Rising Voices” part of a national conversation. During the BET Awards, short versions of the films were screened along with branded…

After receiving a tweet that its messaging only uses female pronouns in Arabic when speaking about baking or cooking, Betty Crocker teamed up with Mindshare Worldwide and an expert linguist to launch its “The Kitchen Is for Everyone” campaign. The work included changing more than 20 million packages in 19 countries to gender-neutral pronouns. With a focus on embracing the current generation, the campaign actively targeted children and male audiences, engaging them as ambassadors and influencers to bring the message to more than the initial target demographic of women. This moved the needle, leading to 36% sales growth. And when polled, 70% of its audience in the Middle East region agreed the kitchen is indeed for everyone.…

Validé is one of Canal+’s most popular shows, digging into the rap music scene in France. Ahead of its second season, Canal+ collaborated with Havas to create an OOH campaign in Paris and Marseille. Rather than following with the standard digital rollout, the team cultivated an interactive experience by tapping into the world of Grand Theft Auto. GTA’s City of Los Santos was treated to an in-game OOH billboard advertising Validé, introduced through an invite-only multiplayer mod in which many top French streamers play. Sporting GTA models of the cast, the billboard was placed on a major street where fans would be certain to see it. Teaming up with GTA streamer Prince, the brand utilized his agent character Tonton to organize the media campaign in Los Santos through a three-hour…

The early days of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout brought a wave of confusion and misinformation, leading to widespread apprehension. With the geographical distribution of doses varying wildly, Walgreens was tasked with getting shots to as many people as possible. Statistics showed that one in five adults were either vaccine-hesitant or resistant, but that hesitancy largely relied on location, so the brand created its “Vaccine Readiness Model.” Tapping into the data gleaned from algorithms, audiences were ranked on their propensity for taking action, which Walgreens used to create a gradient boosted decision tree explaining key components of vaccine readiness, or a model of their willingness to receive a vaccine based on seven factors such as confidence, collective responsibility and constraints. This was then converted into media that had specific messaging, with…

1 THE STABLE Growth: 952% Region: U.S. headquartered/Midwest Category: Full-service Overall rank: 3 SEE TOP 10 LIST 2 NP DIGITAL Region: U.S. headquartered/West; International | Growth: 261% Category: Digital Overall rank: 15 Founded in 2017 by New York Times bestselling author Neil Patel, NP Digital uses its proprietary technology Ubersuggest to drive innovation and efficiencies for small-to medium-sized businesses, including crypto exchange FTX, tech company Cisco, LinkedIn and Claire’s. Harnessing the power of in-depth data analysis, research and digital PR, NP Digital endeavors to provide target solutions. —Kennyatta Collins 3 CIENCE Region: U.S. Headquartered/West Growth: 245% Category: Digital Overall rank: 18 Through segmented sales research and outbound campaigns that have been orchestrated across many channels, Cience offers a blend of managed services and software to deliver results across 200 b-to-b industries…

New Orleans is largely known for its ceaseless nightlife, cuisine and jazz. But as travelers seek more authentic engagement, Dentsu Creative crafted a virtual reality tour called “New Orleans Plus One.” Using a VR headset and the YouTube app, viewers oscillate between a dinner with the city’s cultural luminaries and slice-of-life glimpses of NoLa. “Tourists want to rediscover the parts of themselves they lost over the last few years,” said Dentsu’s Andrew Hunter. “They’re craving inspiration, which the people of New Orleans ooze in spades.”…

The post-holiday doldrums of February are typically when the movies that studios don’t expect to do much business hit theaters. But in 2017, the winter month saw the release of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, the cultural phenomenon that upended the horror genre and everything we knew about its audience. Since then, it seems like horror is everywhere, from movies like Midsommar and A Quiet Place to smash Netflix series Stranger Things and Squid Game to Evil Dead director Sam Raimi bringing his campy-yet-scary aesthetic to Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness this summer. As always, wherever audiences go, so does advertising, and brands are getting scarily good at spooky marketing—with some even casting their own products as the villain. “We’re at a moment where a lot of people…

Though the Middle East/North African (MENA) region is well-known worldwide for its beaches and pools, statistics indicated that 88% of women there didn’t feel comfortable wearing swimwear in public, limiting their enjoyment of water activities. Noting that many other sports categories have adapted product ranges to meet the needs of women in MENA, Adidas recognized an obvious demand to do the same with swimwear. Hoping for new associations with water that would go beyond more fitting attire, the brand transformed a passive medium into an interactive experience by creating the world’s first swimmable billboard. At 5 meters high, this “Liquid Billboard” on a beach in Dubai doubled as an 11,500 gallon swimming pool, inviting women to take a dip. Leaning into a confidence-building media plan, five product ambassadors and a…

Straight Talk Wireless, along with agency partner Mediahub, used stories from recognized artists to show multicultural consumers new ways they could impact their industry using creativity without expensive budgets or manufactured hype. The culturally focused campaign involved working with lifestyle and culture site Uproxx to create a three-part video series that showed artists upcycling materials for merchandise, using DIY methods for creating clothes and highlighting some budget-conscious costumes used in performances. “On Repeat,” which doubled the website’s video viewing average, helped elevate Straight Talk from being simply a wireless provider to a conduit of creative success without the insurmountable costs. This crossover campaign leveraged not just the Uproxx website but also led to a media lift across media platforms including YouTube, surpassing estimated engagement by 400%.…

Through the early days of the pandemic and leading into 2021, TikTok’s audience increased exponentially. Tasked with finding reasons for non-users to join, the brand subverted its own video-reliant nature to tease a larger universe waiting within the platform. Tapping into some of its most popular channels, “You Have to See It” leaned into creating a sense of FOMO by reducing videos to basic sentence descriptions. Turning viral content into descriptions airing via TV, OTT, radio, podcast, OOH and branded platforms, the campaign hoped to re-create the feeling of its users attempting to relay their favorite videos through conversation. While unable to go head-to-head with major competitors like Instagram and YouTube in the financial realm, the multichannel approach appealed to a broad audience through intriguing headlines, with QR codes on…

Pizza chain Little Caesars wanted to honor customers’ demand for its famous pretzel crust pizza in a way that took them along on a journey of excitement, interaction and cheesy rewards. Partnering with influencer marketing brand Blue Hour Studios and media agency Horizon Media NY, the campaign harnessed the power of gamified achievements to encourage customers to “unlock” the coveted pretzel crust by playing a scavenger hunt experience leading up to its product relaunch. The brand left secret codes hidden across digital platforms, physical landscapes, in commercials and even on the clothes of Twitch streamers, prompting audiences to embark on a multifaceted journey for the coveted prizes. Whether it was for a pretzel crust pillow or a custom-skinned Vespa, the worldwide scavenger hunt turned everyday people into brand ambassadors. The…

During the pandemic, when countless people rediscovered their love for the outdoors, Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism came up with the perfect plan to safeguard its parks while engaging with the new influx of travelers. Home to more than 97% protected lands, Jackson Hole saw a tourism increase of 30%. This meant more wear and tear on the destinations as off-trail wandering became more popular and damaging to the surrounding ecosystem. To keep attendees on trail and diminish the off-trail damage, the brand “sole-vertised” through its “Tread on the Trail” campaign, an initiative that paired local hikers and custom hiking boots to create more than 1,500 footprints to remind guests to stay on the path in a nonintrusive way. To further drive the importance of remaining on trails and protecting…

Dissatisfied with uninspired contract extension announcements, racing car manufacturer Alpine sought to inject extra buzz into the format after starting in Formula 1 for the first time in March 2021. Extending driver Fernando Alonso’s contract called for a media plan that could engage a younger audience. Noticing the level of interaction that spelling mistakes from public figures often received, Alpine created a social media plan that would mirror those types of errors—intentionally. Utilizing Alonso’s 8 million followers on Twitter, the brand had Alonso post an encrypted tweet that appeared to be gibberish, but when solved actually said, “Big news coming soon.” Fellow driver Esteban Ocon tweeted a reply also using Vigenère ciphering. Fan engagement shot up as many speculated that their favorite drivers might be drunk, but then the Alpine…

AFTER WEATHERING THE PANDEMIC-INDUCED ECONOMIC CRISIS OF 2020, agencies experienced a new year that saw many shops returning and surpassing their pre-pandemic revenues in 2021. But a new threat looms in 2022: Inflation and a potential recession are driving brands to cut marketing spend—even when most experts recommend increasing ad spend during economic downturns. As budget cuts trickle down to agencies, they get a smaller piece of the pie (if they even get a piece at all), which can potentially initiate layoffs. This year’s Fastest Growing Agencies are in a unique position to use their rapidly scaling businesses to come out of economic turbulence with their staffs intact and ready to pick off business from agencies that are struggling to get by. HOW WE CALCUL ATED OUR LIST To be…

1 MOVERS+SHAKERS Growth: 4,007% Region: U.S. headquartered/West Category: Digital Overall rank: 1 SEE TOP 10 LIST 2 THE SNOW AGENCY Region: U.S. headquartered/Southeast Growth: 675% Category: Full-service Overall rank: 7 SEE TOP 10 LIST 3 MEDIA MATTERS WORLDWIDE Region: U.S. headquartered/West Growth: 424% Category: Media Overall rank: 9 SEE TOP 10 LIST 4 THINKINGBOX Region: International Growth: 207% Category: Digital Overall rank: 23 Staking their claim at the intersection of creativity and technology, Thinkingbox brings together strategic storytelling across the digital, experiential, content and social categories. Having hired more than 30 new employees and elevated new leadership, Thinkingbox continues to prepare to meet its clients such as Intuit, Adobe and Starbucks where they are, regardless of scale. —K.C. 5 MOBURST Region: International Growth: 202% Category: Mobile and Digital Creative Performance Agency…

Adweek’s summit designed to cut through the noise and connect the most forward-thinking minds in publishing to solve challenges took place Oct. 18-19. Speakers included Café Media’s Paul Bannister giving the lay of the identifier landscape; Condé Nast’s Pamela Drucker Mann on how the media company grew its digital ad business by 40% in 2021; and Dow Jones’ Josh Stinchcomb on how data is driving more than revenue for publishers. Bottom line? “Focus on creating content the reader will engage with,” said Corey Wong of Leaf Group, “and the monetization will eventually come.” For all the insights and panel videos, visit adweek.com.…

The eyes of the car-buying public are usually trained on the flashy new offerings at the New York International Auto Show or, more realistically, on whatever models are on the lot at the nearby dealership. So it’s a good bet that few Americans took note of a virtual event that Volvo Group held in Gothenburg, Sweden, last October. Never mind that the unveiling was anything but flashy, but the vehicle making its debut wasn’t even a passenger car. It was an 8.2-ton hauler that’ll be put to work in the mining and quarrying industry. (It goes without saying: This is not your father’s Volvo.) Since the electric vehicle is also autonomous and requires no driver, the canary-yellow hulk was essentially a dump truck with its cab chopped off. Why would…

Marketers are obsessed with acquisition. So much so that they synonymously refer to it as performance, indicating that to add more is to perform better. We know acquisition is an expensive business, with a cost that’s multiple times higher than retaining existing customers. So if acquisition is more costly than retention, why do we glorify acquisition as performance? Because we treat new as better. We see new as growth. Channels are flooded with ads featuring splashy incentives wooing prospective customers to try a product or service with an offer that makes it nearly too good to turn down. It’s all about getting someone in the door. But what of the existing customer who sees those offers and thinks, “Why am I penalized for having already committed? Should I change brands to…

Chipotle teamed up with Mediahub and reigning Stanley Cup Champions, the Colorado Avalanche, to treat hockey fans to an unforgettable experience to announce its sponsorship of the NHL. Breaking the ice on a first-of-its-kind ad format that merged live programming and commercial air time, Chipotle also worked with The Famous Group, a fan experience technology company, to harness the latest in mixed-reality technology. Rather than cutting to a traditional commercial during the break, they turned it into an immersive experience at the event that had fans both in-stadium and at home surprised when a giant hockey glove-covered hand broke through the arena’s ice to grab a burrito and take it back down into the depths of the stadium. The innovative activation took a huge lift from all teams involved, including…

Tapping into statistics showing that many American adults lack financial literacy skills, banking company Ally’s mission to spark interest in financial education for the next generation began. Utilizing four Ally interns chosen through the brand’s entrepreneurship program, Moguls in the Making, the team was tasked with the challenge of making the seemingly drab world of finance interesting to preteens. Ally identified that game-based learning would be an effective approach to make money management interactive and fun, and “Fintropolis” was born. “Fintropolis,” which is widely accessible due to being downloadable on any video game platform, is a world within Minecraft that encourages students to become fiscally educated through gameplay. Partnering with Twitch and utilizing gaming influencers to spark a conversation around the platform, Ally gained coverage in major news outlets, which…

The Super Bowl is one of the most coveted advertising opportunities for brands looking to reach audiences across the country regardless of demographic. Taking on the challenge of sending a message across the nation during such a high-profile event, Coinbase opted for simplicity to create a mass participation moment that piqued viewers’ curiosity. The campaign produced a lo-fi video featuring a large, bouncing QR code that, when scanned, sent participants to a simple landing page where they could enter a sweepstakes to win $1 million in bitcoin. As the antithesis to the current wave of celebrity-dense media, Coinbase shattered the perception of what a Super Bowl ad can look like and still be effective. The 60-second ad led to more than 20 million instantaneous landing page hits for Coinbase, with…

When your country suffers multiple climatic-induced disasters in the last three years alone, it’s time to go from simply waiting for the next one to embracing a more proactive approach. Setting out to change the culture, Insurance Australia Group used the Black Summer BushFires in Australia to create a campaign that would stoke the desire for Australians to be more active in catastrophe prevention. “A Fire Inside” was a multifaceted program that encompassed a documentary, book and media blitz across national stations to reach the country’s various audiences. The campaign also carried a social utility aspect, as IAG partnered with not-for-profit Minderoo Foundation to launch the Australian Resilience Corps, the country’s first volunteer organization whose mission is climate change prevention. The campaign reached more than 12 million Australians through more…

Embracing the challenge of marketing Sweden as an inspiring and sustainable destination during the height of international tourism, Visit Sweden used one of the country’s biggest national brands as the “hook” to tell a new story. In discovering that many people equate Sweden to furniture retailer Ikea, the tourism agency seized the opportunity to take back “hijacked” product names and show audiences that, in fact, these were the names of beautiful destinations around the country. Encouraging people to “Discover the Originals,” the brand presented 21 unique places to visit, each with a name that was also a popular Ikea product. The multichannel media approach included a micro-influencer activation that showed what a trip across Sweden would look like if people were to visit their Ikea furniture namesakes. After the campaign,…

On a quest to meet audiences and targeted communities—such as business professionals, leaders and entrepreneurs—with thought leadership during the pandemic lockdown, Accenture made the pivot from traditional methods of attracting new customers to using a podcast to drive conversations and build its community. The Built for Change podcast featured broadcast journalist Elise Hu and technologist Josh Klein as they curated conversations with top business leaders and pioneers across industries. Tapping into its network of b-to-b partners, the brand focused on PR and platform-specific activations to thread the needle and target the relevant communities, meeting them where they’re engaging most. This understanding of its audience paid off, as listeners shared their takeaways in Slack channels and campaigned to be guests on the show, turning the platform into a networking opportunity. Creating…

Taking into account that Jimmy Dean sausages are largely eaten during holidays and weekends, Tyson Foods utilized America’s most popular breakfast item—eggs—to boost sales year-round. Seeking out innovative ways to encourage consumers to add Jimmy Dean Sausages to their morning routine, the brand used National Egg Day to permanently link eggs and sausage in consumers’ minds. Leaning into data showing that nearly all smartphone users are adapting to frequent use of AR, Tyson Foods created a promotion to give away Jimmy Dean Sausages every time someone scanned an egg. Using data from 10,000 individual eggs, cameras were trained to detect almost any egg, including cartoons and collectibles. Through a partnership with Snap and Amazon, users could capture a photo and be taken to Amazon, where free sausage would already be…

1 MOVERS+SHAKERS Growth: 4,007% REGION: U.S. HEADQUARTERED/WEST CATEGORY: DIGITAL The quarantine TikTok boom of 2020 made every brand realize they needed to get on the platform. And while many have improved their ability to candidly connect with TikTok consumers, cringe-worthy dance challenges with outdated viral sounds still run rampant. However, from its inception, Movers+Shakers has produced TikTok messages that feel more like organic entertainment than ads. An early example is its 2019 creation of the song #EyeLipsFace for beauty brand e.l.f, a disguised jingle that became the most viral campaign in the platform’s history, racking up to 7 billion views and 5 million user-generated videos. This year, the agency has garnered 250 billion total views on all social campaigns for its clients, which include Nerf, Neutrogena and Netflix. As an…

1 ALTO Growth: 3,037% Region: U.S. regional agency/Northeast | Category: Full-service | Overall rank: 2 SEE TOP 10 LIST 2 THE MRN AGENCY Region: U.S. regional agency/West; International Growth: 917% Category: Full-service Overall rank: 4 SEE TOP 10 LIST 3 MEDIA MATTERS WORLDWIDE Region: U.S. headquartered/West Growth: 424% Category: Media Overall rank: 9 SEE TOP 10 LIST 4 HUNTERBLU MEDIA Region: U.S. regional agency/Southeast Growth: 328% Category: Media Overall rank: 11 From two agency founders and $1 million in business when it began to a team now spread across two states with $60 million in billing, hunterblu media’s startup approach has conditioned it for growth. During the pandemic, the agency positioned itself as a partner to larger agencies to improve its agility and expose hunterblu media to mid-sized companies, including…