Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Adweek

Creative partner or legal liability? Research group OpenAI’s ChatGPT text generator has been called many things since its sensational debut in November. The program has an impressive capacity to expound in realistic-sounding language on almost any topic and in any rhetorical style. For marketers, there’s excitement around its potential to revolutionize creative inspiration, mass personalization and copywriting grunt work. Some are diving into the fray. Ryan Reynolds recently read a ChatGPT-produced ad for Mint Mobile. Avocados From Mexico created a ChatGPT-integrated website for a giveaway. But the system has rough edges—namely, a tendency to play fast and loose with facts and few of the guardrails that brands typically demand from marketing output. There are questions around legal ownership of material created by an AI trained on nearly the entire internet’s…

TOP ATHLETES HAVE sometimes stumbled in their efforts to become spokespeople and brand ambassadors, but deftly bridging the sports and business worlds has never been a struggle for Serena Williams. For more than two decades, Serena has been a master both on the tennis court and in building lasting and successful brand partnerships. That’s why Adweek named her our Brand Visionary in 2018, calling her a “branding tour de force.” A lot has changed for Serena since then: She retired from professional tennis last September (though she dislikes the r-word) after one final run at the U.S. Open. Yet brands remain more eager than ever to be in business with the don’t-call-her-retired phenom. Look no further than this month’s Super Bowl, where Serena appeared in not one but two ads—for…

It’s a reasonable bet that most senior-level marketers would like—even if it’s just once—to lead the creation of a Super Bowl ad. After all, who wouldn’t want to work with a budget that lets them drop $7 million on the most prime TV time there is? What CMO doesn’t dream of having 100 million-plus consumers riveted while their brand struts its stuff for 30 seconds? The vast majority of marketing chiefs won’t get this chance, of course. Fox only had around 80 in-game units for sale in Super Bowl 57—and the world contains some 500,000 brands, according to Nielsen data. For those on the other side of the velvet rope, however, there is consoling news: The marketing that brands do for the other 364 days of the year outside of…

A generation ago, Coors Light billed itself as “the silver bullet [that] won’t slow you down.” Which was fine for the time when Coors Light’s biggest problem was Bud Light. But domestic beer consumption has been slipping for 12 years now, a dynamic that’s led to some necessary scrambling. In 2019, Coors Light moved the focus away from calorie counts with a new slogan: “The beer made to chill.” Not coincidentally, “chill” worked in both senses, to wit: This beer is cold, and it’s made for hanging out. “In a world where millennial and Gen Z drinkers have more and more choices,” vp of marketing Ryan Reis said at the time, “we have one job to do: Give them a new reason to reach for Coors Light.” Considering the concerns…

Prior to the internet revolution, few technologies redefined advertising quite like the portable radio. From the 1920s through the ’50s, radios were pieces of furniture—hardwood cabinets with glass dials and vacuum tubes. Successful as radio ads may be, they seldom reached further than the living room. But when a Japanese company called Sony began selling transistor sets with plastic cases in 1955, radios started popping up everywhere from the sidewalk to the park to the patio, Daddy-O. Portability brought advertising messages to places where Americans had simply never heard them before, increasing the reach and influence of brands that invested in airtime. Half a century later, the arrival of smartphones would make the consumption of media as portable as ever. Even so, the humble radio—lightweight, movable, ubiquitous—has held its ground.…

Snoop Dogg fans in Australia got some bad news in 2022: The legendary rapper canceled all of his tour dates outside the United States. But that didn’t mean fans Down Under (or those who failed to score tickets stateside) couldn’t see Snoop perform. In fact, for $17.99, he’d do a little number in your living room. Well, sorta. In an ongoing spotlight of its partnership with Snoop, the Australian-owned 19 Crimes wine brand debuted what it called the world’s first rapping wine label. Oenophiles who purchased a bottle of the new Snoop Cali Gold and scanned the QR code with their smartphone got to see the Doggfather come to life on the label, reprising his 1993 hit “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” Engineered by L.A.-based content agency Observatory, this…

The executive behind global campaigns for hit shows such as House of the Dragon, The White Lotus and The Last of Us didn’t even plan on a career in marketing. Pia Barlow, evp of originals marketing at HBO Max, has been in the business for 18 years. But long before that, she first began her post-Dartmouth undergrad life on the law school track. That changed when she met Courteney Monroe—now president of National Geographic Global Television Networks—who oversaw consumer marketing for HBO, and Barlow was quick to join that team. “The way she inspired and challenged us all to be the gold standard bearer in the industry; for our marketing to be as groundbreaking as the programming, to value creativity and innovation and drive culture,” Barlow said. “Those early years…

Any company can launch programs and blast out marketing and social media messages for February’s Black History Month—as well as Pride Month, Hispanic Heritage Month or other similar periods of DEI recognition. But if the brand isn’t creating change within its workforce, policies, customer interaction or overall culture, it’s “writing a fiction story,” according to Jeff Johnson, the CEO of JIJ Impact, which partners with Fortune 500 companies on inclusion and equity issues. Johnson now works with American Airlines, which, after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, sought to create a more inclusive environment for its employees, passengers and target consumers. It instituted training to identify and eliminate implicit bias and formed a Community Council comprised of seven Black business and community leaders—including Johnson—to advise the…

People shopping for everything from shampoo to furniture to life insurance look different today than they did a decade ago. Between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of U.S. residents who identify as white fell from 63.7% to 57.8%, according to the Census Bureau. With more of everybody else, marketers have an opportunity to spread brand awareness by adjusting their media-buying strategies accordingly. A new white paper from Black-owned ad-tech firm Direct Digital Holdings reveals diverse audiences are more than open to receiving messages delivered to them through media channels either owned by or focused on members of their community. “A significant opportunity exists for brands to grow sales and expand their market share by demonstrating support,” said Mark Walker, co-founder and CEO of DDH. A survey of AAPI, Black, LGBTQ+…

If there’s a single Italian recipe that generations of cooks fuss and disagree over with equal relish, it’s tomato sauce. Do you use fresh tomatoes or canned? Olive oil or butter? Let it simmer for an hour or a day? It always depends. If there’s any agreement among foodies about marinara sauce, it’s probably this: Don’t use the stuff that comes in a jar. Except if it’s Rao’s. While serious foodies may turn up their noses at the likes of Ragu or Prego, a startling consensus emerges when it comes to the brand that sits alongside them on supermarket shelves: It’s good. It’s very good. In 2021, New York Magazine asked a group of renowned chefs to recommend a brand of sauce in a jar. They chose Rao’s. The Today…