Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Adweek

When Emily Siegel was in her 20s, she received a valuable piece of professional advice. After she had bemoaned working a longer day than co-workers rushing home to their children, a colleague reminded her, “You’re playing that role now so someone can give you that grace later.” Those words have only grown more resonant with time. “Your career will likely be long and have many chapters to it,” said Siegel, president and founding partner at full-service agency Lafayette American. “It’s OK to be patient with yourself and remember that each chapter might look different.” Whether someone is taking a step back from work because of child care, family obligations or a decline in mental health, Siegel is an advocate for doing the job that one’s current circumstance warrants. Since founding…

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual NewFronts is almost here, which for advertisers means a week of sprinting around Manhattan to view multiple presentations from digital publishers. But for Day 3 of this year’s digital content event, taking place May 1-4, in-person attendees will be able to remain seated in a single venue. The May 3 presentations will be held entirely at New York’s 225 Liberty St., following requests from the marketing and buying community that the IAB make the NewFronts more accessible and streamlined. “I think it will be good for both presenter and attendee,” said IAB CEO David Cohen. “A one-stop-shop for 20 different companies” like Crackle, LG Ads and DirecTV, each of whom will have 10- to 20-minute slots to make their pitches to marketers. That’s not the…

World travelers know that McDonald’s tastes a little different around the globe. From its Dosa Masala Burger in India to its Philippines’ exclusive Cheesy Eggdesal breakfast option, the chain caters to individuals across continents and cultures. But when it comes to global marketing, Flatley is encouraging its brand custodians to take lessons from one another, bringing both a culture of collaboration and more cohesion to McDonald’s global marketing proposition. A worldwide consortium of McDonald’s CMOs—from those based in China to the U.S.—meet monthly to share ideas and progress. The group was formed at the height of Covid-19, when the brand’s global marketers were feeling “unsure” about their next step, Flatley said. Meetings were initially set to develop a “support network” that would help steer the brand through a tumultuous period.…

The I ♥️NY logo designed by Milton Glaser for a 1977 tourism campaign remains iconic. But a new WE ♥️ NYC version, created by independent creative agency Founders for Partnership for New York City, has received largely negative reviews, including from prominent figures: City Council member Justin Brannan compared it to the Holland Tunnel’s widely panned 2018 holiday decor. The campaign has cheekily acknowledged the reception on Instagram: “We ♥️ critics even if they don’t like our logo.”…

HOW DO YOU BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO AN ICONIC—BUT SOMEWHAT MUSTY—BRAND? It’s one of the toughest tasks in marketing: getting consumers to set aside what might be their lifelong perceptions of a brand to reconsider it in a new light. Yet our cover subjects—McDonald’s global CMO Morgan Flatley and U.S. CMO Tariq Hassan—have excelled at it without breaking a sweat. As our Europe brand editor Rebecca Stewart writes in this month’s cover story, as recently as just a few years ago, McDonald’s was well known, but not necessarily well loved—especially by Gen Zers. That has changed thanks to Flatley, who was elevated to global CMO in 2021, and Hassan, who was hired as U.S. CMO at that time. Together, they have reinvented the brand and ushered in double-digit sales increases…

As players in the $222 billion food delivery market can attest, when customers with grumbling stomachs want food, they want it now. Breakfast from McDonald’s, coffee from Starbucks or a midnight meatball marinara sub? Name it, and it will be at your door in as little as 20 minutes. Pre-pandemic, frictionless apps such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, Deliveroo and GrubHub were already on the rise, bolstered by a trend toward convenience from millennials and Gen Zers. And post-lockdown, business is still booming: According to research firm Grand View, the market will hit $505.5 billion by 2030, growing at an annual rate of 10.3% each year. To satiate customers’ appetites, fast food chains have typically partnered with third-party apps to get hot food to doorsteps. However, now a fresh battleground is…

When Nielsen, long viewed as the standard for measurement, lost its third-party accreditation status through the Media Rating Council in 2021, the TV industry—already reeling from the pandemic—was thrown into even more chaos. Publishers and marketers publicly began grappling with the urgent need to develop measurement alternatives and new currencies—just as audience behavior had begun rapidly shifting from linear to streaming. “Covid-19 completely changed people’s consumption habits from an entertainment standpoint,” said Jen Faraci, chief data officer, Digitas North America. “And so with that, there are marketplace changes around where people spend their time, what that competition looks like, [and] how do we make sure we’re attracting the right type of audiences [as well as] understanding the people that we are reaching and how.” Seizing the opportunity, several ambitious measurement…

Three years ago this month, as Covid-19 began to spread across the country, more than 20 million U.S. jobs disappeared. The ad industry was not spared. In April 2020, the number of positions in advertising, public relations and other related services declined 8.3% compared to the prior month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although employment rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels, the roles are not the same as they were in 2020. Sure enough, figures from LinkedIn show how the marketing universe has changed—and continues to evolve. “Brand and content jobs are rising, signaling it’s more important for marketers to continue investing in their brands to stay relevant,” said Connie Chen, LinkedIn’s insights manager. During the early months of 2023, more LinkedIn users held titles such as director…

Hassan is the first to admit that the word “culture” has become overused by marketers. But for McDonald’s, the term starts with something very simple: the menu. “It’s so central to our business,” said Flatley, noting the menu team sits within the U.S. and global marketing divisions. The brand spends time going on what Hassan described as “food safaris” around different markets to get a feel for trends and what customers want and create new classics. That includes the McCrispy (a crunchy fried chicken sandwich), which was launched into markets including the U.S., U.K. and LATAM to help the brand grow its share of the chicken market. Flatley said her team has been tasked with turning the menu item into a “global icon,” as famous as the Big Mac. “We’re…

While in line to buy a train ticket one morning about four years ago, Pete Markey spotted a poster for improv comedy classes that would change his life. The ad prompted Markey, chief marketing officer of Walgreens-owned British health and beauty retailer Boots, to realize that while he did want to learn something new, his day job didn’t leave time for academic coursework. Learning improvisation could be the answer. Acting also runs in Markey’s family: His son James Markey is an actor, something Markey had considered doing as a hobby, but he didn’t have time to memorize scripts. What better solution than to go onstage and literally make the lines up himself? Now, he has graduated to advanced classes, which he still takes weekly. Markey also co-stars in a monthly…