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Media Decoder: Publicis Groupe, Awaiting a Big Deal, Makes Another

August 14, 2013 by

The acquisition is being made by the Publicis Groupe, based in Paris, which agreed late last month to merge with the Omnicom Group, based in New York, to form the Publicis Omnicom Group, which will be a new industry leader in revenue. Publicis is acquiring Engauge Marketing, an advertising and digital-services agency based in Columbus, Ohio, with offices in Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Orlando, Fla. The price was not disclosed.

Engauge was formed in 2007 by Stan Rapp, a longtime direct marketer, and Halyard Capital, a private equity firm in New York, which was the majority owner. Their goal was to acquire agencies in fields like direct marketing, behavioral targeting and data analytics, then roll them into one agency under the Engauge name.

But the plans to grow much larger through acquisitions slowed after the recession, while the giants of the industry kept expanding. Examples include the Publicis-Omnicom merger, the acquisition of the Aegis Group by Dentsu and the acquisition of LBi by Publicis. The trade publication Advertising Age reported that the owners of Engauge, which had revenue last year of $39 million, had been shopping the agency to various ad holding groups for about a year.

“As we explored opportunities,” Nick Bandy, chief executive of Engauge, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday, it became apparent that Publicis was “the group we felt most the aligned with, the most comfortable with, the best home for our associates and our clients.”

Engauge has more than 250 employees and clients that include Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola and Nationwide Insurance.

Engauge will keep its name and report to a Publicis agency named Moxie, which is a division of the ZenithOptimedia Group at Publicis. Moxie has about 350 employees at its headquarters in Atlanta and offices in Los Angeles and New York.

Engauge is “a fantastic complement to Moxie,” said Suzy Deering, chief executive of Moxie, who joined Mr. Bandy for the interview. “Engauge has a very strong list of clients,” she added.

How Engauge and Moxie will be staffed and located in Atlanta is “to be sorted out,” Ms. Deering said. She and Mr. Bandy played down suggestions of possible cuts. Both agencies “are very busy” and “there’s plenty to do together,” he said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/business/media/publicis-groupe-awaiting-a-big-deal-makes-another.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Campaign Spotlight: Ads Seek to Clear Up Qualms About Cataract Surgery

August 12, 2013 by

Take, for instance, a new campaign from the Alcon division of Novartis, which features print advertisements that carry the headline “This is not your mother’s cataract surgery.” The campaign, now under way, is meant to educate the baby boomer generation about cataract surgery and how, as the ads put it, “today’s advanced technology” enables doctors to offer patients “an opportunity to get your youthful vision back.”

The campaign, with a budget estimated at $3 million, includes, in addition to the print ads, a special Web site, or microsite, and digital ads. The agencies involved in the campaign include HCB Health in Austin, Tex., for the creative duties; the Starcom division of the Starcom MediaVest Group, part of the Publicis Groupe, for the media duties; and Tribal Worldwide, part of the DDB Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group, which built the microsite.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a collaboration between Alcon and the AARP Media Sales unit of AARP that involves AARP print and digital properties. More than $1 million of the total ad budget is to be spent in the properties represented by AARP Media Sales, which include AARP The Magazine and the aarp.org Web site.

As part of the collaboration, Alcon and AARP teamed for a telephone survey of 1,000 members of AARP, age 50 and older, to find out about their awareness and understanding of cataracts and cataract surgery. The results of the survey helped guide the creation of the campaign.

The partnership is another example of an increasingly popular trend on Madison Avenue known as content marketing, which brings together brands and media companies for advertising that is primarily meant to be entertaining or informative rather than using hard-sell tactics to peddle products.

That fits well with the Alcon campaign because its principal goal is to advocate for cataract surgery in general among consumers rather than promote specific Alcon surgical products to them or medical professionals.

“Typically, our marketing efforts have been geared to professional audiences,” says Seba Leoni, vice president and general manager for United States surgical at Alcon in Fort Worth. “Rarely do we go to consumers.”

“This is a first-of-a-kind campaign,” he adds.

The collaboration with AARP is “for focused objectives aimed at driving awareness,” Mr. Leoni says, “to inform and educate about available options for cataract surgery, and how it can be tailored to individual needs.”

“AARP is critical because it reaches the target audience, 50-plus,” he adds, including people with cataracts who “have not been diagnosed” as well as “people who have been diagnosed but not treated yet.”

In the survey, only two out of five respondents who are cataract patients said they planned to have surgery in the next two years. Among the explanations for putting it off, 44 percent said their vision was “fine for now” and 14 percent said they were afraid, fearful or scared of the surgery.

“Vision health is a top priority” for older people, Mr. Leoni says, and they “are generally aware about cataracts but may not know about all the treatment options available today.” Of course, as the leader in cataract surgery, it is in Alcon’s interest to let them know more about surgical treatments.

That is reflected in a section of the survey devoted to responses from people who had cataract surgery. Four out of five said it was easier than they expected, according to the survey, and two out of three said it was not painful.

“The outcome is extremely positive, but there may be some hesitation,” Mr. Leoni says, especially among those who are “not aware how far cataract surgery has come” and how other conditions like presbyopia and astigmatism can also be treated during the surgery.

That perception is expressed in the “This is not your mother’s cataract surgery” headline.

“Twenty years ago, they didn’t have the advances in technology they have today,” says Kim Carpenter, vice president for account services at HCB Health.

“We want to educate the baby boomer population that when you’re diagnosed it’s not something to fear,” she adds, “and that cataract surgery is an opportunity to have better vision than you’ve had.”

Ms. Carpenter calls cataracts “one of those silent thieves” that can take a toll among today’s older people who are used to “an active life style.”

“This generation doesn’t accept the status quo,” she says, “and they’re taking better care of themselves” in areas like eye health.

The collaborative campaign represents “a great opportunity for Alcon and a great opportunity for AARP to educate its members,” she adds.

Patricia Lippe Davis, vice president for marketing at AARP Media Sales, notes that “as of next year, 100 percent of boomers will be 50” because the baby boom generation is defined as those Americans born from 1946 through 1964.

Ms. Davis traces the origins of the partnership between AARP and Alcon to an article, “Six Ways to Save Your Eyesight,” that appeared in the September/October 2011 issue of AARP The Magazine.

“There was an Alcon advertisement in that issue, and that ad was extremely successful for the company,” she recalls, which led to Alcon’s reaching out to AARP Media Sales to ask about potential joint initiatives in “the vision space.”

That produced the survey, which was conducted in April, followed by the campaign, which appears in the August/September issue of AARP The Magazine along with an article, “The Truth About Cataracts and Cataract Surgery.”

The growing appeal of content marketing is tempered by concerns about a blurring of the line between advertising and editorial content. In this instance, Ms. Davis says, there was an agreement that the content would be shared by Alcon and AARP but that Alcon “can have no influence on any editorial that was created.”

“This allowed us to create member value,” she adds, “letting us go deeper into a subject affecting our members.”

In addition to the AARP media properties, the campaign is appearing in publications like Golf, Guideposts, Ladies’ Home Journal, Prevention, Reader’s Digest, The Saturday Evening Post and Spry. The other online media outlets include AOL, Healthgrades and WebMD.

The campaign is scheduled to run through the end of the year. And “we’re already planning for 2014,” says Ms. Carpenter of HCB Health.

The intent is to introduce another creative approach in October and November, she adds, that will be “all about celebrating your independence, your freedom from cataracts,” reflecting how 90 percent of the respondents to the survey said their independence is “extremely important” to them.

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If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that appears Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times print edition and on nytimes.com.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/media/ads-seek-to-clear-up-qualms-about-cataract-surgery.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Air Force Invites Youths to Help Solve Problems

August 4, 2013 by

As part of its continuing recruitment efforts, the Air Force is reaching out to youths for help solving real-world, technological problems through a collaborative online platform.

The initiative, which was introduced on Thursday, involves the creation of a digital “Air Force Collaboratory,” in which youths will be challenged to develop new technologies for search and rescue operations in collapsed structures; to create software code for a quadrotor, a type of unmanned, aerial vehicle; and to help unveil the newest GPS satellite.

The Air Force hopes the program will attract students of so-called STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — to collaborate with the Air Force in developing solutions for the three challenges, and, ideally, to consider enlisting.

The initiative — which the Air Force will promote through digital advertising, social media and partnerships with Discovery Education and others — is the latest recruiting effort created for the Air Force by GSDM, the Austin-based agency that is part of the Omnicom Group.

GSDM has been the Air Force’s agency since 2001, developing campaigns to help the Air Force attract the more than 28,000 new recruits it needs annually; GSDM said its work has helped the Air Force meet its recruiting goals each year since 2001.

Col. Marcus Johnson, chief of the strategic marketing division of the Air Force Recruiting Service, said the Air Force focused on “going after the best and brightest young men and women, with an emphasis on STEM. Whether they’re in high school or college, those topics translate into what we do in the Air Force.”

He said the Collaboratory program is meant to appeal to young men and women between the ages of 16 and 24, including high school students still determining their future plans.

Ryan Carroll, a creative director of GSDM, said the Air Force was “very much like the Apples and Googles of the world in recognizing the huge need for scientists and engineers. They reach out to kids at an early age, and show them the amazing things they can do with science and technology,” through initiatives like the Google Science Fair, an annual online science competition for teenagers worldwide.

Similarly, the aim of the Air Force’s Collaboratory program is to “inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and mathematicians, and to show them all the amazing, science-related things the Air Force does,” Mr. Carroll said. The program will also allow them to “participate and solve real problems the Air Force solves every day,” he added.

Youths will be able to access information on the Collaboratory’s challenges on a new Web site that will act as an online forum. Challenge participants will be able to use custom-built tools to share ideas, and work with airmen and other experts to develop solutions.

Not surprisingly, primarily digital media will be used to promote the Collaboratory.

Thus, customized editorial content is being developed for the STEM hub of GOOD.com, a global community of “pragmatic idealists,” while customized videos are being filmed for DNews, an online video series from Discovery Communications; the videos will feature DNews hosts Trace Dominguez and Anthony Carboni. Blogger outreach is being conducted through Technorati, while the Air Force will pay to place videos on Web sites like YouTube, Blip and Machinima. In addition, the Air Force will promote the Collaboratory through Facebook and Twitter.

Digital banner advertising also will run on Web sites of Scientific American, Popular Science and the Verge. One set of ads depicts an Air Force helicopter approaching a scene of destruction after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that has trapped dozens of survivors. The text says, “Your idea could save them. The Air Force Collaboratory. Search and rescue 2.0 is now open. Start collaborating.”

The Air Force also is working with Discovery Education, the education division of Discovery Communications, on an outreach program for high school STEM teachers.

Colonel Johnson said that although the Collaboratory would run through November, it was possible that new challenges could be created after that; he also said it was the first time there had been “such an open dialogue between the Air Force and the other side.”

In addition, he said there would be no overt recruiting messages on the Collaboratory site, nor would the Air Force actively recruit challenge participants. He said the Collaboratory was meant to ignite interest in the Air Force and possibly encourage participants to seek out more information about opportunities there.

The budget for the Collaboratory campaign is $3.7 million.

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and military expert at the Brookings Institution, said he was “generally favorably inclined” toward the Collaboratory campaign, but said the Air Force would need to be “very empirical, see how well it does, reassess it.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/business/media/air-force-invites-youths-to-help-solve-problems.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Campaign Spotlight: Collective, a Marketing Agency, Showcases Itself

July 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Developed in-house by Collective, a New York agency, with assistance from the Concept Farm in New York and Gale Martin Advertising in Woodmere, N.Y., the campaign is aimed at chief marketing officers of Fortune 100 companies, and at executives of advertising agencies and media-buying companies.

All of the ads, which began running this month, are aimed at promoting Collective’s ability to deliver coordinated media buys across television, mobile, tablet and computer screens, formats and devices. Not coincidentally, the campaign’s theme is “Life is but a screen.”

Co-founded in 2005 by Joe Apprendi, a former executive at MediaMind and 24/7 Real Media, Collective helps clients identify markets and the appropriate media to reach them. It also helps them place digital ads, and, on occasion, will create these. It works with Chase, American Express and KFC, among others, as well as with media-buying agencies like ZenithOptimedia, part of the Publicis Groupe, and OMD, part of the Omnicom Media Group unit of the Omnicom Group.

The campaign follows a study released by Collective in March, based on Nielsen data, that found that “advertising reach and frequency opportunities are no longer defined by TV and traditional TV” time categories, like prime time, “but instead are spread across multiple devices and are defined by the consumer’s preferences, even relationships, with each device.”

If advertisers want to reach prospective customers during rush hour, they should remember that customers’ usage of mobile devices peaks during morning commutes, said Ed Dandridge, Collective’s chief marketing officer. He said that from late morning until early afternoon, the screens that are most viewed are on desktop PCs, and this is when online video-viewing is at its peak. In the early evening, during commuting hours, mobile usage spikes again, while from 8 to 11 p.m., TV and tablet screens are both in use, as social media engagement occurs during television viewing.

The study also found that 71 percent of the media-using audience in the United States — a group Collective estimates exceeds 200 million people — consume media on multiple screens. Collective estimates multiscreen users exceed the 81.4 million TV-only users by approximately 2.5 to 1. The study also found that “the largest group of multiscreen users employ three screens, combining TV, online (computer) and smartphone.”

“The clear shift in consumer media behavior to multiscreen is a significant opportunity for brand marketers. Our campaign highlights precisely why consumers now expect marketers to deliver the right ad to them in the right format, on the right device at the right moment,” Mr. Apprendi said.

To illustrate this concept, a 30-second TV spot depicts screens in use at home, in an office and outdoors. The voice-over — singing an updated version of the 1950s doo-wop song “Sh-boom” (also known as, “Life Could Be a Dream”) — says, “Life is but a screen that takes you from the streets to paradise up above, connects you anywhere to anyone that you love.” The spot is running on cable channels in New York like CNN, ESPN, MSNBC and NY1.

A 15-second version of the TV spot also is running in the elevators of Manhattan office buildings where top ad agencies and advertisers are based.

Out-of-home advertising — running on bus shelters, telephone kiosks and subway entrances in Manhattan, as well as on digital and nondigital billboards at train stations in suburbs surrounding the city — illustrates the use of multiple screens by advertisers in different industries, like beverage, financial services and technology companies, car manufacturers and movie studios. One ad says, “Hollywood spends $3 billion each year on thrilling plot lines. Keep them on the edge of their seats with stunning, dynamic creative.”

The tagline here is, “Right screen. Right creative. Right moment. Collective’s Wherevertising.”

Digital versions of the out-of-home ads are also running on Web sites like ClickZ, Adweek and Business Insider.

The third component of the campaign is aimed specifically at political campaign managers and media strategists in Washington. It inserts modern devices into famous works of art and literature to illustrate how critical moments in history “could have been influenced by multiscreen,” said Mr. Dandridge.

Thus, in a 1570 painting by Giovanni Battista Moroni — “Portrait of a Man Holding a Letter” also known as “The Lawyer” — the man holds a smartphone in his right hand and a tablet in his left. Paraphrasing a quote from Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part 2,” the copy says, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the silos,” and concludes, “Mobilize voters across all screens.”

The political ads are running in media like Politico, The Hill and Huffington Post.

Mr. Dandridge said Collective’s goal was to “treat advertising decision-makers as consumers and to reach them as consumers, because advertising is the underlying currency of the industry they work in. If we can reach them with our brand that way, it demonstrates what we can do for their brand to engage consumers.”

The ads will run through late August and resume again in the fourth quarter of this year.

Mr. Dandridge said Collective would spend “in the mid-seven figures” on the campaign.

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If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that appears Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times print edition and on nytimes.com. http://www.nytimes.com/

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/media/collective-a-marketing-agency-showcases-itself.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Advertising: Aiming Autism Ads at Hispanic and African-American Parents

May 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The campaign, developed with the Advertising Council, which has worked with Autism Speaks since 2005, was created by the New York office of BBDO and LatinWorks of Austin, Tex., both part of the Omnicom Group. The campaign describes early signs of autism in detail and encourages parents to take immediate action if their child does not meet standard developmental milestones.

The new campaign is geared specifically at Hispanic and African-American parents because, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the current age of diagnosis among these groups, as well as among low-income families, is higher than that of the general public. According to the C.D.C., although the average age now of diagnosis in the United States is 4 to 5 years, a reliable diagnosis can be made as early as 18 to 24 months. And if the disorder is treated from the ages of 3 to 5, from 20 percent to 50 percent of children with autism will be able to attend mainstream kindergarten, according to studies by The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Autism is the fastest-growing serious developmental disorder in the United States. According to a study released last year by the C.D.C., in 2008, one in 88 children was diagnosed with autism by a doctor or other medical professional, a 78 percent increase over 2002. For boys, the ratio was one in 54.

Dr. Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of Autism Speaks, said the increase in autism diagnoses was partly because of a broadening of the definition of the disorder. She also said environmental risk factors probably affected the increase.

Autism Speaks, founded in 2005 by Bob Wright, former chairman of NBCUniversal, and his wife, Suzanne, whose grandson has autism, took a different tack than before with the new Ad Council campaigns. Messages of previous campaigns, also created by BBDO, focused on the numerical odds of children being found to have autism, some with celebrities whose children have autism.

Peggy Conlon, president and chief executive of the Ad Council, said previous advertising had effectively increased awareness among the general public about the early signs of autism and encouraged parents to speak to their doctors about their children. The new campaign features “realistic situations parents will identify with. I believe they will help more minority parents speak to their doctors if they see the signs and get their children the intervention they need,” she said. So far, autism ads have run in donated time and space worth more than $350 million.

Liz Feld, president of Autism Speaks, also said there were “cultural barriers to diagnosis and cultural barriers to access to care among minority communities. We wanted to break down these barriers.”

New print and outdoor advertising features photos that zoom in on the eyes and mouth of infants. One ad says, “You think something may be wrong. The answer is not staring you in the face. Avoiding eye contact is one early sign of autism. Learn the others today at autismspeaks.org/signs. Early diagnosis can make a lifetime of difference.”

Another ad, featuring the closed eye and eyelashes of an infant, asks, “How can a 12-month-old keep you up at night without ever making a sound? No babbling is one early sign of autism,” while a third ad, showing an infant’s mouth, says, “It’s been nearly six months without any big smiles. For either of you. No big, joyful smiles is one early sign of autism.”

TV ads, made in 15- and 30-second versions, show parents and infants. In all cases, the parents offer a variety of excuses for the child’s behavior, like “maybe he’s not a smiler” or “maybe he needs more stimulation.” All spots end with the voice-over saying, “Maybe is all you need to find out more about autism.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/business/media/aiming-autism-ads-at-hispanic-and-african-american-parents.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Advertising: National Geographic Channel Shifts Its Programming to TV Series

May 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Courteney Monroe, the channel’s chief marketing officer, said its executives had worked since 2011 to switch its programming from being four-fifths documentaries and one-fifth series to four-fifths series and one-fifth documentaries. “It’s very hard to build a big, loyal audience without recurring series,” she said.

Those series include “Wicked Tuna,” about fishermen from Gloucester, Mass., and “Doomsday Preppers,” about Americans preparing for the end of the world, both introduced last year; “Brain Games,” introduced last month; and “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” which is set to premiere on Sunday. The channel, a joint venture begun in 2001 between the National Geographic Society and Fox Cable Networks, also recently began producing factually based dramas, like “Killing Lincoln,” which ran in February.

The final episode of the current season of “Wicked Tuna” will be shown on Sunday, followed by the first episode of “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” which Ms. Monroe said makes the evening “the ideal launch for the new brand campaign.”

The channel’s strategy so far appears to have had mixed results: according to Nielsen, the Sunday night showings of “Wicked Tuna” during Season 1 averaged 805,000 viewers, climbing to 953,000 in Season 2 through May 5. Average viewership of Tuesday night showings of “Doomsday Preppers,” however, fell from 936,000 in Season 1 to 736,000 in the second season.

Created by the New York office of BBDO, part of the Omnicom Group, the advertising is the channel’s first new branding campaign since 2009. It includes three spots on three of the new series, each 30 and 45 seconds long. The first, based on “Doomsday Preppers,” depicts a birthday party for a little girl in an underground bunker, who receives a gas mask as a present.

The second spot features Dave Marciano, a fishing boat captain who appears on “Wicked Tuna,” anxiously awaiting a possible catch, while the third spot, promoting “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” follows two adventurers racing to catch an airplane through snowy, icy terrain.

All three ads also feature viewers immersed in the environment of each series, watching the action unfold alongside characters representing the series while dressed in sweat pants and nightclothes, and engaged in activities like brushing their teeth and eating. They are invisible to the characters.

There is also a fourth spot, in 60- and 90-second versions, showing segments of the other three. None of the spots has dialogue; each ends with the tagline, “The places we take you … aren’t just on the map.”

Greg Hahn, an executive creative director at BBDO New York, said the agency “knew we needed to show some original content and to bring the viewer into it, but we didn’t want to show clips, or people at home watching TV.”

He added, “We wanted to show the emotional response of people to the programming. It’s not just about the geographic places it takes you but also the emotional places. National Geographic magazine and National Geographic Channel have a long history of taking you to exotic places, showing you new locations. We wanted to build off that, open up a new way of looking at the brand.”

The new advertising will first appear on Sunday night on National Geographic Channel in the United States; it will also appear, starting Thursday, on the channel’s Web site and its Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.

The spots will run in the future on sister channels of National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, which offers wildlife and natural history programming, and Nat Geo Mundo, a Spanish-language channel. They will also run later on National Geographic channels outside the United States, in 170 countries.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/business/media/national-geographic-channel-shifts-its-programming-to-tv-series.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Webdenda : Webdenda

February 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

And1, Aliso Viejo, Calif., the basketball footwear and apparel company, chose Catch New York as agency of record. Billings were not disclosed. The assignment had previously been handled by Frank Creative, Portland, Ore.

David Bonner joined the St. Louis office of Momentum Worldwide as senior vice president and executive creative director. He succeeds Jeff Stevens, who left in April, the agency said. Mr. Bonner had been senior vice president and executive creative director at St. John Partners, Jacksonville, Fla. Momentum Worldwide is part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Jonathan Cohen joined Behan Communications, Albany, in a new post, chief operating officer. He had been running his own consultancy, Cohen Strategic.

Tim Collison joined the ZenithOptimedia Group, London, part of the Publicis Groupe, in a new post, global communications director. He had most recently been director for worldwide communications at Initiative, part of the Mediabrands division of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Lori Conkling joined NBCUniversal, New York, part of Comcast, as executive vice president for strategy and business development in a newly formed part of the company that is focused on areas like innovation and digital strategy and is led by Lauren Zalaznick. Ms. Conkling had been executive vice president for distribution at AE Networks, which is jointly owned by the Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation.

Doremus New York, part of the Doremus division of the Omnicom Group, hired three employees. They are Cori Lundy, account supervisor; Melissa Medeiros, marketing analyst, a new post; and Rose Weng, management supervisor, also a new post.

Robyn Freye joined Digitaria, San Diego, part of the JWT division of WPP, in a new post, vice president for marketing. She had been director for business development at Pereira O’Dell, San Francisco, part of Grupo ABC.

Bob Girolamo joined ePrize, Pleasant Ridge, Mich., in a new post, managing director for its mobile customer relationship management division, overseeing a team based in the company’s Chicago office. He had been a general manager at CoolSavings.com.

Allison Gollust joined the New York office of Turner Broadcasting System, part of Time Warner, as senior vice president for communications at CNN Worldwide, overseeing publicity and public relations teams in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and Washington. The hiring of Ms. Gollust, who had most recently been communications director for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, reunites her with Jeff Zucker, president at CNN Worldwide, with whom she worked when he was at “Today,” NBC and NBCUniversal.

Hearst Ventures, New York, made a minority equity investment — estimated at $30 million for a 20 percent stake — in Science Inc., Santa Monica, Calif., which creates digital businesses and helps them to grow. Recent initiatives by Science Inc. included Dollar Shave Club. Hearst Ventures is part of the Hearst Entertainment and Syndication unit of the Hearst Corporation.

Lionsgate, Santa Monica, Calif., consolidated its media planning and buying assignment for its Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment studios, with spending estimated at $250 million, at the Mindshare division of GroupM, which is owned by WPP. Mindshare has handled the media duties for Summit before Summit was acquired by Lionsgate; the media duties for Lionsgate had been handled by Initiative, part of the Mediabrands division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. A review for the consolidated assignment involved three media agencies: Initiative, Mindshare and Horizon Media.

Sarah Mark and Alex Van Wagner joined Hero Marketing, San Francisco, in new posts. Ms. Mark becomes client strategy director; she had most recently been a consultant. Mr. Van Wagner becomes senior client strategy manager; he had been a client manager at Rauxa.

MarketSense, Burr Ridge, Ill., and its sibling company, MarketEffect, have been combined to form the Mx Group.

Jordi Martinez joined the Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, as a creative director. He had been the head of the Dam Armada unit of the Amsterdam office of Wieden Kennedy.

Tim Mayer joined TruEffect, Westminster, Colo., in a new post, chief marketing officer. He had been vice president for marketing at ShopAtHome.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/webdenda.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Advertising: From Barbasol, Shaving Advice Across the Generations

January 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Barbasol shaving cream, sold by Perio Inc., is to begin a cheeky campaign on Monday that carries the theme “Shave like a man.” The campaign includes commercials on television and radio; advertisements online; the Barbasol Web site, barbasol.com; promotional T-shirts with sayings that include “It’s like America on your face”; and a presence on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

In fact, behavior on social media is among the subjects that the campaign tackles. To make the message seem less scolding or preachy, the TV commercials take an offbeat tack: manly archetypes of the past — a pioneer on the Oregon Trail in 1854, a baseball player in 1920, a G.I. fighting in 1944 — talk directly to their current-day male descendants.

The commercial featuring the soldier begins with the actor speaking to the camera. “Oh, hey, buddy, your great-granddad here,” he says. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of busy here fighting for your freedom in the Second World War.

“But now, you’re using that freedom to hurl insults at celebrities on Twitter?” he says. “Listen, hashtag, if you’re not going to fight like a man, at least shave like a man.”

The spot ends with the soldier barking, “And stop L.O.L.’ing everything.” The other television commercials mock 21st-century habits like channel-surfing and juice cleanses.

The ads are to run on cable channels with large male audiences, like AMC, the Big Ten Network, CBS Sports, ESPN, the MLB Network and Spike.

The campaign is the first work for Barbasol by its new creative agency, GSDM in Austin, Tex., part of the Omnicom Group. Plans call for ad spending to be increased significantly from recent years, when Barbasol ran an earnest campaign that carried the theme “Close shave America.”

Barbasol is not alone in using a wry, wink-wink tone to comment on the state of modern man in a nonconfrontational way.

Other companies taking a similar approach include Brut, with a campaign carrying the theme “Let your man out,” and Old Spice, with ads that entreat the target audience to “Smell like a man, man.”

It is no coincidence that Brut, Old Spice and Barbasol are all venerable brands that want to sharpen their appeal to younger men while at the same time holding on to current customers.

“We have such a good, core group of older, loyal fans, and we didn’t want to alienate them,” said Ken Waldron, vice president for advertising at Perio Inc. in Columbus, Ohio.

The device of the “ancestors” speaking to viewers “plays into our heritage and works for the older generation,” he said, and the humor of the improbable intergenerational advice appeals to men in their 20s and 30s.

Many younger consumers prefer advertising aimed at them to be humorous, and are more likely to “like” funny ads on social media and share them with friends, Mr. Waldron said.

“But humor is hard to do,” he said — and that is one of the reasons Perio chose to work with GSDM. Mr. Waldron cited the agency’s work for a longtime client, Southwest Airlines, whose campaigns carry lighthearted themes like “Wanna get away?” and “You are now free to move about the country.”

Duff Stewart, chief executive at GSDM, said the agency’s efforts for Barbasol began with this question: “How do you take a historic brand, with all that heritage, and make it relevant today?”

“There’s a nostalgia for the traditional concept of manhood,” Mr. Stewart said, and a desire for “getting back to what’s real.”

But if the ads had expressed those ideas in an overly serious manner, he said, some people might have found them antagonistic.

Instead, said Jake Camozzi, creative director at GSDM, the agency sought “a unique way to poke a little fun at the cultural trends that are happening today,” without seeming to mock viewers or make them the “butt of the joke.”

The goal was to produce something that men would respond to by saying, “It has a little bit of irreverence to it, but it’s the truth,” Mr. Camozzi said.

Thus was born what Mr. Camozzi called the hook of the campaign: “the guy from the past telling you to shape up.”

“It came from a familial truth,” he said, likening the discussion to “an uncle at the table talking to the younger generation” — in a good-natured manner, not scolding.

Barbasol is also “a brand with humor in its heritage,” Mr. Camozzi said. For instance, a vintage print ad with a photograph of a beaming bald man carried the headline, “I like Barbasol so well I shave all over.”

The primary competitors for Barbasol are Edge, sold by Energizer Holdings, and various Gillette products, sold by Procter Gamble, including Gillette Foamy, Gillette Fusion ProGlide and Gillette Series.

Perio spent $3.7 million to advertise Barbasol in major media in 2011, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP, compared with $2.7 million in 2010 and $2.9 million in 2009. The total for the first nine months of last year was $2 million.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/business/media/from-barbasol-shaving-advice-across-the-generations.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Advertising: Ad Agency Goodby, Silverstein Opens a New York Office

January 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment

AN advertising agency is rewriting a lyric of “New York, New York” to proclaim, “If I can make it anywhere, I’ll make it there.”

Goodby, Silverstein Partners, a leading agency with headquarters in San Francisco, is opening an office in New York. The office, temporarily located at 7 World Trade Center, gives Goodby, Silverstein, which was founded in 1983, a New York presence for the first time.

It is the agency’s second office outside of San Francisco, after one in Detroit that opened in 2010 as Goodby, Silverstein, which is owned by the Omnicom Group, began creating campaigns for the Chevrolet division of General Motors.

Two senior executives have relocated from San Francisco to lead the New York office, which will employ 15 to 25 people. They are Christian Haas, 39, who becomes partner and executive creative director, and Nancy Reyes, 37, who becomes associate partner and managing director.

The agency is occupying the temporary space while its permanent location, 200 Varick Street at Houston Street, is being remodeled. Plans call for an opening in April.

The office opens with work from current clients like Comcast, Elizabeth Arden, Google and YouTube. Goodby, Silverstein’s other clients include Adobe, the California Milk Processor Board, Cisco, Frito-Lay, the National Basketball Association, Nestlé and Sonic. Ms. Reyes and Mr. Haas say they are eager to look for new business in New York with the help of the agency’s co-chairmen and creative directors, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein.

In the “Mad Men” era, only a handful of American ad agencies with heavyweight creative credentials were located outside New York, a city so widely regarded as the heart of advertising that the phrase “Madison Avenue” became shorthand for the industry.

That changed in the 1970s as the business began to decentralize, partly because the dire financial and quality-of-life problems in New York led many talented executives to pursue careers elsewhere. Agencies like Goodby, Silverstein became known almost as much for not being in New York — opting instead for cities like Austin, Tex.; Boston; Los Angeles; Miami; Minneapolis; Portland, Ore.; Richmond, Va.; and San Francisco — as for the ads they created.

Some of those agencies eventually added New York outposts. Some opened in New York but later retreated, and some still eschew New York. But declining to take a bite out of the Big Apple is becoming less appealing, primarily because New York has overcome the perception issues that once cost it so dearly.

“We just lose so many people to New York,” Mr. Goodby said in a phone interview last week from San Francisco. “It’s crazy not to access that.”

The executives who founded agencies outside New York did so to “kindle a ‘creative shop’ feeling,” Mr. Goodby said: a feeling they did not believe they could cultivate in a city dominated by giant, tradition-minded agencies. “I don’t think Rich and I felt we needed a New York office,” he said. “In fact, it was more unique to not have one.”

In his presentations to prospective East Coast clients, Mr. Goodby normally includes a slide that addresses why the agency has its headquarters on the West Coast. It reads: “You call it distance. We call it perspective.”

“I think I’m going to ask to have that slide retired,” he said, laughing.

Goodby, Silverstein was started as Goodby, Berlin Silverstein by three colleagues at Hal Riney Partners in San Francisco. The third founder, Andy Berlin, left for New York in 1992, three months after Omnicom acquired the 62.5 percent of the agency that it had not already owned, and he has spent the rest of his career there.

There was talk then that Omnicom would transform the agency into its third worldwide network, joining DDB and BBDO, in an expansion that would start with the opening of an office in New York. But a year later, Omnicom bought TBWA International, now TBWA Worldwide, and made that its third network instead.

“San Francisco is so livable, but there’s nothing like New York,” Mr. Silverstein said in an interview last week in Midtown Manhattan, at which he was joined by Mr. Haas and Ms. Reyes. “It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Go East, young man, go East.”

The executives acknowledge the risks of the move. They do not want other agencies to conclude that Goodby, Silverstein is trying to ride in like the cavalry to rescue Madison Avenue. “There’s nothing wrong with what’s going on in New York,” Mr. Silverstein said. “New York doesn’t ‘need’ another ad agency.”

Likewise, Ms. Reyes said, “there’s nothing wrong with what’s going on at Goodby, Silverstein in San Francisco.”

What became clear was that Goodby, Silverstein was losing prospective employees to New York. It was “less about them saying, ‘I’ve got to go to that agency in New York,’ than, ‘I want to be in New York,’ ” Mr. Silverstein said.

In fact, he said, a major reason he and Mr. Goodby finally decided to open an office in New York was that Ms. Reyes and Mr. Haas had confided that they wanted to move there.

Mr. Haas has worked in São Paulo, Brazil, in addition to San Francisco, but he has never worked in New York. “São Paulo is, in a weird way, kind of like New York,” he said, but “the energy, the buzz” of New York are difficult to duplicate.

Ms. Reyes worked at New York agencies like D’Arcy Masius Benton Bowles and Ogilvy Mather before leaving in 2003 to join Goodby, Silverstein.

In the last decade, “we lost lots of people in San Francisco to New York,” she said. “We’ll call on them.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/business/media/ad-agency-goodby-silverstein-opens-a-new-york-office.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Media Decoder Blog: Absolut Vodka Takes a Rare Step and Adds an Agency to Its Lineup

December 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Executives who sell Absolut vodka are doing something they rarely do: expanding the roster of advertising, marketing and communications agencies they work with.

The Absolut Company, a division of Pernod Ricard, is adding Sid Lee, an agency based in Montreal that also has offices in cities like Amsterdam, New York and Toronto. The agency, which works for marketers like Adidas, Cirque du Soleil and Ubisoft, is being named to create the next worldwide campaign for Absolut, which is scheduled to begin appearing in summer 2013.

There was no review or pitch before Sid Lee was added, said Mathias Westphal, global brand director for Absolut, which is based in Stockholm. Absolut executives simply liked the work the agency had produced for clients like Cirque du Soleil.

The campaign is to include traditional advertising; digital advertising; so-called experiential marketing, which involves events and other ways to bring products to life in tangible forms; social media; and branded entertainment, meaning the production of content in which Absolut will be interwoven into the plots.

Absolut has for many years worked with two agencies that lead the global work on its campaigns. One, specializing in television, print and other mainstream forms of advertising, is TBWA Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, and its TBWA/Chiat/Day office in New York. The other is GreatWorks, based in Stockholm, which specializes in digital advertising.

It is TBWA/Chiat/Day and a predecessor, TBWA Advertising, that have created the well-known Absolut ads featuring the brand’s distinctive bottle, artists like Andy Warhol, flavored vodkas and novelties like snow globes and gloves. That relationship with Absolut dates back more than 30 years, through several owners and distributors of the brand.

Both TBWA and GreatWorks will continue to work on Absolut, Mr. Westphal said.

The reason that Absolut decided to “appoint Sid Lee as one of our lead agencies on a global level,” Mr. Westphal said in a phone interview on Thursday, was a rethinking of how Absolut needed to be advertised and marketed, particularly when it came to millennial consumers.

“There’s a bit of a shift in our marketing model, to doing from saying,” Mr. Westphal said — in other words, away from traditional ads that talk about the product to focusing on experiences that the product can offer consumers.

Sid Lee is “bringing a lot of fresh, new thinking to today’s millennial generation,” he added.

Another reason for reconsidering how Absolut is sold is what Mr. Westphal called the “fierce competition” in the premium segment of the vodka market that confronts Absolut.

Absolut was once almost alone in its field of imported vodkas that cost more than domestic brands like Smirnoff. Now it faces scores of rivals, both in its price range as well as from vodkas that are known as superpremiums, brands like Grey Goose and Ketel One that cost more than Absolut.

“As a brand, when we started out, we were challenging conventions,” Mr. Westphal said. “We need to do that now.”

Absolut is the fourth-largest spirits brand in the world, behind Bacardi, Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker, meaning it is still the biggest brand of imported vodka. In most countries in which it is sold, including the United States, it is also the best-selling premium or imported vodka.

At Sid Lee, the Absolut work will be primarily handled out of its Amsterdam office, with the New York office, a relatively new addition, and the Toronto office also taking part.

“It’s a big deal for us,” said Bertrand Cesvet, chairman of Sid Lee in Montreal.

And “it’s humbling,” he added, to join TBWA on the Absolut agency roster, because “there’s a great body of work and a great heritage.”

“Absolut has been one of the most consistent brands in history” in terms of its ad approaches, Mr. Cesvet said. “It’s a new era.”

Eric Alper, vice president for strategy and lead account partner for Absolut at Sid Lee, based in the Toronto office, said: “To reach, touch and engage millennials, advertising can’t be like wallpaper. You have to create advertising that can compete with pop culture.”

TBWA will continue to create campaigns for other brands sold by the Absolut Company and the Pernod Ricard parent, among them Jameson and Kahlua.

After the campaign for Absolut for 2013 begins to run, Mr. Westphal said, “where we go in the future is an open question.”

Asked if, going forward, each assignment from Absolut will be a so-called jump ball, with the roster agencies competing to be selected for the work, Mr. Westphal replied, “Right now, Sid Lee has caught that ball.”

In another sign of how competitive the vodka market is, another vodka brand said on Thursday that it was hiring an agency it had not worked with before.

Belvedere vodka, produced and distributed by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, selected BBDO Worldwide, also an Omnicom agency, to handle a project, creating its next global campaign. The ads are expected to begin running in spring 2013.

Belvedere had most recently worked with another Omnicom agency, the Arnell Group in New York, as its creative agency of record.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/absolut-vodka-takes-a-rare-step-and-adds-an-agency-to-its-lineup/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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