Business

Have you been part of an agency pitch lately? If so, you will have seen a very different pitch than you would have seen five or 10 years ago. Of course that’s normal, given all the change that is happening in our industry.  Agency RFPs now include lengthy requirements for data, insights, marketing technology and other digital components. These are not “fluff” requests like “increase likes” or “drive search results.”  by Maarten Albarda

Companies will spend more than $1 trillion globally on marketing in 2017, by one estimate. This puts chief marketing officers stewarding their brands squarely in the crosshairs of CEOs, CFOs and corporate boards, who want to know where all this money is going and what they’re getting in return—“brands be damned.”  To respond to these pressures, CMOs have turned to marketing mix optimization (MMO), an analytical approach to figuring out which elements of the marketing mix—media, creative and so on—are working more and less effectively, and then spending more on the winners and less on the losers.  By Cesar Brea, Laura Beaudin, Andreas Dullweber and Brian Dennehy

Billboard announced that Raúl Alarcόn Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Spanish Broadcasting System, Inc., tops Billboard’s annual “Power 100”.

Last December, the ANA CMO Masters Circle and the ANA’s Educational Foundation organized a roundtable hosted by the CMO at Hyatt Hotels, Maryam Banikarim. The roundtable topic focused on how to channel the highest quality of talent into a career in marketing or advertising with key stakeholders like CMOs, agency leaders, academic professors, and millennial marketers (who joined us from Hyatt). The insights on the industry from the millennial viewpoint were particularly important.  By Elliot Lum

In the ‘90s, casual Fridays brought about the slow death of formal business attire in the office. In the new millennium, mobile devices effectively eliminated the 9-to-5 workday and erased the line between personal and professional. Now, the gig economy is about to kill the concept of a company employee.

I recently gave a presentation to a room full of inside-sales people.  The topic was listening.  If you know me at all you know how ironic this session was for me to give.  I’m notoriously distracted and a multi-tasker, probably like most of those reading this article. Listening is an art form — like a finely tuned instrument — and I am a “blunt instrument” most of the time.  So, I explored how it is perfected by focused people who are conscious of the impact listening can have.  By Cory Treffiletti

Over the past ten years, I have witnessed the disappearance of powerful brands and with it the diminishing of a level of enchantment that once fed our “can do, anything is possible” American view of the world.  This is the first report in a five-part series exploring the impact on people and our culture of powerful brand vanishment and why, more than ever, we need these cultural artifacts back among us.  By Jane Cavalier

Brands don’t want to associate with content that makes them look bad in any way.  Last year’s brand safety controversies stirred fears that advertisers would back away from platforms like Facebook and YouTube, but spending has continued to surge.

Spanish Broadcasting System, Inc. (SBS) announced the appointment of Geraldo Arriaga as Vice President, Digital Media Sales of SBS, LaMusica App. In this role, Geraldo will spearhead all of the Company’s digital revenue efforts at the national scale, while working directly with all Digital Sales Managers,Sales Management and divisions in each one of our markets. Mr. Arriaga will ensure SBS’s Digital Media programs are fully integrated into the network’s growing “Original Content Strategy.”

Spanish Broadcasting System, Inc. (SBS) announced the appointment of Geraldo Arriaga as Vice President, Digital Media Sales of SBS, LaMusica App. In this role, Geraldo will spearhead all of the Company’s digital revenue efforts at the national scale, while working directly with all Digital Sales Managers,Sales Management and divisions in each one of our markets. Mr. Arriaga will ensure SBS’s Digital Media programs are fully integrated into the network’s growing “Original Content Strategy.”

The 4A’s issued a Fair Play Charter to its members, asking media agencies, and media departments within agencies, to recommit to fair and equitable treatment of minority media owners.

BEN hires Maria Teresa Hernandez as Vice President of Client Development to lead multicultural business development

If the Super Bowl is indeed a barometer of national sentiment, it is quite clear that the mood of the masses is shifting. Save for some allusions to recent natural disasters, the “cause marketing”, “virtue signaling”, social commentary and moral grandstanding we witnessed last year seem to have taken a backseat. The Dow is a damned geyser. The labor market is tight as a Telemundo weather girl’s dress. Taxes are low, life is good. Rocket man? Border walls? We’ll get to that later. It’s time to make hay now. It’s back to business in ‘murica to judge by the hefty prices brands, movie studios and streaming services*** are paying to appear in the crevices of the last football game of the season. So, what can we say of the repertoire? It was quintessential Super Bowl fare. Crowd-pleasing tropes, unpretentious gimmicks, not too brainy. Don’t overthink it, just throw a ton of money at the brief. Write a simple script, have the planners sign off on it and get a seasoned, big name director to shoot the boards. With “a big name director” I mean someone who knows how to blow shit up and handle celebrities. And their publicists. Problem is, advertising is always a tossup. Even if you throw all the right ingredients into the equation to play it safe with a sure bet, the acid test of memorability can still be elusive. Hence, without further ado, I give you my impressions below.  Disclaimer:  what you are about to read is 100% morning after unaided recall.  By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

While the ad industry has been debating whether purpose is a business driver or not, Larry Fink, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Blackrock Inc., has no doubt and is willing to use the $1.7 trillion in active funds managed by Blackrock to push companies to make positive contribution to society.  by Nigel Hollis

Economic momentum is accelerating. CEOs around the world sense the opportunities for expanding in the US through 2018.

The new book “Auténtico, The Definitive Guide to Latino Career Success” is co-authored by Latino executives Andrés Tomás Tapia, a senior partner and Inclusion Strategies Solutions leader at Korn Ferry, and Robert Rodríguez, PhD.

Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Nielsen released their second year findings of its “Digitally Engaged Food Shopper” study.  Building on the joint research findings issued in 2017, this second set of insights examines what food and beverage manufacturers and brick-and-mortar retailers need to do to ready themselves for the rising digital grocery landscape, identifying six digital imperatives for omnichannel success.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc./LMMiami.com

• Technology finally confirmed what we had suspected all along (especially us cynics in the ad biz): nobody gives a damn about those brainy, carefully fact-checked foreign policy op-eds that appear on the Sunday paper.
• Our newfangled ability to track what people click on on their various devices is one rude awakening: most folks out there seem to have quite corny consumption habits.
• To put it mildly.
• Dancing cats, wardrobe malfunctions, celebrity gossip, the Paul bros, conspiracy theories.

Most digital strategies don’t reflect how digital is changing economic fundamentals, industry dynamics, or what it means to compete. Companies should watch out for five pitfalls.  The processing power of today’s smartphones are several thousand times greater than that of the computers that landed a man on the moon in 1969. These devices connect the majority of the human population, and they’re only ten years old.

In this report, Chick Foxgrover, 4A’s EVP of creative technologies and innovation, shares his perspective on this year’s CES conference — including key take-aways for agencies, insights on voice technology, VR, smart homes, and more.