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Respect for Millennials; Winklevosses' Crypto Campaign; Tattletale iPhones |
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Hello, CMOs. Wouldn’t you like to be a meme? If you said “yes,” you’re a marketer who tolerates risk. If you said no, you sell Tide Pods.
And in the middle, now there's Netflix. People are paying homage to its hit horror movie "Bird Box" by uploading videos of themselves stumbling around in blindfolds, just like Sandra Bullock in the film. But the “Bird Box Challenge” has also generated clips like one showing a blindfolded toddler banging into a wall. YouTube took that video down, Fast Company reports. In a post on Twitter, Netflix urged, “Please do not hurt yourselves with this Bird Box Challenge.”
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PHOTO: THE BRITISH ARMY
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Everyone enjoys hilarious, deprecating clichés about millennials and Gen Z, except millennials and Gen Z.
That insight drives the latest ad campaign for the British Army, which aims to treat undervalued young people with dignity, the Guardian reports. Recruitment ads seek “Snow Flakes” (for their compassion), “Me Me Me Millennials” (for their self-belief) and other ostensibly flawed candidates with hidden virtues.
“The army sees people differently and we are proud to look beyond the stereotypes and spot the potential in young people, from compassion to self-belief,” Major General Paul Nanson said. Seems like a strategy other marketers might want to try.
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PHOTO: PAUL VIGNA
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Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, argues in a new ad campaign that its chaotic sector should protect investors by adopting standard best practices and following regulations. Not incidentally, the campaign simultaneously suggests that Gemini already provides shelter from the storm.
Subway, taxi-top and other ads deliver slogans like “The Revolution Needs Rules,” “Crypto Without Chaos” and “Money Has a Future.” A full-page ad in the New York Times on Monday will press the point. “We believe that investors coming into cryptocurrency deserve the exact same protections as investors in more traditional markets, adhering to the same standards, practices, regulations and compliance protocols,” Chris Roan, head of marketing at Gemini, told CMO Today.
The ad campaign, Gemini’s first notable effort aimed at retail investors, was timed to capitalize on new mobile app, Mr. Roan said. But it arrives on the heels of a brutal year for cryptocurrency values broadly, and allegations of manipulation and fraud in the sector are common. "Order" might be a compelling pitch.
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CMO Today's Lara O'Reilly emails: The first rule of representing a brand is fairly simple: Don't be seen using your competitors' products. Yet, as we've seen time and time again over the years, Twitter can be marketers' downfall—exposing their brand ambassadors and even their official accounts apparently moonlighting with the enemy.
Take Huawei, the troubled Chinese phonemaker currently under a heap of U.S. government scrutiny. The brand's official Twitter account wished us all a "Happy #2019" at the turn of the new year... via Twitter for iPhone.
The punishment for the unfortunate tweeters was reportedly severe. Huawei blamed the mistake on one of its agencies but the company also demoted and deducted pay from two of its in-house staff, Bloomberg News reports, citing an internal memo. Always think before you tweet.
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“There’s this trope of cutting out the middleman and therefore delivering more value and more affordable products to the customer, but it’s fluff for a lot of folks.”
| — Paul Shaked, co-founder of eco-friendly comforter startup Buffy, to Digiday. The brand started with certain direct-to-consumer tactics like selling on Instagram instead of in stores, but ignored other pages in the DTC manual. |
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Bumble said it will introduce an ad campaign starring Serena Williams “during” the Super Bowl, although it declined to confirm whether it will actually run in the Super Bowl broadcast on CBS. Which sounds like a no. [Yahoo Sports]
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PepsiCo is deploying self-driving “Snackbots” to deliver SunChips and other goods to students who order via app on the University of the Pacific’s Stockton, California, campus. [Adweek]
The National Football League signed a sponsorship deal letting Caesars Entertainment use NFL trademarks to promote casinos, a first for the league, but not sports betting or daily fantasy. (Watch this space.) [ESPN]
Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, who managed agency relationships and key accounts for Snap as its head of global strategic partnerships, is the latest executive to leave the company. [Business Insider]
The partial government shutdown is affecting ad agencies, too: The government is a top 50 advertiser with nearly $1 billion in annual spending. Defense Department work like military recruiting is still on. [Ad Age]
Some big YouTube stars, including those popular with children and teens, are promoting a gambling site that sells prize-filled "mystery boxes." [The Daily Beast]
The city attorney of Los Angeles filed a lawsuit against the Weather Company, alleging the Weather Channel app deceptively collected, shared and profited from consumer location data for purposes including targeted marketing. A spokesman for IBM, which owns the Weather Company, said the company has always been transparent about the use of location data. [The New York Times]
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