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CMOs and CEOs Need to Be ‘Absolutely Together’ on Tackling Political Issues |
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Hello CMOs. Apple’s sentimental holiday ads are always among the most anticipated festive commercials. This year’s effort is a charming animated tale of a girl too insecure to share her creative talent with the world.
The spot gets top marks not just for the film itself, but for its hidden cultural easter eggs. My personal favorite? The Sonic Youth “Washing Machine” album t-shirt the protagonist sports early in the ad as she taps away at her MacBook.
The CMO Today newsletter is taking a break for the Thanksgiving holiday. I’ll be back in your inbox Monday morning. Happy holidays!
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PHOTO: ERIC RISBERG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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We are living in politically charged times and it’s something brands can’t really ignore. Recent research by PR firm Edelman found that a company’s position on a social issue can sway potential buyers of a product just as much as its features.
Airbnb and Walmart are among the latest brands to tangle with politics, CMO Today’s Nat Ives reports. The home-sharing company is facing calls for a boycott over its decision to remove listings located in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Walmart, Union Pacific and Boston Scientific are dropping their support for the re-election campaign of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R., Miss.) over her reference to a “public hanging”. Ms. Hyde-Smith said Tuesday: “For anyone that was offended by my comments, I certainly apologize.”
Richard Edelman, the PR firm’s founder, advised marketers to be prepared for rapid-response communications, partly by anticipating the sorts of issues that might come up. “But the most important part is CEO and CMO have to be absolutely together on this,” he said.
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On the subject of brands’ political entanglements, shoe brand Toms is donating $5 million to anti-gun violence organizations—the largest-ever public corporate contribution toward ending gun violence in the U.S., the Hollywood Reporter reports.
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PHOTO: JOEL SAGET/AFP
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How’s your holiday campaign planning go this year? I’d hazard a guess many marketers intend to pump a sizeable chunk of their seasonal ad budgets into Facebook.
Those plans may have hit a slight snag Tuesday when Facebook’s Ads Manager suffered a blackout for several hours. A Facebook spokesman told Bloomberg that campaigns that were already up and running should not have been affected, but ad-buyers may have encountered issues creating new campaigns or making changes to existing ones—just in time for Black Friday! (A spokesman tells me Facebook resolved the underlying issue, and any lingering glitches should improve today.)
Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, reiterated in a TV interview with CNN Tuesday that stepping down as chairman is “not the plan” in the near term. He also supported COO Sheryl Sandberg as an important partner he hopes to work with “for decades.”
Elsewhere, some more news on Definers, the oppo-research and consulting outfit tasked with exposing critical information about Facebook’s detractors. Facebook’s departing policy and communications chief, Elliot Schrage, took the blame for hiring Definers—“and similar firms”—according to a memo first reported by TechCrunch.
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A GDPR warning France's data-protection regulator issued to a little-known mobile ad-tech firm has garnered lots of attention from data-protection experts.
Vectuary, a small DSP, was found by the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, to be harvesting data on almost 70 million people, across 32,000 apps, without their consent. The company was ordered to delete the information and stop processing data without proper consent.
Here’s the interesting part for anybody using consent frameworks. Vectuary itself was using the GDPR consent framework endorsed by industry association IAB Europe to collect consent strings from its many partners. The new CNIL notice could be a sign that companies can't rely on contractural relationships to assume user consent on their behalf; companies processing that data must themselves verify that consent is valid.
Matthias Matthiesen, IAB Europe's head of data protection and privacy policy, told Digiday the trade body has always held the view that companies shouldn't assume consent has been given just because a contract has been put in place.
(Google, by the way, still hasn’t adopted the IAB Europe consent framework and instead offers its own consent-management platform, Funding Choices.)
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PHOTO: JASON ALDEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably browsed LinkedIn and felt a weird pang that something is missing. Well, I come bearing gifts. Following in the footsteps of Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Google...LinkedIn has become the latest tech platform to introduce Stories!
“Finally!” I hear you exclaim. But let’s take a step back before you start ripping up your 2019 media plan to place LinkedIn Stories front and center.
The new Stories-like feature is called “Student Voices” and lets U.S. students post videos to their “campus playlist.” But TechCrunch has noticed a perplexing quirk of the plan. While similar updates on other platforms disappear after 24 hours—encouraging users to post a less filtered version of their online selves—Student Voices will remain permanently on users’ profiles. The idea, LinkedIn says, is to let students show off their campus experiences to potential recruiters.
LinkedIn says there are no plans to insert ads in Student Voices yet, but that it does plan to build a similar feature for more sets of users.
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“This isn’t like another magazine that is not going to make it...This is about the evolution of a brand and what it means not just to redefine itself and grow, but also to liberate itself and have this ability to not only continue on, but to be more successful than it ever was.”
| — Pamela Drucker Mann, Condé Nast’s chief marketing officer, on the decision to end the regular print publication of Glamour magazine |
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Consecutive years in which agency revenues have grown slower than overall advertising spend, according to Deutsche Bank
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Amazon is reportedly bidding for Disney’s 22 regional sports networks. [CNBC]
A wave of banking startups dubbed “neo-banks” are looking to steal share from major financial brands with phone-first services and fewer fees. [The New York Times]
Former Golden State Warriors star Baron Davis has opened a pop-up for his fledgling Black Santa Co. [San Francisco Business Times]
Anomaly has promoted global COO Karina Wilsher to the chief executive position. [Ad Age]
Jane Maas, the copywriter dubbed “the real Peggy Olson” and named one of Ad Age’s 100 most influential women in advertising, has died. She was 86. [Ad Age]
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