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Behold, 10G; WeWork Rebrands; Ford's Mobility Detour; AB Inbev Makes a Big Super Bowl Buy |
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Now that certain AT&T phones display sexy “5G E” icons on some connections even though they aren't really 5G, rivals are attacking. Verizon ran newspaper ads promising not to change old phones’ software “to turn the 4 in the status bar into a 5.” T-Mobile tweeted a video of someone sticking a little “9G” label to a phone, with the caption, “didn’t realize it was this easy, brb updating,” and attacked Verizon's definition of 5G for good measure.
But the cable industry had an even better idea: using CES to introduce 10G. “While the world is talking about 5G, we're proud to be part of this extraordinary movement to 10G,” an exec at Liberty Global said in an announcement. Obviously the G’s don’t mean the same thing at all.
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Ashton Kutcher presents the WeWork London Creator Awards last October. PHOTO: MATT ALEXANDER/ZUMA PRESS
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WeWork doesn’t want to be known as just an office space supplier, especially if the economy and/or the real estate market weaken appreciably, so it’s becoming the We Company. The name will better match Chief Executive Adam Neumann’s aspirations to expand not only the main office business but residential division WeLive and education unit WeGrow. A 2009 pitch deck from before WeWork’s launch, as a matter of fact, mentions plans including including WeSleep, WeSail and
WeBank (“It’s coming,” Mr. Neumann told Fast Company).
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PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Ford’s attempt to transform its image into “mobility company” is taking a detour with the end of its sponsorship of one bike-share program. A deal to brand San Francisco bicycles from startup Motivate as Ford GoBike will wind down in the next couple of months, Axios reports. Lyft bought Motivate since the Ford pact was announced in 2016, so some changes might be expected, though Lyft doesn’t plan to end other deals such as Citigroup’s sponsorship of Citi Bike in New York, according to Axios.
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Yesterday I highlighted “Ad Contrarian” Bob Hoffman's suggestion that it's hard to build big new consumer brands online because nobody knows who else is seeing the ads, and we're social creatures. (He explains it better.) Here's a sample of your reactions:
Justin Soffer said: “Online ‘brand’ advertising is often ineffective because of poor and uninspiring creative. So much time, energy and money go into TV creative. I've found that digital creative, especially for brand campaigns, is just badly executed.”
Michelle Blaser said: “Online brand advertising can be much more effective if it includes a social element. But it's very hard to get someone to share a banner ad, unless it's really creative.”
Ignacio Linares said: “TV advertising building brands has nothing to do with this esoteric ‘member of the tribe’ theory. When watching TV, you haven’t got the faintest which channel your buddies are watching—unless Bob is implying that only ads shown not just on TV, but on live TV, have brand-building capabilities. TV advertising building brands has everything to do with two things: 1) 100% video focus, which is the most efficient means to convey a compelling, memorable message. 2) Viewability, meaning that more often than not TV ads are actually watched (partially or fully). Digital ads are often blocked, those not blocked are shown to bots, and if by any miracle a human being is actually exposed to the ad, the industry says it is good enough to watch 50% of the pixels for two seconds. So what should marketers do? Focus on video. Use platforms where the
standard is 100% viewability, by 100% human beings. Period.”
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“I'm going to put myself out there more than I've been comfortable with and engage more in some of these debates about the future, the tradeoffs we face, and where we want to go.”
| — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a post describing the latest annual "personal challenge" he has given himself: hosting a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society |
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26 million |
The number of U.S. viewers for Netflix’s “Bird Box” over the first seven days of its release, according to Nielsen. Netflix said last month that more than 45 million accounts worldwide had watched the film in its first week.
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Mattel's fledgling films unit struck a deal with Warner Brothers for a live-action Barbie movie starting Margot Robbie in the title role. [CNBC]
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Anheuser-Busch InBev will run five and a half minutes of ads in the Super Bowl, its biggest buy in recent memory, as it tries to lift its brands from the beer category's extended slump. On the roster: Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Stella Artois, Bon & Viv SpikedSeltzer—and no politics. [Ad Age]
Amazon is testing a program to deliver free product samples from brands based on what the retail giant predicts shoppers are likely to buy. A job listing suggests Amazon will look to make it a self-service offering for marketers. [Axios]
TikTok has been called “the only truly pleasant social network in existence,” so naturally its content is being aggregated on YouTube to make fun of it. It's called “ironic TikTok.” [Intelligencer]
Marketers spent almost $1.5 billion advertising on Hulu last year, up more than 45% and a new high for the platform. [WSJ]
NBCUniversal expanded on an earlier promise to cut the number of ads in prime-time by 20% and to reduce prime-time ad time by 10%, saying it will get ad time down 20% by the 2019-2020 TV season. [Axios]
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