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BarkBox Apologizes for Leaked Slack Suspending Pride Ads; Meta Wants Hollywood to Star in Its VR Vision; How United Knows Where You Want to Go
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Good morning. Today, a dog-toy subscription service decides it’s the wrong moment for Pride marketing; Meta seeks exclusive shows and movies to help sell its next VR device; and United gets creative as it picks its new routes.
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An internal message at BarkBox said the political climate makes promoting its Pride collection feel like a political statement. PHOTO: SERGI ALEXANDER/GETTY IMAGES FOR SOBEWFF
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BarkBox’s CEO apologized after a leaked internal Slack message revealed that the company was pausing ads for its Pride merchandise because of the political environment, Patrick Coffee reports for CMO Today.
The Slack, a screenshot of which made its way onto social media this week, said the current climate makes “this promotion feel more like a political statement than a universally joyful moment for all dog people.”
If BarkBox wouldn’t push “a MAGA-themed product,” it added, “it’s worth asking whether this is the right moment to run this particular campaign.”
“I do not agree with the content of the message,” founder and CEO Matt Meeker wrote Wednesday on BarkBox’s social-media accounts. “It wasn’t good, it doesn’t reflect our values, and I’m deeply sorry that it happened.”
Meeker’s post didn’t address the question of Pride advertising, only noting that the Pride collection remains for sale on BarkBox’s home page.
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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Centralize Customer Insights to Unlock New Opportunities
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Due to rapidly shifting customer preferences and advances in technology, many organizations are reconsidering how they gather, integrate, and act on customer insights. Read More
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Meta’s Quest headsets are the bestselling devices in virtual reality, but they haven’t gone mainstream. PHOTO: JULIEN DE ROSA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Meta Platforms has spoken with entertainment brands including Disney and A24 about making immersive video for the VR device it plans to release next year, Ben Fritz and Jessica Toonkel write.
The company is offering millions of dollars for episodic and stand-alone immersive video based on well-known intellectual property. Meta hopes the content will attract people to the VR device it plans to launch next year that would compete with Apple’s Vision Pro.
The device, known internally as “Loma,” is more powerful than the Meta Quest VR headsets now available, with higher-fidelity video.
The design is similar to a large pair of eyeglasses—more like Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses than the goggles that the Quest and Vision Pro use—connected to a puck users can put in their pockets.
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“You’re rarely going to hit it out of the park, particularly with people as polarizing as the ones I represent.”
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— Juda Engelmayer, the crisis communications specialist whose clients include Harvey Weinstein and the orgasmic meditation guru now on trial for allegedly exploiting her employees. Engelmayer calls his job a “long game.”
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United recently launched flights to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, above, from Tokyo. PHOTO: KRIANGKRAI THITIMAKORN/GETTY IMAGES
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United Airlines is trying to meet consumers where they are in order to take them where they want to go, Alison Sider writes.
It recently added flights to Nuuk, Greenland, from Newark, and this month begins flying to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from Tokyo—destinations that are both firsts for a U.S. airline.
Its decisionmaking starts with data from credit cards and the Department of Transportation, then gets more creative, according to Patrick Quayle, the United executive tasked with identifying the next travel hot spots.
“We’re looking at what’s trending on Instagram,” Quayle said. “We’re looking at where people are searching on United.com. We’re looking at top travel trends.”
“We had [Bangkok] in our plans long before ‘White Lotus’ ever announced they were filming in Thailand,” he added, “but we sped it up because of the ‘White Lotus’ effect.”
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7,000
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Nonmanufacturing jobs that Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s biggest marketers, will cut over the next two years to create broader roles and smaller teams. The maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers also plans to trim its product portfolio, exiting some categories and divesting some smaller brands in certain markets.
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Steve Huffman, chief executive of Reddit. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Reddit is suing Anthropic for using its data without a licensing agreement, saying the AI startup accessed its site more than 100,000 times after saying it had stopped. [WSJ]
Converse’s early bet on a shoe deal with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is paying off spectacularly now that the NBA star has reached the NBA Finals. [NYT]
Active agency reviews this year are turning Cannes Lions into a stage for portions of the pitch process. [Ad Age]
LVMH’s Benefit Cosmetics taught an OpenAI-powered AI assistant to talk with consumers on WhatsApp in the brand’s playful voice. [Glossy]
Why Ulta Beauty introduced and then abandoned “Cue the New” sections for the latest releases in the front of its stores. [Modern Retail]
Color me shocked: Fans are complaining about the latest CGI rendering of a well-known character, in this case the Cowardly Lion in the new trailer for “Wicked: For Good.” [Creative Bloq]
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