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P&G Acquires Walker and Accenture Bolsters Ad-Buying Offering |
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Hello CMOs. A Vox reporter spent seven days (and a grand total of $4,921) in a cocoon of direct-to-consumer products and other Instagram-ready, millennial-focused brands. Casper mattress, Quip toothbrush, Lola tampons, plants from The Sill—the lot. The experience apparently generated not one but two existential crises. Not a bad return from a week of stunt journalism!
All the brands in the piece position themselves as best in their category, “the last one you’ll ever have to buy." So is living as the Perfect Millennial Consumer™ an improvement?
It’s complicated. “The widening incongruity between the products I used and the person I was meant that the nicer my life looked in a photograph, the worse it looked to me,” the author writes. Spoiler alert: D2C brands do not buy you happiness!
This week we’re testing earlier delivery for the CMO Today newsletter than the usual 8 a.m. We're watching the numbers, but you can also reply to this email to register your preference.
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PHOTO: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS
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In 2013, having grown frustrated with the “ethnic beauty” aisle, Tristan Walker set up a company to sell grooming and beauty products for people of color.
Five years later, Procter & Gamble has acquired Walker & Co. Brands for an undisclosed sum, the Journal reports.
The deal will give the company a serious marketing injection. P&G plans to give Walker access to marketing expertise and technology to help grow brands such as its Bevel male grooming brand and Form hair-care brand around the world. P&G spends some $10 billion on measured media around the world each year, according to R3.
The consumer-goods giant has set a goal to better serve African-Americans with curly or natural hair. New product launches aimed at this market include Pantene’s Gold Series and the Head & Shoulders Royal Oils line. Unilever is also expanding its efforts in this area, having acquired Sundial Brands for an undisclosed sum last year.
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Accenture Interactive ruffled a few feathers earlier this year when it announced its move into media-buying with the launch of its Programmatic Services practice.
Agencies weren’t pleased to see a consulting firm parking yet another tank on Madison Avenue. Several of Accenture’s peers have bought creative and design firms in recent years. The American Association of Advertising Agencies said the move marked a “clear conflict of interest” because Accenture also audits ad agencies’ results and processes. For its part, Accenture says its media-buying and audit divisions are completely separate and that it strictly adheres to confidentiality protocols.
Accenture Interactive is wasting little time in bolstering its digital ad-buying arm. As I reported for CMO Today, it has agreed to acquire Adaptly, an ad-tech platform that has a fancy user-interface and plugs into all the major “walled garden” platforms like Amazon, Google and Facebook.
The acquisition will help Accenture Interactive “enable workflow, improve quality assurance and really just operate better and faster and more effectively for clients,” Scott Tieman, Accenture Interactive’s global head of programmatic services told me.
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PHOTO: DUCKDUCKGO.COM
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When Google acquired On2 Technologies—previously known as the Duck Corporation—back in 2010, it also picked up the Duck.com domain.
Privacy-conscious readers may know about DuckDuckGo, a search engine that blocks ad trackers and keeps users’ search history private. DuckDuckGo had previously called fowl play (you didn’t think you could escape this item without a pun, did you?) about Duck.com redirecting to Google search, which it said “consistently confuses DuckDuckGo users.”
The confusion ends here. Earlier this week, NamePros confirmed Google relented and had transferred ownership of the domain to DuckDuckGo.
As the Verge points out, Google owns reams of domain names, ranging from Google misspellings like googel.com and gogole.com—good practice for any marketer looking to protect their brand from domain hijacking—and scores of potentially valuable domains such as zero.com or like.com.
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“The headline for us when it comes down to why are we getting back into basketball after 20 years is culture culture culture culture culture.”
| — Adam Petrick, Puma’s global director for brand and marketing,speaking to the New York Times |
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Bottled water is America’s most popular drink. And it has a big plastic problem. [WSJ]
Smirnoff has put its global creative account into review. MDC Partners agency 72andSunny has been the brand’s agency of record since 2013. [Agency Spy]
The Madison Square Garden Company has hired WeWork marketing chief Geraldine Calpin as its CMO. [Adweek]
Apple’s plan to relaunch Texture, an app it recently acquired that offers access to around 200 magazines, is reportedly getting a “chilly reception” from publishers who are worried it could steal their subscribers. [Bloomberg]
WPP’s GroupM has appointed Tim Castree, currently global CEO of fellow WPP agency Wavemaker, as its North America CEO. [Campaign]
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