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Chuck E. Cheese Will @ You Over That Conspiracy Theory; Lee Clow Retires |
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But pity the brand’s social-media managers, who have spent the last two days shooting down the idea, one @ at a time. “Absolutely untrue, Beth,” Chuck E. Cheese told a consumer on Twitter in one of dozens of similar responses. “Our pizzas are handmade to order by our team of pizza pros.” Maybe the chain should follow the lead of McDonald’s Canada, which ended a challenging conversation in the most productive way possible when it made a video demonstrating why its burgers
look better in ads than in restaurants.
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PHOTO: BILL HORNSTEIN/TBWA\CHIAT\DAY
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Lee Clow, whose ads helped put Apple Inc. on the map, is retiring from the agency he joined five decades ago.
Mr. Clow, 75, began at Chiat/Day—now Omnicom Group’s TBWA\Chiat\Day—as an art director. He worked closely with Apple for more than 30 of those years. Over time, he built a relationship with Steve Jobs and helped create the dystopian “1984” Super Bowl commercial that launched the Macintosh computer, as well as the “Think Different” campaign in 1997.
The business is losing a creative pioneer as it undergoes massive change. The shops known for big, long-thought-out ideas are under pressure to churn out much more ad content faster and cheaper as consumers spend increasing time online and the audiences for traditional commercials fade. “The years I spent doing this thing called ‘advertising’ have been fun: challenging, rewarding, maddening—sometimes painful—but mostly, joyful,” Mr. Clow wrote in a note announcing his retirement.
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PHOTO: AB INBEV
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The next time you see that Budweiser Super Bowl commercial with the dalmation, clydesdales, wind power and Bob Dylan, something will be missing: Bob Dylan. The brand has already subbed out the soundtrack it used less than two weeks ago with a cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind” by The Cloves.
Buying music rights for very short periods has become a popular strategy for penny-pinching marketers, er, brands blessed by the insights of procurement departments, a music branding expert tells Ad Age. Even better for the Super Bowl, when the bang for $5 million-ish bucks is pretty much maxed out by the end of the game.
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PHOTO: LEX VAN LIESHOUT/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
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A day after Molson Coors said declining drinking hurt its sales, Heineken said its flagship brand just had its best performance in more than a decade—partly thanks to alcohol-free Heineken 0.0, introduced in 2017.
Earlier alcohol-free beers didn’t taste great and weren’t well marketed, so there could be even more upside for the newer versions. Which in turn could be downside for soft-drink marketers: One in five low-or-no-alcohol products sold is replacing a soft drink, according to a survey by UBS.
Meanwhile: While brewers pitch beer without booze, major meatpacker Tyson Foods is getting into meat-free meat.
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“Sure, it’s a beautiful design, it’s a beautifully considered product, and those are great, but how diverse is it? How easy is it to switch? Are the margins actually good? Is it a good business? Is it a big enough market?”
| — Hims founder and CEO Andrew Dudum to Digiday, predicting a shakeout in direct-to-consumer brands |
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Prada named “Selma” director Ava Duvernay co-chair of a diversity and inclusion advisory council it is creating after it offered (and then pulled) bag charms that evoked blackface. [The Hollywood Reporter]
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Marketers have become more worried about finding talent to bolster their in-house media capabilities and less concerned with the quality of agency talent working on their business. [The Drum]
Levi Strauss & Co. is looking to diversify beyond jeans as it plans its return to the public markets. [WSJ]
The European Union agreed on a new copyright law that makes digital platforms such as YouTube liable for uploaded copyright violations and prevents search results from including more than “very short extracts” of news articles without licenses. [WSJ]
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And follow the CMO Today team on Twitter: @wsjCMO, @natives, @larakiara, @alexbruell.
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