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Sonos Hires a Madison Avenue Veteran to Fix Its Brand; Shein Scrambles to Stay Online in France; MPA Gives Instagram’s ‘PG-13’ a Thumbs Down
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Good morning. Today, Colleen DeCourcy signs on to a brand revival project; authorities move to suspend Shein’s site in France; and the MPA doubts Meta moderation practices can live up to its ratings system.
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Colleen DeCourcy, who joined Snap in 2022 after a storied career at advertising agencies, starts at Sonos in January. Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images
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Ad veteran Colleen DeCourcy was named chief marketing officer at Sonos, the speaker company still trying to repair its brand after a botched app update in May 2024, Katie Deighton reports for CMO Today.
DeCourcy most recently led brand strategy at Snapchat and previously ran the creative departments of global ad agencies including TBWA and Wieden+Kennedy, building a rep along the way for being ahead of the curve on digital tools and tech.
The infamous Sonos update rendered some customers’ sound systems faulty at best and essentially useless at worst, costing the company at least $100 million in revenue over the following six months, Sonos has said.
The company’s turnaround strategy is now shifting from stabilizing product reliability to adding customers and getting households to use more devices.
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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Fast Fashion, Fast Fallout
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Protesters against Shein outside the department store in Paris where its first permanent bricks-and-mortar shop just opened. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
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Shein temporarily suspended sales by third-party vendors in France and is “seeking dialogue” with authorities after the government moved to suspend its website, Chelsey Dulaney and Noemie Bisserbe write.
Following officials’ announcement that they had seen Shein listings for weapons as well as sex dolls resembling children, the finance ministry said it had given the company 48 hours to scrub illegal products from its platform. The interior ministry separately has asked a court to shut down the site.
The dustup came the same day that Shein opened its first permanent bricks-and-mortar location, in the BHV Marais department store in the heart of Paris, and the city had already been in an uproar over the ultrafast-fashion giant’s arrival in the fashion capital of the world.
Customers lined up on opening day to enter the store, which isn’t affected by the impending ban, but protesters also gathered.
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“The key takeaway for me is: Don’t blink.”
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— American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers on his takeaway from the flare-up over the Sydney Sweeney ad campaign. “Don’t blink,” he added, “if you believe that your intentions were correct and were real, and if you’re looking at customer and business data that would indicate that you’re on the right path.”
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Instagram began rolling out teen accounts last month, saying the content users see will be similar to a PG-13 movie. Photo: Matthias Balk/DPA/ZUMA Press
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The Motion Picture Association wants Meta to stop calling the content on Instagram’s new teen accounts “PG-13,” Isabella Simonetti reports.
The MPA, which has administered parental-guidance ratings for movies since 1968, sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter calling that description “literally false and highly misleading.”
The movie ratings system relies on a group composed of American parents who have children between the ages of 5 and 15 when they start.
“The MPA has worked for decades to earn the public’s trust in its rating system,” said the letter. “Any dissatisfaction with Meta’s automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA’s rating system.”
Meta responded that it never suggested teen accounts were officially rated or certified by the MPA, and had instead said they’d be “guided by” PG-13.
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Ed. note: Some of us know from experience that long before kids could easily access all kinds of awful things online, they could get into movies like “Gremlins,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Poltergeist” because their violence or gore only triggered a PG rating, not an R, and there was nothing in between.
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The ratings board actually had given “Poltergeist” an R, which would have hurt its ticket sales, but Stephen Spielberg and MGM successfully appealed to a panel of theater owners and other industry executives.
Parents didn’t appreciate the imprecision and loopholes in the ratings system as much as kids and movie marketers did, leading to the creation of PG-13 in 1984 (with Spielberg’s help).
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25
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Cities where the Starbucks workers’ union plans to strike starting Nov. 13, when the coffee chain will hold its annual Red Cup Day promotion, unless it reaches a deal for a long-awaited contract
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Snapchat ranks among the most popular social platforms, especially with younger users drawn to its AR lenses, but steady profitability has been harder to achieve. Photo: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
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Perplexity will pay Snap $400 million to integrate its AI-powered chatbot into Snapchat in a bid to increase users and subscribers [WSJ]
Andrew Cuomo’s New York City mayoral campaign was a cautionary tale for any politicians thinking about embracing AI-generated advertising. [Futurism]
MSNBC scored a rare win in total viewers over Fox News during primetime on election night, though CNN was No. 1 in primetime for viewers aged 25 to 54. [NewscastStudio]
Trade groups for beer, wine and spirits urged Congress to ban intoxicating hemp drinks until a regulatory framework is in place. [Brewbound]
Chains like Starbucks, Dunkin’, Panera and 7 Brew are squaring off with holiday cups and marketing to promote them. [Restaurant Business]
Krispy Kreme said it’s retooling distribution to prioritize selling doughnuts through retailers like Walmart and Costco in the aftermath of its split with McDonald’s. [WSJ]
Netflix adopted a new metric for its ad-supported plan, one that it says measures multiple viewers of a stream instead of just the account holder. [Deadline]
Novartis chose Fallon to help make its upcoming Super Bowl ad after a competitive pitch. [Ad Age]
Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone and Cole Escola are working on a movie that will finally give top billing to Miss Piggy. [Vulture]
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