AgencySpy reported Translation CCO Chris Cereda left the agency. If Cereda was responsible for the Bud Light campaign, he should have been booted. Fortunately, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake are available to pick up the creative duties.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Saturday, March 09, 2013
11041: Heineken’s Global Booty Calls.
This new Heineken commercial features plenty of racial, cultural and sexual stereotypes. Do the non-White women seem more sexually aggressive than the pursued hottie from New York City?
Friday, March 08, 2013
11040: Do Boomers Matter?
Why Don’t Advertisers Care About Me Anymore?
By Eric Nagourney
Greetings. You people are all irrelevant.
Well, let’s not paint with too broad a brush. Almost all of you are irrelevant. You 48-year-old boomers bringing up the generational rear? You may have as much as a year left of mattering. Then you, too, will slip out of the 18-to-49 demographic that advertisers most want and TV programmers cater to.
Ouch.
Why? you may well be asking. Why? I do my part. I can consume with the best of them. There is a good chance I am earning more now than I ever have before. And there are so many of us boomers. Why ignore us?
It’s not that none of you are pierced or tattooed (though if you are, here’s betting there’s a good back story). And it’s not that you don’t buy lots of stuff. It’s just that, Summer of Love generation — how can we put this? You are not very good at playing hard to get.
Advertisers know where you are, and they’ll get to you when they get to you. Your generation is watching five to six hours of TV a day, as much as an hour or so more than the national average, The Wall Street Journal reported. And though boomers are hardly averse to using digital recording devices or streaming shows, many still engage in “appointment TV.” That means that if “Seinfeld” is on at 9 p.m. Thursday, you will be dutifully sitting on your couch at 8:55 — though if you were planning to do that this week, we have some bad news for you.
“The boomers are an important audience, but boomers are a little easier to find, because they probably watch TV in a more traditional way,” said John C. Verret, an associate professor at the Boston University College of Communication. That’s a polite way of saying that for advertisers, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel — chubby fish with bad knees and AARP discount cards.
Those 18- to 49-year-olds, on the other hand, have an air of mystery that advertisers can’t resist. You can never be sure where to find them, and when they do, advertisers pay for the privilege.
So in 2010, when “Dancing With the Stars” managed to pull ahead of “American Idol,” it didn’t really help ABC’s bottom line, Bill Carter noted in The New York Times. “Dancing” viewers were older than “Idol” viewers, so even if there were more of them, a 30-second commercial on the first show cost about $209,000, compared with $642,000 on the second.
Herbert Jack Rotfeld, a professor in the marketing department at Auburn University in Alabama, said in an e-mail that advertisers liked the younger viewers because “in general they are the ages at which people are most willing to change the past way of doing things.”
He continued, “Since advertising often tries to attract new customers, or get prior customers to buy more often, younger people are more likely to make this happen.” But advertisers often put too much faith in younger audiences, and when they do they risk losing older customers, Professor Rotfeld said.
It’s not just a matter of energy drinks and headphones. Twenty-year-olds might not have much disposable income, but sooner or later they may be buying cars and washing machines, and advertisers want to lay claim to their loyalties now.
There is evidence that some of this may be changing. As audiences age, The Journal noted, TV shows are increasingly featuring older characters. And advertisers may be starting to realize that baby boomers appear more open to change than older consumers once were. But boomers are unlikely to emerge fully from the shadow of younger viewers.
Don’t feel too bad. We had our moment. “When the boomers were younger,” recalled Professor Vetter, who was in the business for 29 years, “we were really hammering them.”
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
11038: WALTER Not Wise.
JWT launched a pop-up agency for SXSW called WALTER. The website reads:
The only thing making a difference is differentFive days. That’s how long we’ll be around in Austin. WALTER is the start-up, start-down ad agency powered by JWT. A collective of industrious outsiders who embrace uncertainty, invent within chaos, and make a difference by being different.
Sign up here to meet with us about your idea or company. If we like what we hear, we’ll create a customized, strategic marketing plan for you.
Call us WALTER.
It was cool while it lasted.
Wow. That’s lame.
Why the hell would tech-minded startups want to connect with a dinosaur BDA incapable of even assembling a decent website? It’s like seeking dating advice from Taylor Swift. Or beauty tips from Joan Rivers. Or advertising insights from, well, JWT.
Adrants reported JWT CEO David Eastman said, “Walter is meant to be a reciprocal thing—we’d learn from the startups, where technology is going culturally, and they’d learn from us and could be partners for our clients. It’s a value exchange. We get exposure to new tech and startups and those people would get exposed to the brands and the creative thinking that they wouldn’t necessarily have access to.” Jesus, this guy has delusions of grandouche.
11036: Buh-Bye, Boschetto.
Advertising Age reported former Draftfcb President and CEO Laurence Boschetto has been replaced by former Y&R Advertising North America CEO Carter Murray. Current IPG Chairman CEO Michael Roth said, “We wish [Boschetto] well in his ongoing industry activity, particularly in the area of diversity and inclusion, where we will continue to work together.” Right. Why, Boschetto was a mere nine months shy of realizing his dream that by 2014 Draftfcb would be an organization that no longer used the term “diversity and inclusion.” Look for Murray to take the reins with the bold initiative. When hell freezes over.
DraftFCB’s New Global CEO Is 38-Year-Old Carter Murray
Energetic British Exec Will Replace Laurence Boschetto
By Rupal Parekh, Maureen Morrison
DraftFCB’s next global CEO will be 38-year-old Carter Murray, who for the past year has been head of Y&R’s North American operations.
Not only is the embattled Interpublic Group of Cos. agency getting a new leader, it’s poised for a major cultural shift under Mr. Murray. He has spent most of his career in Europe and been referred to as charming and super energetic by those who’ve worked with him in the past. It’s not only a quick ascent up the ladder to lead one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world, it’s also a formidable challenge.
Mr. Murray has signed on to take the reins from Laurence Boschetto, DraftFCB’s CEO of four years, after a brief transition period. A start date for the newly-anointed chief has not yet been determined however.
A formal search began last summer for a leader to succeed Mr. Boschetto, who’s overseen the network during a tumultuous three-and-a-half years that have been marked by significant client departures. (Mr. Boschetto joined the search process as part of an attempt at a smooth succession and will continue in a consulting role.)
The selection has been a huge focus for Interpublic senior management including Chairman-CEO Michael Roth, who’s acutely aware of the need to turn around the ship at DraftFCB. Mr. Murray is likely getting some broad leeway to make the changes he sees fit to improve the shop’s standing in adland.
Howard Draft will retain his executive-chairman post at DraftFCB, working with a number of the agency’s major clients and on special projects, but he’ll report to Mr. Murray, who’ll be based in New York.
“[Mr. Murray] understands consumer advertising and brands, has demonstrated the ability to motivate diverse teams and raise the quality of creative work, nurture client relationships and win global business,” Mr. Roth said in a statement. “This combination of skills and experience in a dynamic new leader is what the agency needs in order to evolve its integrated model and drive growth.”
Mr. Roth added: “We thank Laurence for his contributions to our search for his successor. … We wish him well in his ongoing industry activity, particularly in the area of diversity and inclusion, where we will continue to work together.”
“Carter brings energy, a new perspective and range of talents that will take us to the next level,” Mr. Boschetto said in a statement. “I’ll do everything to help him step into the CEO role seamlessly.”
In the wake of Mr. Murray’s his departure, Y&R named Matt Anthony CEO of Y&R Advertising North America. Mr. Anthony is a member of Y&R’s executive committee and founding partner of VML. He had for the last six months been running Y&R Australia.
Finding someone willing to take the challenge of re-energizing DraftFCB was no simple task. In November, Mr. Roth remarked during a Wall Street investor conference: “Hopefully we’ll be able to find someone.”
After a lengthy process—during which a number of Madison Avenue execs were approached, some who felt the fix-it job was too tall an order—the search was narrowed to three last month. Mr. Murray resigned from Y&R yesterday after just a year there.
“I like big challenges and I like big opportunities,” Mr. Murray told Ad Age. “And it would take a challenge and an opportunity as large as this for me to leave my current position. I do love [Y&R CEO] David Sable, and I’m really proud of the people I work with at Y&R. But it’s not every day that you get this kind of opportunity [at an agency] that we know has had some challenges but also has had some great client relationships. It’s one of those jobs that doesn’t come up every day.
“If you look at DraftFCB, the last thing they need is someone who comes charging in and tells them exactly how to do their jobs at the outset. I have a point of view on marketing and what I think is important, and am particularly passionate about the creative product and defining groundbreaking work. And that’s something I want to infuse more throughout the organization.”
A Brit who was educated in in the U.S.—he attended Duke University—Mr. Murray started his career at Leo Burnett in Chicago. He soon moved to Europe, where he’s spent most of his career. He worked for Leo Burnett in Germany as a regional account director and in London as a regional new-business director for Europe.
He joined Publicis in 2007. That’s where he really made his mark. During his tenure at the French holding company, he took Nestle from being Publicis’ fourth-largest account, and one that was declining in size, to the agency’s biggest account.
With experience in markets from Russia to Korea to Kenya to Switzerland, and with clients such as Nestle, P&G, Barclays, Coke and Ikea, Mr. Murray’s pedigree is far different than his predecessor’s.
Mr. Boschetto joined Draft in the agency’s New York office in 1997, a move prompted by his sale of Adler Boschetto Peebles—a Big Apple shop he founded—to Draft. He worked his way up from general manager to more senior roles. It was only a matter of years before he was being touted as Howard Draft’s heir apparent, and was promoted to president and chief operating officer, first of New York, and then (around the same time as the agency’s very public win-and-loss of the Walmart account) across the network. He’s been especially close to some clients, among them Beiersdorf.
His ascension to CEO came more than two years after the merger of Draft and Foote Cone & Belding. The marriage was a move that Interpublic touted as a way to combine the direct-marketing prowess of Draft with the creative abilities of FCB, but many industry executives said they predicted the merger was doomed because of clashing cultures and disciplines.
Initially there were some indications that the critics were wrong, given sizable new-business wins from the U.S. Census, Kraft, MillerCoors and Kmart. Above all, the shop was profitable.
But while Mr. Boschetto was at the helm, the shop’s fortunes turned. The past couple of years in North America have been incredibly rocky, marked by a string of account losses—prompting speculation that it was only a matter of time before there would be a change at the top.
The biggest hit came with the exit of one of DraftFCB’s biggest and oldest accounts: SC Johnson. The agency failed to hang on to the business after a review, losing to WPP’s Ogilvy and Omnicom Group’s EnergyBBDO. The loss stripped several global outposts of their biggest client and shuttered other international offices. The agency laid off about 10% of it staffers in its Chicago office, and 3% globally.
When the massive packaged-goods account departed after 58 years, SC Johnson was estimated to be worth $65 million in global revenue. But at its height years earlier, the account was believed to bring in as much as $80 million in global revenue for the agency. Though it was a small percentage—about 5 to 6%—of the agency’s global revenue at the time of the loss, the agency has been unable to recover the revenue with another large account win.
That loss was devastating, but another blow came with the loss of its MillerCoors business without a review. The brewer’s account went to Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi, which picked up Miller Lite, and a new WPP agency dubbed Cavalry was formed to handle Coors brands and new products. Layoffs again followed at DraftFCB, with the agency confirming about 5% of its Chicago office employees were affected.
Another marquee account, Taco Bell, has brought other Interpublic agencies such as Deutsch into the fold to handle creative work. While DraftFCB remains on the roster as the lead agency, TV work—part of a campaign Taco Bell said was its biggest—for the chain’s new Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco was created by Deutsch.
DraftFCB is facing yet another potential significant account defection from Kmart, a client since 2007. The struggling retailer began circulating requests for proposal in January; DraftFCB is said to be defending the business. That same month, DrafFCB shed its media operation, which was shifted to sibling Mediabrands.
While agencies are prone to going through up-and-down periods, two of the biggest criticisms of DraftFCB under Mr. Boschetto’s watch has been its failure to attract new business and inability to realize the promise of the benefits touted at the time of the merger. The agency has scored a string of small and midsize wins to help offset the loss of major legacy accounts—such as agency-of-record account for SeaWorld, Discover Card and Cox Communications—but it hasn’t picked up a major blue-chip lead creative account in some time.
That responsibility will now fall on the young Mr. Murray’s shoulders. The question is: Is he up to the challenge? One of the most powerful marketers in the world says Mr. Murray has a decent chance.
Tom Buday, head of marketing and consumer communication at Nestle, endorses Mr. Murray thusly on LinkedIn: “Carter is a highly committed professional who puts client needs at the top of his priorities, and brings valuable insight and perspective to the challenges at hand. Put simply, Carter is someone you can count on to deliver.”
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
11035: Kicking Assi.
Upscale new ethnic supermarket in Irvine targets young Asians
Assi Natural Market aims to be more like Whole Foods than the typical Asian grocery store, offering organic produce, high-end meats and American fare in its food court.
By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times
Assi Natural Market carries dozens of kimchi products. There are more than 200 kinds of dumplings. Its carts mimic the red and green of Sriracha sauce bottles.
All of which seems to indicate a pretty standard Asian grocery. But once it opens this month in Irvine, Assi aspires to be a hybrid of cultures — like the growing and increasingly moneyed population of second-generation Asian Americans it hopes to draw into its aisles.
The goal, manager Thomas Yoon said, is to become the Whole Foods of ethnic supermarkets.
Parent company Assi Super Inc. runs 19 stores in the U.S., including one in Los Angeles. But the Irvine market, which cost $10 million to pull together, is designed as a prototype that Assi Super hopes to eventually expand.
That means characteristics largely unheard of in Asian grocery stores, such as organic bok choy, eco-friendly reclaimed wood details, a glass-encased wine library and American fare at the food court.
Most competitors — including 99 Ranch Market, H-Mart and mom-and-pop outlets — sit next to boba stores, herb shops, Taiwanese pastry parlors and other Asian-centric businesses. Signage inside focuses on low prices and is rarely in English. Modestly decorated, crowded aisles often are infused with aromas from dumpling samples and the fresh fish counter.
The 35,000-square-foot Assi store, by contrast, shares the suburban Woodbridge Village Center shopping plaza with a plastic surgeon, a yoga studio, a Barnes & Noble bookstore and a movie theater. The complex overlooks a landscaped lagoon.
The interior is swathed in brushed stainless steel, recycled plywood, LED lights, low-chemical paint and polished concrete floors. A high-tech underground ventilation system sweeps away the pungent smell of black bean sauce. Boutique wines and specialty Asian spirits such as sake, soju and makgeolli will be housed in a spacious, clear display.
Produce — including Napa cabbage, cilantro and peppers displayed in wood cases inspired by Finnish grocery stores — will be organic. So will the dairy and eggs. Tofu too. The goods will largely be sourced from local farms Assi began acquiring in March 2012.
Some of the high-end meats, which will include Wagyu beef and free-range Jidori chicken, will be marinated in-house. They’ll be displayed in front of an employee area fashionably modeled after open kitchens in upscale restaurants. The space, with an animal carcass artistically hung against a sterile backdrop, is visible through a wide glass screen.
The food court has a bakery, made-to-order sushi, pre-packaged lunches, even some American and Italian dishes made by a chef hired away from Whole Foods. Within reach of snacks such as chicken feet, there’s a salad bar, a fruit bar and a juice bar.
Yoon took his Whole Foods admiration even further, going to great lengths to procure the same seafood distributor and checkout machines that the Austin, Texas, chain uses.
At its heart, though, Assi Natural Market is an Asian grocery.
The store is advertising its opening in Korean, Persian, Chinese and Vietnamese community news publications. A Korean makeup store and a ginseng shop will be set up on the outskirts of the store.
Its aisles will hold goods from 13 countries, including Vietnamese pho and Japanese udon, 50 kinds of rice and grains and 300 types of roasted seaweed. A shabu shabu section will slice meat to customers’ specifications and offer other hot pot accouterments. In the produce aisle: dragon fruit and durian.
Counters, refrigerator handles and shelves are all 4 inches lower than in standard supermarkets to cater to Asians, who tend to be shorter than the average American, Yoon said.
Ethnic supermarkets are expected to keep growing at a 3.7% annual rate, reaching $31.2 billion in annual U.S. sales in 2016, according to research group IBISWorld. Thousands of new stores are expected to crop up nationwide in the next few years.
Executives expect Assi Natural Market in Irvine to pull in $20 million to $25 million in revenue a year.
The rebounding economy is one factor. But so are the burgeoning Latino and Asian populations, which represent 98.3% of ethnic supermarket sales. In five years, there will be 20.9 million Asian Americans in the U.S., up from 18.2 million in 2010, according to Nielsen.
Asian American buying power is up 523% since 1990, reaching $718.4 billion last year, according to Nielsen. Within five years, the figure is expected to top the $1-trillion mark.
Assi is aiming for a subset of that demographic: Asian American millennial shoppers ages 18 to 34. The group — unique for its higher income, technological savvy and socially conscious lifestyle — is interested in trying ethnic foods but wants to do so at stores that are more stylish than the ones its immigrant parents patronized.
To cater to such customers, Yoon has hired local, English-speaking high school and college students to help customers, collect runaway carts and operate cash registers. All signs are in English. To boost convenience for shoppers in a rush, the seafood department has a raw shrimp bar along with a steamer and fryer to cook purchases.
And shelves will carry some of the same groceries as mainstream supermarkets, down to Kraft cheese and pasta.
“Assi was losing money because all the new generation was going to Whole Foods, even though they were Korean and Chinese,” Yoon said. “They have more options. So we’re taking a lot of risk doing this.”
Monday, March 04, 2013
Sunday, March 03, 2013
Saturday, March 02, 2013
11032: Bloomberg Bungle.
Magazine Cover Draws Claims of Racism
By Tanzina Vega
A Bloomberg Businessweek magazine cover published Feb. 25 about the housing rebound in the United States — featuring cartoonish minorities holding fistfuls of money — has drawn intense criticism from readers and media critics, some of whom have described the cover as racist.
“Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret,” Josh Tyrangiel, the magazine’s editor, said in a statement on Thursday. “Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we’d do it differently.”
But his statement came too late to head off pointed criticism online. Some posts on Twitter called it a “non-apology,” and by Thursday afternoon, a handful of people had signed an online petition urging the company to pull the cover. (A new issue, however, is already on newsstands.)
Matthew Yglesias, a business correspondent at Slate, prompted much of the online commentary after questioning the cover in a post on the Web site Thursday morning. While praising the publication for being “a genuinely great magazine that does an amazing job of making business and economics news accessible and interesting,” he said Bloomberg Businessweek “ought to be ashamed” for its cover choice.
Ryan Chittum, at the Columbia Journalism Review, said the cover was “clearly a mistake” because of “its cast of black and Hispanic caricatures with exaggerated features reminiscent of early 20th-century race cartoons.” What made it even more offensive, Mr. Chittum wrote, “is the fact that race has been a key backdrop to the subprime crisis.”
In a statement, Andres Guzman, the illustrator who created the cover, said, “The assignment was an illustration about housing. I simply drew the family like that because those are the kind of families I know. I am Latino and grew up around plenty of mixed families.” According to Mr. Guzman’s Tumblr page, he was born in Lima, Peru and lives in Minneapolis.
In an interview, Hugo Balta, the president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said the cover “continues to speak to the insensitivity of how minorities, and in this case Latinos, are being portrayed in media.”
“I think it oversimplifies an issue that obviously has tremendous financial impact to the country, and it also puts a face to a community that is too often vulnerable to those types of attacks,” Mr. Balta said. “If we go with the old saying that a picture is worth a thousands words, the message in this picture is that it’s the minority’s fault.”
Mr. Balta said he planned to contact Bloomberg Businessweek to discuss the issue.
Gregory Lee Jr., the president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said in a statement, “The image that was published by Bloomberg Businessweek is just a microcosm of a bigger problem in the magazine industry — the lack of diversity.”
“The last presidential election demonstrated that our nation’s demographics are changing rapidly and it is essential that media companies should make the appropriate changes to welcome diversity in their newsrooms, specifically in managerial positions,” Mr. Lee said.
Friday, March 01, 2013
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