Enjoy AdForum’s daily roundup of the latest news, trends, and notable work in the advertising industry.
General Mills Selects Mindshare to Handle U.S. Media Business
“General Mills has consolidated the bulk of its global media business with WPP's GroupM, led by its agency Mindshare, on the heels of its selection of Mindshare to handle its massive U.S. business. The group will support General Mills in Europe and Australasia, as well as take the lead on the company's Yoplait Europe business and a portion of General Mills business in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, said a General Mills spokeswoman.” Read more at Ad Age.
Variable Adds Storyteller Lloyd Lee Choi as Director
The New York-based creative collective known as Variable (WeAreVariable.com), has added an innovative young storyteller to its roster of directors, editors and producers. Lloyd Lee Choi has joined the company as a director. Adept at creating emotional, people-centered stories, often marked by a subtle sense of humor, his work includes TV spots and branded content short films. News of his signing was announced by Variable Partner and Executive Producer Tyler Ginter. To view Choi’s show reel.
After 60 Years Playboy Drops Naked Women, Exposes Brand to Uncertain Future
“Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion. In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.” Full story at The New York Times.
R/GA Opens in Instanbul, Taps Sertan Eratay as Managing Director of Middle East
“R/GA is pleased to announce it is officially expanding its presence in Turkey with the opening of its 15th global office, in the one of the most innovative and dynamic cities in the world, Istanbul. The agency is also delighted to announce that Sertan Eratay, has been appointed as Managing Director, R/GA Middle East, joining from Turkey’s most iconic communications and technology company, Turkcell, where he previously held the role of Director of Digital Channels.” For more details visit Little Black Book.
Hatin’ It: McDonald’s Gets Schooled by 3 Million Teachers
“McDonald’s has several methods for marketing directly to children and parents, including McTeacher’s Nights, where educators will volunteer to work for the night at a McD’s in exchange for a ‘percentage of sales from the event’ being donated to the school. Today, groups and unions representing some 3 million American teachers are asking McDonald’s to put an end to the program.” More at Consumerist.
Product Placement Advertising Loses Luster in Fragmented Modern Media
“Ad clutter is generally increasing as marketers find more and more places to peddle their products. But there is one place where ads are declining: smack in the middle of prime time TV shows. The number of product placements appearing during the first week of the new broadcast season declined 45% to 104, compared to last year’s premiere week, according to Nielsen.” Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
Snapchat’s Original Content Endeavor Offers Hard Lessons in Modern Publishing
“Platforms with publisher dreams have a hard road ahead of them. The latest cautionary tale comes courtesy of Snapchat, which shut down its Snap channel for original content. The disappearing-message app has been building itself up as a media company, courting established publishers including People and CNN to post their own videos and stories directly to the app.” Visit Digiday for the full story.
Job of the Day: Junior Art Director at Wunderman in New York City
The Junior Art Director acts in a support capacity for the Creative design team, assisting on various projects to facilitate the development and delivery of creative work. A Junior Art Director is not necessarily expected to originate designs, but rather extend a brands’ established look & feel across the individual components of a project to help bring it to completion. Visit Wunderman for details.
Caffeine Rush: Starbucks Launches Delivery Service at Empire State Building
“Only three weeks after rolling out mobile ordering in its U.S. stores—a service that lets people pay for drinks in a branded app and pick them up in stores—Starbucks is bringing coffee delivery to the office door. Today, the coffee chain launched its first foray into food delivery with a store on the bottom floor of New York's Empire State Building, which houses 12,000 workers. The program—dubbed "Green Apron Delivery"—lets staffers in 150 offices order food and drinks through a website that only tenants in the iconic building can utilize, meaning that tourists will not be able to participate in the program.” Read more at Adweek.
Agency of the Week
Mullen Lowe Group: We’re a different kind of company - a global boutique network of distinctive diverse agencies, rich in local culture with both intimacy and scale, present in more than 65 markets with over 90 agencies. At Mullen Lowe Group - we work to get our clients an unfair share of attention, by always thinking like a challenger and through our hyper bundled approach - smashing together scrums of our best talent from every discipline and from all over the world.
Because today is Wednesday, check out this hilarious Mercedes Benz ad (below) by Jung von Matt/Alster, which demonstrates why we don't allow kids to drive cars.
