Morning Update: Canada PSA wants drivers to die; David Goodchild departs Bauer UK; Instagram’s new logo; monetising football social
Ad week: This Darkly Clever Billboard for a Funeral Home Leaves Toronto Motorists Aghast
This billboard, which went up this week next to the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, is provocative in the extreme—blatantly urging drivers to text and drive as a way of drumming up business for the advertiser, Wathan Funeral Home.
But there’s a method to the madness. It’s actually a PSA from the Montreal office of agency John St., in partnership with out-of-home company Cieslok Media. No, Wathan Funeral Home isn’t real. But it does have a website, where angry motorists who’ve Googled the place are confronted with this message:
The Guardian: Bauer merges its UK magazine publishing businesses
German media giant Bauer is to merge its two UK publishing operations, bringing together titles including Take A Break, TV Choice and Grazia with Heat, Kerrang! and Q.
The two operations, Bauer Media and H Bauer, will be run by long-serving Bauer Media chief executive Paul Keenan.
H Bauer runs more than a dozen titles including TV Choice, the biggest TV listings magazine in the UK, and Take A Break, the UK’s biggest women’s weekly magazine.
H Bauer chief David Goodchild, who joined Bauer in 1993, is to leave the company on Friday.
Andreas Schoo, executive board member at Bauer Media Group, said the move to merge the operations aimed to boost cost-savings and growth opportunities in the UK.
AdAge: Poll: Instagram’s Simple New Logo – Love It or Hate It?
Today Instagram debuted a new, pared-down logo that simplifies the features of its previous old-school camera symbol. Gone is the more literal depiction featuring a lens, flash and rainbow adornment. Now, the logo features simple white shapes — a rounded square enclosing a central circle and a simple dot in the upper right corner — set against a multi-colored gradient of hues.
According a post on Instagram’s blog, the “updated looks reflects how vibrant and diverse” the storytelling of its users has become. “The Instagram community has evolved over the past five years from a place to share filtered photos to so much more — a global community of interests sharing more than 80 million photos and videos every day.”
The Drum: Why Arsenal FC thinks football can be the first sector ‘to monetise social media’
When it comes to deeply engaged audiences, football fans rank highly, something that is strikingly obvious across social media, particularly come match day. It’s this opportunity that Arsenal Football Club believes will result in the sport being among the first sectors to turn social engagement into sales.
But despite having a massive following across its social channels – 49 million on Facebook, 70 million on Twitter and 2 million on Chinese platforms – the London club is trying to overcome its “biggest marketing challenge” of converting fans in to customers, the clubs head of marketing Charles Allen told The Drum at the Marketing Academy Scholars showcase yesterday (10 May).
The Guardian: Tokyo Olympics: €1.3m payment to secret account raises questions over 2020 Games
A seven-figure payment from the Tokyo Olympic bid team to an account linked to the son of the disgraced former world athletics chief Lamine Diack was apparently made during Japan’s successful race to host the 2020 Games, the Guardian has learned.
The alleged payment of about €1.3m (£1m), now believed to be under French police scrutiny, will increase pressure on the International Olympic Committee to investigate properly links between Diack’s regime and the contest to host its flagship event. It also raises serious questions over Tokyo’s winning bid, awarded in 2013.
Campaign Live: M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment expands into esports
M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment is betting on the rise of the nerds with the launch of a dedicated esports division. The division is led by M&C Saatchi S&E’s head of digital, Haran Ramachandran, who reports in to agency chief Steve Martin. Ramachandran oversees five internal M&C Saatchi S&E staffers, plus additional freelancers.
The expansion sees the agency moving into live video gaming alongside its usual territory of football, rugby, golf and major sporting events.
Digiday: ‘Why change?’: Brands are slacking when it comes to Slack
Slack, the workplace communication tool and $4 billion unicorn, has not caught on at agencies — and it may well be because the brands they work with themselves aren’t using Slack.
Over a series of conversations with brands, a theme emerged: Calcified brand bureaucracies stymie internal change. (Slack, which have become a sensation in the tech and publishing industries, does not have sector-specific data on how its service is being adopted.)
The rise of ad blocking will expose publishers that do not charge their readers for content, the Asia boss of the Wall Street Journal has said.
Talking to Mumbrella yesterday, Jonny Wright, the Hong Kong-based international MD of WSJ publisher Dow Jones, said that publishers reliant on a single revenue stream from advertising will find the rise of ad blocking “restrictive” and will need to adopt a more diversified business model.
