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Morning Update: Facebook’s tiny tax bill; Tic Tac goes big; A lesson for pot marketers

AdAge: Tic Tac goes little in first big work with the Martin Agency

Tic Tac is jumping back into marketing with a new brand effort suggesting people take time to appreciate the little things in life — including, of course, Tic Tacs.

The effort comes after the Ferrero USA brand picked Interpublic Group’s the Martin Agency as its new agency in December, following a decade with Omnicom Group’s Merkley & Partners. The Martin Agency worked on Tic Tac’s Minions-themed packages tied to the 2015 summer movie, but this is the first big brand messaging change in more than three years.

The Guardian: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax despite £35m staff bonuses 

Staff at Facebook’s UK arm took home an average of more than £210,000 last year in pay and bonuses, while their employer paid just £4,327 in corporation tax.

Facebook made an accounting loss of £28.5m in Britain in 2014, after paying out more than £35m to its 362 staff in a share bonus scheme, according to the unit’s latest published accounts. Operating at a loss meant that Facebook was able to pay less than £5,000 in corporation tax to HM Revenue for the year.

The share scheme was worth an average of more than £96,000 for each member of staff. Once salaries were taken into account, a British employee of Facebook received more than £210,000 on average.

 

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Ad Week: What pot marketers can learn from pills and booze

As decriminalization, authorized medicinal use and regulated recreational use of marijuana expand across the U.S. at the state level, the cannabis brand experience is transforming.

A once illicit product most often bought in unlabeled baggies on the black market is increasingly available in polished retail environments. It seems inevitable (with federal action) that cannabis will be fully legalized. The question becomes: What will legal pot brands look like?

Campaign Live: Danepak creates Bake Off spoof Great British Bacon off 

Danepak, the Danish bacon brand, has created a spoof of the BBC’s Great British Bake Off, called The Great British Bacon Off.

It features four contestants who are asked to create a signature sandwich and a showstopper, imitating the challenges that feature in every episode of Bake Off.

They are given two minutes, a pantry of ingredients and Danepak’s 90-second Rapid Rashers to create a classic bacon sandwich. In the second round, the contestants have ten minutes to make an elaborate bacon sandwich.

Digiday: ‘Rich Man’s GIF’: Stock photography sites rush to the cinemagraph craze

Cinemagraphs are becoming ubiquitous on social media, and stock image agencies are looking to capitalize on their popularity. There is even a startup focusing solely on cinemagraphs — which are still photographs but with subtle movement — and it will compete with major image sites that are about to go deeper into the genre as well.

The startup website is called Gallereplay, based in Berlin, and the fact that it sees a business opportunity solely in stock cinemagraphs shows the format continues to capture the creative community.

 

Techcrunch: Microsoft’s hardware push the falling PC market 

The PC industry had a big week. Microsoft debuted several news devices built to run its new Windows 10 operating system, garnering a more-positive press cycle than I anticipated. The software giant also announced that 110 million devices now ran the new operating system, a number that it seems proud of.

The glow stemming from all of that was tempered a few days later by the release of new PC sales data from both Gartner and IDC.

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