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Morning Update: Ikea cooks up a kitchen; Honour thy Saturday; Diamond Minecart most popular YouTube channel; Can agencies not pitch?

Mumbrella Asia: Ikea uses miniature kitchen parts as ingredients to promote its range of new products

Ikea is promoting its new range of kitchens with creative from BBH Asia Pacific which demonstrates how to construct a new kitchen in the form of a recipe.

The film takes miniaturised IKEA products and cooks them together in a frying pan before unveiling the finished product – a fully decked out Metod kitchen.

DigiDay: On ad pricing, Condé Nast bows to the reality of digital

But like all publishers, it’s had to adjust as readers and advertisers migrate online, a theme that likely is the focus of the company’s latest visit by consultants. In a nod to the brutal price competition on the Web, the company has also broken with its longstanding tradition of not negotiating rates. The move to show flexibility on rates is also, unsurprisingly, a move that draws cheers from buyers, although it can also be seen as more depressing evidence of the vast commoditization force digital is for all publishers.

The Guardian: The Diamond Minecart becomes most popular YouTube channel

The most popular channel on YouTube now belongs to British gamer Daniel Middleton, whose Minecraft videos published as The Diamond Minecart were watched more than 402m times in July 2015 alone.

That was enough to make him the biggest channel on YouTube that month ahead of wrestling body WWE’s 399m views, according to the latest chart published by analytics firm OpenSlate and online-video industry site Tubefilter.

Another British channel, nursery-rhymes collection Little Baby Bum, was third in the rankings with 391m views in July, followed by BuzzFeed Video’s 382m views, and musician Taylor Swift’s 381m.

AdAge: The Football Gods Punish Puny Mortals in New Fox Sports Campaign

As it prepares to kick off its fourth straight year of Saturday college football coverage, Fox Sports is calling on a triumvirate of higher powers to promote its broadcast slate.

Beginning Monday, Fox will roll out its new “Honor Thy Saturday” campaign, a $10 million initiative that includes buys on national cable networks and a number of high-profile digital outlets. At the heart of the promotional effort is a series of 30-second spots from Pereira & O’Dell featuring the Football Gods, a fearsome threesome of former gridiron greats Eric Dickerson, William “The Refrigerator” Perry and Brian Bosworth.

AdWeek: Can Agencies Win If They Don’t Play the Spec Pitch Game?

When Mike Wolfsohn and his two partners left Southern California agency Ignited in 2010 to form High Wide & Handsome, they vowed not to participate in competitive pitches requiring contenders to foot the bill for speculative creative work. Such exercises “demean the profession,” said Wolfsohn, who decries the process as “a reality show to impress some panel of judges. Pitches rarely resemble what a working relationship would be like between agency and client.”

Many in the business would undoubtedly agree with that assessment. Still, spec pitches are sewn into the fabric of adland so seamlessly that they even provided plotlines for Mad Men.What makes for memorable episodic television, however, can be a frustrating and expensive time suck in real life.

MediaPost: Connected TV Viewing Rises Sharply, Marketer Engagement Does Not

Although connected TV/over-the-top viewing is sharply climbing, engagement in advertising on connected TV/OTT platforms is low.

An Association of National Advertisers/BrightLine survey says one in five — 22% — “engaged” in connected TV/OTT advertising over the past year. “Lack of familiarity” was the main reason for those not currently engaged.

The time frame for engagement in ads seems more murky: 13% intend to engage in connected TV advertising over the next year, while 59% are unsure.

NYTimes: Soul-Searching in TV Land Over the Challenges of a New Golden Age

John Landgraf’s comments arrived like a thunderbolt.

There’s a malaise in TV these days that’s felt among executives, viewers and critics, said Mr. Landgraf, the chief executive of FX Networks. And it’s the result of one thing: There is simply too much on television.

The glut, he said at a Television Critics Association media event earlier this month, has made it hard to “cut through the clutter and create real buzz” and has presented “a huge challenge in finding compelling original stories and the level of talent needed to sustain those stories.”

 

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