Morning Update: How CMO’s feel when their Super Bowl ad airs; Car firms considers renaming Zica car; Netflix’s weird new comedy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R93poYhiufI
Adweek: What a CMO Looks Like When He Knows His Super Bowl Ad Was a Total Waste
You going all-in with a TV buy on the Super Bowl without a proper, accompanying, data-driven digital strategy to really take advantage of that flood of viewer interest? If so, you’re not going to have a very happy Sunday, says Adobe.
The company, on Monday, released the latest amusing spot in its ongoing ‘Do you know what your marketing is doing?‘ campaign from Goodby Silverstein & Partners. This one centres on a sad-sack CMO on Super Bowl Sunday, who has bought time on the big game and is watching it all unfold – along with the beginning of the end of his marketing career – in a bar. (Either this guy doesn’t have a family, or any friends, or he’s been such a cranky-ass stress case these past few weeks that no one wants anything to do with him tonight.)
The Guardian: Tata considers renaming new Zica car as Zika virus spreads
The Indian carmaker Tata Motors has been forced to consider changing the name of its heavily promoted new car, the Zica, as global alarm mounts about the Zika virus.
The company said it was reviewing the name, short for ‘zippy car’, which now has unavoidable associations with a virus linked to serious birth defects and neurological problems.
The possible rebranding comes just weeks after Tata launched a big marketing campaign for the car, including adverts featuring footage of the footballer Lionel Messi.
Digiday: With a bet on a platform strategy, BuzzFeed faces business challenges
BuzzFeed has mastered the art of distributed publishing, using platforms like Facebook, Snapchat and others to amass massive audience attention. The publisher boasts a mind-boggling 5 billion views per month of its articles and videos, spread out across 30 platforms, from Facebook to Pinterest to Snapchat. In a month it does 3 billion video views, less than 5 percent of which are on BuzzFeed.com. The bet is simple: publish content where people are, rather than forcing them to come to you.
BuzzFeed’s move, underway for a year now, was ahead of the curve. Now, publishers are clamouring to get involved in publishing directly to Facebook, Snapchat and other platforms. Gawker CEO Nick Denton, an early critic of publishers relying on Facebook, is now all-in. Like BuzzFeed’s early embrace of content-based native ads, the news and entertainment publisher is blazing a trail others are now following.
But BuzzFeed must navigate a thorny transition as it seeks to follow the Silicon Valley credo of up-ending your business before others do so for you.
TechCrunch: Audience Measurement Consolidates As ComScore Closes $768M Rentrak Acquisition
Some more consolidation in the online measurement and analytics space: today comScore announced that it has closed its $767.7 million deal to acquire Rentrak in an all-stock deal that brings together Rentrak’s TV and cinema audience tracking business with comScore’s business covering Internet and mobile audiences to better compete against the likes of Nielsen.
The deal was first announced in September 2015, and in the wake of the news, comScore also sold another division, its Digital Analytix business, to Adobe as it continued to streamline its operations.
The Verge: Netflix’s newest comedy is The Characters, and it looks super weird
Are you excited by the prospect of young comedians being given total creative freedom and access to Netflix’s coffers? That’s the promise of Netflix Presents: The Characters, the booming streaming service’s newest piece of original programming. Netflix enlisted eight up-and-coming performers for what it’s calling “outlaw comedy”, a show without rules or restrictions; the comedians were given a half-hour each and allowed to jam whatever characters, sketches and ideas they wanted into that time. If the show’s first trailer is any indication, this is going to be a weird one: expect plenty of drag, reality show parodies, cameos from established comedy stars and generally repellent behaviour.
Mumbrella Asia: Why positive storytelling beats shock tactics for Animals Asia in its fight to end bear bile farming
Animals Asia is a charity that, unlike many others, uses a softer approach to tell disturbing stories, the retrieval of bears from bile farms and other acts of animal cruelty such as the dog meat trade.
In this Q&A with Mumbrella Asia’s editor Robin Hicks, Animals Asia’s head of communications, Steve Jackson, talks about why positive stories are more effective than shock tactics in building a following, the type of content that gets most shared, how the NGO moderates extreme comments, and how it works with celebrities and brands.
