Morning Update: Cosmo launches car; Netflix sued for poaching; Guardian US to axe 30% staff; former Disney exec ‘loves piracy’
Campaign Live: Cosmopolitan partners Seat to launch car for women
The car is a special edition of Seat’s Mii model with specific accessories chosen by the title’s global creative team, regional editors and readers.
Susanne Franz, global marketing director at Seat, said that the car will meet women’s needs “in terms of daily usage” and this is the brand’s “most feminine car”. She said: “This new car goes beyond aesthetics, it is a functional vehicle where the design has a purpose.
The Drum: Fox is suing Netflix for poaching employees
21st Century Fox has filed a lawsuit against Netflix accusing the streaming-video business of illegally hiring two of its executives who were still under contract.
Fox said that Netflix has led “a brazen campaign to unlawfully target, recruit, and poach valuable Fox executives by illegally inducing them to break their employment contracts with Fox to work at Netflix.”
Politico Media: The Guardian to make major cuts to U.S. news operation
Executives from The Guardian said Thursday there will be cuts at the British news organization’s U.S. operation, announcing a 30% reduction in head count across the board.
In a meeting with newsroom staff, Guardian Media Group CEO David Pemsel called the changes a “course correction.”
The former head of Walt Disney’s digital operation in India said during a panel debate on the rise of internet television last week that he is a fan of content piracy as it serves as a useful indicator of what people want to watch.
Talking on a panel at the All That Matters conference in Singapore, Samir Bangara, co-founder of Indian youth-focused online broadcast network Qyuki Digital Media, argued that the biggest problem for content creators at the moment is getting discovered, and piracy helps to “find what is working.”
Campaign Live: Vice’s Shane Smith predicts Snapchat ad boom in talk with Martin Sorrell
Snapchat stands to win big from an advertising industry desperate for an alternative to the “duopoly” of Facebook and Google, Vice Media chief executive Shane Smith has said.
Smith was in conversation with Sir Martin Sorrell in front of an audience at Dmexco. Sorrell’s WPP is one of a number of major media companies to have invested in Vice, along with Disney and Time Warner.
In a wide-ranging interview with WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey explained the challenges it currently faces, priorities for the future and why Sorrell should emulate Tesla’s Elon Musk and join Twitter.
Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey believes its focus on live content will ensure the company can regain user and revenue growth.
Marketing Week: Behaviour versus demographics: Why the term ‘millennial’ is useless
Marketers need to focus more on consumer behaviour rather than segmenting people simply by generation, according to two new studies.
The Empowered Customer Segmentation by market research group Forrester seeks to move away from demographic segments and instead group consumers according to how they respond to new products and technology.
San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area unicorn Mode Media shuts down, leaves bloggers unpaid
Over the past couple of years, a herd of unicorns — the tech industry’s term for private companies worth more than a billion dollars — have thundered through Silicon Valley. This week, one of them stumbled out of the pack.
Brisbane’s Mode Media has abruptly shut down, leaving bloggers unpaid, investors frustrated and rumors swirling in its wake.
NY Times: Off the Cuff, but on the Record
Suki Kim, a New York Times best-selling author, attended a book festival in Brisbane, Australia, two weeks ago, where, after listening to a controversial keynote address on racial and cultural identity, she and a few other authors retreated to a room for what was billed as an “artist-only” private conversation over cocktails.
Four days later, Kim found herself quoted in The New York Times, in a piece in which she criticized another prominent author by name, lamenting that his and other books by white males on topics similar to her book’s tended to be better received.