Morning Update: Samsung to shelve Note; Patron sues ex-agency; George Takei launches chatbot; Dentsu Japan tackles overwork
Campaign Live: Samsung ‘buzz’ falls after Note 7 fiasco
On Tuesday, Samsung announced plans to permanently cease production of the smartphone. The buzz metric records whether consumers have heard positive or negative news about a brand through advertising, word of mouth or news.
Samsung’s buzz declined to a nadir of -9.7 among the public on 23 September after a week of negative coverage about its devices. That compares with a high of 9.5 earlier in the month. Buzz remained low on 9 October at -3.1.
Ad Age: Patron Sues Ex-Agency for Still Listing Work on Its Website
Tequila marketer Patron Spirits International has sued its former digital agency, alleging the shop is violating trademark law by continuing to promote Patron as a client on its website, even though the relationship was terminated in early 2014. Patron also alleges that the agency, called Reindeer, overbilled the marketer by at least $81,000.
Agencies routinely display client work on their websites. But the Patron lawsuit raises questions about what rights agencies have to promote client work, especially if the two parties no longer have a relationship.
Ad Week: 50 Years After Star Trek’s Debut, George Takei Is Launching His Own Chatbot
In an early episode of Star Trek, Captain Kirk talks into a computer, asking for background information on another character. The scene by far outdates modern artificial intelligence assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant.
But there is something uncannily familiar—both about the way the captain talks into the machine and the way the female voice responds. Now, 50 years later, George Takei, the famed actor behind the character Hikaru Sulu, is using this same type of technology to create a chatbot.
Dentsu has outlined the measures the company has in place to stop its employees from working excessive hours in the wake of the suicide of a young employee.
Matsuri Takahashi took her own life nine months into her career with the advertising agency after she had clocked 105 hours of overtime in a single month. A Tokyo labour department ruled at the end of last week that mental collapse from overwork was to blame.
Ad Exchange: Programmatic VR? That’s Where OmniVirt Is Looking To Play
Virtual reality may have a way to go before it hits mass scale, but it’s just had a big week. Last Tuesday, Google unveiled Daydream View, its lightweight, low-cost answer to Oculus Rift, and announced its Daydream View-compatible Pixel smartphone.
And on Thursday, Facebook followed with its own series of announcements at the Oculus Connect developers conference, including a VR web browser and the ability to create 3-D avatars to virtually interact with friends.
