Magazine

Some World War II POWs Escaped With Help From Bicycle Playing Cards

Of the roughly 94,000 U.S. soldiers who became prisoners of war in Germany during World War II, an especially unfortunate several hundred wound up in a camp called Oflag IV-C, better known as Colditz Castle, a 12th-century stone fortress built atop a 250-foot cliff in Saxony. The Germans believed that escape from Colditz was impossible…. …

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Off the Clock: MarketMaker’s CEO Has Sky-High Ambitions

For some, the world of advertising just isn’t exciting enough. The always-on-the-move Celeny Da Silva, chief executive of market development and advisory company MarketMakers, is a born traveler and can often be found at the industry’s largest digital advertising conferences. One of her many life goals is visiting every country in the world. She’s checked… …

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Angel Reese Is Taking Her Game to the Next Level—and Bringing Brands With Her

Angel Reese was already a star, but when LSU won its first NCAA women’s basketball championship in school history in April, No. 10 knew things would never be the same. “My price just went up. Today’s price ain’t tomorrow’s price,” Reese told reporters that night–with a gold crown in front of her–post-game in Dallas before… …

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For UPS, Delivering DEI to the Fashion Industry Never Goes Out of Style

There was once a time when UPS was the unlikeliest brand to be associated with fashion. With its ubiquitous (some would say drab) brown color scheme, nothing about the shipping company seemed to connect with an industry often characterized by its kaleidoscopic usage of color. This unexpected, radical connection makes UPS uniquely situated to usher… …

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Lessons Learned: Slow and Steady Won the Digital Marketing Race for DigiShopGirl’s Founder

In 2012, at the start of the DTC boom, Katya Constantine founded DigiShopGirl Media. The digital agency used two relatively new technologies at the time–digital media and programmatic advertising–to turn startups into household names. Some of her star clients have now included luggage brand Away, Rent the Runway, skin care firm Starface and weight-loss program… …

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Why Marketers of Color Are Quitting Their Jobs

Ample research has documented the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for business. We know that marketing organizations and creative agencies with diverse workforces enjoy better business performance, innovation, creativity, and decreased attrition and related hiring costs. Yet three years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a period marked by ambitious DEI pledges… …

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Walmart CMO William White Keeps the Essential Retailer Relevant

After seven years leading marketing for rival Target and a prior tenure at Coca-Cola, William White joined Walmart in May 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It would be a baptism of fire for any professional, but the veteran marketer mined his CPG and retail experience to help his new company navigate unknown… …

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How Cinnabon Moved From the Food Court to Pretty Much Everywhere—Including TV 

If you were among the millions of devotees of AMC’s much-missed Breaking Bad, odds are you recall the climactic Season 5 episode “Granite State.” Bedeviled by the collapse of his meth empire, Walter White attempted to coerce his sketchy lawyer, Saul Goodman, to come with him on the lam–but Goodman did not want any part… …

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KR Liu Used to Hide Her Disability. Now She’s Advertising’s Biggest Accessibility Advocate

As Google’s head of brand accessibility, KR Liu is as influential a voice for the disabled community as you’ll find on the corporate carpet. Her injunction to marketers–the time has come to get serious about inclusion–won global attention last year with Google’s release of its Accessible Marketing Playbook, a seminal document that Liu had a… …

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Fighting Climate Doom With Solutions-Focused (and Science-Backed) Inspirational TikToks

When Bo Burnham released a song encapsulating the absurdity of middle-class existence while attempting to process all the concurrent crises of 2020, it’s unlikely he intended to create the soundtrack to climate doomism. “That Funny Feeling,” a song from the comedian’s hourlong special Inside, proved especially relatable, eventually becoming a popular TikTok sound used in… …

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With His New Global Media Company, Kevin Hart Shakes Up Hollywood—and Madison Avenue

There’s being stretched thin, and then there’s Kevin Hart’s current schedule. The actor/comedian/media mogul/entrepreneur extraordinaire is phoning in for a chat at the end of yet another overstuffed day. That morning, he flew to Atlanta from Charlotte, N.C., where he performed the previous night during his 60-city Reality Check standup U.S. tour. Then he put… …

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Gen Z Is Resilient and Honest, and They Expect the Same From Brands

In Moneyball, Brad Pitt’s baseball general manager Billy Beane uses a new way of assembling a winning team, telling his staff, “Adapt or die.” As marketers, we subscribe to that ethos, but evolving is now more challenging than ever. A Gen Z tsunami is coming, and most brands aren’t ready. Currently ages 10 to 25,… …

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Spotify Revolutionized Podcasting. Can It Do the Same for Podcast Ads?

When Jemele Hill first launched her podcast exclusively on Spotify in April 2019, the moment marked a new chapter for both parties, though neither could have known it at the time. Just two months prior, Spotify had declared itself an audio company for the first time, officially expanding its mission beyond music and signaling its… …

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James Patterson, Now a Memoirist, Reflects on the Lessons of His Time in Advertising

With well over 150 books to his name, James Patterson is one of the few writers in history whose name has transcended being an author and has become a multimedia empire. After selling more than 400 million copies of his thrillers, youth titles, graphic novels and collaborations with celebrities including Dolly Parton and Bill Clinton,… …

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Paramount and WarnerMedia Sideline Their Streaming Strategies for March Madness

After Covid-19 canceled the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament in 2020 and restricted the crowd size for last year’s return, advertisers were eager to be part of the first “normal” March Madness games since 2019. CBS and Turner Sports sold out their advertising inventory for the tournament earlier than ever, bringing in more than… …

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Those Iconic Images of Che Guevara and James Dean? Thank a Leica Camera

Let’s pretend it’s 150 years ago and you wanted to have your picture taken. You’d have to get yourself to a photo studio and be prepared to spend time and money. The photographer would get under the drape of his wet-collodion camera–a milk crate-sized box bolted to a tripod–then remove the lens cover. Since it… …

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Editor’s Letter: Introducing Adweek’s 2022 Global Theme

When our editorial team prepared last year’s Outlook issue, we started with a list of questions: What would the future of work look like? Would consumer habits change long-term? Would media spending rebound? Less than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, many of those questions remained unanswerable. This year is different. We’re beginning 2022 with… …

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Editor’s Letter: There’s No Such Thing as Future Proof, but These Agencies Are Future Ready

As Kristen Cavallo and I flashed our vaccine cards and pulled down our masks at Bryant Park Grill a few blocks away from Madison Avenue in New York last month, I couldn’t help but marvel at how things change. Four years ago, I was leading our coverage of the #MeToo movement, which led to shake-ups… …

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The Pandemic May Be the Final Nudge Brands Needed to Ban Fur

For decades, organizations such as the Humane Society of the U.S. and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have worked toward creating a more humane world for animals. But until recently, efforts to convince consumers, businesses and governments to ban the production and sale of fur largely fell on deaf ears. The pandemic,… …

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How Verizon Became New Streaming Services’ Secret Weapon for Scaling

In August, AMC+ landed what has become every streaming service’s holy grail: a coveted Verizon partnership. As part of a deal between the two companies, certain customers of Verizon’s broadband and unlimited phone plans are entitled to a free year of the AMC Networks streamer, featuring ad-free programming across its entertainment networks and early access… …

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The Only Thing That Scares Lovecraft Country Creator Misha Green Is Playing It Safe

Misha Green finds new ways to terrify viewers with each episode of Lovecraft Country–from a haunted house to demonic twins–but the creator herself doesn’t frighten easily. “I very rarely get scared,” says Green. Well, except for one thing: “I guess stasis scares me: the idea of not growing, not challenging yourself, not being surprised.” Certainly… …

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How Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative Is Changing False Narratives Around Racism in America

All throughout the United States, prisoners on death row are afforded the right to state-funded legal assistance–everywhere but in Alabama, that is. Enter Bryan Stevenson, who in 1989 established the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit whose stated mission is to provide “legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced or abused in… …

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Facebook Is Up to Old Copycat Tricks, and TikTok Is the Target This Time

While TikTok is establishing itself–it counts 43.7 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S., according to Comscore, and introduced a self-serve ad platform in July–it faces a potential regulatory nightmare. Already booted from its top market in India over concerns of user privacy and data sharing with the Chinese government, TikTok parent company ByteDance has… …

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Discounted Annual Subscriptions Give Streamers a Leg Up in Crowded Space

When NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock debuted nationally this month, its most-advertised price point was the tier executives thought would be most appealing to consumers during the pandemic: free. But for users who wanted to lock in a year’s worth of Peacock Premium–which offers additional content beyond the free version–the service offered a 40% discount on… …

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How Bike Brands Are Navigating a Boom Fueled by Covid-19

“Unprecedented” is an apt way to describe 2020 so far. And while that’s not necessarily a good thing for most of the marketing world, the bicycle industry has seen an unprecedented amount of growth. People are flocking to bike shops and major retailers during quarantine to purchase bikes for socially distant exercise or to avoid… …

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