December 4, 2017 Important to Important People
Tito’s Handmade Vodka won a spirited fight for Marketer of the Year, plus nine others that crushed it
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The top 100 spenders are pouring it on— and some of the biggest movers are in China p. 9
Don’t believe what you read about magazines—these titles are thriving (and kicking digital butts) p. 28
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Important to Important People
1
Inside This Issue
Behind the Headlines 3 Facebook’s about-face
Ford may have a better idea
Carjacking
Q&AA
The platform warms up to formerly banned pre-roll ads with Watch test
Accenture Interactive’s Maserati heist could signal trouble for shops
Automaker reevaluates its agency relationships, including with WPP
Steve Stoute puts the CRM in RPM with new music startup
Datacenter 9
“I have been convinced that it is the best thing ... but it still breaks my heart.” CP&B Chairman Chuck Porter to AdAge.com about the closing of the Miami office that made the agency famous President & Publisher Josh Golden
World’s Largest Advertisers
Associate Publisher, General Manager, Marketing & Brand
Chinese marketers surge on Ad Age’s comprehensive annual ranking
Heidi Waldusky Editors
Editor Brian Braiker Executive Editor Nat Ives Deputy Editor Judann Pollack Managing Editor
City Spotlight 11 Getting better all the time
Roberta Bernstein
Member & Custom Content Editor Ann Marie Kerwin
U.K. ad capital London keeps calm and carries on despite Brexit
Datacenter
Creativity 13
Catherine Wolf
Editors at Large
The Media Guy Personal Products/Research
Outstanding brand positioning leads Tito’s to top of category—and our list
Jack Neff
Editorial Beat Sheet
See who else made the grade
Check out the nine runners-up whose marketing outshone their rivals
Magazines of the Year 28
Digital Content Producer Nefertiti Anderson
Creativity Editor
The tube plays data tricks: Now you see the ratings, now you don’t
Senior Editor, Events Anna Sekula
George Slefo
Tech, Social Garett Sloane Agencies, PR Lindsay Stein Food Jessica Wohl
Culture shock
The true forces shaping pop culture are outside the ad industry
Marketing & Audience Development
Senior Audience Development Manager
Conferences & Events
Ad Tech, Ad Fraud, Search
TV’s hocus-pocus
Associate Marketing Producer Diane Firmalino
Adrianne Pasquarelli Media Jeanine Poggi E.J. Schultz
Opinion 36
Eniko Skintej
Maria Giatrakis
Chicago Bureau Chief
New York magazine leads the pack in our recognition of top titles of 2017
General Manager, Product & Technology Kevin Skaggs Director, Program Management Kerri Ross Senior Marketing Programs Manager Emily Chiang Marketing Programs Manager
Ann-Christine Diaz Asia Editor Angela Doland Media Agencies Megan Graham London Editor Emma Hall
Retail, Finance
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Program Management
Simon Dumenco
Tito’s Handmade Vodka
Danika Felt
Director, Data Management Senior Research Editor
Marketers of the Year 16
Senior Manager, Client Partnerships Alex McGrath Senior Manager, Client Partnerships Brent Rupp Senior Manager, Client Partnerships Liz Spitaleri Manager, Client Partnerships
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Kevin Brown
Brands take bizarre cameo roles in China’s historical costume dramas
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Let’s do the time warp
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Classic Ad Review
Senior Art Directors
In wake of sexual harassment news, Charlie’s ads take on new meaning
Jennifer Chiu, Tam Nguyen Video Producer David Hall
Digital Content Producer Chen Wu
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Ad Age December 4, 2017
Behind the Headlines
Behind the Headlines FACEBOOK TO LIFT LONGTIME BAN ON PRE-ROLL VIDEO ADS By Garett Sloane Illustration by Tam Nguyen
Facebook plans to test video ads at the start of Watch shows, exploring what would be a significant shift, according to advertisers familiar with the social network’s strategy. Facebook has long resisted the pre-roll format because of its reputation for annoying viewers who are trying to get to their desired content. For years, CEO Mark Zuckerberg even banned “pre-roll” from Facebook’s advertising vernacular. “We don’t need to do pre-roll because our model is not one where you come to Facebook to watch one piece of content,” Zuckerberg said on a conference call with investors in late July. “You come to look at a feed.” But now it seems the time might be right to at least give them a try. Facebook this year introduced Facebook Watch, a would-be YouTube rival where publishers, TV studios and web celebrities create shows and try to make money through ad sales. The move was part of a broader war among digital platforms and publishers to win at video, where marketers will pay more than for other kinds of ads. Facebook, which declined to comment for this story, is expected to begin studying how users respond to the new commercial experience in the coming weeks. “YouTube already established that people will sit through and tolerate pre-roll,” says Steve Ellis, CEO of WhoSay, a social influencer marketing company. “It’s proven that they haven’t sent consumers fleeing, so Important to Important People
it makes sense that Facebook would pursue a similar strategy as it builds out its original content experience.” Watch shows are also different than the video that Facebook has previously featured most: shorter clips that depend on impulse viewers. Watch was designed to draw audiences of loyal, returning viewers in a setting more like TV. In that scenario, fans of a show might be more open to watching a commercial before a program starts. It’s a different mindset than racing down the Facebook feed. Advertisers like the guarantee of ads being seen at the outset instead of hoping viewers reach the break. “A downside of Facebook News Feed inventory is that it can be easily scrolled past by users, whereas preroll or mid-roll in Watch guarantees eyeballs against our clients’ content,” says Mark Sytsma, associate director of paid social at Huge. “The ability to purchase a known or guaranteed
amount of inventory has always been a gap when buying on Facebook. This ad product would fill that hole.” In August, Facebook introduced Watch with mid-roll ads, which run in the middle of the shows, after a viewer presumably gets sucked into the content and is less likely to abandon it because of an ad break. But some publishers and advertisers say those ads haven’t been optimal. Show creators are concerned that mid-roll ads risk letting viewers tune out even if they’ve been watching for a while. “There have been comments from viewers about how annoying the ads are,” says one publishing executive, who works with Facebook on shows and spoke on condition of anonymity. “They say they would rather watch pre-roll than watch a video and be interrupted.” The mid-rolls have delivered some positive results, however, like higher completion rates than video ads in the Facebook feed, according to a number
of advertisers. People also mostly watch them with the sound on, unlike the feed. Facebook has said mid-roll ads see a 70 percent completion rate, but that’s for all mid-roll, which can run in videos outside Watch, too. It has not revealed data specific to ad completion in Watch. Nor has it said how often viewers drop off when they hit commercial breaks. Facebook uses data to determine the media habits of individual users, so it should also be able to tell users who accept pre-roll ads from ones who don’t. It could show pre-roll to some and mid-roll to others, says a media-agency executive familiar with Facebook’s thinking. “They can get really sophisticated understanding people,” the executive says. “For those people who watch for longer amounts of time, they could get in-stream ads. And people who tend not to watch for very long, they would instead see a pre-roll.” 3
Behind the Headlines Car trouble
WPP FACES PRESSURE ON FORD ACCOUNT By Lindsay Stein and E.J. Schultz
WPP CEO Martin Sorrell (l.) and Ford CEO Jim Hackett
ACCENTURE DRIVES OFF WITH MASERATI By Emma Hall
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If there’s one question expected to be asked of WPP CEO Martin Sorrell at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference this week, it’s this: What’s up with Ford? The first sign of potential trouble came when WPP, in a regulatory filing to the London Stock Exchange, stated that Ford “verbally informed WPP that they are considering their future internal and external marketing model.” The statement added that Ford wants to enter into “a further agreement with WPP for a period to be agreed in 2018.” That seems to be code for Ford wanting to negotiate more favorable terms with the agency holding company that oversees almost all of its ad business. WPP referred com-
Score another one for the consultants: Fiat Chrysler tapped Accenture Interactive as global experience agency of record for Maserati, with a brief spanning eight major markets including the U.S., Japan and Europe. Though Maserati is not a major U.S. brand and does not spend much in this country, the move is still significant for Accenture Interactive, which along with other consultants is on a quest to beat traditional agencies at their own game. Anatoly Roytman, managing director of Accenture Interactive in Europe, Africa and Latin America, called the move “a game-changer in the industry. We’ve arrived. There was no pitch because no other agency could offer this entire, end-to-end scope. It’s our first win using everything we have as Accenture Interactive.”
ment to Ford, which said in a statement that “we are exploring options to improve the fitness of our marketing and advertising operations. No decisions have been made.” Pivotal Research senior analyst Brian Wieser says Ford’s statement likely signals the automaker is “providing notice that it was offering worse terms to WPP than it currently has, but giving them first rights to figure something out.” That could be bad news for WPP, which like all holding companies, is coming under increased pressure from clients on fees. WPP already lowered growth expectations to zero earlier this year, blaming cutbacks from major packaged goods clients like Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Ford is “one of
WPP’s biggest accounts, and one of its oldest too,” Wieser says. “Generally, older accounts tend to be more profitable than newer ones, so it may be disproportionately important relative to its already large size.” WPP, which handles Ford via dedicated shop Global Team Blue, has worked for Ford continuously since the automaker hired J. Walter Thompson in 1943. Today, WPP’s scope on the business includes media buying and planning, advertising and PR. Ford’s new management team is putting spending under the microscope. Jim Hackett, who was named CEO in May, is looking to slash $14 billion in the next five years, including material cost reductions and engineering savings. Marketing is
This year, for the first time, four consultancies cracked Ad Age’s ranking of the 10 largest agency companies in the world, with Accenture Interactive leading the four. Roytman was behind Accenture’s acquisition last year of London creative agency Karmarama, which will lead the Maserati account. The focus is on being a customer-centric “experience agency,” meaning one that addresses every point where consumers come into contact with Maserati. This includes brand and creative work, digital advertising, strategy and content production, campaign management, search-engine optimization, analytics—everything on down to test drives. “We want to engage with our customers across all channels in more meaningful ways,” says Jacob Nyborg, Maserati’s head of marketing. “Accenture Interactive have the capabilities to manage our customer touchpoints holistically so we can deliver great experiences that build consistent, seamless and authentic interactions with our discerning customers.”
overseen by Kumar Galhotra, group VP of the Lincoln brand, who in November added global chief marketing officer to his title. Another change agent is Musa Tariq, a former Apple and Nike marketer, who was named VP and chief brand officer at Ford in January. In a sign that Ford is willing to shake up its agency roster, the automaker’s luxury Lincoln brand recently hired Wasserman Media Group-owned Laundry Service to assist on a campaign for the launch of the redesigned 2018 Lincoln Navigator SUV. A Lincoln spokesman confirmed that the agency would handle social media. WPP’s Hudson Rouge—known for Lincoln’s Matthew McConaughey ads— will continue to work on Lincoln.
The success of the Maserati partnership will be judged on how many cars are sold, says Roytman. “Our KPIs are about selling cars to the right audience.” Accenture Interactive has steered clear of buying ads. “We don’t want to be in the commission business,” Roytman says. “It’s not a good model to get involved in.” Asked whether agencies need to be worried about consultants, Roytman says, “We all need to be worried. ...We all need to change. The consultancies need to go beyond the single-project mindset. Clients need a partner to generate growth, and it’s not possible to do that on a project basis.”
Ad Age December 4, 2017
12/1/17 7:11 PM
It’s one thing to know what she’s watching today. But what about tomorrow? When you have the right data and the right science, you won’t only know what’s next—you’ll get there first. Learn more about The Science Behind What’s Next™ at nielsen.com.
Copyright © 2017 The Nielsen Company (US), LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Behind the Headlines Questions & Ad Age
Q&AA: STEVE STOUTE ON THE LABEL OF THE FUTURE Flush with $70 million in new funding, the former president of Interscope Records discusses his music startup
By Lindsay Stein Illustration by Jérôme Mireault
If Translation is an agency about translating culture for brands, what does the UnitedMasters name mean? Charlie Chaplin created United Artists [with Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Mary Pickford] to bring artists together to go against that studio system. At that time, because the studios owned the theaters, if you were in a Paramount movie, you only played in Paramount theaters and you were signed to a long-term contract. Those things had to change, so they created United Artists as a vehicle for change. UnitedMasters is an iteration of that. It’s about artists coming together to change the system. Our purpose is to operationalize independence and give advertisers a much clearer opportunity to work with artists. Is this a revolt against the major labels? Or are they doomed? I don’t think it’s fair that anybody should kill this idea while it’s still in the cradle, nor do I think you should assume the incumbent is dead. There’s a lot of room between the two places.
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“Music has always been, and will always be, a strong gateway to connect with a consumer in an emotional hot state.” Steve Stoute
What do people get wrong in the music industry? The legacy labels have been late to building out digital technology to help the artists. I think others have done it, like MTV, the iPod, Napster, Garage Band, Spotify, Apple. Others have built digital technology to amplify the business, but not legacy labels. So, enter UnitedMasters? The idea in its origin came to me maybe 14 or 15 years ago. When I was at Interscope Records, [producer] Jimmy Iovine and I would marvel at the fact that we never knew who our customer was. We would sell millions of physical CDs, but never knew who was buying them, which was common. But we said, “Imagine if you took a CD out and on the back tray we etched a logo on it, like Nike or Apple, and wrote copy on the back and said this was brought to you by Nike or by Apple.” It was an idea called CD media and it never got off the ground, but it was the notion of targeting an ad with the physical packaging that’s in the hands of a music fan. Ad Age December 4, 2017
Jérôme Mireaultn, colagene.com
When Steve Stoute left the music industry to create independent advertising agency Translation in 2004, he says he was determined to take what he learned from the record business and bring it to the ad world. Now, the entrepreneur is squaring the circle with his new venture, UnitedMasters. The company, which has received $70 million in funding from investors including Google parent company Alphabet, Andreessen Horowitz and 21st Century Fox, will sign and distribute artists, help them nurture and monetize a fan base and then identify brands for them to work with. Ad Age sat down with Stoute to find out more about UnitedMasters and what it means for both the advertising and music industries. Our conversation has been edited.
Ad s
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Behind the Headlines Questions & Ad Age
Meaning, the music industry can better target fans now? When I looked at the music landscape, while it should be the case, it isn’t the case. In fact, an album like Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” can sell five million albums, let’s say, but if she came out six months later with an album called “Iced Tea,” she’d have to find those same five million people over again. This is about the need for the industry to innovate with digital technology. Play out a scenario of how you propose to do this. We can find an artist, help that artist grow his or her audience and, when they grow that audience, we can build a CRM system around that audience so they know exactly who their casual fans and super-engaged fans are. Once you can identify those fans, you can build out the best ways to monetize them. You can sell tickets or sell merchandise, but on top of all of that, I believe that when those artists reach a certain scale, we can allow brands to target their audience directly. I look at the artists as mini media companies, like if Beyoncé is ESPN and Lady Gaga is Discovery. You start building out those brands because the artists have just as much reach as the brands, but they don’t have a way to monetize their audience like brands do, and now they will. What types of artists will you work with? Any particular genre? Some of them can be legacy artists but 90 to 95 percent will be new digital-native artists who are from the internet era and probably never even used a CD player or recorded on tape before. They have learned the digital economy and how to navigate it. We’re looking to distribute those artists who need distribution services and want it with the benefits of data-driven
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“This is a win for the ad industry. I want agencies to see this and think, ‘Yes. We matter.’” Steve Stoute
decisions, real, actionable insights and, ultimately, the ability to use their audiences to work with brands. What’s the endgame for you? Translation and UnitedMasters, which is all one company, is my vision and my dream, and I think it’s today’s reality of the convergence between storytelling, technology and culture. If you’re in business for tomorrow, you must have that convergence within your organization to move forward. It’s critical. As an advertising agency, I’m really proud of the stories we’ve told and the creative we’ve put into the world, but I think creative advertising agencies and media agencies need to be able to offer more services. The advertising industry needs to keep evolving. Is UnitedMasters meant to combat these issues? This is a win for the ad industry. I want agencies to see this and think, “Yes. We matter. Yes. We have value.” It’s a new innovative way for the industry to move forward. What sort of talent are you looking for to work on UnitedMasters? If you look at the body of employees right now, it’s data scientists, engineers, product folks, creatives, storytellers, design teams and writers, and then there’s A&R and digital sales. It’s about bringing all those skill sets together. The most important thing is the convergence of storytelling, culture and technology. That’s the world we live in right now.
How so? It’s everything we admire—all of the tech platforms taking off, the way we engage with things, like bringing technology to the Starbucks experience. That’s why we’re seeing the industry going wide. All those services are needed, but they’re hard to find in one place because it’s expensive. I think Interscope Records and Def Jam would have been great advertising agencies. Why’s that? They were always on the cultural front lines. They never built the infrastructure to work with a brand at scale, but they definitely had the ingredients to help move a brand’s initiative forward. So the fact that I ran record companies for years and I built an advertising agency, and now I’m combining music insights, storytelling and data, to me, that’s just the next evolution. Where do brands come into this? Brands make big investments in music that are wasteful. Music has always been and will always be a strong gateway to connect with consumers in an emotional hot state. However, the current way in which money is spent to do that is a bunch of wasted sponsorships and poorly invested dollars with no return.
Heavy hitters: (From l.) Jay-Z, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Steve Stoute attend a night of boxing in Las Vegas.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
Photograph by Johnny Nunez/WireImage
And now fans tend to download or stream music, so the physical component is gone. I had to go through the cons of making less money per song on digital, and that people can buy a song and not the entire album, and there’s no artwork, so it’s hard to get people to buy into a body of work. Albums and themes of albums don’t matter any longer. But the pros are that we now have the power that the digital economy provides, so we can build CRM systems, which allow us to know your customers and build ways to communicate and drive affinity with those customers.
Datacenter WORLD’S LARGEST ADVERTISERS 2017 The 31st annual global report, produced by wAd Age Datacenter By Bradley Johnson
The World’s 100 Largest Advertisers increased ad spending 3.4 percent to $267 billion in 2016. But if you want to see the real growth, check out China, which boasts four of the world’s biggest marketers. Advertising and promotional spending by Alibaba, China’s biggest online retailer, rocketed 50 percent to $1.3 billion, the fastest growth in the top 100. Spending at internet power Tencent surged 48 percent to $1.4 billion, good for the second-highest growth. SAIC Motor, China’s largest domestic auto group, increased ad spending a more modest 4 percent, to $1.6 billion. Yili Group, the country’s largest dairy marketer, trimmed its outlay, but the quartet’s overall spending grew 20 percent anyway. Most of the four firms’ global spending was in China, the world’s second-largest ad market. Ad spending there grew 8.7 percent in 2016 and is set to rise 7.4 percent this year, to $80.5 billion, according to a new forecast by Publicis Groupe’s Zenith. Amazon ranks No. 11 among global advertisers with spending of $5 billion, ahead of such marketers as Ford Motor, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. The ranking includes 10 such internet-age companies—Tencent, Alibaba and Rakuten also among them—that last year collectively boosted ad spending by 25.8 percent. Spending for the remaining 90 edged up 1.7 percent. Sixty-five of the 100 showed increases. (Not surprisingly, internet-centric marketers dominate Important to Important People
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World's 25 Largest Advertisers
By 2016 total worldwide advertising spending
Rank
Marketer
Headquarters, category
2016 total worldwide advertising spending
1
Procter & Gamble Co.
U.S., personal care
$10.5B
2
Samsung Electronics Co.
South Korea, technology
9.9B
3
Nestlé
Switzerland, food and beverages
9.2B
4
Unilever
U.K./Netherlands, personal care
8.6B
5
L'Oréal
France, personal care
8.3B
6
Volkswagen
Germany, automotive
6.7B
7
Comcast Corp.
U.S., entertainment and media
6.1B
8
Anheuser-Busch InBev
Belgium, beer, wine and liquor
5.9B
9
General Motors Co.
U.S., automotive
5.3B
10
Daimler
Germany, automotive
5.1B
11
Amazon
U.S., retail
5.0B
12
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton
France, apparel
4.7B
13
Ford Motor Co.
U.S., automotive
4.3B
14
Toyota Motor Corp.
Japan, automotive
4.2B
15
Coca-Cola Co.
U.S., food and beverages
4.0B
16
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
U.K., automotive
3.9B
17
Alphabet (Google)
U.S., entertainment and media
3.9B
18
Priceline Group
U.S., travel
3.8B
19
AT&T
U.S., telecommunications
3.8B
20
American Express Co.
U.S., financial services
3.7B
21
Mars Inc.
U.S., food and beverages
3.5B
22
McDonald's Corp.
U.S., restaurants
3.4B
23
Sony Corp.
Japan, entertainment and media
3.4B
24
Bayer
Germany, personal care
3.3B
25
Pfizer
U.S., pharmaceuticals
3.2B
World’s Largest Advertisers: Top 25
$133.5B
World’s Largest Advertisers: Top 100
$267.3B
Source: Ad Age Datacenter. Total worldwide advertising spending from Ad Age Datacenter estimates and company financial filings. Numbers rounded. Full report including ranking of top 100, profiles and expanded footnotes: AdAge.com/globalmarketers2017. 1. Procter & Gamble: Year ended June 2017. Estimated spending on advertising plus other marketing costs. 2. Samsung: Ad Age revised spending model to capture advertising and sales promotion. Ad Age previously excluded sales promotion from its calculation of Samsung worldwide spending. 3. Nestlé: Ad Age revised spending model to capture estimated “consumer facing” marketing expenses. Ad Age previously ranked Nestlé using a model based on a narrower definition of ad spending. 8. Anheuser-Busch InBev: Estimated pro forma spending including SABMiller (acquired October 2016). 22. McDonald’s: Estimated worldwide systemwide ad spending including spending from franchisees and company-owned restaurants.
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12/1/17 3:57 PM
Datacenter
Ad Age’s separate tally of the world’s fastest-growing ad spenders.) The World’s Largest Advertisers ranking is based on Ad Age Datacenter estimates and company disclosures. It captures total ad spending, an all-in assessment including everything from TV and in-store advertising to social media and mobile. Still No. 1 Procter & Gamble kept the top spot by spending an estimated $10.5 billion on advertising and other marketing activities. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics took second with $9.9 billion in 2016 spending. Swiss food marketer Nestlé came in No. 3 with $9.2 billion in estimated “consumer facing” marketing spending. Ad Age revised spending models for this report to incorporate Samsung’s massive promotion budget and a broader definition of Nestlé consumer marketing spending. Auto was the biggest category among the World’s Largest Advertisers, with 17 marketers spending $51 billion. Personal care and household products was close behind with 13 marketers spending $48 billion. The top 100 includes 46 based in North America (45 in the U.S. plus the telecom firm América Móvil in Mexico), 31 in Europe and 23 in Asia. World’s Largest Advertisers complements Ad Age’s Leading National Advertisers report (AdAge.com/ lna2017); 80 of the 200 biggest U.S. spenders made the ranking of the top 100 global spenders. Eleven of the World’s Largest Advertisers had no significant U.S. measured-media spending in 2016: automakers PSA Group and Renault (France) and SAIC (China); retailers Aeon (Japan), Alibaba (China), Carrefour (France) and Rewe Group (Germany); telecoms Telefónica (Spain) and Vodafone Group (U.K.); and China’s Tencent and Yili.
Go online to see the world The complete World’s Largest Advertisers 2017 ranking and database are available exclusively online to Ad Age Datacenter subscribers at AdAge.com/globalmarketers2017. Online content includes: • World’s Largest Advertisers: Ad Age’s exclusive ranking of the 100 biggest spenders. • Global marketers database: Profiles, ad spending, executives and key global agencies for World’s Largest Advertisers. • Biggest advertisers in 95 countries: Rankings based on measured-media spending. Subscribe: AdAge.com/getdatacenter 10
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World's Largest Advertisers by category
Seventeen of the World’s 100 Largest Advertisers are in automotive—16 automakers and tire maker Bridgestone—with 2016 total worldwide ad spending of $51 billion. Spending by personal care and household products marketers was close behind at $48 billion.
Category
Number of marketers
2016 total worldwide advertising spending
Automotive
17
$50.8B
19.0%
Personal care and household products
13
48.2B
18.0
Entertainment and media
10
25.5B
9.5
Retail
14
23.9B
8.9
Food and beverages
7
23.2B
8.7
Technology
6
17.8B
6.7
Telecommunications
7
15.1B
5.7
Beer, wine and liquor
6
14.8B
5.5
Financial services
6
13.6B
5.1
Apparel
4
11.6B
4.3
Pharmaceuticals
6
10.6B
4.0
Travel
2
6.5B
2.4
Restaurants
2
5.6B
2.1
World’s Largest Advertisers: Top 100
100
$267.3B
100.0%
Share of top 100's spending
Source: Ad Age Datacenter. Total worldwide advertising spending from Ad Age Datacenter estimates and company financial filings. Numbers rounded. Full report including ranking of top 100, profiles and expanded footnotes: AdAge.com/globalmarketers2017.
Fastest-growing spenders
Nine of the 10 fastest-growing ad spenders among the World’s 100 Largest Advertisers are internet-centric plays, led by China’s Alibaba. The one exception is Schwarz Gruppe, a brick-and-mortar retailer based in Germany.
Rank
Marketer
Headquarters
Category
2016 total worldwide advertising spending
1
Alibaba Group Holding
China
Retail
$1.3B
50%
2
Tencent Holdings
China
Entertainment and media
1.4B
48
3
Rakuten
Japan
Retail
1.1B
34
4
Amazon
U.S.
Retail
5.0B
32
5
Expedia
U.S.
Travel
2.7B
29
6
Priceline Group
U.S.
Travel
3.8B
25
7
Alphabet (Google)
U.S.
Entertainment and media
3.9B
21
8
Schwarz Gruppe
Germany
Retail
1.4B
21
9
Netflix
U.S.
Entertainment and media
1.0B
20
10
eBay
U.S.
Retail
1.2B
20
% change vs. 2015
Source: Ad Age Datacenter. Total worldwide advertising spending from Ad Age Datacenter estimates and company financial filings. Numbers rounded. Full report including ranking of top 100, profiles and expanded footnotes: AdAge.com/globalmarketers2017.
Methodology: Spending for World’s Largest Advertisers from Ad Age Datacenter estimates and company disclosures. Figures capture total worldwide advertising spending, an all-in assessment that includes everything from TV and in-store advertising to social media and mobile. Ad Age translated currencies to U.S. dollars at average exchange rates. Measured media for top advertisers by country from media tracking services; links to tracking services available at AdAge.com/globalmarketers2017.
Datacenter directors: Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson. Senior research editor: Catherine Wolf. Research assistants: Briana Boston, Melanie Falina, Andrew Fricke, Danielle Gregory, Gabrielle Rosas. Ad Age Asia editor: Angela Doland.
© Copyright 2017 Crain Communications Inc. The data and information presented is the property of Crain and others and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. For personal, noncommercial use only, which must be in accordance with Ad Age’s Terms and Conditions at AdAge.com/terms. Archiving, reproduction, redistribution or other uses are prohibited. For licensing arrangements, please contact lpicariello@ crain.com.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
12/1/17 3:44 PM
City Spotlight London
City Spotlight LONDON From Brexit to Brixton, everything you need to know about the U.K.’s ad capital By Emma Hall
London: iStock
Illustrations by Hyesu Lee
The upcoming nuptials of Prince Harry to the biracial, divorced American actress Meghan Markle is an apt analogy for London: Rooted in tradition, it’s anything but traditional. The city’s hip bona fides were born in the swinging ’60s, when a youth-driven revolution introduced miniskirts and the Rolling Stones to the world. Today the U.K. capital continues to be a vital cultural force; add to that it being wedged between the American and Asian time zones, and it’s no wonder big U.S. tech companies are setting up shop there. Google, Apple and Facebook have all recently invested in statement-making London headquarters, many of them housed in the Kings Cross neighborhood. It’s not hard to convince people to work here: There are more good restaurants than ever, and from trendy Dalston (think Brooklyn) to swanky Mayfair (think Park Avenue), there’s a place for everyone. Plus, there’s history. Anomaly’s office, for example, is situated near one of the Black Death plague pits. And while the U.K. voted for Brexit, Londoners voted overwhelmingly to stay in the European Union. The city’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, is determined to remain an active player in the global community. Katie Mackay, a partner at Mother London, says Britain threatening to close its Important to Important People
P011_012_AA_20171204.indd 11
The Thames River winds its way through growing London.
doors to non-U.K. workers once it has left the EU has resulted in resumes, cold calls, chocolate and alcohol being sent from Europeans eager to move to London while they still can. Alain Groenendaal, who moved from New York to London this year when he became president and CEO of Grey Europe, says he finds the city more mixed, and the multiculturalism more layered, than in New York. Look no further than British Vogue for proof: Its December issue—the debut of Vogue’s first black, male editor, Edward Enninful—features a parade of multicultural U.K. creative talent, and the British-Ghanaian model and activist Adwoa Aboah on its cover. Diverse—but not so much This diversity, however, is not that apparent in the ad industry. While many of the city’s ad legends started their careers in the mailroom—including Iraqi immigrant Charles Saatchi, founder of Saatchi & Saatchi, and Peter Mead, founder of Abbott Mead Vickers (now part of BBDO)—college graduate recruitment has now become pretty much the only way to get a foot in the door. This has resulted in an entry-level group of mostly white,
middle-class employees. Mother London’s Mackay is leading initiatives there to up diversity, such as offering entry-level jobs that pay well enough to appeal to applicants who don’t have parents able to bankroll them. Start-ups swallowed up London’s ad world faces other challenges. Indie agencies could become a thing of the past, as exemplified by the selling off of thriving companies Lucky Generals and 101 to TBWA and MullenLowe, respectively. Laurence Green, a founder of 101 , says it’s difficult to be a standalone in this low-growth, low-pricing era, particularly when big regional and global work is harder to come by. The barriers to entry are higher than ever, inflated by the need
for access to data analytics. Meanwhile, there’s less work for indies from the bigger clients. Over the last year, for example, Procter & Gamble and Unilever have cut their agency rosters in half. Media companies face the biggest challenges. A wave of London media execs left their posts this past October, which became known in the industry as “Shocktober.” Paul Frampton, outgoing CEO of Havas Media Group U.K., Tracy De Groose, Dentsu Aegis Network U.K. CEO, and Pippa Glucklich, U.K. CEO of Starcom, all resigned without jobs to go to. The cause is the root-to-branch disruption triggered by digital technology and the transformation of the supply chain. Media agencies seem to have been hit even harder than ad agencies by the brutal pressure to deliver financial results, which, combined with the scrutiny around transparency, has provoked this exodus of talent. Brexit also hasn’t helped, particularly when global network chiefs fail to understand its local impact. Frampton’s resignation to staff said, “Our industry is undergoing tectonic changes and it feels like the time for me to try something different.” 11
12/1/17 10:57 AM
City Spotlight London
Google: 6 Pancras Sq., Kings Cross Construction begins in 2018 on Google’s new U.K. headquarters, which will have room for 7,000 employees. Perks include a roof meadow and butchery lessons. Havas: 3 Pancras Sq., Kings Cross Opened earlier this year, Havas Village brings the group’s 26 U.K. agencies under one roof, with 1,700 people across 10 floors. Street art: 83 Rivington St. Street art—including some by Banksy—adorn the walls behind the Cargo club. Facebook: 1 Rathbone Sq. Facebook moves from Kings Cross to this former Royal Mail site. Apple: Battersea Power Station The company plans to open its new London headquarters here in 2021. The art deco masterpiece has stood derelict on the banks of the Thames for 33 years. God’s Own Junkyard: 82A Shernhall St. This little piece of Vegas has neon signs from artist Chris Bracey. Anomaly: 25 Charterhouse Sq. Anomaly’s state-of-the-art office was formerly part of the Charterhouse buildings, which stands near the site of a Black Death plague pit, where 15,000 bodies are buried. Publicis Media: 63 Turnmill St. Publicis Media’s impressive new office is on the site of London’s most famous 1990s dance club, Turnmills. Saatchi & Saatchi: 40 Chancery Lane The agency moved to London’s legal district last year in a building with enough space to rehouse Saatchi’s famous pub, The Pregnant Man. Ministry of Stories: 159 Hoxton St. Hoxton Street Monster Supplies’ website advertises Banshee Balls and Cubed Earwax for sale, but it’s actually a front for the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing and mentoring charity.
WPP: 27 Farm St. WPP, the world’s largest communications group, has its headquarters in a 200-year-old townhouse on a residential street in the posh Mayfair district. Annabel’s: 46 Berkeley Sq. Just around the corner from WPP is the new $75 million 12
P011_012_AA_20171204.indd 12
incarnation of Annabel’s, said to be the only nightclub the Queen has ever visited. The Beatles’ last hurrah: 3 Savile Row The site of the Beatles’ last live concert, performed on the roof of their recording company, Apple, in 1969. Growing Underground: 1a Carpenter’s Pl. This World War II bomb shelter has been turned into
an urban farm way below the busy streets of South London. Mother London: 10 Redchurch St. Mother London occupies three floors of the famous eight-story Tea Building in Shoreditch. Bowie!: 6 Tunstall Rd., Brixton Site of a graffiti portrait of David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, which became a destination after his death.
Ogilvy & Mather: Sea Containers, 18 Upper Ground After 17 years stranded in Canary Wharf, Southwark was a welcome change for Ogilvy & Mather when it moved there last year. Omnicom: Bankside, Southwark Street Omnicom’s campus site on the Thames counts AMV BBDO, TBWA and Proximity among the agencies working in the former bank building.
Adam & Eve DDB: 12 Bishops Bridge Rd. Adam & Eve DDB remained in an old postal sorting house, escaping the soulless Southwark HQ. Unilever: Unilever House, New Bridge Street Unilever’s HQ is on a site acquired by founder Lord Leverhulme in 1920. Post-Brexit, the Anglo-Dutch company has been considering just one HQ, in Rotterdam.
Traitors’ Gate: 35 Tower Hill Many have entered the Tower of London through the Traitors’ Gate, never to return. The Ned: 27 Poultry The Ned boasts nine restaurants and a branch of private members’ club Soho House. Sherlock Holmes Museum: 221B Baker St. Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional sleuth’s home was created for this museum.
Illustration by Hyesu Lee
Saatchi Gallery: Duke of York’s Headquarters, King’s Road Charles Saatchi’s contemporary art museum moved to its current premises in 2008.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
12/1/17 10:57 AM
Creativity SNEAKY ADS Modern brands travel to ancient times in China’s streaming TV series By Angela Doland
Characters from a distant era grab a Coke in ‘Princess Agents.’
Important to Important People
P013_P014_AA_20171204.indd 13
“Princess Agents,” a Chinese drama set in a long-ago dynasty, is about a young slave woman who becomes a sword-wielding military general. It features, among other period details, elaborate costumes: silky robes, braided hairdos and plenty of armor. But viewers who streamed the show online this summer encountered a startling, anachronistic scene: the series’ sweaty warriors cracking open a chest filled with icy Coca-Cola. Chinese online video platforms are a hotbed of advertising experimentation, pushing limits of how and where brands typically appear. The results are often surprising. Imagine if the 18th-century Scottish clans of the Starz drama “Outlander” took a
break from warring to feast on haggis and Stove Top stuffing. Or if “Downton Abbey” paused for a commercial, only to show the household staff spritzing the castle curtains with Febreze. It may sound bizarre, but this kind of thing happens often on China’s streaming sites, where the tactic is widespread in everything from period dramas to reality TV. People call it “native video advertising” or “creative mid-roll.” It’s a clever way of serving brand content to people who aren’t expecting to see ads in the middle of their shows. These ads are interruptive, just like an old-fashioned commercial, but the hope is that people will enjoy them if they feature characters from the show and seem like a companion
piece to the series. The idea is to catch people off guard and make them laugh. Branding the Song dynasty It’s all because of costume dramas. “We have a lot of dramas that are really popular in China that are set in ancient times, but it’s really hard for fashion brands and other modern brands to do product placement,” says Jialu Yuan, general manager of drama marketing at iQiyi. After all, you can’t have characters from the Song dynasty using a smartphone app or drinking juice from plastic bottles...or can you? Last year, clients, producers and iQiyi worked together on an idea. What if, for each episode of a costume
13
12/1/17 11:38 AM
Creativity Department of anachronisms
(Clockwise from l.) A character in ‘Princess Agents,’ set long ago, holds up a modern-day Coke bottle; and Pepsi and Lay’s get ads in ‘Mystic Nine.’
drama, you could include a standate business director of OMD China. alone scene where a brand or product “If you’re watching ‘Game of Thrones’ appeared in an offbeat, anachronistic you wouldn’t want to see a shampoo way that would get viewers talking? ad pop up which is totally not releThe series’ production teams could vant.” But what if “Game of Thrones” prepare and shoot the commercials characters get together to relax and themselves, instead of creative agencrack open a modern-day beer? Peocies. Show producers already have the ple might find that funny, he says. actors, costumes and sets. iQiyi, which is backed by Chinese Driven by the model internet giant Baidu, adopted the tactic China’s powerful online video sites first and developed it into a commercial have a different business model product when it broadcast the 1930s than, say, Netflix or HBO. In the U.S., tomb-raiding adventure tale “The content has gravitated to subscripMystic Nine” last year. The first batch tion-based platforms that offer few or of advertisers ranged from iQianjin, a no advertising opportunities, presentpeer-to-peer lending app, to PepsiCo, ing a conundrum for brands. which showed characters chowing But in China, online video content down on Lay’s and gulping Pepsi. is packed with brand messages, from The other major services, Alibaba product placement to brand logos that Group’s Youku Tudou and Tencent flash and spin on the screen. That’s Holdings’ video platform, have embecause Chinese platforms offer most braced the tactic too. At iQiyi, the cost content free; they had to start that for embedding one such commercial way to lure people away from wildly in an episode ranges from $150,000 popular pirated programming. to $530,000, depending on projected The platforms also offer VIP subviewership, Yuan says. scriptions, where for a few dollars a A commercial, perhaps 30 or 45 month viewers can subscribe to unlock seconds long, might appear once or extra content and skip interruptive ads. twice but isn’t repeated endlessly, as But even the people who pay extra ads usually are, so it stays novel and to avoid commercials see these new seems like part of the content. native video ads. There’s no way to “People have gotten very resistant skip them—they’re embedded in the to a hard sell—they think this way show. That lets video platforms make is more entertaining, and it’s a new more money, and it allows brands to way of seeing the characters from a reach everyone, including consumers show,” says Alessandro Pang, associwith enough spending power to pay 14
P013_P014_AA_20171204.indd 14
What if “Game of Thrones” characters get together to relax and crack open a modernday beer?
Internet slang Coca-Cola has done other ads as well, including a campaign to promote bottles and cans featuring internet slant. Producers “send scripts to us and we discuss with the clients,” says Sonny Xu, Isobar media planning director for the Coca-Cola brand and Fanta, who worked on the ads. “Then there are several rounds of revision to get the scripts confirmed.” In addition to a big campaign for the packaging, with creative by McCann Worldgroup that featured singer-actor Lu Han, Coke put native video ads in both “Princess Agents” and another costume drama that aired online. Another Coke scene in “Princess Agents,” whose rights iQiyi bought from satellite channel Hunan TV: When a bodyguard pines for another character, someone suggests she confess her feelings with a bottle marked “521”—a declaration of love in Chinese internet slang. “Chinese people are very shy to confess anything, and this product lets you do that,” says Annie Zhang, the Isobar business director leading the sparkling beverage category for Coca-Cola. The juxtaposition of the modern pop-culture references and period drama feels fresh and unusual for now. But this kind of thing probably won’t work forever, Zhang says: “When it gets old, we will try something new.”
iQiyi
for subscriptions. It also means viewers might have higher expectations for any brand messages that do appear. “We have to make it interesting content so people are happy to see it,” says iQiyi’s Yuan. The ads are meant to feel like a standalone comedy skit inside the episode, or as Yuan describes it, “a little play inside the main show.” On some shows, iQiyi even runs a little old-style theater curtain before the native video ads to announce that a commercial is coming, so people understand that what they’re about to see isn’t part of the storyline. Though the trend started on period dramas, it has spread to other content, too. One iQiyi show, hip-hop singing contest “The Rap of China,” interrupted the onstage action for a skit about McDonald’s, a sponsor of the show. Funny enough, the McDonald’s skit was in the historic past, and the rappers were clad in silk period costumes instead of the gold chains and sweatshirts they usually wear.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
12/1/17 10:52 AM
Announcing the Creativity Awards jury chairs. What will these luminaries think of your work?
People
Chloe Gottlieb
Chief Creative Officer, R/GA, US Work
Anselmo Ramos Chief Creative Officer and Founder, DAVID Companies
Shelly Palmer President & CEO, The Palmer Group
Enter to find out.
A-List & Creativity Awards
Final A-List deadline: 12/20 Final Creativity deadline: 1/11 With 28 different categories, there are multiple ways to win. Enter now at AdAge.com/acawards
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11/30/17 5:46 PM
Marketers of the Year Ad Age’s Marketers of the Year list recognizes companies that, with insightful and inventive strategies, have conquered categories, forged fresh paths and resonated with consumers regardless of budget. This year’s big winner, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, floated to the top of the spirits category—and this list— because of a once-derided brand legend that no one is laughing about today Illustration by Gabriela Zurda
Tito’s sparked a revolution in spirits with its ‘handmade’ vodka. 16
TITO’S HANDMADE VODKA Marketer of the Year By E.J. Schultz
Nicole Portwood still remembers a phone call she made several years ago to lobby a music festival to accept the vodka brand as a sponsor. “I got the cold shoulder,” says Tito’s VP of brand marketing. “I can’t tell you how many people hung up on me because they didn’t have any idea who we were.” They do now. Tito’s, founded in 1997 under the then-ridiculous proposition of a Texas-distilled “handmade vodka,” this year became the top-selling spirits variety in U.S. stores, surpassing more established players like Jack Daniel’s Black Label and Smirnoff Red Label. Once only available in Texas, Tito’s is now sold everywhere from United Airlines flights to big restaurant chains like McCormick & Schmick’s, which recently featured a “Mexitini” cocktail made from Tito’s and triple sec. At U.S. retail stores, sales surged 40.8 percent to $198 million in the 52 weeks ending Nov. 5, according to IRI data cited by Wine & Spirits Daily. In bars and restaurants, Tito’s now commands an impressive 7.1 percent share of the fragmented vodka market, up from 1 percent in 2011, according to Technomic. The brand’s growth, while remarkable, is not the only reason Tito’s is Ad Age’s 2017 Marketer of the Year. Its path to the top is an example of the new marketing battlefield in which upstart brands are successfully taking on giant consumer packaged-goods conglomerates, often by eschewing big-spending ad techniques. Tito’s has not run a single TV ad in its 20-year history. Instead, it has relied heav-
ily on word-of-mouth and scrappy marketing like its “Vodka for Dog People,” a philanthropic effort that has included events like Yappy Hours and Puppy Pawties to raise money for organizations like no-kill shelters. It has, however, spent signficantly on print and outdoor advertising. “We are kind of old-school,” Portwood says, noting that the brand remains loyal to magazine ads. Recently, the company has run ads in titles as varied as Rolling Stone and Popular Mechanics. Tito’s handles creative in-house, while relying on KSM South for media buying and Praytell for PR. While other brands obsess about millennials, Tito’s avoids specific targeting, operating under the philosophy that “if you have a liver, we deliver.” That’s among the many “Titoisms” offered up by brand founder Bert “Tito” Beveridge, whose folksy approach underpins pretty much everything the brand does. “He is what he is: a Texas cowboy on a billboard with a dog sitting on cases of Tito’s,” Emily Pennington, editor of Wine & Spirits Daily, recently wrote. “Is there a little myth-making going on? Of course, but he’s always made decisions based on his own likes and dislikes regardless of what his competitors were doing.” The brand’s founding story, outlined in detail on its website, is as important as any marketing campaign it could run. Beveridge, who has degrees in geology and geophysics, worked in the oil and gas industry and then got into the mortgage business. In the early 1990s, he began making flavored vodka for friends as Christmas presents before realizing the real opportunity was in pure, smooth vodka. So he studied photos of old moonshiners, built his own still and “kept messing with it until I got to where everybody liked my vodka better than the other stuff,” he writes on the brand’s site. He built a distillery after running up a debt of $88,000 on 19 credit cards. A breakthrough came in 2001, when Ad Age December 4, 2017
Marketers of the Year 2017
Bert ‘Tito’ Beveridge (l.) and Nicole Portwood, VP of brand marketing
Tito’s took double gold at the World Spirits Competition. Tito’s has cultivated a craft identity: Its formal name is Tito’s Handmade Vodka and it’s still promoted as being made in “old-fashioned pot stills.” It’s priced cheaper than premium competitors like Grey Goose and Absolut, and has avoided jumping on the latest hot trend in favor of consistency. For instance, Tito’s stayed away from flavored varieties even as other brands flooded, and later oversaturated, the market with sweet-tasting blends. When all the varieties marketed by its rival spirits are bundled together, Tito’s, which comes in only one variety, is still behind Smirnoff, Jack Daniel’s, Crown Royal and Captain Morgan, but it’s gaining
fast, according to IRI data. Portwood, who worked on Grey Goose at now-defunct media agency KSL before taking the Tito’s job eight years ago, traced the brand’s rise to the consumer mood that took hold in the wake of the 2008-09 recession. It used to be all about “bottle service and bling,” but ”suddenly people started valuing substance over image,” she says. “As people began to look for American-made brands, they wanted to know the stories behind the brands they were aligning with.” Tito’s climb to the top has not gone unchallenged. Tito’s “handmade” and “pot stills” claims have been challenged in court multiple times by plaintiffs alleging false advertising/labeling. “All but one has
been dismissed, so there’s not a lot of validity to those claims,” Portwood says. “When you’re succeeding, people will look for ways to drill holes in your ship.” Earlier this year, Smirnoff took a not-so-veiled shot at Tito’s with a TV ad starring Chrissy Teigen that went after “fake crafty” rivals. If anything, the attention from a big-spending rival showed that Tito’s, which once couldn’t get its calls answered, had truly arrived.
“As people began to look for American-made brands, they wanted to know the stories behind the brands they were aligning with.”
SAMSUNG By Adrianne Pasquarelli
The ad is hard to forget: An ostrich wanted so badly to fly, but weak pectoral muscles and tiny wings kept him earthbound. That is, until he discovered a Samsung Gear VR headset and was able to simulate flight through virtual reality, soaring through the clouds to the strains of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Created by Leo Burnett Chicago, the spot won three gold awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity earlier this year, and is brilliant not only for its humorous splendor, but also because its message of achieving the impossible could be a metaphor for Samsung itself. Just over a year ago, Samsung was plagued with problems. Following numerous reports of phone batteries catching fire, exploding washing machines and a bribery scandal implicating a top executive, Samsung 18
became the poster child for a brand in crisis. Yet after issuing an apology ad, and overhauling its product testing process—the brand enlisted hundreds of researchers and employed a third-party auditor—Samsung has managed to restore its reputation. Its recent new products, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 phones, have been successful, and consumers are eagerly anticipating the next iterations, expected to be released early next year. In October, the South Korean tech company reported record earnings, generating $12.9 billion in operating profit and posting a 30 percent rise in revenue. Samsung has also moved up on Interbrand’s ranking of top global brands, landing at No. 6 earlier this year from No. 7. Ads like the flying ostrich under the “Do What You Can’t” tagline, and a recent colorful promotion of Samsung's QLED television, helped rebuild Samsung into a showcase for innovation. It’s also gained ground with its retail experimentation. Last year, it opened Samsung 837, a
Samsung’s ostrich spot from Leo Burnett Chicago
55,000-square-foot store in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District that sells the brand experience, rather than the merchandise (which can be played with, but purchased elsewhere) as a way to engage with consumers. “To inspire through purpose is bigger than a bottom line,” said Pio
Schunker, senior VP and global head of integrated brand marketing, at the October Association of National Advertisers conference, where he spoke about Samsung’s reinvention. “When you have that, it’ll see you through the good, the bad and the absolutely horrendous times.” Ad Age December 4, 2017
Tito’s photograph courtesy of Tito’s Handmade Vodka; Ostrich photograph courtesy of Samsung via YouTube
Nicole Portwood, Tito’s
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11/28/17 12:30 PM
A MARKETER'S GUIDE TO Only radio is live, local and personal with massive scale.
THE FACTS ABOUT RADIO
Radio is America's #1 reach medium.
93% of Americans
Radio delivers superior ROI.
$10 : $1
that's
271 million people
tune in weekly.
Average across major categories.
Nielsen Audio-State of the Media: Audio Today 2017; June 2017, p6+
Nielsen Studies 2014-2016
Radio listenership is growing.
125.4 124.7
Across every key demographic, year over year.
117.8
$4
Beer
$3
Candy
$3
QSR
$2
Soft Drinks
Radio is #1 in music discovery.
2016
2016
2017
2017
Higher share of total listening than all streaming combined.
2016
2017
Friends/ Relatives
Online Music Services
4.2% AM/FM Radio
49%
P25-54
P18-49
54%
All in-car streaming
Edison Research, Share of Ear Study, 2017, Listening Habits of New Car Buyers (2015-2017 car models), Adults = P18+
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Mass Merchandisers
$14 Telecom $9 Home Improvement $6 Snacks
67.2
People in new cars choose radio over streaming 13:1.
13x
Department Stores
$15
AM/FM Radio
P18-34 Nielsen RADAR 128, 132, Mon-Sun Mid-Mid, Weekly Cume Audience.
$17
117.2
67.8 +600k 18-34 +700k 18-49 +600k 25-54
$23 Grocery $21 Auto Aftermarket
Social Media
40%
27%
25 %
Nielsen U.S. Music 360 2017 Report
11/28/17 12:33 PM
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Radio creates overall campaign awareness lift.
12.4%
+261% Mobile Internet
2.4%
Average brand unaided recall vs. non-radio advertisers.
BASE
Radio Drives Search! Study, RAB and Sequent Partners, September 2017
Radio delivers exceptional brand recall.
5x
LIFT in Google searches, across 8 brands & 2157 ads studied.
Radio Advertisers
+100% Newspaper
Non-radio advertisers
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Radio directly impacts purchase decisions.
Outdoor
+81% PC Internet
+78% Direct Mail
Those who hear radio ads are far more likely to act online and offline than those who don’t hear radio ads.
+54% Television
100% more likely to purchase at store
300% more likely to order from store website
+42% Magazine
Nielsen series of studies for 4 advertisers in BtoB, Auto Aftermarket and Motorcycles 2015-2016 Radio (re)Discovered: A Brand Manager's guide to Radio. Nielsen Audio, 2017
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NINTENDO
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By George Slefo
By Jessica Wohl
The protagonist of one of marketing’s biggest comeback stories of 2017 is an Italian plumber with a mustache. Nintendo and its iconic character, Super Mario, leveled up with the release of its $299 Switch, a crossover between home-gaming console and portable gaming device. It was a bold move for Nintendo, which had a flop in 2010 with its last console, the Wii U, which suffered, among other reasons, because its games couldn’t be played on the go. Switch is significantly different from recent offerings from rivals Microsoft and Sony, which are making video-game systems that are more powerful but not portable. Nintendo’s risk was rewarded. For its fiscal second quarter ended Oct. 30, Nintendo reported revenue at $1.9 billion, a massive turnaround from the $57 million loss in profit reported for the first half of the last fiscal year. Overall, Nintendo told analysts it expects to make a cool billion in profit by year’s end. Its estimate was driven by Switch, continuing demand for Pokémon Go and the introduction of SNES Classic, a tiny gaming console that comes preloaded with iconic games more than two decades old. Nintendo fueled demand for Switch with its first Super Bowl spot in February, from Leo Burnett and production company Interrogate, that featured its “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” game with a soundtrack of Imagine Dragons’ “Believer.” At the time, Nintendo said it had hoped to sell 2 million units on the March 3 launch date, but the company now estimates it will sell 14 million units by year’s end. Finding a Switch when it was released proved difficult, driving hopefuls to camp outside retail stores. And it’s still in demand: Switch was among the top five bestselling products every day from Nov. 22 through Cyber Monday, according to recently released data from Adobe. The Switch—which a Quartz reviewer wrote was “one of the best, and most addictive, new pieces of technology I’ve used in a long time”—isn’t alone in contributing to Nintendo’s very good year. SNES Classic also flew off store shelves and prompted shortages. The SNES Classic, which retails for about $80, is currently selling for double that on eBay as Nintendo and Super Mario continue their odyssey.
Panera Bread’s annual marketing budget hovers around $100 million, yet the brand outshines the giants with a simple proposition: When you eat at Panera, you know exactly what you’re getting. The company’s “clean” food crusade to remove artificial flavors and preservatives, along with its move to post calories and added sugar information directly on cups, has resonated with consumers. Privately held Panera says it notched same-store sales gains of more than 6 percent year-over-year during the first nine months of 2017, a coup during a time when many competitors are struggling. Panera’s approach of serving reasonably priced food in what some company executives call the “craveable wellness space,” along with its digitally savvy ordering technology and increasing use of delivery, also attracted a suitor in JAB Holding Company, which acquired Panera in July for $7.2 billion. “Transparency and clean foods is a message that consumers are looking for,” says Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy, noting that Panera is a leader in such messaging. Panera’s “100% of our food is 100% clean” push began in January, appearing in a TV spot, on billboards, on staff T-shirts and in social posts. “Now we’re actually marketing to effect change versus marketing for marketing’s sake,” says Chris Hollander, senior VP of marketing at Panera, which works with Anomaly on its advertising. “That’s when it gets exciting.” Along with its push to tell people just how much added sugar is found in fountain drinks, Panera used the opportunity to suggest patrons try some of its new, lower-sugar beverages. (The sugar-in-drinks effort is even more interesting when one recalls Hollander spent more than a decade in marketing roles at Pepsi before joining Panera in 2010.) Some efforts didn’t hit. A video plea from soon-to-step-down CEO Ron Shaich, asking the top three burger chains’ CEOs to serve better kids’ meals, didn’t spark as much conversation as Hollander hoped. Even so, Panera wants to move from more traditional creative executions to being more nimble, reactive and opportunistic, all while keeping costs in check. Next up, it’s putting more empha-
Important to Important People
Nintendo, with the help of Super Mario, bet big on a portable video game console.
Finding a Switch when it was released proved difficult, causing hopefuls to camp outside retail stores.
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Nintendo photographs: Michael Loccisano, Chesnot/Getty Images
Marketers of the Year 2017
Marketers of the Year 2017
HULU By Jeanine Poggi
Elisabeth Moss in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
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Hulu emerged from the shadow of Netflix and Amazon this year thanks to the dystopian drama “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name is the first Hulu original series to garner critical acclaim and become part of the cultural zeitgeist—with the help of some smart marketing and good timing. With its first-ever Super Bowl ad, a creepy IRL stunt and bold print campaign, Hulu went all-in promoting the series set in a future universe where women have been enslaved and forced to become handmaids to help stem a population crisis. It didn’t hurt that the theme of women’s oppression, which underlies the series, has become a real-life bogeyman given the post-election threat of women’s rights being curtailed. Hulu capitalized on that fact, embedding actresses dressed as handmaids on high-traffic city streets and at festivals like South by Southwest. Clad in red robes and white bonnets, the handmaids silently walked through crowds, turning heads and sparking social media conversations. The unsettling stunt was mimicked by other women, who dressed like handmaids at protests across the country and carried signs like “Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again,” playing off President Trump’s slogan. Hulu’s print and outdoor campaigns gave off a similarly creepy vibe.
The company released nine character posters the day after “Handmaid’s Tale” premiered in April with messages like “The future is a f---ing nightmare,” “This is not ordinary” and “Your body is no longer your own.” Hulu aptly ingrained itself and "The Handmaid’s Tale” into the women’s movement. It partnered with The Wing, a New York social club for women; created a capsule collection inspired by the series with fashion design collective Vaquera; and curated an art installation on the High Line in New York where hundreds of books containing messages of hope and resistance lined the nearly one-and-ahalf-mile stretch. And in a true sign of resonance, “Handmaid’s Tale” was spoofed by “Saturday Night Live” and quoted in a speech given by Hillary Clinton. It all culminated in September, with Hulu taking home eight Emmy Awards for the series, including the top prize for best drama—the first streaming service to win the honor. Hulu’s success this year extends beyond “Handmaid’s Tale.” In the last six months, it has also launched a live TV service, created a $5 streaming bundle for students in conjunction with Spotify, and added thousands of new episodes of content from the likes of Fox and NBC Universal. All told, the company will spend $2.5 billion on content in 2017. While Hulu doesn’t release ratings, the company says average daily signups nearly doubled during the first few months after “The Handmaid’s Tale" debuted.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
“Handmaid’s Tale” image courtesy of Hulu via YouTube
sis on delivery and forging deeper connections with millions of diners through personalized offers that include marketing salads or sandwiches, not both, depending on what one typically orders, or enticing a patron who only buys coffee to pair it with a new breakfast sandwich. There’s also plenty of restaurant remodeling to do as Panera tries to maintain and grow its relevancy in the crowded fast-casual dining market it helped create. And it’s still too early to say how Panera will approach marketing at Au Bon Pain, which it’s in the process of acquiring. “I’ll be shocked if Panera in two years looks like Panera today,” says Hollander.
THE NEW YORK TIMES By Megan Graham
“We recognize that people can disagree on how best to tell a disagreeable story.” That’s The New York Times National Editor Marc Lacey responding to social media blowback claiming that a Times story last month normalized a Nazi sympathizer. But public reaction to the profile, negative as it was, did prove one thing: People care about The New York Times and what it has to say. That includes President Trump. One of his favorite insults of 2017 has been to lash out at the “failing New York Times,” which might be the best marketing the company could ever ask for. Times CEO Mark Thompson famously called Trump “rocket fuel” for the paper, which hit an all-time record in the first quarter of this year for digital subscriptions. Today, the Times has nearly 2.5 million digital subscribers and another million print subscribers. The paper also saw yearover-year growth of 59 percent in digital subscriptions for the third quarter of 2017. “We’ve had some monumental growth over the last few quarters,” says Clay Fisher, the publication’s senior VP of consumer revenue. In its visible battle against “fake news” and through blockbuster investigative reporting on subjects including Harvey Weinstein and the New York subway system, the outlet has converted its readership into an ardent support system who routinely take to Twitter to encourage their followers to subscribe. “The fundamental journey we’re on is we’re trying to get people to pay for
the news,” says David Rubin, head of audience and brand. “We need to not only tell people what we’re offering is really great, but that it’s better than something they can get for free.” The paper supplements the digital and print products with virtual reality offerings, newsletters and a free Daily podcast that gives listeners a 20-minute look into the day’s biggest stories. The podcast averages 750,000 listens a day and serves ads both for the Times and other brands. The New York Times also launched its first major brand campaign in over a decade with “The Truth Is Hard.” The campaign, by Droga5 New York, kicked off in February with a simple, powerful video that displayed a barrage of conflicting statements, completing with the message: "The truth is hard/the truth is hard to know/the truth is more important than ever." The campaign included digital, social, print and outof-home ads with similar messaging. “In the moment, the response was really unbelievable,” Rubin says. “We had over 25 million [video] views, the lion’s share of which were organic,” in its first 10 days. The campaign continued with a series of videos directed by Darren Aronofsky on stories by Times journalists on topics including war, terrorism and economic hardship. The campaign launched on a Thursday. On Friday, journalists from the Times and other outlets were barred by then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer from attending a press briefing. On Sunday morning, demonstrators were outside the New York Times building. “We woke up to a demonstration in front of our building, with a bunch of supporters protesting for the right to free speech,” Rubin says. Many were holding the campaign’s print ad.
The New York Times’ first major brand campaign in over a decade centered around one simple line: ‘The Truth Is Hard.’
“Handmaid’s Tale” image courtesy of Hulu via YouTube
“We need to not only tell people that what we’re offering is really great, but that it’s better than something they can get for free.” David Rubin, The New York Times
Important to Important People
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Marketers of the Year 2017
‘IT’ By Megan Graham
In Amazon’s holiday ad this year, hundreds of brown boxes—to the tune of Supertramp’s “Give a Little Bit”— sing their way to gifting destinations, braving conveyor belts, mopeds and freight jets to deliver joy to consumers. The campaign, says Amazon, which was created with London-based Lucky Generals, was prompted by customers themselves. “A big focus of our marketing effort is to look for insights that help shape that customer experience,” says Neil Lindsay, VP of worldwide marketing at Amazon and a self-described Supertramp fan. “When people receive an Amazon box, it prompts a smile—that’s true for me and we hear it all the time.” Amazon has reason to smile. The 23-year-old brand just reported a 34 percent revenue increase to $43.7 billion in its third quarter over last year. In 2016, unstoppable Amazon generated $136 billion in annual revenue, and it’s gaining even more dominance across categories, as evidenced by its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods. While Lindsay says the brand is “proudly lean” when it comes to its marketing budget, the company is ramping up its spending as it continues its expansion into video, music, food and devices. Last year, Amazon spent $2.6 billion, a 30 percent spike over 2015, on advertising, and is the 26
Marketing “is not just shouting about what we want to say about the brand. The challenge is making sure it’s relevant.” Neil Lindsay, Amazon
Ad Age December 4, 2017
Halo Top photograph by Halo Top
By Adrianne Pasquarelli
largest retail spender in the U.S., according to Ad Age’s Datacenter. Yet internal teams are small enough that they can be fed with just two pizzas at gatherings, Lindsay says. “It’s important to stay small even while big is an important theme in our company,” he notes. The brand works with a host of agencies for various platforms, including Above ¶ Beyond, which created a campaign for its Music Unlimited offering, and Crispin Porter & Bogusky Los Angeles, which worked on its NFL streaming service. Lindsay uses his own experiences to help inform the Seattle-based brand’s strategy as well. Every evening he asks Alexa to call his father in his native Australia. Such stories helped create Amazon’s “Alexa Moments” campaign for the Echo late last year. Most campaigns, like “Alexa Moments” and the singing boxes, are well-received by the public, but Amazon did suffer a brand blemish earlier this year when allegations surfaced accusing Amazon Studios head Roy Price of sexual harassment. Price, lauded for award winners like “Transparent,” resigned shortly thereafter. Lindsay says Amazon’s marketing will always tie back to effectiveness. “Marketing only matters to customers to the extent it helps them find that next product or service,” says Lindsay. “It’s not just shouting about what we want to say about the brand. The challenge is making sure it’s relevant.”
Amazon via YouTube
AMAZON
Missing children posters and red balloons tied to sewer grates were just the beginning of the massive marketing effort behind “It,” the movie released in September based on Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel. The film has so far earned $692 million in global ticket sales, which reportedly makes it the highest-grossing horror film of all time. Variety reported that it set the record for the most-watched trailer in a single day, generating 197 million views globally within 24 hours of its release. “It’s fair to say we broke the internet, and then we had to keep trying to break it,” says Blair Rich, president of worldwide marketing for Warner Bros. Pictures. The film “wasn’t really about the murderous clown, it’s really about the universal fear of the loss of innocence,” says Rich, which allowed Warner to “break free of the tropes of horror movies.” Experiential was a large part of the campaign. The company had a school bus drive around the country, for example, with a VR experience that took fans to the Derry, New Hampshire, sewers where they came face-to-face with Pennywise the clown. At Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles, the studio built a replica of the eerie Neibolt house from the film for fans to tour. More than 35,000 visitors went through, waiting on average five hours on weekends, Rich says. Fan interactivity also included “It”-inspired art that the studio displayed in pop-up and museum exhibits. “We really used the fans as effectively as a megaphone,” Rich says. “When you allow fans to be the most passionate and have the most ownership, it really pays off. That kind of big voice starts to multiply and it became very contagious.”
SPOTIFY By Megan Graham
HALO TOP
Halo Top photograph by Halo Top
Amazon via YouTube
By Jessica Wohl
Let’s get one thing out of the way: It doesn’t taste like Ben & Jerry’s, Häagen-Dazs or many other premium ice creams. But Halo Top, powered by consistent social media outreach, word-of-mouth and giveaways, has had a stellar year, and even became the bestselling ice cream brand in the U.S. for the four weeks ended Sept. 10. High-protein Halo Top carries a fraction of leading brands’ calories and fat, and has established itself as a relaImportant to Important People
There was a time when an endorsement from the president of the United States came with some gravitas. So, this past January, when former president Barack Obama—who famously organized Spotify playlists on themes like summer and workouts—quipped that he was still waiting for his job at the music streaming service, the company kept the bit going. Spotify posted a job listing for the title of “President of Playlists,” requiring a candidate with a Nobel Peace Prize and “experience in programming playlists at a federal level.” “We were able to capture this kind of cultural moment, where people were both celebrating and mourning the change that was about to happen to this country,” says Spotify CMO Seth Farbman, referring to the election of Donald Trump. “We started off the year by both reflecting on where we’d been and also kind of setting the stage for where we might go as a culture, as a country in particular.”
It’s that data-fueled pop wizardry that has helped Spotify, the Stockholm-headquartered company that landed in the U.S. in 2011, climb to 60 million paid subscribers and 140 million active users this summer. (Privately held Spotify typically only reports subscriber numbers in 10 million increments, so July is its most recent public subscriber tally.) The service lets listeners play more than 30 million songs for $9.99 a month (ad-free) or for free with commercials. Apple Music, which launched in 2015, had around 27 million paid subscribers in June of this year. Jay-Z rival Tidal was believed to have about a million paid subscribers last year. The appeal isn’t hard to understand. Name a mood, and Spotify has a playlist for it. One out-of-home campaign in February poked fun at the utter randomness of users’ playlist titles, whether they’re “root canal songs” or “sorry I lost your cat.” The campaign by Wieden & Kennedy
New York was just one of many ways Spotify uses a massive wealth of user data as fodder for its ad campaigns. Another campaign late last year crunched listener data for out-ofhome displays with messages like “Dear 3,749 people who streamed 'It's the End of the World as We Know It' the day of the Brexit vote, hang in there." “The brand has a lot of permission to sort of comment on culture and what’s going on,” Farbman says. “There was a role for the brand to create levity during otherwise concerning times. It’s soothing to know you’re part of something and that others have the same kind of attitudes and feelings as you. But it’s lighthearted, too. Certainly this past year the world has needed a little levity to go along with all the seriousness.”
tively guilt-free indulgence for those willing to shell out a little more than they would for Ben & Jerry’s, as it sells at an average premium price of just under $5 per pint. Time named Halo Top one of the 25 best inventions of the year (we’ll overlook that it was actually invented in 2012). While it’s still the nation’s top-selling pint, Halo Top recently slipped to fifth place overall. Its runaway success prompted the deeper-pocketed ice cream giants like Breyers and grocer Kroger to bring out their own high-protein brands. But Halo Top, which made a
name for itself initially with wordof-mouth, is gearing up for a fight by introducing more paid advertising. That effort began with buzzy video ads with an angel-versus-devil theme on YouTube and elsewhere. Then came a longer-form spot—seemingly straight out of a Stanley Kubrick film—in which a woman was force-fed ice cream by a robot. Halo Top Founder and CEO Justin Woolverton said his brand had “never done anything this off-the-wall before.” Additional proof that the concept was a bit out there included a smaller competitor, Enlightened, responding with a spoof. Halo Top recently introduced new
flavors and dairy-free varieties. Now, it’s looking into more mainstream approaches to attract new buyers. The company, for instance, opened its first scoop shop at California’s Westfield Topanga mall. In grocery stores, Halo Top’s exponential growth rate has slowed, but the numbers remain staggering. Sales soared about 2,500 percent in 2016 and increased 1,656 percent in the 52 weeks ended Nov. 5, to nearly $298.6 million, according to IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm. Meanwhile, the overall industry grew at a 3.2 percent clip and six of the other top 10 brands posted declines. 27
Magazines of the Year Battle-hardened during the rise of digital media, our latest crop of magazine honorees are showing the way forward—and not just for “old” media By Simon Dumenco and the Ad Age Editorial Staff
When we started working on the annual Ad Age Magazines of the Year package in the fall, there were six large magazine publishers: American Media Inc., Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, Rodale and Time Inc. Soon—once Hearst finalizes its acquisition of Rodale, and Meredith swallows Time Inc.—there will be four. You’ve probably heard publishing types say something like, “It’s been a challenging year.” That’s for public consumption. Private translation: “It’s been absolutely brutal.” Beyond the headline-making consolidation, the biggest players have all cut (sometimes slashed) budgets, and various independents—e.g., Wenner Media, which offloaded Us Weekly and Men’s Journal to AMI and, as of this writing, is still looking for a buyer for Rolling Stone—began a slow fade to black. But what made 2017 particularly transformative is that more than traditional publishers were under siege. Digital natives also faced stiff headwinds. BuzzFeed, after missing revenue projections, announced it was cutting 100 staffers; Mashable sold for 28
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a fraction of its previous presumed value; and Verizon laid off more than 500 employees of Yahoo and AOL. And so a curious reversal is happening: The once seemingly invincible digital darlings are scrambling to rethink their businesses and diversify their revenue (native-advertising champion BuzzFeed, the sworn enemy of display advertising, quietly decided over the summer to start taking money for, yes, banner ads). Sound familiar? Traditional publishers have been rethinking/reinventing/diversifying for years now. And get this: Every honoree on our Magazines of the Year list still produces print editions that make money—in many cases a lot of money—while they’ve been building out their increasingly impressive digital businesses. Honestly, good old-fashioned “reader revenue”—money from subscriptions and newsstand sales— has a refreshing ring to it circa 2017. (Eat your hearts out, digital natives.) Starting with New York magazine, the Magazine of the Year (see page 34), followed by the diverse range
of titles (in alphabetical order) that round out our honorees, we present to you modern media brands that are cross-platform, experimental, nimble and, perhaps most notably, disciplined. Memo to digital natives: Maybe take some notes. Bon Appétit Condé Nast’s Bon Appétit held print advertising steady this year while expanding digital operations under Editor-in-Chief Adam Rapoport, also the editorial director of pioneering foodie site Epicurious.com, now in its 22nd year. Bonappetit.com debuted a clean, mobile-friendly redesign in October, and under Craig Kostelic, chief business officer of Condé’s Lifestyle Collection, Bon App’s millennial audience is up 13 percent year-over-year, with big boosts from new sub-brands Basically (“25 Kitchen Upgrades for Under $25”) and Healthyish (“11 Healthy Recipes That Are Perfect for Cooking in College Dorms”). In 2017, the Food Innovation Group, which includes Bon App, Epicurious and their online siblings, surged past the 50
percent mark in terms of the revenue generated by digital—but perhaps just as remarkably, Bon Appétit won major print ad business from digital marketers including Google (a special issue called Food Without Borders was backed by an ad takeover for Google’s Pixel 2 smartphone launch) and Apple (a big backer of the magazine’s annual travel issue). Country Living Print ad pages are up (8 percent yearover-year) at Hearst’s Country Living, which under Editor-in-Chief Rachel Hardage Barrett excels at practical service packages, e.g., “The No-Regrets Guide to Decorating.” But the monthly has also found a way to work its folksy, no-nonsense appeal online, positioning itself under Associate Publisher Michelle Balaz as “a scenic route off the information highway” with an aggressive video strategy including the August introduction of a hit Facebook Watch show, “Life With Pets.” This year, more than 100,000 attendees came to Country Living Fair events in cities from Nashville to CoAd Age December 4, 2017
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From #ImSoMartha to The New Yorker Poetry Bot, these brands shine on social platforms. But their execution and resolve go beyond gimmicks.
lumbus, Ohio. And the annual “Country From Coast to Coast” reader issue (“50 States, One State of Mind”) came to life in March with a new Country Living-branded spring cruise on Holland America, which set sail for the Caribbean from Fort Lauderdale. The magazine’s editors and special guests, including country music star Holly Williams and flea-market experts Amie and Jolie Sikes (aka the Junk Gypsies), served up a week’s worth of countryfied cuisine, crafting sessions and entertainment for Country Living obsessives in one of the most ambitious and unexpected magazine brand extensions we saw all year. Food Network Magazine In its ninth year, Food Network Magazine feels like much more than just a fanzine for the beloved cable channel (the magazine is a co-venture between Hearst and HGTV owner Scripps Networks Interactive). Under Editor-in-Chief Maile Carpenter, the monthly focuses on entirely accessible, if gorgeously photographed, meals and treats (hello, peaches-and-cream Important to Important People
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cupcakes) that are designed to connect with readers who may or may not be regular viewers of FN shows. Ad pages under VP, Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Vicki Wellington have held steady, with a big assist from the magazine’s in-house creative team, which produced more than 100 custom-content and other bespoke executions this year for advertisers from endemic food-mag categories, including Land O’Lakes and KitchenAid, as well as broader brands such as Kohl’s and Sherwin-Williams. And FNM continues to have a great newsstand business— single-copy sales averaged more than a quarter million in the second half of 2017—helping it to over-deliver on its 1.7 million rate base. GQ Fashion magazines had a rough 2017, with print ad revenue down pretty much across the board—and Condé Nast’s GQ was no exception. But we’re honoring the iconic glossy, in its 14th year under Editor-in-Chief Jim Nelson, for not only revving up its digital business (e.g., GQ.com now averages
nearly 10 million monthly unique visitors, up 40 percent year-over-year) in partnership with Chief Business Officer Kim Kelleher and VP of Revenue David Stuckey, but for taking some really interesting editorial risks. Cases in point: The full-throated political stance of the Colin Kaepernick “Citizen of the Year” cover. The commentary of Keith Olbermann, whose GQ web series “The Resistance” offers some of the most furious—yet clear-eyed—deconstructions of the Trump era. (The show is so intense it may well have worn him out; Olbermann now says he’s “retiring” from political commentary.) And the hiring of Ben Schreckinger from Politico to be GQ’s D.C. correspondent, where he’s developing a video series with an emphasis on breaking news and investigative journalism. Meanwhile, the brand has continued to show off its enduring pop-cultural power by enlisting the likes of Harrison Ford and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to star in original digital shorts, helping drive video views to a record 65 million in October.
HGTV Magazine HGTV Magazine, Hearst’s other major co-venture with Scripps Networks Interactive (alongside Food Network Magazine), ticked up 1 percent in ad pages this year under the leadership of VP, Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Dan Fuchs, in the midst of a down year for the shelter-book category. Though the magazine regularly features stars of the cable network HGTV, who are known for big-budget renovations—“Property Brothers” Drew and Jonathan Scott, for instance—Editor-in-Chief Sara Peterson has positioned the print product to focus on home makeovers and quick design fixes with price points more likely to be in the hundreds or tens of dollars (e.g., “Dream House on a Tight Budget,” “More Style for Less! 125 Totally Doable Ideas”). That said, loyal readers are willing to pay a premium for HGTV mag—the average sub price for 10 issues a year rose to $21.50 in 2017—and it’s one of the top 10 monthlies at the newsstand.
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Magazines of the Year
Launch of the Year: The Pioneer Woman Magazine
The Magnolia Journal The Magnolia Journal, Meredith’s new quarterly magazine led by Editor-in-Chief Joanna Gaines—one half of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” team (her husband Chip, we probably don’t need to tell you, is the other half)—started with a fall 2016 test issue that sold out 400,000 issues at the newsstand. Subscriptions became available with the second issue, which served a rate base of 800,000. And the spring 2018 issue will lift the rate base to 1.2 million. For fans of “Fixer Upper”—which is winding down in its current form on HGTV, but is set for at least one planned spin-off—this elegant quarterly is the perfect print expression of the show’s home renovation/decor aesthetic, as well as a collectible entry point into the Gaineses’ burgeoning Magnolia lifestyle brand. Under VP and Publisher Mark Josephson, The Magnolia Journal has an unusually disciplined revenue strategy: Its model limits ads to 25 pages per issue, so ad revenue gains have come from a rising ad insertion cost as the rate base has increased. And subscription pricing is $20 for four issues or $30 for eight issues. It’s never discounted, giving The Magnolia Journal one of the most enviable consumer revenue streams in publishing. Martha Stewart Living Meredith may have the next Martha Stewart in the form of Joanna 30
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Gaines, but it also has the Martha Stewart. The doyen of domesticity’s namesake glossy gave up its indie status in 2015 (Meredith assumed operational and editorial control in December of that year), and now, after nearly two years under new management, print ad pages are bouncing back (up 4 percent through November versus the same period in 2016) and digital and video revenue is up, too. Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Graves and Design Director Jaspal Riyait unveiled a major redesign of the print product with the October issue, including custom-created MSL-exclusive typefaces (as always, no detail is too small for Martha). VP and Publisher Daren Mazzucca has been diversifying the marketer mix, with print ad growth particularly in the toiletries-and-cosmetics category (thanks in part to L’Oréal and P&G) as well as the home category (KitchenAid, Rowenta and Serta came on board). And in its 27th year, the magazine just feels more fun, particularly in its social media; witness its wry tone vis-à-vis Martha herself, starting with the #ImSoMartha hashtag on Instagram. Men’s Health and Women’s Health Men’s Health and Women’s Health are, quite simply, why Hearst decided to acquire Rodale this fall. Family-owned Rodale, once known more for rather earnest titles including
Prevention and the late Organic Gardening (which lives on as the Rodale Organic Life website), somehow turned what could have been prosaic wellness/fitness titles into expertly executed, pop-culturally savvy global publishing powerhouses. Men’s Health, now in its 30th year, has 35 international editions; Women’s Health, which began in 2005, has 13. Both titles remain formidable lifestyle books—and, notably, Men’s Health essentially vanquished its longtime (wannabe) direct competition when AMI announced earlier this year that it was axing the Men’s Fitness print edition. Under newish Editor-in-Chief Matt Bean—2017 will be his first full year—Men’s Health debuted a thoughtful redesign/rethink in print while rapidly building out its digital platforms, particularly video. (Video views grew 74 percent to 8.3 million, and MH Films, devoted to episodic longform content, launched in April.) At Women’s Health, Editor-in-Chief Amy Keller Laird has been putting an increased emphasis on mental health (e.g., Women’s Health’s May story on “smiling depression,” wherein women put on false fronts to hide symptoms, complete with a participatory #HowIReallyFelt element on social media). The magazine also pulled off a Global Naked Issue (about body acceptance) with Sofia Vergara as its cover star across its various multi-
Hearst proceeded cautiously with summer’s pilot of The Pioneer Woman Magazine, printing just 150,000 copies, sold primarily at Walmart. The fall issue expanded to 20 retailers; next year the magazine officially goes quarterly, with a 400,000 rate base. Subscriptions are now available, but TPWM is on track to rank in the top 10 of all magazines on the newsstand in 2018. The appeal here is, of course, Ree Drummond, the lifestyle entrepreneur whose wildly popular Pioneer Woman blog led to a hit cooking show on the Food Network. Oklahoma-based Editorial Director Drummond works with New York-based Editor-in-Chief Maile Carpenter to produce a deeply nostalgic package with stories such as “An Owner’s Guide to Backyard Chickens.” Brands seeking ad adjacencies to its folksy fare range from Tyson to L’Oréal Paris; VP, Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Vicki Wellington has already tripled Hearst’s ad revenue projections. Incidentally, the brand’s secret sauce is Drummond’s decidedly modern social media presence, including 4.5 million Facebook fans. The backyard chickens—and everyone else— seem fine with the irony.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
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Magazines of the Year
lingual editions. Given that Hearst is also expert at launching and supporting international versions of its magazine brands, it’s hard to imagine a better next home for the two magazines than Hearst Tower. The New Yorker In 2017, The New Yorker’s journalism has been stronger and more influential than ever. Think Ryan Lizza’s report on his rather stunning late-night conversation with shortlived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and Ronan Farrow’s relentless Harvey Weinstein coverage, which arguably outdid The New York Times’ Weinstein reporting, even though the Times was first out of the gate. David Remnick is closing in on two decades as editor-in-chief of the venerable Condé Nast weekly (he took the helm in 1998) and along the way he’s proved himself to be a most nimble multimedia mastermind. Time and time again in 2017, stories that broke on newyorker. com drove the national news cycle, and the brand grew its followers across social to more than 17 million (including 1.1 million for @newyo32
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rkercartoons on Instagram alone), up 24 percent year-over-year. At every turn, the signature sensibility shines through (see The New Yorker Poetry Bot on Twitter and Facebook Messenger, now sending you a poem every day). And under Chief Business Officer Chris Mitchell, year-over-year digital revenue has increased 17 percent, video revenue 40 percent, consumer revenue 9 percent—and overall revenue 12 percent. People The once high-flying business of celebrity weeklies has been crashing to earth—witness the spring fire sale of Wenner Media’s Us Weekly to AMI— but People remains a bright spot not only for the category, but for Time Inc. and the entire magazine industry. Of course, the 43-year-old brand is more than a celebrity title—it’s always been just as much a purveyor of newsy human-interest stories—but People’s generally gracious, fact-based coverage of movie, TV and social-media stars under Editorial Director Jess Cagle makes it an ever-more-refreshing read in a celebutainment “news” ecosystem increasingly focused on rumors, fictional pregnancies, fabri-
cated feuds and all-around nastiness. People’s bestselling issues still top half-a-million single-copy sales, and total reader revenue continues to make an outsize contribution to the bottom line on a 3.4 million rate base. Under Group President Karen Kovacs, print revenue has held steady (paging dipped just 2 percent—a huge win for a weekly in 2017) as web monthly uniques grew 5 percent to 36 million. And the brand relaunched the People/ Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN) as PeopleTV, racking up more than 100 million video views 2017 to date. The Week The Week, which was introduced in 2001 by the late Felix Dennis (closely following the template of the original U.K. edition, which started in 1995), is a slim weekly magazine that concisely summarizes and analyzes the news. Its 550,000 rate base is entirely unpadded (no “verified” or other giveaway circ) and it has no newsstand presence (reader revenue comes from paid subs, which average $50 per year). As such, it’s something of a cult favorite among the time-crunched business-minded jet set—although its website has quietly gained impressive
reach, drawing an average of 6.2 million unique monthly visitors in 2017, up 11 percent from 2016. Pulitzer Prize–winning newspaper veteran William Falk has been editor-in-chief of the print edition since launch, consistently assembling a smartly balanced, fair-minded take on U.S. and international news. Ben Frumin has been editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com since 2012, somehow offering big-picture clarity on the otherwise insufferable, bewildering news cycle. And the return of John Guehl (who started at The Week in 2007, decamped to Condé Nast for three years, returned in 2013 and has been VP and publisher since 2015) has supercharged the bottom line. Print ad pages are up 17 percent this year to date— both Morgan Stanley and Emirates did sole-advertiser issue takeovers this year—and digital revenue is up 7 percent.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
12/1/17 3:23 PM
YOU INSPIRE MILLIONS TO
ACHIEVE DAILY & DREAM BIG
Congratulations to Martha Stewart Living and The Magnolia Journal on being named to Ad Age’s 2017 Magazines of the Year.
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Magazines of the Year
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Publisher Avi Zimak, digital ad revenue is on track to rise double digits by year end. The flagship NYMag. com website, and its sub-brands including Grub Street and Vulture, draw a monthly audience of unique visitors that has grown to 20.6 million—up nearly 25 percent year-over-year. E-commerce revenue is on track for double-digit growth too. The Vulture Festival, born in New York four years ago, expanded to Los Angeles in November and drew A-list participants including Kerry Washington, Issa Rae and James Franco. And New York Media continues to form adventurous content alliances with brands such as Louis Vuitton, which backed Vulture’s “How to Navigate an Art Fair With Jerry Saltz,” and FreshDirect, sponsor of “Bittman’s Kitchen,” starring food writer and cookbook author Mark Bittman, who joined Grub Street as a columnist in June. Bittman’s addition to the team—along with this year’s oth-
er high-profile hires, including Olivia Nuzzi as Washington correspondent and Fritzie Andrade as director of video—underscores the extent to which New York Magazine is a white-hot media shop. Of course, the magazine, founded in 1968 by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker, has historically been home to a dazzling array of reporters and writers, including Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and Nora Ephron. But such is Moss’ personal stature that the chance to work in his orbit is its own talent magnet. We’ll note here that Brooklyn-born, 60-yearold Moss, who also had celebrated stints at other publications including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire and a short-lived but influential start-up in the late ’80s called 7 Days, is pretty much the opposite of what you might expect of a media-world legend. He’s gracious, unassuming and quick to laugh. You can experience his lack of traditional media-grandee bluster via the latest edition of Ad Lib, the weekly podcast hosted by Ad Age Editor Brian Braiker. Here, a small sampling of their conversation:
Let’s talk about how your job has transformed in the time that you’ve been at the magazine. How much editing do you actually do? Oh my God. [laughter] Uh, well, what constitutes editing is now completely different than it used to be. It used to be you actually worked hard on a given story. I seldom have time to do that anymore. A lot of it is sort of managing the whole shebang and ... having hugely talented, capable people do most of the actual editing. If you were to start a magazine from scratch today, (a) Would you? and (b) What would it be? Oh man, I don’t know. Uh, you know, I’m in a privileged position where I can basically play out my idiotic ideas on the magazine that I do edit. ... The internet has exploded the potential audience for your material. So it still feels like an alive and powerful medium, and the medium itself is morphing, so it’s creatively challenging and interesting. I think this is a great time for magazines. Hear the full podcast interview at adage.com.
Moss: Photograph by Axel Dupeux/Courtesy New York Media
NEW YORK MAGAZINE IS AD AGE’S MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR AND ADAM MOSS IS EDITOR OF THE YEAR
Adam Moss is Ad Age’s Editor of the Year, and the title he’s edited since 2004, New York Magazine, is the Magazine of the Year. Actually, it feels sort of strange to call Moss just an editor. The word seems rather old-fashioned and constraining for someone who presides over a growing content empire that encompasses print, digital, events, e-commerce and other revenue streams. Yes, in 2017, New York, the print product, feels as vital as ever. And the Oct. 16 50th-anniversary issue, along with a just-published retrospective book, “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: 50 Years of New York,” serve as vivid reminders of how essential the glossy has been not only to its hometown, but to American social, cultural, political and media history. But New York Media, as the magazine’s parent company is known, now has a revenue base that is 64 percent digital—and under CEO Pamela Wasserstein and
Ad Age December 4, 2017
12/1/17 3:23 PM
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Opinion TV’S CRY FOR HELP Replacing traditional ratings with bespoke data won’t cut it By Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is CEO of The Palmer Group, a strategic advisory and business development practice 36
Welcome to the TV industry’s latest bit of magic … prestidigitalization. It’s a new twist on the old sleight-of-measurement trick. Here’s how it works. You buy TV the old-fashioned way because, well, that’s how you buy TV. The ratings suck. You want to pay less because you’re getting less. TV says, “You’re not getting less. Look at our newly crafted, data-driven metrics. We’re delivering premium audiences across omni-channel touchpoints and generating better return-on-ad-spends than ever!” If you can brush the buzzwords off your shoulder, you respond, “Yeah, but Nielsen says the ratings are down.” And TV triumphantly concludes, “Nielsen sucks! Here’s how we prestidigitally measure your success.”
thing. Even with its investments in new technology, it has not adequately adapted to behavioral changes in media consumption—at least not in a way that favors TV. According to Nielsen, in 2016 (the last fully reported year) its revenues within the Watch segment (the TV ratings biz) increased 5.7 percent to $2.9 billion. Audience Measurement of Video and Text revenues increased 7.5 percent primarily due to its ongoing investments and continued client adoption of its Total Audience Measurement system. Nielsen has a de facto monopoly on ratings, and business is up, so it is not under any significant evolutionary pressure to do anything more than it is already doing.
Artisanal solutions don’t scale As it turns out, TV is right. They do have newly crafted, data-driven metrics, and they can deliver premium audiences across omni-channel touchpoints, and Nielsen does suck. (Sorry Nielsen, I love you guys, I really do. I’ll defend you in a moment.) At an unusual cross-industry meeting last week to discuss TV’s problems and ostensibly start fixing them, NBC Universal sales chief Linda Yaccarino said the company will try to wean itself off a single currency. That means Nielsen. The problem is that every TV sales group has devised hand-crafted, unscalable, data-driven metrics to justify your ad dollars. In some cases, metrics can even vary between different divisions of the same network. There is no common currency that encompasses industry-accepted messaging units and the delivery of quality audiences. Even if such a currency could be agreed upon, it would be obviously biased toward a desired outcome. It would not have practical value. Look over there … let’s blame Nielsen!
The prestidigital smoke screen But Nielsen is making TV look bad compared to its data-rich rivals. “If only we were measured right,” laments the TV business, “you’d see. TV is awesome.” Put another way, if we could manipulate a new metric the way we manipulate Nielsen, we could continue to charge you ungodly sums without having to deliver attributable business outcomes. Of course, the pressure on TV ad sales is not Nielsen’s fault (although every crisis needs a villain). The blame can be placed squarely on changes in consumer behavior. While this has been prophesized for years, and everyone has agreed in theory that television viewers were evolving their behaviors, no one could agree on the timing. This is not a linear exercise; the pace of technological change is exponential and the industry is now getting an up-close-and-personal view of what an empowered consumer is (and is not) willing to put up with.
Nielsen for better or for worse It’s easy to blame Nielsen for every-
A new currency won’t solve the problem Mass marketing and its component parts are facing an existential crisis. With enough data, machine learning tools can (and will) optimize for mar-
keting outcomes in ways that will soon render Nielsen and other “research” companies (and departments) obsolete. If a message finds its target, and phones home about it, and an outcome is determined, there’s nothing else to know. Marketers have never wanted to buy a GRP or a CPM. They want to drive velocity or brand awareness or create purchase intent or some other metric of their own choosing. They’re not governed by how well they buy ads. They’re governed by revenue, and everyone is under extreme pressure to perform. Not to put too fine a point on it—in case you were not paying attention—today, every company is a tech company. Try to get through a meeting without using the word “data.” It is almost impossible. The art form versus the platform TV, the art form, is in its platinum age. But the future present of video packaging and distribution is on-demand and digital. TV the platform simply cannot survive under its current business model. It must evolve. Last week, Amazon introduced an array of broadcast-quality media services that enable anyone with an Amazon Web Services account to process, store and make money from video. You want to see real magic? “Abracadabra! You’re a broadcast-quality, omni-channel television network!” This is a level of competition the traditional TV business has not anticipated. Disney blew a zillion dollars acquiring the part of BAMTech it did not already own—just to get into the streaming business with an established technology and workflow. Give me 10 engineers and 10 weeks, and a credit card to open your AWS account, and I’ll build you 100 percent of that capability (and more) for a fraction of what Disney spent. The pace of technological change is exponential. Believe it, own it, leverage it. As for TV? It’s not time for prestidigitalization, it’s time to “presto-change-o.” Ad Age December 4, 2017
CONGRATULATIONS T O
O U R
2 0 1 7
Magazines of the Year
BE THERE when it happens.
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BRAND VOYEURS AND CULTURE VAMPIRES Marginalized people are shaping the stuff we consume, not agencies or Hollywood execs By Alain Sylvain
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PREPARE YOUR AGENCY FOR 2018: PREDICTIONS FOR THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY
What do we mean by “pop culture”? It encompasses the broad range of social phenomena we consider to be cool and unifying. It’s the connective tissue of society; our common language. The stuff that ties us to one another. Pop culture comprises fashion, food, art, language, music and even humor. It’s the stuff that brings us together as a people. But traditionally much of this stuff is the work of a small elite—entertainment executives, brands and their agencies—peddling stuff in the hope of penetrating culture seemingly authentically. In the past they were the ones that greenlit movies like “Justice League” or placed cereal boxes on the set of some CBS primetime comedy. Today, this same elite operates slightly differently: hijacking your Instagram account,
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Alain Sylvain is founder and CEO of innovation and brand design consultancy Sylvain Labs
Paul Ryan: A little dab’ll do ya.
buying fake followers or paying Google to serve you content you never asked for. These people will be the first to tell you that they create culture. They will be the first to tell you that they, and only they, are the ones that know how. But in 2017 pop culture was not the domain of the elite. Just look at the language of the day: “bae,” “basic,” “fuckboy,” “swag,” “ratchet,” “yas queen,” “bye felicia,” “squad,” “turnt up,” “clap back.” Sza, Jordan Peele, Laverne Cox, #BlackTwitter. Want more proof? This year “on fleek” made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, twerking was a featured segment on “Good Morning America” and Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, “dabbed” on stage. This stuff was not created by Hollywood studios or big brands. In 2017, the drivers of culture are often young, marginalized people. They are members of groups that historically have been forced out of the mainstream: people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, people on the fringes, economically, socially or politically. Yet despite this marginalization, these people are driving what is relevant and hip today. And they’re doing it in fascinating ways.
The internet has created the perfect platform for these new makers to disrupt the chain of command. They’re designing, workshopping and distributing culture through the niche corners of the internet. And brands can learn a lot. It’s an organic, leaderless movement that is defining pop culture as we know it. How? First, they create for the in-group. They design stuff for themselves and each other, and don’t particularly care if it doesn’t resonate with the masses. It’s unapologetic, exclusive and private—an inside joke or conversation between friends that plays on the behaviors of the group. For example, GHE20G0TH1K is an art collective, DJ crew and aesthetic movement led by visionaries Shayne Oliver, Venus X and DJ Mike Q. They launched an underground party eight years ago that ushered in a new era of New York cool. Regular attendees included musicians and fashion leaders and queers and hood kids and tastemakers from all corners of the city. Like some nextgen Warhol Factory, the collective birthed trends that reverberated up into broader culture. But if you’re outside the
tribe, by the time you’ve heard of them, the moment has passed. Second, they remix, reimagine and repurpose old pieces of culture for new consumption. That can be anything from taking a pre-existing image and adding text, parodying something in the mainstream for their own benefit, or repurposing an emoji for a new context. Suede the Remix God not only makes clips go viral, he’s even reached the Billboard Hot 100 for a remix of the “Dr. Phil” clip “Cash Me Outside,” which launched the career of 13-year-old Danielle Peskowitz Bregoli. While remaining in the margins, these aesthetic innovators’ point is to assert a perspective on the dominant culture and exercise a sense of self-determination. (See: Vine, which was a tremendous outlet of expression and community for young people of color.) (Also, RIP Vine.) Brands and entertainment executives have been rendered passive by the emergence of these new makers. The irony being that while the entertainment and advertising industries fuss about diversity, the most prolific creators are already everywhere.
Ad Age December 4, 2017
Alain Sylvain; Paul Ryan: CNN
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Classic Ad Review
THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS “There’s a fragrance that’s here today, and they call it—Charlie!” The year was 1973, and this spot—a kinda-wow-kinda-now beacon of hope and rising feminism—stands in stark contrast to this complicated harassment-outing moment in our culture. In the early ’70s, Mary Tyler Moore played unmarried TV producer Mary Richards, famously opening her TV show by throwing her beret in the air. That iconic gesture, now baked into the fabric of America, suggested to fellow single “career” girls in the city that the sky was the limit. Despite all this, Revlon founder Charles Revson was hardly a feminist. But he sensed something revolutionary happening. The company had recently branched into fragrances, and the stars aligned for the release of his namesake scent. And who among the young ’uns wouldn’t dream of being (pre-“Charlie’s Angels”) fashion model Shelley Hack, with her golden ’70s bob, light-up smile, and super-long-legged, jumpsuited bod? Imagine driving your Rolls convertible to the Plaza Hotel in New York City, throwing your cap at the bellman, scrawling your one-name signature, dancing around the bistro to Bobby Short’s live music and then being twirled into a booth by your date. Though this was actually more like a scene from a 1930s crackpot-heiress movie, there was something about the alchemy of the jaunty male brand name and Hack’s forward movement that telegraphed to women a vision of future strides. Charlie became the first “lifestyle” fragrance, an affordable, non-oldlady, daytime scent marketed to the wearer herself, not her man. By 1975 it had racked up $55 million in U.S. sales. Since then, the eau has gone cold. You can now buy Charlie Red or Blue for less than $8 at Target. Certainly, gender roles have grown more fluid. Still, it’s disappointing that 44 years later, the jig is far less joyous. How to contact Ad Age:
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Important to Important People
Charlie images courtesy of Revlon via YouTube
By Barbara Lippert
Images from various ads in Revlon’s Charlie campaign. Contents copyright 2017 by Crain Communications Inc. All rights reserved. Advertising Age (ISSN 0001-8899) Vol 88, No. 23. Published semimonthly in: January, February, March, April, June, July, September, October, November and December; three times per month in: May; and monthly in: August by Crain Communications Inc. at 150 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60601-3806. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Ad Age, Audience Development Department, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48207-2912. $4.99 a copy, $109 a year in the U.S. In Canada: $5.00 a copy, $239 per year, includes GST. Mexico $239, All other countries $429, includes a one-year subscription and expedited air delivery. ‘’Canadian Post International Publications Mail Product (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40012850’’ GST #136760444. Canadian return address: 4960-2 Walker Road, Windsor, ON N9A6J3. Printed in U.S.A. Four weeks’ notice required for change of address. Address all subscription correspondence to Audience Development Department, Advertising Age, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48207-2912 (1-877-320-1721). Microfilm copies are available from ProQuest, 800-521-0600 or www.proquest.com. Ad Age is available for electronic retrieval on the NEXIS® Service (800-227-4908) and Dow Jones & Co. (800-522-3567).
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