When screen-fatigued, sleep-deprived employees shrug off pleas from friends and family to take a step back from work, the next logical step is to employ a theatrical cracker to deliver the message. In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, Canadian charity Nabs and creative agency Cossette did just. In a new spot, an anthropomorphic cracker…Read More
British retailer John Lewis has pulled a controversial ad for its home insurance after a regulator said the content could be misleading. John Lewis debuted its “Let Life Happen” campaign on Oct. 11 to promote its home insurance product. Set to the Stevie Nicks song “Edge of Seventeen,” it featured a boy dressed up in…Read More
Whirlpool opened the “doors” to its new Whirlpool Virtual Showroom on Pinterest. The experience will allow Pinners to tour different laundry spaces with a 360-degree view and dive deeper into the products being featured, exploring from all angles in an immersive fashion as if they were actually in the room in real life. People can…Read More
As Halloween creeps closer, plans for a fun night are well underway for many who want to celebrate outside of their homes. But as partygoers consider how to get back and forth safely, well, as one famous group of cartoon sleuths would say, “it looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands.” Thankfully, Uber…Read More
In early October good old Facebook went down along with all its affiliate apps (Instagram & WhatsApp) for a good 6 hours. The longest outage for over 2 years, but what caused this? A hack? Disgruntled whistle-blowers? Neither according to their Vice president of infrastructure “Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication”. In short a faulty configuration change meant that the entire Facebook network went down. Not only the user facing platforms but internal comms channels, physical access at the data centres and offices and even 3rd party communication apps with “Sign-In With Facebook” features. Meaning even when the issue was discovered it still took them time to resolve the issue due to communications and access being taken down.
How did this affect your brand or business?
Ad revenue makes up the lions share of revenue generated by Facebook and with the platform being doing for close to 6 hours, substantial ad money was lost. But the advertisers also lost out, for many businesses, the platform is crucial to generate interest and conversions. The outage meant some were unable to do business, others migrated to Twitter to capitalise on some moment marketing poking fun at the big blue. If anything the outage brought on a clear sign that advertisers need to look at long term and proactive mitigation plans in the reliance on the channel, it’s not the first time they’ve gone down and it wont be the last.
There aren’t many snacks as polarizing as the raisin. The middle ground that exists between those who find the evolved grapes to be a healthy treat and detractors who consider them a textural nightmare fits very few people, often inspiring impassioned debates and more than a few memes. Spooky Season is the one time when…Read More
Chief executive of WPP Mark Read has highlighted the growth in demand for PR services and spoken confidently about new business prospects as the company recorded like-for-like revenue growth of 15.7% for the third quarter of $3.6 billion (2.6 billion pounds). It also revealed reported revenue growth of 14.7% at $4.5 billion (3.2 billion pounds)….Read More
Like so many other things, the TV industry has been significantly changed by the pandemic. Every major media company has had to adjust to the newly steaming-centric world. From Oct. 12-14, leaders from media companies including CBS/Paramount+, HBO/HBO Max and Disney+ virtually gathered to discuss how they have adapted to this seismic change and what…Read More
There’s a political savvy that helps when talking about the complex world of programmatic advertising, one that vp commercial Kodi Foster has already mastered after one month at The Washington Post. During an Elevate: Publishing session led by Adweek media editor Lucinda Southern, Foster carefully walked a fine rhetorical line familiar to most publishers: a…Read More
The digital-savvy customers of today interact with brands on multiple channels, online and in the real world. All of these different channels and communication methods can be challenging for companies to truly understand their customers’ preferences–not to mention delivering personalized experiences at scale. Leaders from Delta Air Lines, Bain & Company and Warner Music Group…Read More
