Copywriter hires support clown
A former copywriter for FCB New Zealand has made global headlines for bringing a “support clown” to a layoff meeting last week.
According to a report by the New Zealand Herald, Josh Thompson received a notice from his bosses asking for a meeting to discuss his role at the agency. New Zealand law gives employees the option to bring a support person to meetings of this nature.
Rather than family or friends, however, Thompson paid NZ$200 to procure the services of “Joe the Clown.” The clown is said to have sat through the meeting making balloon animals, and when Thompson was told he was losing his job, he responded by mimicking crying. “Professionalism at its finest, really,” Thompson told the BBC.
The good news is that Thompson and his art director partner Jake Blood have been offered a new job. As for Thompson, it seems like his successor is going to have some big shoes to fill.
Tide drops Kenan Thompson battle rap in laundry night feud
Last week, Tide began a new campaign connected to NBC’s Sunday Night Football. NFL great Peyton Manning declared that Tuesdays would officially be laundry night so that Sundays could be 100% NFL: Not for laundry. That was followed by Gwen Stefani defending Tuesdays as a night for her show The Voice, and yet another ad tied to the NBC show Superstore.
On Sunday, Tide released another new element—a two-minute rap video by Kenan Thompson of Saturday Night Live (another NBC show), in which he sets the record straight about Sunday being laundry night. See his video here, with the earlier ads below.
More than half of marketing leadership hires in the first half of 2019 were women
Female marketing leadership appointments are at an “all-time high,” according to U.S. management consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates, with women accounting for 48% of all CMO appointments in the first half of the year.
Russell Reynolds found there were 214 appointments in the first half of the year, exceeding the previous six-month high of 45% set in the second half of 2017.
Companies in the financial services and industrial and natural resources sectors showed a greater propensity for hiring women to the CMO role, accounting for 56% and 55% respectively of the industry’s respective totals.
The study also revealed what Russell Reynolds called an “acute CMO succession crisis,” with external hires accounting for more than 80% of publicly reported CMO appointments in the first six months. “Next generation CMOs will likely need to change employers to reach the top marketing position,” the report says.
It attributes it to the fact that many of today’s VP-level marketers are highly specialized in disciplines such as CRM or data and analytics, and lack a deep understanding of the full marketing spectrum required by modern CMOs.
Russell Reynolds found that a marketing leader has just a 20% chance of getting the CMO role at their company and, once appointed as CMO about a 20% change of being internally promoted to a broader role.
YouTube will not count paid ad views in its music charts
YouTube says that paid ad views will no longer count towards the rankings in its Music Charts, a move it says will provide more transparency and align with the policies of official charting companies such as Billboard and Nielsen.
Artists will now be ranked solely on the basis of views from organic sources, including direct links to the video, search results, external sites that embed the video and YouTube features such as the home page, watch next and “trending.”
YouTube said that fans, artists and their teams have touted the number of views a video receives on the platform within 24 hours as the “definitive representation” of its cultural impact.
“Video advertising is an effective way to reach specific audiences with a song debut, but paid advertising views on YouTube will no longer be considered when looking at a 24-hour record debut,” said the video platform in a blog post announcing the change.
Sustainable hangar company Arch & Hook calls out fashion industry
No plastic hangars. That’s the ambition of Amsterdam-based sustainable hangar company Arch & Hook, which worked with Ridley Scott Creative Group (RSCG) to create a new ad called “Fashion’s dirty little secret.”
The 60-second ad, which debuted at London Fashion Week, calls out the industry as one of the worst polluters in the world. This is largely because of its continued use on plastic hangars for the so-called “garment on hangar” stage of fashion retail, when garments are transported from the factory to retailers.
These hangars are immediately disposed of once the garments arrive at the retail locations says Arch & Hook, resulting in an estimated 85 billion plastic hangars ending up in landfill.
The campaign coincides with the launch of Arch & Hook’s new “BLUE” hangars, made from a mixture of plastic and other waster found in oceans and collected in “the world’s most polluted areas.”
