Tabla de contenidos para January 29, 2018 en Adweek

KFC has a new celebrity wearing Colonel Sanders’ signature white suit and goatee—Reba McEntire. The country singer stars in a 60-second spot promoting the fried-chicken chain’s new Smoky Mountain BBQ flavor, which will be available on Jan. 29. A 30-second version of the ad from Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore., aired during Sunday’s Grammy Awards on CBS. McEntire said she was “spellbound” when asked to be the first woman and first musician Colonel Sanders and that she enjoyed the way she was able to “portray what I do for a living as the Colonel.”…

The Super Bowl offers tremendous opportunities for brands to connect to consumers in host cities—and the cold of Minneapolis will give fans a little more motivation to head indoors and visit the 10-day Super Bowl Live festival, which is free for all and will be littered with eight to 10 blocks of hometown brands. Minneapolis-based Target is hosting the Bullseye Lounge, which includes a collaboration with local outdoor clothing company Askov Finlayson, as well as national brands including Mountain Dew, Doritos and Skittles. Marriott is hosting Viking House and Endeavor Global Marketing is extending the brand’s “Super Bowl Sleepover” field-side suite fan contest to crowds at Mall of America with a VR experience. “This is clearly a unique opportunity for us to showcase our city, state and our company on…

1 AUTHENTICITY ALWAYS WINS On advertising’s biggest night, messages that are authentic always seem to connect most. Squarespace took that into account with the Malkovich ad. “John had this great, real-life story of struggling to get his domain because someone else already owned it. We took this insight and turned it into a smart and humorous spot,” Lee said. 2 STAY AGILE It’s easy to fall in love with an idea or a strategy for your Super Bowl ad, but for Lee, becoming attached to something is a huge no-no. “That strategy and vision will change as you go through the process of creating something for such a big audience,” he said. “Unexpected issues will arise, and the best thing you can do is be agile.” Things from timing, to…

ENVELOPING THIS MONTH’S DIGITAL Transformation Playbook, which is focused on the burgeoning trend of personalization as an important marketing avenue, is Adweek’s annual Super Bowl issue. It’s an interesting pairing and underscores a shift in the brand-marketing ecosystem—from the power of many, to the power of one. The Super Bowl remains one of a handful of televised media events to still draw a huge audience. Brands this year will spend $5 million per 30 seconds to get their products and messages in front of the 111 million people expected to tune in. The building drama between the reigning champion New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles and their gleeful and full-throated embrace of their underdog status will likely drive that number even higher. But as the content in these pages…

Collect good data Retailers need to collect both user-level data—like site traffic, shopping cart abandonment and basic analytics—as well as customer-specific data, such as shopping history, sizes and preferences. They also need to pay attention to the right product attributes, says Jeriad Zoghby, Accenture Interactive’s global lead for personalization. “Every company has to do a better job of listening,” he says. “They need to stop worrying about which shirts I buy, and start paying attention to the features, the size, the fit, the color.” Be data led, not data driven It’s easy to cherry pick data to justify a brand’s strategy, says Forrester principal analyst Brendan Witcher. Smart organizations look at the data first and then decide what to do. “Any organization can find data to support a strategy they…

CREATIVE APPEAL Adding animals or kids to a spot will improve its ranking on the USA Today Ad Meter. GOOGLE SEARCH Ads with working-class themes and actors resulted in increased Google searches. AD CUT THROUGH A comedic tone and new creative should drive up Nielsen’s TV Brand Effect measurement. CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT Animated characters are a reliable method of growing YouTube views. SOCIAL BUZZ Patriotic ads, or spots promoting a social cause, are more likely to trend on Twitter.…

THE PILE This upper layer is what AstroTurf calls a “high micron monofilament,” which is basically a very durable fiber that looks a lot like natural grass. THE HEIGHT One of the obvious advantages of artificial turf: The grass stays at a perfectly uniform height. For football, that’s between 40 and 60 millimeters. THE FIBER This texturized layer, called the RootZone, features crimped filaments that hold up the main fibers and provide more consistent footing for players. Thanks to those pricey commercial spots, the Super Bowl is nearly as famous for hosting brands as football teams. But there’s one brand that the big game—that professional football, period—has planted so deeply in the national consciousness that millions of Americans know it, even though they don’t own it and it’s not for…

Consumers around the world get frustrated when brands fail to deliver relevant, tailored experiences, something they are increasingly demanding. They’re also concerned about giving companies too much personal information, which paradoxically is what brands need in order to deliver such experiences in the first place. Meanwhile, poor personalization resulting from a lack of trust costs companies trillions of dollars annually, according to new research from Accenture Strategy, which surveyed 24,877 consumers across 33 countries. Robert Wollan, senior managing director and advanced customer strategy global lead at Accenture Strategy, said that as technology like AI, machine learning and digital assistants becomes mainstream and gets more sophisticated, companies are offering new services “that intelligently anticipate and flex to their customers’ precise needs, offering a level of hyper-relevance not experienced before. Those that…

10.2 PERCENT M&M’s growth in 2017, per Nielsen. 75 YEARS In 2016, M&M’s celebrated its 75th anniversary. 1996 M&M’s creative agency BBDO kicked off the “Irresistibility” ad campaign. It’s a late day in November and Danny DeVito is waist deep in a chocolate pool—well, he’s not exactly wading in molten chocolate, but a liquid mixture of sorts. This brown soup is meant to resemble a chocolate pool and it will, after some retouching in postproduction. Mars and BBDO are in the midst of filming a 30-second M&M’s spot for the Super Bowl airing on Feb. 4. During the shoot, 713 gallons of said concoction have been sitting uncovered for 12-plus hours on the New York City lot at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. And yet, DeVito, the consummate professional, plunges…

When Monster Products founder and CEO Noel Lee prepared to shoot his company’s first ad ever two weeks ago, “I thought it was just going to be two guys and a camcorder,” he recalls. Instead, NBCU’s Content Innovation Agency employed a crew of more than 250 for the spot, which shot for four days around New York City. The ad, inspired by Lee’s life, features 11 celebrities and influencers, including recording artist Iggy Azalea and YouTube star RiceGum, who plays a younger version of Lee (who shows up at the end). Azalea’s new song “Savior” appears in the ad, which is “so appropriate,” says Lee. “Here is young Noel Lee, saving the world from bad music.” And while the CEO initially had his doubts about shelling out more than $5…

Daniel Sena’s favorite Super Bowl was XLVIII. In 2014, Sena worked on a whopping four Big Game spots. He was neither at an agency nor a brand. Rather, Sena was at Interscope Records, pairing its artists (Afrojack, Zedd, Skylar Grey and OneRepublic) with Anheuser-Busch brands (Budweiser, Bud Light and Bud Light Platinum) to create memorable Super Bowl spots with killer soundtracks. As head of strategic marketing for Interscope Records, Sena continues to spend his days matching artists with brands. For Super Bowl LII, Sena helped program live performances —with Interscope artists including Imagine Dragons, Machine Gun Kelly and Mura Masa—in Minneapolis ahead of the game. The on-the-ground performances by these Interscope artists will be sponsored by EA Sports and DirecTV, thanks to Sena. “Those partnerships are all shapes and sizes,”…

For the athletes involved, the two major sports events occurring over the next few weeks—Super Bowl LII and the 2018 Winter Olympics—represent the culmination of years of training, laser-focus and pushing oneself to the limit, all in pursuit of breaking records and coming out on top. The same goes for the NBC Sports ad sales team, which is overseeing inventory for both events (as well as Telemundo’s Spanish-language rights to the World Cup in June)—and has spent the past two years changing up its go-to-market approach in the hopes of scoring a record ad revenue windfall next month. And thanks to a combination of new ad innovations, an aggressive strategy and some big swings, they are on track to do just that. NBC expects to collect “close to $500 million”…

As news anchor for NBC Nightly News and Dateline NBC, Lester Holt is a man on the move. Last week, he reported from inside North Korea (later widely criticized for his government orchestrated coverage). The coming weeks will find Holt in New York and then Washington, D.C., for the State of the Union address before traveling to Minneapolis where he’ll be covering Super Bowl LII (his first). Then it’s back to the Korean Peninsula for the XXIII Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea (Holt’s ninth). Holt, who took over the Nightly News’ anchor desk in 2015, says the show, marking its 70th anniversary this year, is as sharp as it’s ever been—this, despite having to deal with, as he puts it: “low blows from high places.” Adweek recently spoke…