Adweek January 3, 2022

After going virtual last year, the largest technology trade show in North America is making an in-person comeback. The 2022 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show is set to take place in Las Vegas from Jan. 5-8. As the world continues to navigate the ongoing pandemic, the show will also have a new hybrid format. Last year’s virtual-only event attracted more than 100,000 attendees across live and on-demand broadcasts. This year, according to the Consumer Technology Association—the trade organization that produces CES annually—more than 1,900 exhibiting companies have signed up to participate, with attendees coming in from 160 countries. This is also the first year that CES will have a presence in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s West Hall, which makes up an area of 1.4 million square feet. Other CES venues in…

Whether it’s ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or iPhone emojis, stained-glass windows in a medieval cathedral or ads in a glossy magazine, humans have a long history of producing artifacts designed to communicate. As an art history major, school counselor and now marketer at a Fortune 500 company, Ryan Riess’ diverse experiences have taught him that the best approach to getting a point across is often the least complicated one. “A simple message is usually the most powerful message,” said Riess, who ended 2021 with a promotion to vp of brand strategy and creative development after helping develop and lead The Hershey Company’s internal creative agency, C-Sweet Studio, since 2018. Growing up in Florida, Riess dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player. But after breaking his right leg three times in high school during his…

When our editorial team prepared last year’s Outlook issue, we started with a list of questions: What would the future of work look like? Would consumer habits change long-term? Would media spending rebound? Less than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, many of those questions remained unanswerable. This year is different. We’re beginning 2022 with a clearer view of the world that lies before us—a world of convergence. For the first time in our publication’s history, we are declaring a global theme for 2022: Convergent Futures. In the next 12 months, our entire organization will map the fascinating ways once disparate trends and technologies are merging to create a new reality. In biology, convergence happens when cells come together to create a new organism. In marketing, business models are converging to create…

Over the past two years, TikTok has triggered a fundamental reinvention of both creator culture and the way people interact online. Originally a teen haven filled with dance videos and sound-based memes, the platform’s horizons have expanded, drawing in 1 billion monthly active users across a broad range of demographics, according to company data. Early brand adopters including Chipotle, Eos, e.l.f. Cosmetics and Oreo were rewarded with powerful viral moments and creator partnerships. As performance levels out, marketers have to get more nuanced by connecting with the subcultures and communities that are developing on the platform, exploring monetization options and targeting niche trends and creators. Simply put, the massive influx of users and brands is impacting the visibility of content on the platform. “We are now seeing a stabilization of growth and…

As ecommerce continues to soar amid a pandemic boom, some companies are betting the next venue for selling products will be in your text messages or DMs. Startups are increasingly experimenting with how sales interactions and transactions can be conducted entirely within chat windows. These efforts are made possible by advances in AI natural language processing that make interactions on this scale more viable as well as a general shift in ecommerce and retail toward more personalized and convenient service. Wizard, a conversational commerce startup backed by former Walmart ecommerce chief Marc Lore, recently raised $50 million for its mission to provide brands with an end-to-end service that allows them to conduct transactions over text. Wizard co-founder and CEO Melissa Bridgeford said she sees the company as part of an evolution of retail.…

Last year’s most significant TV transaction by far occurred in March, when the NFL completed eye-popping new rights deals for all of its TV packages, worth an estimated $10 billion annually over the next decade. Not only did the agreements keep the NFL games on CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN and ABC—ensuring that linear TV will continue to have its top audience draws for years to come—but they also extended them to a variety of streaming platforms. This includes Amazon Prime Video, which will have exclusive Thursday Night Football rights beginning this fall. The deal, in other words, was a microcosm of the dual role that live sports now plays in keeping eyeballs on linear TV and serving as a major subscription driver to streamers. And that’s why media companies must now pay…