In the past the EMMY Awards (among other top-tier entertainment awards) has been called out for a lack of diversity in nominations and winners. The organization vowed change and was credited this
year for improvement in the increase of Black nominees and winners. 

That said some groups remain underrepresented or unrecognized which is why the ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and
Multicultural Marketing – AIMM – partnered with Billy Porter, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daniel Dae Kim, Isis King, Jamie Chung and Nicole Scherzinger on
 a PSA challenging the entertainment industry to increase diverse and accurate cultural representation in programming and advertising.  

Developed and produced by ad agency
Walton Isaacson, the spot first aired during the “Countdown to the Emmys” preshow on ABC...

Havas Media Group has signed a multi-year agreement for its agencies to use FreeWheel’s Strata platform for media buying and management business in the United Kingdom and France.

Havas said it chose the Comcast-owned FreeWheel platform after a competitive review conducted last year, based on factors including Strata’s modular architecture enabling “seamless API
connections” with data, financial and internal agency systems platforms.

“The modular principle applies particularly well to a global network such as Havas, where the platform can
be tailored locally, at a market level. As such, it is well-suited to meet Havas’ needs in EMEA and beyond,” Havas stated in its announcement.

The two companies have been working
on a phased deployment of the software that went live in Fran...

Two weeks into the NFL season show a 7% decline
in the average Nielsen-measured viewing per game across all networks — to 15.0 million viewers versus the same period a year ago.

By comparison, two weeks into the 2019 season showed
a slight 3% gain versus the same period in 2018.

After a decent, but not stellar, first week this season (with Fox’s Sunday afternoon game getting to 25.8 million viewers
and NBC’s “NFL Kickoff” on Thursday at 20.5 million) — there were no individual games in the second week pulling in more than 20 million viewers.

The highest-rated game in Week
Two was on CBS with 18.9 million viewers, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl champions vs. the Los Angeles Chargers.

Helping to keep the losses to a minimum, the second
week of “Monday Night Football” (New O...

It seems as if 2020 progressed from March to September in the blink of an eye.

What started as a new decade supercharged with infinite possibilities and roaring 20s throwbacks quickly transformed
into one of the most challenging times for businesses since the Great Depression.

Now we find ourselves ringing in a very different kind of fall — one marked less by pumpkin-spiced lattes,
holiday window displays and movie theater blockbusters, and increasingly by a new normal of takeout windows, curbside pickup, and movie releases streaming on AppleTV and Disney+.

Despite
shelter-in-place restrictions lifting, most consumers are still opting to stay home, moving the highest traffic shopping days from brick-and-mortar to online.

Meanwhile, streaming and gaming
have found record audiences, as p...

The third day of the ARF’s
virtual AudienceXScience Conference Wednesday highlighted the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) launch of a cross-media measurement initiative that will based on a common currency
across all platforms, an assessment of attribution approaches that demonstrate extensive inconsistencies (and, consequently, produce different outcomes measures), solid research on the value of
attention as an ad metric, the value of ad position in commercial pods, and the damaging effects of ad clutter and long commercial breaks.  All this plus insights from a two industry
CEOs.  

Reed Cundiff, CEO of Kantar North America, recommended combined research approaches to explore current realities in close to real-time — “don’t be
turtle” — based on the digital transition ...

Cult Collective has been servicing U.S. brands from Canada for more than six years and now the Calgary-based agency has established its first outpost in the U.S.

The collective has set
up shop in Los Angeles where its biggest U.S. client—UCLA Health—is based.

The agency does a lot of project work and relies on a talented pool of seasoned freelancers so that it
can quickly scale up or down depending on the size of the project. Its name reflects part of its mission: help brands create cult-like adoration from consumers.

The LA office isn’t fully
staffed yet, due to the pandemic but did create a campaign for UCLA Health that broke during the NBA playoffs and
featured a young cancer survivor who is now thriving thanks to the efforts at the medical center.

The freelance network that Cul...

“The Simpsons” sends up a long-running
series on another network to start its unprecedented 32nd season this weekend.

The series is “Undercover Boss” on CBS — the reality series in which CEOs disguise themselves as
ordinary working folk and then infiltrate one of their stores or franchise restaurants as a “new” employee to learn about the challenges their workers face every day.

In the
“Simpsons” season premiere Sunday night on Fox, “Undercover Boss” becomes “Undercover Burns” as the tyrannical patriarch of the Springfield Nuclear Plant, C.
Montgomery Burns, dons an elaborate disguise as “Fred Kranepool” and befriends co-workers Homer, Karl and Lenny (all pictured above).

David Harbour of “Stranger Things”
provides the voice of “Fred...

Last time, we took a look at a few of the avenues that marketers are
exploring to attain a tighter grasp on their data, brand narratives, and SEO. This week’s data showed marketers and agencies on a similar quest for control as they’re forced to reckon with
a fall and winter of distracted consumers and a pandemic that remains undeterred in its ability to upend normal business practices. 

“Field marketing” rose
exponentially in the beginning of September. This could indicate that brands are looking for ways to take their in-person strategies online as the threat of a second coronavirus wave looms. Field
marketing can take many forms and, like almost everything, the ways in which field marketers can engage their target audiences are evolving...

I am so appalled when I read about (or actually meet) someone who plans to vote for Trump, that I listen very carefully to their reasoning. It is utterly inconceivable
to me that having seen and heard that moron for nearly four years, they still think he’s the Right Person for the job.  

They always start with the disclaimer that
“Yeah, he can be a little rough around the edges” — which glosses over things like telling 20,000 lies to the public, his dismal performance on the pandemic, and book after book from
members of his administration that all agree, “This guy is nuts and he is hurting the country.” 

They skip over the rape charges, the racism and the advice to
drink bathroom cleaner to protect against COVID, and hundreds of other utterances and tweets that showcase his uni...