Turner Broadcasting has awarded its estimated $150 million media-buying assignment to Horizon Media after a review. The agency will handle buying for all Turner Networks, which include CNN, TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner Sports and TBS among others. However, Turner will continue to handle search marketing and social media in-house. The incumbent was MediaVest, part of Publicis Groupe’s Starcom Mediavest Group, which won the business in 2010. Previously, Turner had handled buying in house. Turner confirmed that MediaVest was not invited to defend. “It was time to make a change,” said Dennis Camlek, SVP Turner Media Group at Turner Broadcasting. “We worked with them for five years, which says a lot.” As for the choice of Horizon, which will officially take the reins at the start of 2015, Camlek credited their category experience, both past (NBC broadcast and cable networks) and present (A&E, History). “They’re well known and well respected and have deep expertise in tune-in,” which Camlek said is especially critical in today’s on-demand environment. Camlek also said that Horizon’s pricing proposals were “strong.” And Horizon has an impressive array of advanced activation tools that Turner can tap into, said Camlek, an agency veteran who worked at both Horizon and Omnicom’s PHD. Camlek said he is still working with the agency on who will lead the Turner business. The review began a few months back and Turner talked with six or seven shops, narrowing the list down to three finalists, which he declined to disclose. The Turner assignment is the second big piece of business that has shifted from Starcom MediaVest Group to Horizon this year. Earlier this year Burger King shifted its estimated $250 million media assignment from Starcom to Horizon. Turner did not use an outside search consultant to assist with the process.
Last year, Publicis Groupe created Level Studios, a new digital marketing agency within its Rosetta division, to focus specifically and solely on one client: Apple. Now, Level is expanding its scope. The agency, which has been separated from Rosetta and is now a stand-alone agency with Publicis Groupe, has promoted Dan Connolly from Partner to the newly created role of President to oversee all business units within Level Studios. As Partner, he previously focused on leading team and client relationships, but as President, he will focus on Level’s expansion through new client business, building out the core components of the agency, and leading market-facing business initiatives. All 125 employees across offices located in California and the United Kingdom will report to Connolly, who is based in California. Connolly originally joined Level in 2008 as an Account Supervisor before moving up the ranks to Partner and now President. Meanwhile, Level is rapidly growing in size, clients and stature within Publicis Groupe. Connolly’s promotion coincides with a major hiring spree for the agency. There are more than 50 current open positions for skilled creatives, technologists and client service representatives. At the top of its list of key hires is a senior business development officer who will lead its pursuit of new business. The agency also plans to open an additional office in San Francisco before the end of the year. “Our unique status within the Publicis Groupe has positioned Level Studios to enter into a phase of rapid growth, both domestically and abroad, allowing us to expand our client roster and attract the industry’s best talent,” said Connolly. Although Publicis re-launched this unit last year to concentrate on Apple, Level Studios has actually been around for numerous years. The agency originally began in the '90s as Web Associates. Then, Web Associates rebranded itself as Level Studios, and was acquired by Rosetta in 2010. With last year’s re-launch Level’s structure and delivery model were developed in close partnership with Apple to ensure alignment across operations, workflows and processes.
Havas reported a 2.7% revenue increase for the first half of 2014 to 844 Euros, which is about $1.1 billion at today’s exchange rate. Organic growth for the period was 5.7%, while net income grew nearly 7%. The first half numbers represent a marked improvement over year-ago results for the same period, when revenue was up just 1% and organic growth was just 0.5%. It was just a year ago that Havas CEO Yannick Bollore succeeded his father Vincent as chairman of Havas. Earlier this year, he took the CEO reins from David Jones, who left the company. Net new business for the first half of the year totaled nearly 1.3 billion Euros (about $1.7 billion), up sharply from a year ago when the company reported 838 million in net new business for the first half of 2013. Contributing to this year’s tally were assignments from Paypal, Disney, Barclays, Sanofi, Liberty Mutual and KAO USA. “Havas delivered very satisfactory first-half organic growth,” said Bollore. “All our regions reported growth and certain ones, including the UK, Asia Pacific and Africa showed double-digit growth.” In North America, the company said that growth “accelerated” in the second quarter with revenues up 4.5% for the first half. The company cited the New York and Chicago offices of Havas Worldwide and Havas Media as having “performed particularly well.” Recent wins in the region include Biogen, Green Mountain Coffee and Dish Network. Bollore told analysts on a Friday conference to discuss results that Havas “has never had so many important clients in the U.S.,” as it does currently. He attributed the progress to management changes at the agencies, notably Andrew Bennett who was named global CEO Havas Worldwide in January. Right now, he said, “our biggest challenge in the U.S. is managing growth,” which in large part will be accomplished by making sure the right talent is in place. Bollore said that he believes the company’s strategy of creating “villages” in geographic locations is paying off, although “it’s hard to quantify.” In New York, for example, all of the holding company’s operations moved to single location at the end of last year. Similar moves are being planned worldwide including a London consolidation of 1,500 staffers that has been put in motion for 2016. The idea is to foster collaboration, said Bollore -- which in turn, he believes, will optimize strategies and results for prospects and existing clients. “We need to be working together,” he said. This story has been updated to include information from a Havas conference call with analysts to discuss the company's first half results.
As a long-time sponsor of the U.S. Open, IBM has provided technological infrastructure that the tournament runs on and each year, executives look to create an experience that brings to life its sponsorship partnership. This year, IBM wanted to showcase the capabilities of one particular product: IBM Cloud, which is a massive scalable computing power available on-demand that’s built for big data. Developed by agency of record Ogilvy & Mather, IBM is introducing an immersive audio and visual experience that turns real-time data from the matches, such as aces and points scored, and turns it into its own soundtrack. The algorithm is written in a way that will produce a piece of music that depicts both the intensity of a match, and the events – like aces, winners, faults, etc… that bring on that intensity. The result is one continuous soundtrack that changes in tone, tempo, rhythm, instrumentation and more depending on what the data dictates. Each soundtrack is archived on the U.S. Open and IBM websites and fans can listen to matches from the tournament and download tracks for free. You can see the site here. The concept is based on showing how one could generate drama in the data to create an emotional element that someone wouldn’t get from a standard scoreboard or news feed. IBM wanted to show that when raw data is reshaped into a form that people can comprehend, it can give them a new experience. Essentially, the business brand wanted to show that it can dramatize a real-time data stream in such a way that fans would connect to, whether they are at the games and not.
Interest in native advertising is surging among brand marketers and agencies alike, but many still don’t know how to begin adopting this new channel, in part because they lack content that would be suitable for deployment in native ads. To help brands and agencies overcome that hurdle, native ad distribution platform Nativo has created a new Content Creator Consortium that can get marketers up and running with native ad content faster than they could on their own.The new consortium includes content creators NewsCred, Contently, Visual.ly, Niche and Poptent, together offering marketers custom content capabilities across digital media categories, such as articles, visuals (e.g. infographics) and video. In creating the consortium, Nativo hopes to offer marketers a way of streamlining the process for creating native ad campaigns, from conception to creation, distribution, and measurement.Chris Rooke, Nativo’s senior vice president of strategy and operations, noted: “Within the last 18 months, we’ve seen this huge influx of media agencies and brand marketers interested in native distribution. This is great, [but] what we didn’t anticipate is that many brands would come without content to distribute, or that the content wouldn’t be just right for native placement.”Rooke added: “We realized the way to close that gap was to facilitate content creation on their behalf, to help get them started. We’re helping them thinking about their content strategy and getting going immediately, without having to go away and come back six months later.” The content creation partners were all selected based on their ability to produce content of suitable quality quickly and on budget.Under the system organized by Nativo, clients and agencies always know who created the content, Rooke emphasized, adding that the company has already seen a lot of activity through the consortium, which launched informally six months ago: “Typically the flight dates extend and the budgets expand significantly. You can go from one article a month all the way to an annual requirement of 50 pieces of content or more.”
A recent UK study queried ad agencies about their thoughts on native advertising. While 77% of agencies are now comfortable explaining native advertising to clients, many are concerned about how to scale the practice and 63% don't think the practice is effectively regulated. Furthermore, 83% of agencies now include the practice of native advertising as part of their digital offering and the other 17% plan to do so in the immediate future. In aggregate, the study -- conducted by FaR Partners on behalf of ad platform Adyoulike -- found that UK agencies believe native advertising will comprise 9.2% of total digital spend in 2014 and 14.7% by 2015. In what may be the most cogent and refreshing viewpoint heard from an ad agency exec, Monica Little, who is stepping down as CEO of Minneapolis-based Little & Co., said: “I made the decision years ago that I didn’t want to sell to an outside firm because I’ve seen other companies that did and they were eviscerated. I like money, but my mortgage is paid. And I’m not about wringing as much as I can out of the company. Life is too short. It was about valuable work and working with these smart people.” Thanks for that, Monica. You've given us hope that the entire advertising industry is not populated entirely with money-grubbing power grabbers who are more concerned with how many toys they have versus how well they take care of their agency and its employees. Hmm. Who knew Segway still existed? The thing was supposed to reinvent human transportation and all it has become is a joke in a movie about a mall cop. Anyway, the brand has announced that it has selected Aroluxe to serve as its agency of record. Segway will lean on Aroluxe to bring "uniformity and a fresh direction" to the brand with new creative, sales and dealer support, demand generation programs, and an ecommerce Web site. Of the agency selection, Segway VP of Marketing Brian Buccella said: “As we move our brand forward into new and emerging EV segments, we wanted a partner who could take our vision of redefining the green personal transportation market, bring it to life, and then amplify that vision across all channels. For us, there’s no doubt that we made the right decision. We look for passion and creativity, and Aroluxe has a surplus of both.” Well, anyway, good luck expanding beyond mall cops. iProspect has hired Sam Huston as chief strategy officer. Prior to joining the iProspect team, Huston was partner, SVP of Strategy and Innovation at Jumptank. He also worked across the Dentsu Aegis Network, including Carat, Isobar and Vizeum. Over the last 14 years, he's worked across agency specialties including media, creative, and entertainment. He worked on P&G, Adidas Boost, Red Bull, Disney and GoPro. In this role, Huston will oversee client campaigns and service team collaborations. Based in San Francisco, he will report to iProspect President Jeremy Cornfeldt.