Learn about research that was conducted to better understand how ANA members are using data to manage agency relationships and how learnings can be applied to optimize client/agency performance.

By Gary Larkin, Research Associate, The Conference Board Governance Center The issue of using universal proxy cards in contested elections has been on The Conference Board Governance Center’s radar since the spring and held a roundtable for its members last month on the topic. In fact, a small subgroup of the roundtable met with SEC […]

If you head to Google.com today, you might notice something interesting underneath the search bar: an invitation to watch a series of animations called #WhoWeAre.

A collaboration between StoryCorps and Upworthy, with support from Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and Delta Airlines, #WhoWeAre is designed to encourage people across the United States to reach out to others who’ve had vastly different experiences. It’s a call for connection in a deeply divided election season. From stories of people who got to know individuals who’d committed crimes against them, to stories of people who went above and beyond to help strangers, to stories of people who faced discrimination for their race, religion or gender and found ways to understand with those who persecuted them — the goal is to share stories that stress empathy and love.

As Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps and winner of the 2015 TED Prize, says in a short explainer video about the series, the animations are intended “to speak to our best selves.” He added over email that the idea for #WhoWeAre started shortly after he spoke at the TED2016 conference. “Steven Spielberg asked me to meet, and we came up with idea of trying to blanket the country with simple, animated StoryCorps stories,” he wrote. “We hope they’ll be a little ripple of hope in the midst of the madness.”

Enjoy the playlist above. Isay has one request as you watch and share: that you reach out to someone who thinks differently from you, and ask them meaningful questions about their life. For extra credit, record the conversation using the StoryCorps app — and upload it directly to The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Politicians, actors, directors, architects, athletes, everyone is tweeting about the elections in USA. With #TweetsFromTheStars they will tweet for those who can no longer do so.

“O1” (a creative Latin collective based in Venice Beach, California) created the Tweet From The Stars campaign which they’ve dubbed a Hollywood Blvd. Intervention. The crew took to the streets and placed tweets over the actual stars on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood for those who are no longer with us including Robin Williams, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson and even Godzilla weighed in on the US Elections. In the end the video encourages viewers to vote, and that’s a good thing.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Advertising Agency: O1 (Venice Beach CA).
Agency website: www.o1-agency.com/
Creative Director: Curro Chozas, Pablo Lopez
Art Director: Antonio Mora
Director: Pascui Rivas
Production: Shad Thompson

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); –ADVERTISEMENT–

Cue the Guns N’ Roses‘ song “Welcome to the Jungle” add Danny McBride and Michael Phelps and watch them say “screw it, let’s go to space” in this epic trailer for the soon to be released Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

World gone mad? Screw it, let’s go to space! Directed by Peter Berg, follow a crew of gamers – including Michael Phelps and Danny McBride – as they escape the frustrations of Earth and launch into intense dogfights, zero-G combat and classic boots-on-the-ground action across the solar system in this epic new installment in the Call of Duty franchise.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Ad Agency: 72andSunny

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); –ADVERTISEMENT–

Take a look inside b8ta, a new store for discovering new tech products.  Learn how b8ta closes the gap between maker and buyer with a hands-on helpful retail customer experience that is much needed into today’s high tech, omnichannel world.

other Brand Experience Briefs:

• Target Open House connected home store
• Apple Union Square
• Best Buy

transcript:

Today’s brand experience brief is about an innovative retail store designed for discovering, trying, and buying new technology products.  It’s called b8ta and it can be found in downtown Palo Alto, California.  Let’s take a look inside.

b8ta showcases a collection of new technology products including many Internet of Things products like the Sense by Hello which tracks your sleep behavior, a video home phone device and network called Ily or ily (not quite sure about that), Mocaheart by Mocacare, a heart health tracker that measures heart rate, blood oxygen, and blood velocity, and an e-Bike by Juno Power.

Every product is out on display, with explanatory signage and demo screens and videos, so you are encouraged to try them out.  And each also displays a reminder to ask the friendly b8ta staff for a demo.  One of the store slogans is “No packaging—just products,” and it definitely delivers on the hands-on experience.

Unlike most tech stores that are not very kid-friendly, b8ta hosts a prominent kids section where kids are invited to play with the products and, even in the case of a maker-like product, are given ideas of what to do with it including creating something that can make a loud noise!

b8ta is the perfect environment for companies like SoftBank Media that want to show off products like its emotional robot, Pepper, which is  able to “read” four human emotions — happiness, joy, sadness, and anger — and respond accordingly.

b8ta is targeted both to consumers who are interested in learning about cool, new products — the store markets itself as “retail designed for discovery” — and to makers and sellers of those products who want to get exposure for and feedback on their innovations. In fact, there’s a display in the store promoting The Stable, a retail sales agency for IoT products.

b8ta opened in December 2015 and was founded by four former Nest employees who wanted to “Create a physical space where people can try the best new technology products out of the box.” They wanted to create a store where all the products are displayed for hands-on interaction and to close the time and physical gap between maker and buyer.  They’ve certainly succeeded.

b8ta says two more stores will be opening in December 2016, in Santa Monica and Seattle.  As more and more products start to have some element of technology in them, stores like b8ta are going to be needed so people can learn about and try them before purchase. Also b8ta demonstrates that the role of a store is no longer just about providing access to inventory but it’s also the best possible marketing for a product — it’s an idea that is growing in relevance in today’s omnichannel world.

The post brand experience brief: b8ta appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

By Alex Parkinson, Associate Director, Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board The Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board (SNCR) today opened its call for entries for the 2017 Excellence in New Communications Awards. Organizations that have made innovative use of digital, social, and mobile technologies can now submit their […]

Curator and host Pat Mitchell introduces a session of TEDWomen. This year’s speaker lineup features 40+ women and men from many fields, all speaking to the theme: It’s About Time. Photo: Marla Aufmuth/TED

Many people ask, “How are speakers selected for TEDWomen? The answer is that speakers, like ideas, come from many different sources. TED has an open recommendation process on TED.com, and we review those as well as suggestions that come in from everywhere. Sometimes people self nominate but mostly, fans of TEDTalks submit names of women and men whose ideas, work and stories they have discovered and that they feel would make strong TEDTalks.

This year our initial list was more than 150 names and each one a potential TEDTalk, making our final choices very challenging. In part, we review the speakers for the relevance of their ideas to the conference theme which this year is “It’s about time.”   We also take into account the important fact that TEDWomen is a global conference with multiple TEDxWomen conferences convening simultaneously on every continent, taking a live stream of TEDWomen, so global perspective and a diversity of backgrounds are significant factors in our selections, too.

As the editorial director and curator, I work with the amazing TED team of curators and my awesome colleague, Betsy Scolnik, to make selections of speakers, and we’re thrilled to present this year’s speaker program: 40* extraordinary speakers, women and men, in six sessions.

Browse the entire 2016 lineup »

I believe this year’s program further affirms that TEDWomen is not a conference about women so much as it is a conference where women and their ideas — on everything from race to nuclear weapons to philanthropy and time management — are the reason that nearly 1,000 women and men will gather in San Francisco in October.

This is not a conference about well-known people, though you may recognize a few names and faces. It is a conference whose speakers are working hard to make the presentation of their stories and ideas memorable and important for you to hear. The TEDWomen team and I can’t wait to share them with you.

Warm regards,

Pat Mitchell, Betsy Scolnik and the TED Team

*And we have a few surprises that we are not announcing today … so watch for other names to come!

---

The theater is sold out, but we have decided to offer discounted registrations that include all conference activities except for guaranteed seats in the theater. These registrations provide comfortable viewing in our Simulcast Lounge, where everyone gathers during breaks between sessions. Find out more at the TEDWomen website.

Supported by its worldwide agency Les Gaulois, Citroën is launching a new brand campaign entitled “Citroën Inspired By You”. Citroën has always been interested in the relationship people have with cars. This attachment to people is inscribed in Citroën’s DNA and has never wavered throughout its history. Today the brand is putting into images the experience people have with their cars, inspired by the findings of the survey carried out in Europe with CSA Research and published on 28 September, “Our lives inside our cars”

The campaign consists of a main film and several short films, each one depicting the responses provided by Citroën cars, technologies and services to continually enhance the in-car experience. The main film (long, 50- second format) says we spend 4 years and 1 month of our lives in a car, so you might as well enjoy that time in a Citroën. The brand’s cars enable people to take best advantage of that in-car time, for example, through user-friendly design and travelling well-being. The series of shorter films provide a practical illustration of how the Brand’s innovative technologies and pioneering services are making motoring an increasingly seamless experience.

The campaign, with which drivers and passengers alike will identify, is launched simultaneously in Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, to be followed by a second wave from January 2017 in other European countries as well as China and Latin America. The main 50-second film will be broadcast on TV and social media from this evening through Sunday with the objective of strong impact, particularly in prime time. Starting on Monday 17 October, all of the content produced for the campaign will be supported on Facebook and YouTube for two weeks. In parallel, the citroeninspiredbyyou.com website will present the entire campaign with all the technology and service-related solutions that Citroën brings to its customers.

The campaign also kicks off a change in some of the Brand’s codes with a new flat-design 2D logo, lending the double chevron extra modernity and visibility, and a new warm and rythmic sound signature, reflecting the Brand’s values of boldness and closeness.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
LES GAULOIS AGENCY
Brand Film:
Chief Creative Officer: Xavier Beauregard
Creative Directors: Mickael Jeanne – Alexandre Drouillard

Short Films:
Chief Creative Officer: Xavier Beauregard
Creative Directors: Hadi Hassan-Helou
Art Director: Jordan Molina – Aurélien Bigot – Emma Rousseau
Copywriter: Ludovic Miege – Julie Moreno
Head of TV: Christopher Thiery
TV Producer: Sarah Bouadjera
Music Supervisor: Lionel Dray

PRODUCTION: HRCLS (Hercules)
Sound and Business Affairs: HRCLS
Supervisor SFX: Yann Dubois

PRODUCTION: BANDITS
Realisator: Brian Aldrich
Productor: Leslie Dupuis-Mendel
[full_width]
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); –ADVERTISEMENT–

At the age of 64, Diana Nyad became the first person to make the 110-mile swim from Havana to Key West without a shark cage. The swim took her 52 hours and 54 minutes to complete, a lifetime goal she had begun dreaming of in the late 1970s. She made her first attempt in 1978 at the age of 28. Then after decades of not swimming, she decided to try again in her 60s. After three unsuccessful attempts, she made it in 2013.

She talked about her epic swim at TEDWomen 2013. So far, more than 3.3 million people have watched her talk, titled “Never, Ever Give Up.”

Now, Diana is working on a new goal. Along with her Cuba swim expedition leader, Bonnie Stoll, Diana has founded EverWalk Nation, a bold movement to get people to pledge to walk three times a week. Research shows that Westerners’ sedentary lifestyle can be as damaging to our health as smoking, so Diana and Bonnie want to get us moving!

“We intend to amass over the next calendar year a million people pledging to walk three times a week.  We are going to spark a tsunami of walking in this country, turning America into a rabid nation of walkers,” she writes in a recent email.

And as you might expect from someone like Diana, the launch of the initiative is no small affair. This Sunday, on the third anniversary of Diana’s historic Cuba swim, she will lead a gang of walkers on a 145-mile walk down the California coast from Los Angeles to San Diego. EverWalk will sponsor more long walks around the country over the next several years, including from Boston to New York City and from Chicago to St. Louis. Participants can sign on for different distances depending on their abilities.

Registration is closed for this weekend’s walk, but if you’re in LA, cheer the group on at their kick-off event from 7 to 8:30 AM at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Oct. 23.

Get Involved: To take the pledge, join the community and to find out about future walks, visit EverWalk.com and be a leader in the biggest walking initiative in American history.

We’ll be checking in on Diana and Bonnie’s progress with a live update from their LA-to–San Diego walk at this year’s TEDWomen, held next week, Oct. 26–28, in San Francisco.