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Diversity in Agency Life: How to Find it, Keep it, and Not Treat it Like a Prize

Hundreds of people attended The One Club for Creativity’s “Here Are All the Black People” event during AdWeek last year, which featured professional development, recruiting, networking, and talent showcase opportunities.   The multicultural career fair is one of a growing number of popular efforts to increase diversity and inclusion in the (overwhelmingly white male) fields of advertising, design and media - from the ADCOLOR Conference to The Association of Advertising Agencies’ (4As) Multicultural Advertising Internship Program, among others. But they are not enough.  Diverse talent is pooling at the entry level, rather than being evenly distributed throughout agencies and sufficiently supported to reach senior positions.
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Experiencing Augmented Reality: Sound as the Next Frontier

Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies are popping up everywhere as brands try to engage consumers with increasingly immersive and compelling experiences. From helping them preview products in real-world environments, embark on virtual tours or extend live experiences, it’s the ultimate in 3-D marketing. While virtual reality takes consumers to different places, augmented reality puts objects in front of their eyes, and now, brings sound to their ears.
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3 Reasons to Break the Rules of Advertising

Busting down barriers and breaking the rules may not work so well if you’re a doctor or lawyer.  So welcome to the world of advertising and creative production, the perfect place for people who don’t care for or play by the rules. High quality, authenticity, and wickedly unorthodox content is achieved by pushing toward, and through, the edges of what has already come before.  

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Content Delivery in 2020 Politics: Live, Live, Live!

Make no mistake: The 2020 presidential campaign, already kicking into gear, will take place in an unprecedented media and engagement marketing environment of in-your-face, unfiltered (and often cringe-worthy) immediacy. Political live-streaming as a communication tool could not only bestow authenticity to an otherwise stale and scripted primary process, but it may also result in digital-savvy candidates vaulting over everyone else.

Think Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, only with people who want to be the Leader of the Free World, poor lighting, and fewer laughs.

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The Economic Costs of #MeToo: Quantifying a Movement

Les Moonves, the longtime CBS chairman and CEO, is out as the latest #MeToo casualty in the wake of sexual assault and abuse allegations detailed by The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow.  Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Louis C.K., and Kevin Spacey - also gone, but not forgotten.  As the list continues to grow, so does the outrage and price of keeping a sexual abuser on the payroll.  Just consider the astoundingly low opening receipts of Spacey’s latest film release, Billionaire Boys Club:  $126.00.  Not $126 million, or thousand, but just 126 dollars.  Less than the cost of a new pair of designer jeans. If you wondered how much Spacey (who denies the allegations) would suffer, you can now do the math.

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Generation Z: Giving Ad Agencies a Makeover, Telling It Like It Is

The youngest crop of teenagers - known as Generation Z and born between 1996 and 2010 - represents perhaps one of the most complex and misunderstood customers in advertising history. A highly mobile, social media-fluent, and socially conscious generation of multitaskers, they are expected to account for 40% of all consumers by 2020 with the potential to wield billions in buying power, making them a larger and more diverse cohort than Baby Boomers or Millennials.  

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Southwest learns the hard way: For a brand with ‘heart’, quality matters, too.

Summer was on sale again in May at Southwest Airlines, whose smiling pilots and flight attendants offered one-way fares as low as $49 as part of its annual, multi-platform "Transfarency" marketing campaign.  For decades, Southwest Airlines led the nation’s domestic carriers as one of the most aggressive advertisers, with a $218MM advertising budget in 2015.  Its front-facing public relations and brand strategy projected an image of the nation’s most consumer-friendly airline with a family-style employee culture.  The investment paid off with good press and high returns.

Until it didn’t.

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