In this special episode of Marketing Vanguard, Pernod Ricard Chairman and North America CEO Ann Mukherjee and CMO Pamela Forbus highlight the uniqueness and importance of their relationship in the C-suite to drive growth for the spirits company. Mukherjee, herself a decorated former CMO who held that role at Frito-Lay and SC Johnson, brings knowledge of the marketing practice to bear in her role as CEO, knowledge that she and Forbus can center on. 

It’s an uncommon cornerstone of experience that can arguably strengthen the marketing priorities of a brand and business—with intentional collaboration. The pair explain their relationship as CEO and CMO while having very different personalities. They’ve even sought out coaching to help understand the other’s working dynamics. “I’m always being pushed to go faster than I want to, but I’m also holding Ann back. Our personality tests and the assessments we took, are sort of our motivations, and it helped explain some things,” explains Forbus.

Listen to this special episode to hear the pair talk about more about the importance of creativity being woven into all sides of a business, the role of vulnerability in leadership and some of the mistakes they’re not afraid to admit they’ve made along the way.

Stream the new episode below and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or find it on Spotify.

Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness brought in Leslie Sims as chief marketing and creative officer in 2022 after roles in the agency and consultancy space.

Now, in her first podcast since starting at Impossible, Sims discusses how she’s infusing the company’s marketing with attention-grabbing creativity to change people’s minds about meat alternatives. 

In its latest campaign, the brand partnered with Deloitte Digital to create buzz around capturing your carbon footprint. “It’s a great day for us to celebrate because we can authentically say our entire existence is for the planet,” Sims said.

Listen to this episode to hear more about Impossible’s latest campaign, Sims’ new role, and why creativity is the business strategy to drive results.

Stream the new episode below and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or find it on Spotify.

Two weeks ago, transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney announced a limited partnership with Bud Light. To commemorate March Madness and her “day 365 of womanhood,” Mulvaney encouraged consumers to celebrate the tournament with the beer brand while brandishing cans with her face on them.

The subsequent transphobic outroar on social media—which can be summarized by a clip of Kid Rock shooting a gun at a pack and declaring “f**k Bud Light and F**ck Anheuser-Busch—was an expression of the dangers a brand that has epitomized frat culture in the past faces when it tries to widen its demographic. 

Mulvaney’s gender identity wasn’t the only thing that sparked outrage among Bud Light fans. The campaign touched on her previous lack of knowledge of March Madness, which angered talk show pundits, social media users and podcast hosts who don’t believe someone with interests outside of sports should be representing a beer brand. 

Anheuser Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a statement Friday afternoon about the uproar, without actually addressing the specific partnership. 

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer,” he said.

In the full statement, which you can read below, Whitworth doesn’t name Mulvaney or the partnership. His message to consumers also doesn’t commit to supporting LGBTQ+ rights after Bud Light previously committed to joining forces with the National LBGT Chamber of Commerce to support local LGBTQ-owned businesses last year.

A new marketing direction

Earlier this year, Bud Light’s vp of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid told Adweek Bud Light needed to “reestablish what this brand is about.” To Heinerscheid, that meant making the brand more approachable to younger drinkers and changing the image of the brand away from slapstick humor with a new brand tagline, “Easy to Drink. Easy to Enjoy.”

She emphasized during the Super Bowl campaign that “female representation is something I’m super passionate about.”

The brand’s partnership with Mulvaney follows a gradual marketing pivot toward expanding Bud Light’s consumer base and factoring inclusion into the conversation. In the Super Bowl ad, Miles and Keleigh Teller dance their way through hold music, playing on a popular meme on TikTok. It followed the brand’s first spot with the new positioning, which spotlighted a woman making her way through a crowded bar. 

At the time, Heinerscheid told Adweek, “We do fundamentally believe we’ve got the right ‘who we are and what we stand for.’ And the work truly does deliver on that message of easy enjoyment.”

After a somewhat fallow period, Meta is regaining its footing with marketers.

Three agency and brand sources told Adweek they are reallocating funds back toward Meta, especially compelled by the performance of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, an AI-driven tool that optimizes ads across audiences and ad formats, leaning on automation and machine learning to make up for signal loss.

This is a shift from the beginning of this year when sources said they were not planning on increasing their Meta investment in 2023, partly spurred by poorer performance and more enticing platforms like TikTok and connected TV.

After decreasing spend on Meta over the course of 2022, Matt Gehring, CMO at telehealth vet firm Dutch started putting his growing marketing budget back into Facebook and Instagram.

“We’re growing spend,” he said, “I’m taking those incremental dollars and I’m pushing them back into Meta rather than some other channels,” he added, noting that prior to the success of ASC campaigns, he would not have directed the funds toward Meta.

Katya Constantine, founder of DTC agency DigiShopGirl said the agency is seeing 5-7% of budgets shift toward Meta incrementally.

“In regards to budget allocation, we are seeing strong conversion performance coming from Meta in Q1,” Constantine. “We are seeing media spend from other paid social channels being shifted to Meta as other paid social channels (including TikTok) are a bit softer.”

Since February, when the agency noticed greater efficiency on Meta relative to TikTok, David Herrmann, president of DTC-focused agency Herrmann Digital, said his agency has been directing more spend from his TikTok budget towards Meta.

“I can run an ad on Facebook, and it will consistently work,” Herrmann said, noting clients can go months without changing ads and rely on Meta’s algorithmic creative optimization. “The same ad on TikTok; you’ll usually get three to four days out of it before you have to rebuild it.”

Meta winning an AI race

Part of Meta’s allure for advertisers comes from its superior automation and AI tools.

TikTok introduced a tool similar to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns called Smart Performance Campaigns, which automates the audience targeting and creative optimization processes, among others. But the tool hasn’t produced dramatically improved results compared to traditional TikTok campaigns, three buyers told Adweek.

“We are not seeing strong results from this rollout,” Constantine said. “Comparatively to [Google’s] Performance Max or Advantage+, where in most cases we saw a lift in performance and scale, in regards to TikTok, we are not seeing that just yet. There is a number of reasons for this. One is both Google and Meta have significantly more data and history in their algorithm-based campaigns, and TikTok is still a newer platform.”

Regardless, many marketers reserve a place for TikTok in their media plan, a meteoric rise for an app that was barely a household name three years ago.

Avi Ben-Zvi, vp of paid social at performance agency Tinuiti, said Smart Performance Campaigns are too new to be written off, and his agency has seen some positive results.

In a recent A/B test, Tinuiti found that Smart Performance Campaigns were 26% more efficient based on cost per acquisition than an average TikTok campaign and that the campaign drove 20% of last-click revenue, despite only receiving 14% of the campaign’s media spend, meaning it drove an outsized ROI compared to other channels.

Relying on the black box

While Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are producing good results, some marketers are wary of using the tool, which has fewer levers to pull than typical Meta campaigns and offers less transparency into granular campaign details.

“As a performance marketer, I want to look in the black box, so if anything deteriorates, I can know why,” Gehring said.

Advertisers who have less ability to trace how one piece of creative drove a particular result worry the algorithm could lead to undetected biases.

Alex Song, CEO of Proxima, a data intelligence firm that helps businesses improve their targeting and performance across social platforms, noticed Advantage+ may favor brands that spend more money.

For larger brands, or those spending more than $100,000 a month on Meta, Advantage+ campaigns generate CPMs 4.7% more expensive than when these same large advertisers use non-Advantage+ campaigns on Meta, according to data drawn from 71 advertisers using Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns from Proxima.

But for smaller advertisers, or those that spend less than $100,000 a month, CPMs for Advantage+ campaigns are 26% more expensive than non-Advantage+ campaigns.

“Is Meta really looking out and optimizing their algorithm to maximize your total ad spend, or are they trying to maximize their profitability?” Song said.

Several other marketers said they didn’t notice this difference between big and small spenders and that all algorithms work better with more data.

For Ben-Zvi, the danger of automated tools like Advantage+ is less about not being able to catch platform mistakes, but in marketers once again relying on Meta mindlessly for all their analytics, instead of taking a more nuanced approach to measurement, as many marketers were forced to do when Meta’s performance lagged in 2021 and 2022.

“The introduction of some of these tools can reverse the need for looking up the funnel and thinking of more sophisticated kinds of measurement,” he said.

California’s policymakers are making efforts to regulate the use of artificial intelligence, especially as a way to combat algorithmic discrimination, including testing algorithms ahead of time and pushing for transparency in the use of tools like ChatGPT.

Introduced by the California State Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan in March, the AB 331 bill aims to ensure that AI systems that are used to directly impact “consequential decisions” about people—pertaining to factors such as employment, financial, medical and education—receive additional oversight.

This is to determine whether there’s going to be a potentially adverse impact on these important sectors, said Dominique Shelton Leipzig, a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown.

The bill also covers companies that use AI to determine the target audience for ads across these sectors, since certain decisions made based on these algorithms can have an impact on people’s lives, Leipzig added.

“Marketers should build the algorithms from the get-go with trusting minds,” said Leipzig, “instead of ignoring it and waiting for the worst to come back in two years as it did with privacy.” 

As the ad industry shifts away from third-party cookies and towards algorithms to help match audiences, elements such as accuracy and bias checks need to be baked into systems when companies adopt AI tools. Regulators are concerned that, given the rapid developments around AI, these checks are being overlooked. As such, lawmakers in California and other states, including Washington and Minnesota, are picking up the pace to regulate. Meanwhile, industry leaders, including Elon Musk, have pushed for a moratorium on AI development. 

Under the proposed bill, companies using ChatGPT4, such as Microsoft’s Bing, will be asked to be more transparent about the data that is being used ot train the AI models.

In addition, companies will be required to share their impact assessments for using such technology with the Civil Rights Department or face a fine of $10,000. This includes companies that use ChatGPT for customer service chatbots, such as Snap and Shopify.

The bill also contains a private right of action that allows any California resident to sue a company they think is in violation, after which the company has 45 days to remedy the violation.  

While it could be years before the bill becomes a law—it is due for a committee hearing this week where stakeholders will discuss and suggest possible amendments—companies using generative AI, especially for decision-making purposes, or planning to push their own version of it into the market, would do well to identify these processes ahead of coming regulation.

“Companies are going to have to put in place regular processes to understand when they onboard these types of products, conduct data protection impact assessments and understand its consequences,” said David Stauss, an attorney with experience in data privacy at the law firm Husch Blackwell.

A patchwork of statewide AI laws is likely, said Stauss, a similar scenario to the patchwork nature of privacy laws.

Changes within privacy laws

Meanwhile, state agency, the California Privacy Protection Agency, is focusing on data regulation issues around AI under its privacy law.

The state’s privacy law—the most conservative in the U.S.—lets people opt out of data collection when a business uses automated-decision making technology to collect such information. People also have the right to request information on how the technology is being used.  

Currently, the agency is collecting public comments on what regulations around AI should be issued, but it could take some time before anything is finalized.

“By the end of the session, we could be looking at a whole another regulatory regime,” said Stauss.

The chair that Miranda Lambert should be sitting in is empty, and the canned cocktails she’s supposed to be promoting are slowly gathering dust. 

The crew at this commercial shoot for Lone River Ranch Water is standing by, but there’s no celebrity spokeswoman hitting her marks and delivering her lines. There’s only a plaintive question that goes out over a walkie talkie: “Eyes on Miranda? Anyone?” 

This is not diva behavior on the part of the chart-topper and three-time Grammy winner. In fact, Lambert is the brand personified, according to the new campaign that equates her free-spirited nature with the DNA of the tequila-inspired product.

Lambert is “untamed, true to where she comes from, lives by no one’s rules, not even ours,” according to the hero 30-second spot.

That’s why she’s strumming a guitar in one ad (“Guitar”) and riding a horse in another (“Untamed”), with neither activity written into the script, or so the ad’s narration says. At any rate, the seemingly impromptu moves make a more convincing statement than asking her to pose and shill, per the campaign from agency Anomaly.

‘Fresh and pioneering’ spirit

The brief asked creatives to give an authentic peek into “the West Texas spirit,” which needed some fleshing out, according to the agency’s head of brand strategy, Nika Rastakhiz.

“The spirit of the West is fresh and pioneering,” Rastakhiz told Adweek. “It’s not all grit and stoicism–it’s light and fun.”

That insight led to the “real and raw” partnership with Lambert, Rastakhiz said, which is not a one-and-done marketing campaign.

The country music superstar, who’s headlining a Las Vegas residency through late 2023, will continue working with Lone River as part of a multiyear alliance. Full details are still to come, but she will be collaborating with the brand’s CEO and founder Katie Beal Brown on networking events and other gatherings for female entrepreneurs in various U.S. cities.

“I don’t do a ton of partnerships, but I was drawn to Katie’s story and found so many similarities with my own,” Lambert said in a statement. “I’m a storyteller first and foremost, and that’s exactly what Katie set out to do with this brand. Lone River was built on honoring her family’s roots and sharing an authentic way of life in West Texas. I’m excited to see what kind of noise us Texas women can make together.”

Brown called Lambert “the embodiment of the trailblazing spirit that built our business” who has “played such an important part in modernizing the ideals of the American West.”

The latest ads–from the agency where Brown got her start as an account director–hype the margarita-style line extension, called Ranch Rita, and its new variety pack. The new ads will appear on broadcast TV, streaming services, digital and social platforms. Acquired by liquor conglomerate Diageo in 2021, Lone River has also worked with Austin-based GSD&M on previous projects.

It’s perhaps unexpected for any advertising network to expand its business into a country that is fighting for its own existence, but Dentsu has chosen to do just that with the opening of its new media agency DentsuX in Ukraine.

It’s been almost 14 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and no end to the conflict seems imminent. And while the aggression has been taking place, the country has learned to work on and rebuild its economy, including its advertising sector, to a functional state.

Dentsu Ukraine is made up of over 400 specialists working across agencies such as Carat, iProspect and Vizeum, the latter of which will be consumed by DentsuX. It will be led by Anna Gorkun as its chief executive officer (CEO), who has spent the last four years leading Vizeum Ukraine.

Internationally, DentsuX employs around 3,500 people and works with clients such as LVMH, Kao Corporation and Nestlé.

According to data released in August by the Statista Research Department, advertising spend in Ukraine across television, online and outdoor surprisingly continued to grow despite the impact of the war, which began in February bringing chaos to the whole country.

Oleksandr Gorokhovskyi, CEO of Dentsu Ukraine, explained to Adweek that while the launch was taking place during “a period of unprecedented challenges,” it had also been four years in the making.

“Being the leader for the last seven years and developing media business for the last 30 years along with state transformations and socioeconomic disruptions, we have learned that this is a key time to convert difficulties into inspiration and make the business thrive meaningfully,” he added.

The decision to complete the launch was taken due to Dentsu continuing to “operate successfully” last year, with Gorokhovskyi claiming that the business recovered faster than the market, meaning it was seen as a moment to “maximize” the company’s position in the country.

“By launching DentsuX now, Dentsu Ukraine is clearly demonstrating its high level of operational resilience and sending a strong signal in the confidence of the Ukraine business, now and in the future,” he said.

The new entity will bring together 70 individuals from across the business, including Vizeum, to deliver media solutions to the local market.

The company declined to reveal the founding client list for the new business, saying only that “many” of them had already been on its roster for “a number of years”.

In a statement, Sanjay Nazerali, global brand president for DentsuX, welcomed the new Ukrainian members to the network.

“We have long worked with them as part of the wider Dentsu Group and know them to be a hugely collaborative and talented team of individuals,” he said. “As they face ongoing challenges, we look forward to working with them to help build for a brighter future.”

In this week’s episode of Yeah, That’s Probably an Ad, Adweek’s community editor Luz Corona is joined by the show’s new co-host, Adweek Europe brand editor Rebecca Stewart.

This week they welcome sustainability editor Kathryn Lundstrom to talk about the latest move by the FTC to ensure consumers are not misled by brands that tout sustainability commitments.

There are three fundamental questions that every marketer should ask when crafting a campaign: Is it relevant? Is it wonderful? And is it unexpected?

In this episode of Everything Is Better With Creators, Matt Kerbel, director of strategic brand planning at Turo, shares his insights on how to answer those questions and create campaigns that truly resonate.

Turo is the world’s largest ride-sharing platform. Think of it as Airbnb for cars.

But more than that, Turo pays close attention to what their audience wants, recognizing that creators are increasingly becoming the most trusted when it comes to purchase decisions.

So buckle up as Kerbel takes us on Turo’s journey to help consumers find their drive. Plus, how Turo uses creative strategies to engage its audience and why creators are at the heart of it all.

Fans of the Houston Rockets know Jalen Green as a hot-shooting guard with five 40-point games under his belt in his nascent NBA career. But maybe less obvious about the young player is his twisted sense of humor, which meshes well with his new brand partner, Liquid Death.

Green, a first-round draft pick straight from high school, stars in Liquid Death’s latest campaign alongside a screaming, disembodied head—created with special effects—continuing the brand’s penchant for horror-comedy in its marketing and planting its flag deeper into mainstream professional sports.

The 21-year-old standout “embraces the hilariousness of Liquid Death and gets that we can have some fun with how athletes and brands traditionally work together,” Andy Pearson, vice president of creative, told Adweek. “That made him the perfect person to help us get in front of the next generation of basketball fans who hate traditional marketing as much as we do.”

The 60-second video, dubbed Severed Head Basketball, takes its cues from vintage Saturday morning commercials and launches a piece of merchandise that turns the brand’s “murder your thirst” motto into a bloody-fun collectible.

The mini-movie also announces Green as an investor in the company and the first NBA brand ambassador, joining a celebrity roster that includes Tony Hawk, Steve-O, Bert Kreischer and Dorothea “The Godmother of Drumming” Taylor, a self-proclaimed heavy metal granny.

In-house creatives at the brand, in considering ways to unveil Green as a new collaborator, decided to develop a collectible basketball that resembled a human head but with cartoonishly gruesome accents. Will Carsola, creator of Adult Swim’s Mr. Pickles and frequent Liquid Death collaborator, designed the limited-edition swag.

For the video, the team scoured toy advertising from ‘90s TV, along with Michael Jordan’s promos for Wheaties and Gatorade.

“The whole thing became an homage to that sort of celebrity endorsement from that era, when all the ads told you to be like your hero,” Pearson said. “When we presented it to Jalen, he just laughed and said he loved it.”

Liquid Death’s relationship with Green stretches back several years, with the brand’s senior vice president of digital retail and avid hoops fan, Hamid Saify, learning that Green was a devotee of the canned water and keeping him stocked in the product. For Green’s second year in the NBA, the time was right to “join forces and make something together,” Pearson said.

The comically horrifying “Hoop Head” costs $125 on LiquidDeath.com, following in the footsteps of other wacky merch like the skateboards infused with Hawk’s blood and the VHS cassettes of Kreischer’s instructional workout videos.

CREDITS

• Co-founder/CEO: Mike Cessario
• Svp of marketing: Dan Murphy
• Svp of digital retail: Hamid Saify
• Vp of creative: Andy Pearson
• Vp of marketing: Greg Fass
• Vp of design: Franke Dresmé
• Vp of cultwear: Misha Brunelli
• Creative director: Will Carsola
• Associate creative director: Stu Golley
• Senior brand manager: Tia Sherwood
• Senior nihilist: Brendan Kelly
• Apparel production and sourcing manager: Sean Snirk
• Director: Daniel Stessen
• Executive producer: Johnny Eastlund
• Senior producer: Tatianna Rodriguez
• Production coordinator: Emily Draznik, Tanner Blount
• Director of photography: Mårten Tedin
• Still photographer: Arturo Almos
• Gaffer: Josh Arriazola
• Key grip: Cesar Quintanilla
• Wardrobe stylist: Stefania Maso
• SFX MUAs: Manny Lemus, Casey Jay Wong, Dahlia Carmichael
• Location manager: Chris Lacher