Advertising and Brands

Under Amazon, Whole Foods seems to have a lot of secrets

Content Courtesy of: adageindia.in

Written By:  AdAge

Wall Street misses the old Whole Foods.

For years, hedge funds marked the date of the organic grocer's earnings announcement on their calendars. Its quarterly results provided a rare window into the burgeoning market for organic food and how upscale Americans ate and shopped. And everyone, whether bull or bear, had an opinion.

Those days are gone. Since last August, when Whole Foods was swallowed up by Amazon.com, there's been a virtual blackout. The grocery chain is now little more than a footnote in the e-commerce behemoth's earnings statements. Barely a peep comes out of analyst calls.

"It's not the same," said Jennifer Bartashus, a retail-staples analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Before, "you could see the whole dynamic playing out. There's no equivalent in the public space right now."

In recent years, organic food has become big business in the U.S., with the likes of Kroger, Trader Joe's and Walmartall crowding into the space. And no single grocer has embodied that upmarket shift into trends such as quinoa, kale and farm-to-table as much as Whole Foods, founded by outspoken vegan John Mackey more than three decades ago.

Rounding error

During Amazon's second-quarter earnings call on Thursday, only one question was asked about Whole Foods. And when Amazon executives do talk about the company's roughly 460 Whole Foods stores, the answers aren't particularly enlightening. They usually amount to some combination of cutting prices, expanding delivery and trying get Prime members to buy more groceries.

Amazon's earnings statements aren't much help either. Revenue from Whole Foods is part of the company's "physical store" line item, which means sales from the chain's wild Alaska sockeye salmon and small-batch olive oil are lumped in with revenue from Amazon's bookstores.

Details on same-store sales? Nope. New store openings? Good luck with that.

There's little doubt that Amazon has shaken up the organic-food industry and worked to shed the grocer's "Whole Paycheck" nickname, which even loyal shoppers derisively use to this day. Yet industry analysts have been left to rely on third-party services to track metrics like price cuts and sales growth.

Christopher Mandeville, whose covers Kroger and other food retailers at Jefferies, still peruses Amazon's earnings transcript to see if Whole Foods is mentioned. He recalls how it was such a lightning rod as a publicly traded company, and at times, misses the heated discussions that investors would have during earnings season.

It was "hotly debated," he said. "It certainly generated a lot of dialogue."

--Bloomberg News

Art

Content Courtesy of: nytimes.com

Written By:  David Segal

Kyungah Ham in her storage room in Seoul, South Korea, where she displays the embroidery made by anonymous artisans in North Korea, following her designs. Each can take the artisans several thousand hours to craft and are confected through a hazard-filled maze.

Credit By: Tim Franco

SEOUL, South Korea — Growing up here in the 1970s, Kyungah Ham would occasionally find propaganda leaflets sent from North Korea via helium balloons. Like her classmates, Ms. Ham turned in the leaflets at school, where she was given a reward for doing a small part in South Korea’s simmering ideological war with its neighbor.

In 2008, when Ms. Ham found another North Korean leaflet — this one under the gate of her parents’ home — it felt like an alien object, blown in from a different planet. By then, she was a multimedia artist who had come to distrust much of the history she’d been taught, and she knew that South Koreans were sending leaflets of their own over the border. That got her wondering: Could she communicate directly with people who, through a geopolitical tragedy now 65 years old, she is forbidden to contact?

It was the birth of what might be the art world’s most extraordinary, ongoing collaboration. For a decade, Ms. Ham has been producing designs on her computer that are printed and smuggled into North Korea through intermediaries based in Russia or China. Then a group of anonymous artisans, whom she has never met or spoken to, are paid to convert them into embroideries, using exquisitely fine stitching. With bribes and subterfuge, the works are smuggled back out. Ultimately, they are shown and sold at galleries and exhibitions.

The most ambitious pieces are large-scale renderings of luminous, glittering chandeliers, some nearly 12 feet wide and 9 feet high, that from a distance look like photographs set against black backdrops. Get closer, and a filigree of stitches appear. Both chandelier and backdrop have been painstakingly composed of silk thread.

On one level, her embroideries are an attempt to reunite through art people who were forcibly separated in 1953 through war. The work marries the strength of the South (technology) to the strength of the North (craftsmanship), and it is confected through a hazard-filled maze.

Ms. Ham in her storage facility, looking at an embroidery of a chandelier. The pieces are sometimes 108 square feet in size.

Credit By: Tim Franco

A lot of artists talk about taking risks, but few mean it as literally as Ms. Ham. International sanctions prohibit commerce with the Hermit Kingdom, so at least theoretically, she could face criminal prosecution for these cash-for-work transactions.

The potential penalties for her collaborators are far graver. If caught, these residents of the world’s most repressive regime could be imprisoned or executed. The dangers facing the North Koreans raise ethical issues that, intended or otherwise, become part of Ms. Ham’s art.

“With Kyungah’s work, it’s difficult to separate the object from the process of making the object,” said Rosalie Kim, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which acquired one of Ms. Ham’s embroideries in 2016. “The risk isn’t the point, but the risk emphasizes the consequences of the separation of the peninsula and what is at stake in trying to overcome it.”

Ms. Ham protects the covert network in her employ with a spymaster’s care, and would not discuss the size of the lump sums that cover the cost of intermediaries, artisans and bribes. But she hides neither her art nor the basics of her methods. The Embroidery Project, as she calls it, has been part of museum group shows in London, Vienna and Singapore, and wall labels beside each piece succinctly explain how it was made.

“North Korean Hand Embroidery,” reads one label. “Silk threads on cotton, middleman, anxiety, censorship, ideology, wooden frame, approx. 2200 hours/2 persons.”

On first meeting, Ms. Ham seems wildly miscast for the role she has created for herself. She would be the first to admit that she is lousy at coping with stress, now a permanent feature of her life. Once, on a flight to meet an intermediary, she collapsed with a stomach ailment so painful and severe that as soon as she landed, she was put on the next plane back to Seoul and admitted to a hospital.

“Are You Lonely, Too?” is part of what artist Ms. Ham calls her SMS Series in Camouflage. It’s conceived on a computer in Seoul and turned into an embroidery on silk by unknown artisans in North Korea.

Credit By: Joon Hyung Park

If her nerves are fragile, other parts are made of steel. During interviews in both Paris and Seoul in recent months, she was adamant and particular about nearly everything. Before dinner at a brasserie, she rejected three different tables offered by a host. (Her final choice, it must be said, was superior to the others.) She issued demands about virtually every aspect of this article, including who would photograph her.

And though an introvert by nature, once she overcomes her natural shyness, she is bursting with words.

“If we take it step by step,” she said with a smile early in our first meeting, preparing to describe her life and work, “this will take five hours.”

As Ms. Ham explained, her chandeliers are a symbol of the foreign powers that divided Korea along the 38th Parallel after three years of fighting the Korean War. (The golden age of those powers passed, she said, which is why these chandeliers are either falling or already on the ground.) The border was largely imposed on the peninsula by non-Koreans; Ms. Ham’s favorite word to describe this fact is “absurd.”

As she conceived her embroideries, she was inspired in part by a moment in a documentary about the Mass Games, Pyongyang’s socialist-realist extravaganza of tightly choreographed music, dance and gymnastics. The production includes a crowd, thousands of people strong, holding flip books in front their faces with blocks of colors on each page. The pages are turned in uncannily timed unison, a vast human billboard of seamlessly changing words and images.

Ms. Ham watched and saw the face of a young boy peeking over his color book.

“He was like a pixel in a digital image,” she said. “I wanted to bring this idea to my chandeliers. Behind them are highly skilled embroidery workers, whom you can’t see, but they memorialize themselves, stitch by stitch.”

One of Ms. Ham’s embroideries. The pieces are smuggled back to her from North Korea in a black plastic bag, and initially reek of cigarette smoke.

Credit By: Tim Franco

Pieces typically come back folded up in black plastic bags, reeking of cigarette smoke. Her first move is to hang up the work and air it out. The round trip to and from North Korea can take as long as a year, a process she likens to shouting from a mountain top and hearing her voice 12 months later.

Ms. Ham is not idle while she waits, and the embroideries are just one facet of a varied career. Since earning an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York, in 1995, she has been making videos, sculptures, photographs and an assortment of installations. One recurring impulse is to highlight the ways power is abused, and for whatever reason, she is drawn to methods that give her agita.

With an installation called “Museum Display,” in 2010, theme and practice were combined. She has long been irked by the many Western museums filled with cultural treasures from other countries — think of the Elgin marbles, originally part of the Parthenon in Greece, which have spent the last 200 years in the British Museum. With wit and irony, Ms. Ham pilloried this tradition by stealing hundreds of mundane objects from museums around the world, including forks, saucers, knives, vases, salt and pepper shakers. She then displayed them in a huge glass case, under lights, labeling each item with the gravity befitting a looted masterpiece.

“Sign, ‘These doors are alarmed,’ 10cm x 10 cm, the British Museum, 2009,” reads one.

Her other great passion is connecting to strangers, and the Embroidery Project is an expression of that urge. Among the first images she conceived for her artisans were stylized words, rendered in both Korean and English, and set against abstract and colorful designs. One simply read “I’m sorry,” in the two languages.

“I wanted to tell these artisans, ‘I’m sorry about the situation,’” she said. “‘I am sorry about what history has done to us.’”

Later, she began what she calls the “SMS Series in Camouflage,” in which she weaves faint words, in script, into almost psychedelic oil slicks of color. One of these not-so-secret messages reads “Big Smile,” an instruction for performers during the Mass Games. When a gallerist urged her to employ embroiderers in China, arguing it would be far quicker and easier, she felt misunderstood enough to create a new message: “Are you lonely, too?”

The largest collection of Ms. Ham’s work is in her storage facility. The words under the chandelier, “Perhaps, I secretly longed for our liaison to fail,” come from a popular Korean song and express her complicated feelings about her collaboration with North Korean embroiderers.

Credit By: Tim Franco

Many early works were confiscated by North Korean authorities, either on the way in or out of the country. She has gone through several intermediaries, one of whom simply took her money, and has gradually found ways to work with standout artisans, using a code to convey her admiration for certain pieces. The result is a rarity — conceptual art in which the finished product is every bit as compelling as the concept itself.

“There are a lot of beautiful things you can buy at Art Basel, and there are a lot of clever conceptual strategies out there,” said Roger Buergel, the German-born artistic director of the 2012 Busan Biennale, which featured work by Ms. Ham. “She unites these two poles in a singular way. The pieces themselves are spectacular.”

Though she has given interviews in the past, she spent months wavering about whether to speak to The Times. Friends have told her “Don’t get too famous.” Citing fatigue, she stopped answering texted questions a few weeks ago, including one about the summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore last month. Would a rapprochement change — or even end — her project?

After a long silence, she sent a text a few day ago that said that if North Korea joined the brotherhood of nations, her work would be reinterpreted in a new political context and, she wrote, “stay alive in history.”

Today, her pieces sell for prices ranging from $25,000 to $300,000 in the Carlier Gebauer Gallery in Berlin and the Kukje Gallery in Seoul. But the largest collection of her work is in her storage facility outside Seoul. During a visit in February, Ms. Ham offered a tour of what is little more than a large and bare room, with embroideries neatly stacked against each other on the floor.

Ms. Ham roamed around the space, beaming. She is somewhat ambivalent about parting with her chandeliers, especially if they are just going to hang on someone’s wall. Her preference is to lend pieces to exhibitions, or sell them to museums, where the largest possible audience can consider their improbable journey and marvel at their virtuosity.

“I don’t tell the galleries about everything I have,” she said with a grin, “because they will sell it.”

Food

The Big Mac is turning 50! Here's how to score a free McDonald's burger

What's better than a Big Mac? A totally free Big Mac.

Content Courtesy of: today.com

Written By:  Erica Chayes Wida

Move over, Bitcoin! There's a new global currency coming to town and it's something people can see, feel ... and turn into a Big Mac! If you've been craving coins stamped with a burger, it's time to collect.

On Thursday, McDonald's will launch its most recent innovation: The MacCoin. This universal "food currency" is being launched to honor the Big Mac's 50th birthday and can be used in 50 different countries to score a free Big Mac.

Get your hands on a limited-edition MacCoin on Aug. 2.

Mickey D's has come up with some wild promotions in the past, including a catchy jingle for breakfast lovers and a Twitter contest with a $12,500 diamond "Bling Mac" ring prize. Unlike that bejeweled Big Mac, MacCoins will be a bit more attainable ... with more than 6 million being released worldwide.

Starting at lunchtime on Thursday, customers who purchase a Big Mac will receive a free MacCoin at participating locations in the U.S. The coins can then be redeemed for a free sandwich starting on Friday. They'll be valid through the end of the year at any participating location in the world.

So far, it looks like some vegatarians even want a bite of the coin collection.

McDonald's is offering the new food currency in honor of The Big Mac turning 50 this year — so it's sort of like a universally-distributed birthday party favor. The chain's signature burger was originally created by entrepreneur and McDonald's franchise owner Jim Delligatti who dreamed up the double-patty burger topped with special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. It was launched onto the national menu in 1968. Aug. 2 was also Delligatti's birthday (he passed away in 2016) but his family will also be celebrating his memory, according to a company statement.

There will be five different MacCoins, with each representing the last five decades of the burger. The first coin is decorated with flowers to represent the period of "flower power" in the years it was first invented. Other MacCoins allude to pop art in the 1980s and "bold, abstract" shapes like a pair of Mario Lopez's favorite A.C. Slater pants from the 1990s. The fifth MacCoin shows off the technological boom and is also stamped with emojis.

According to a McDonald's spokesperson, the inspiration to create these coins came from the "Big Mac Index," which The Economist began using in 1986 to "measure the purchasing power of international currencies every year." Creating a coin to represent the longevity of the popular burger seemed only fitting.

But don't worry about missing the chance to snag a MacCoin on Thursday. The fast food chain is still offering $1 Big Macs on its mobile app through the end of September.

Innovation

Meet Noah, the latest biobased, electric vehicle

Content Courtesy of: biofuelsdigest.com

Written By: Rebecca Coons

In the Netherlands, students at the Eindhoven University of Technology have built an electric car from flax fiber and sugar. Dubbed Noah, the two-seater weighs just 420 kg, including the battery.

The car’s chassis and interior are comprised of panels of bioplastic and flax fiber, while the body is made of flax mats injected with a biobased resin. Because the materials weigh so little, Noah’s battery weighs just 60 kg—compared with regular electric car batteries that require several hundred kg.

Once the car has completed its useful life, it can be ground down and used as raw material for other products.

Cas Verstappen, one of the students who worked on the project, tells Automotive Business Review that the project was targeted toward building awareness. “We want to show that a circular economy is already possible in complex products such as cars.”

The Noah concept EV will be constructed using biocomposite panels with a sugarcane PLA matrix sandwiched inbetween

Credit By: HOWDO Creative Direction

Wall Decor Inspiration

The Noah concept EV has been designed to be sustainable during production and usage, and recyclable at the end of its operational life

Credit By: Keyshot by Luxion

The Noah concept city car is unlikely to include many of the comforts seen in modern vehicles, but will undergo regulatory testing for roadworthiness and safety

Credit By: Keyshot by Luxion

The Noah concept electric city car from TU/ecomotive will be constructed over the coming months, ahead of a meet and greet tour of European cities due to kick off in June or July 2018

Credit By: Keyshot by Luxion

2017's Lina  electric four-seater was the first TU/ecomotive concept to use biocomposite and bio-plastics

Music

The Best Songs to Listen To From July 2018

Tune into the best new releases you might've missed.

Content Courtesy of: harpersbazaar.com

Written By: Erica Gonzales

At the peak of the summer, the new releases are just as hot as the weather. Check out our favorite new tracks below, and check back in throughout the month for new additions.

"Boo'd Up (Remix)" by T-Pain

Following "Panda" and "Bartier Cardi," Ella Mai's breakout track is the latest hit to get blessed with T-Pain's genius. Nicki Minaj and Quavo might've teamed up for a remix that same week, but this one takes the cake—and every last crumb.

"Doesn't Matter" by Christine and the Queens

Frontwoman Héloïse Letissier told Zayn Lowe that the song was bold, exposed, and confessional. "There is a sense of despair also in this record but it’s strangely empowering at the same time," she said, per Spin. The track, a sharp and clean spin on '80s pop, is the second single from her upcoming album, Chris.

"Feels Like Summer" by Childish Gambino

In the middle of July, Donald Glover hit us with two cool new summer jams to counter the summer heat; "Feels Like Summer" is the more ambient of the pair. They're both co-produced by Ludwig Goransson, whom he worked with on the poignant "This Is America," which just goes to show the kind of range we can expect from Gambino's upcoming album.

"1999 Wildfire" by BROCKHAMPTON

The hip-hop crew is a prodigious new favorite that proved over a series of EPs that no sound is outside of their comfort zone. With "1999 Wildfire," BROCKHAMPTON adopts a smooth retro R&B vibe—at times channeling old-school Outkast—for the first supposed single from their next album. Though they dropped one member after a sexual misconduct controversy, the group's momentum is unstoppable.

"Better" by SG Lewis feat. Clairo

Indie-pop up-and-comer Clairo nabbed a crossover hit just over a month after releasing her debut EP. Her languid vocals plus SG Lewis' disco-inspired production results in a danceable banger with that too-cool-for-you vibe. The pairing was unexpected but Clairo assured in a statement that was a "match made in heaven."

"God is a woman" by Ariana Grande

After her first two Sweetener singles, "No Tears Left to Cry" and "The Light Is Coming," this is probably Grande's biggest one yet. It's reminiscent of the pure pop mastery of Dangerous Woman, while taking a jab at the patriarchy. (Oh, and the last 30 seconds are pure choral bliss.) "To my fellow goddesses who work their asses off every day to 'break the glass ceiling,' this is for you," the star wrote.

"Endless" by Garren Sean

The Bay Area producer, who's previously worked with Chance the Rapper, brings hints of Coloring Book (and some Francis and the Lights influences) to the opening track of his new Sundrip EP. Sean brings elements like soulful guitar licks, an ethereal R&B vibe, and trap hi-hats together for a chill gem.

"Wildin'" by berhana

The singer-songwriter and Atlanta native finds himself evaluating his success on the first single off his next project. It's "about losing sight of yourself, about getting swept up in the moment and forgetting about what you came here to do," he said in a statement.

“Look What U Started” by The Internet

Following 2015’s Ego Death, Syd, Steve Lacy, and Matt Martians pursued equally impressive solo projects, but the band came back together to make the cohesive, aptly-titled Hive Mind. The record is chock-full of soul-funk jams, but this one’s bass line is especially alluring, right from the bass line.

“65th & Ingleside” by Chance the Rapper

Weeks after becoming engaged to longtime girlfriend Kirsten Corley, Chance released a track where he looks back at the hard times they endured together while living on 65th and Ingleside in Chicago. He praises her financial and emotional support through their low points, and ends with: “Truth is I just really need your finger size / So I can make sure that they make the ring so tight.” Excuse us while we cry softly.

“WWYD?” by DRAM

DRAM gets us thinking on his new track: “If you gotta check in your name for a hundred thousand dollars, honestly, what would you do?” he asks in the hook. The Virginia rapper/R&B star surprised us with the song—and two others—on a new three-track EP, That's a Girls Name, to follow up his 2016 album Big Baby DRAM.

“Real Life S**t” by Buddy

Compton rapper Buddy makes a stunning debut with his album, Harlan & Alondra, where he gets pensive about his childhood, upbringing, and identity, with features including a hip-hop vet (Snoop Dogg), a ubiquitous collaborator (Ty Dolla $ign), and a budding pop star (Khalid). This intro track—produced by Bruno Mars collaborator Brody Brown and co-written by Terrace Martin—sets the scene for the rest of the record. If you want a good dance bop to groove to, add “The Blue” (featuring Snoop) to your queue.

“Maybe 25” by Minke

This only marks the third single for the London-bred up-and-comer, but it sounds like she’s been releasing music for years. Minke pairs her soothing vocals over an uplifting pop-rock vibe in this commentary on the lack of real connections in today’s society. Keep an eye out for her EP coming this fall.

“Potato Salad” by Tyler, the Creator and A$AP Rocky

The rappers bring their friendship into a freestyle collab that’s part swagger and part humor (“This ain’t a purse, it’s a satchel,” Rocky raps). The pair exchanges verses over “Knock Knock by Monica, which was produced by Kanye West. You won’t find this on streaming services, so keep the YouTube video bookmarked if you’re a fan.

“Charcoal Baby” by Blood Orange

Dev Hynes returned with two new songs to preview his upcoming album Negro Swan, which he called “an exploration into my own and many types of black depression,” according to Rolling Stone. “Charcoal Baby” is a depiction of that loneliness and being an outsider, laid over the artist’s signature lo-fi ‘80s sound. Just wait until the saxophone solo at the end.

“BLACK BALLOONS | 13LACK 13ALLOONZ” by Denzel Curry feat. Twelve’len and Goldlink

On his three-part new album, Ta13oo, the Floridian rapper brings back the hard-hitting verses that earned him acclaim on his 2016 record, Imperial. But he also shows his versatility with this unexpected pop/R&B crossover.

“My Love” by VanJess

The sister duo acquired a lot of collaborators for their debut album, including Kaytranada and Goldlink, but they really make an impression in the opening track with Soulection producer Da-P. The duo offers a dark, moody, and modern style of R&B (think Kelela’s Take Me Apart era) that serves as a perfect tipping off point for their promising careers.

“Hypothalamus” by Ruthven

The producer and artist delivers a masterful spin on ‘80s-inspired synth pop with a nod to his profession as a firefighter. The track was named after the part of the brain that acts as the body’s thermostat (which he learned in a first aid course on the job). As an artist, it became a “metaphor for the physical impact of heartbreak,” according to a release.

Movies

Guardians of the Galaxy Star Quits Twitter After James Gunn's Firing

Content Courtesy of: screenrant.com

Written By:  DAN ZINSKI

Writer-director James Gunn's firing over years-old offensive tweets has prompted Guardians of the Galaxy star Michael Rooker to quit Twitter. Gunn was let go by Disneyon Friday after a number of his tweets, all posted before he went to work on the first Guardians of the Galaxy film, resurfaced and touched off a firestorm.

Gunn later apologized for the tweets, characterizing them as failed attempts at humor, and insisting he's grown as a person in the intervening years. Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista defended Gunn, and later more cast members also spoke out in favor of the embattled director, including Zoe Saldana and Chris Pratt. As of Sunday afternoon, a fan petition calling for Disney to re-hire Gunn had garnered over 65,000 signatures.

In another demonstration of solidarity with the ousted Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy star Michael Rooker said on Monday that he is quitting Twitter (via CBR). Rooker briefly posted tweets explaining his decision before deleting his account, leading to the tweets also disappearing. The actor's now-deleted statement read in part:

Rooker first worked with Gunn on the director's 2006 horror movie Slither, then reunited with him for the 2010 action comedy Super, the film that more than any other led to Gunn being hired by Disney to adapt Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy into a film. Gunn brought Rooker aboard Guardians as the Ravagers leader Yondu, the man responsible for kidnapping Chris Pratt's Peter Quill. Rooker returned as Yondu for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and played an even bigger part, becoming a focal point of the plot.

Though Gunn has received plenty of condemnation for his old tweets, many of which referenced rape and pedophilia, he has also received an outpouring of support not just from Guardians of the Galaxy cast members but the movie industry at large. With Gunn at the head of Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel, the films grossed $1.6 billion worldwide. Shortly before his firing, Gunn had completed work on a draft of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which reportedly would be set after the apocalyptic events of this year's Avengers: Infinity War. Disney has thus far given no word on who might take over writing and directing chores on the third Guardians film now that Gunn has been fired.

Entertainment

VIRAL ENTERTAINMENT FACEBOOK PUBLISHERS SURGE IN POPULARITY IN JULY 2018

Content Courtesy of: tubularinsights.com

Written By:  Bree Brouwer

Thanks to July’s Facebook leaderboards, we know the top ten most-watched publishers and brands on that platform garnered just over 10.9 billion total views last month. That, of course, doesn’t touch on the billions of views from the remaining 90 publishers in the top 100, and it certainly doesn’t tell us anything about the top trends and insights dominating July’s leaderboard, which video showrunners around the world want to know about so they can improve their own digital strategies. So let’s take a look at those trends and key players from last month, shall we? For starters, here’s the rundown of July’s highlights:

• Five publishers claimed at least 1 billion views each.
• The highest average 30-day engagement rate (ER30) of the top ten publishers hit 1.7x, while the highest ER30 of the top 100 publishers hit just over 2.8x, almost 3 times a normal engagement rate.
• The best 30-day average (V30) from the top ten was more than 15.4 million, while the best overall V30 across the top 100 publishers landed at 24.2 million.
• Out of all 100 publishers, six of them increased rankings by at least 100 positions each, with the position change of 530 spots being the highest of all.

Top Facebook Video Publishers July 2018

July’s top ten Facebook publishers and brands are familiar faces to Tubular’s monthly leaderboard, such as UNILAD and The Dodo. The most change in views, however, tends to occur farther down the leaderboard across the top 100 publishers, and that’s certainly what we saw this month. Two media brands , in particular,saw fantastic view gains for some of their sub-properties, and there were a few new faces from the viral and animal-based content genres, as well. Let’s take a look:

Two Media Brands See Substantial View Growth in July

You know your brand is doing something right when several of your properties move leaps and bounds up the leaderboard due to millions of more views. In July, both the UK-based MediaChain and Germany-based Axel Springer experienced this phenomenon, with the media giants massively increasing their views and growth on some of their select properties.

MediaChain, for example, runs the Facebook pages for viral entertainment brand See More and the what I’m calling the “life experiences” comedy brand 9 to 5 Life, because it provides witty commentary-style videos on everyday happenings in life like work, school, and family. SeeMore bumped up 12 spots to land at #12 thanks to almost 640 million views, while 9 to 5 Life gained a highly-enviable 307 positions to place seventeenth with nearly 491 million views! Why did these two pages gain more video views in July? It likely has to do with both media brands providing more of the exact content their audiences want to see, as both increased their number of uploads in July (SeeMore had 294 videos vs. June’s 261, 9 to 5 Life had 286 videos vs. July’s 99). More videos inevitably means more eyeballs, but SeeMore and 9 to 5 Life also succeeded in gaining more traction thanks to on-point content their audiences love.

Like MediaChain, Axel Springer enjoyed the benefits of higher viewership in July, too, mainly across its family of Insider-related properties. For example, across the month’s top 100 publishers, we saw INSIDER Presents at #54 after jumping up 66 positions, DESSERT Insider at #57 after moving up 48 spots, STYLE Insider placing #78 after gaining an impressive 118 positions, and INVENTIONS Insider landing at #89 thanks to an increase of 26 spots. Now, all these brands are Facebook Watch shows, which means they probably had paid and organic promotion going for them, along with pushes from Facebook’s own algorithm. That being said, both INSIDER Presents and DESSERT Insider worked with sponsors on a few videos in late June and early July, which also helped increase their viewership; this video about a dress-zipping tool, for example, was sponsored by Delta Hotels and pulled in 4.7 million views to date.

Insight:

Peak Games' campaign with Ryan Reynolds shows how ad performance metrics have evolved to measure results of video spots and allow advertisers to make quick adjustments to a media placement strategy. It will be interesting to see how the Peak Games campaign performs, and what lessons there will be for other brands that are looking to boost the efficiency of their marketing efforts.

According to VentureBeat, Peak's mobile card game studio was bought by Zynga last year for $100 million in cash. Zynga's acquisitions over the last year, combined with its change to Unity Technologies as its advertising partner show a company looking to dominate not only the mobile game industry but its marketing as well.

The partnership with bankable star Ryan Reynolds is likely to only further boost its prominence. The actor this year announced an interest in Aviation Gin, whose brand owner Davos Brands said Reynolds will "play an active role in the day-to-day business and oversee creative direction." He was also the voice (if not the face) of several successful "Deadpool"-based campaigns, including an AR activation with 7-Eleven, a pop-up by Mike's Harder and a commercial for Devour frozen sandwiches.

Peak Games was estimated to have more than doubled its revenue in 2017 with popular titles like Toy Blast. The company also created mobile card games like Okey Plus, Spades Plus and Gin Rummy Plus that allow users to join games among communities of players.