Well, we are really glad the the President at least pardoned one Turkey this Thanksgiving. As much as we love the spirit of this holiday, the overall shedding of little and large Turkey’s sends chills down our little and large spines. Nevertheless, we herein bring you a few of the most notable tunes heard on Turkey day and all the other notable happenings in November.
MACY’S DAY PARADE
FASHION
ALIVE AND WELL IN NOVEMBER
Written by: Olivier Saillant for Colette Pop-Up Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Content courtesy of: Chanel
For the latest takeover of renowned Parisian concept store Colette, Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel created an exclusive Adidas sneaker with musician Pharrell Williams, available on the first floor. The month-long residency (also offering limited-edition tees designed by Lagerfeld, soundtracks by Michel Gaubert, and more) was on through November 25. And after 20 years, Colette closes its’ door for the last time on December 20.
ART
THE LOUVRE OPENS IN ABU-DHABI
Written by: Alexandra Peers for ArtinAmericaMagazine.com Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Content by: Mohamed Somji Courtesy of: The Louvre Abu Dhabi
The Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum opened officially to the public November 11, though Arab sheikhs, French president Emmanuel Macron, and other VIPs got an early preview.
Designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Jean Nouvel, the museum comprises some fifty white-cube galleries that spill from under a perforated steel canopy, off which sunlight flickers across the sprawling 260,000-square-foot complex. Sitting on the seaside of the United Arab Emirates’ capital city, the institution resembles nothing so much as a floating, cracked-open Rubik’s Cube in white and grey. And, much like a Rubik’s Cube, it is both maddening and addictive.
In an unprecedented deal, many of the several hundred artworks inside are on loan from the Louvre and from a dozen French national institutions in a consortium dubbed Agence France-Muséums. (The thirty-year partnership, which reportedly cost Abu Dhabi one billion dollars including construction, entails special exhibitions, revolving art loans, curatorial consultations with a raft of Louvre staffers and the loan of the Louvre brand name.) The display diverges from the encyclopedic tradition epitomized by the Louvre—the collection is organized by era, and sometimes topic, rather than by geography. Adieu to the “Egyptian Wing” and the “Arts of Asia Gallery.” Here, in one of the ancient art galleries, a Gandharan figure from Central Asia stands next to a Roman one, flanked by a Han dynasty horse and a pre-Columbian mask. Another room pairs the legendary Blue Qur’an—a medieval manuscript on indigo-dyed vellum—with a Yemenite Torah and a fifteenth-century French Bible. In a witty gallery illustrating the art of war, Napoleon rides in on horseback, crossing the Alps in one of Jacques-Louis David’s most famous paintings, this version on loan from Versailles The display is a visual farrago. But as with the Barnes Museum, the jumble can occasionally be magnificent.
First announced over a decade ago, the museum has been plagued by delays and controversy. The global media has reported on substandard working conditions at the construction site (though the issue was given short shrift in the news coverage on the eve of this week’s unveiling). In his opening remarks, Jean-Luc Martinez, president of the Louvre, briefly addressed these concerns. “We made sure that [conditions for] all the workers on the site conformed to all the regulations of the country,” he said.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi was supposed to be the first of several starchitect-designed cultural institutions on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, all of which are now in various degrees of limbo: a Guggenheim satellite by Frank Gehry, the Maritime Museum by Tadao Ando, a performing arts complex from the studio of the late Zaha Hadid, and a museum in honor of Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, former president of the UAE, from Foster+ Partners (the British Museum withdrew from its partnership agreement with the Zayed National Museum last month).
But the Louvre Abu Dhabi pressed on. The UAE augmented the Louvre’s loans with its own recent acquisitions and commissions. These include a handful of glorious early photographs (many of which are from Egypt), works by Jenny Holzer and Ai Weiwei, and a Piet Mondrian that formerly belonged to Yves Saint Laurent.
The blockbuster Impressionist room, much of its material from the Musée D’Orsay, Paris, features beautful works by Manet, Caillebotte, Monet, and other big names. It risks coming off as a “greatest hits” of French painting. But few of the works are the overexposed ones seen on gift-shop postcards. In the modernist galleries, a black-and-white Jackson Pollock hangs opposite a moody, deep-purple Mark Rothko. The paintings sit so gorgeously in conversation that you can imagine both artists making the works for just this space.
Viewers who dive into every corner will be rewarded. There is a sarcophagus visible only after negotiating a maze of black marble vitrines, while a dimly lit side gallery opens onto an Art Deco room by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, transported from the Champs Élysées. Other highlights include an 1888 van Gogh self-portrait, La belle ferronnière (ca. 1490–96) by Leonardo da Vinci (though its attribution has been disputed for decades), Bellini’s vivid and spiritual 1480-85 Mother and Child, and Paul Gauguin’s Children Wrestling (1888).
There are problems. The need to have wall text in three languages minimizes the information avaialable in each one. The Nouvel building and its grounds are unfinished, so first impressions, at least from the land-locked side are underwhelming. The organizers are simply trying to do too much here, and the historical narrative can get muddy. Consider that, in the Renaissance galleries, dishes from the Ottoman empire sit in front of the aforementioned da Vinci. However, if this juxtaposition rankles, it is easy enough to forgive when you spot works by Titian and Holbein hanging nearby. (One guest from France, where the collaboration has been criticized as a sale of the nation’s cultural patrimony, argued the latter was a “basement Holbein” piece. But it is not in my basement, and I wish it were.)
All in all, while the Louvre Abu Dhabi can seem in places like an art-historical CliffsNotes, the ambition to reshuffle the deck and the fabulous objects thus brought together make the museum a game-changer. It has the potential to dramatically shift perspectives on world culture. On a personal note, I was sorry to leave. I wanted to tour one last time to see what I had missed. Blessed and mobile as some of us are in the art world, we see a great many museums and become jaded. This one offers a sense of new discovery. At the opening, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, made an announcement that would have sounded puffy patriotism if it were not delivered with such a genuine thrill and effervescence. “It is a great day, a great day when you will all see history,” he said. “This is a museum for the world. It will broadcast tolerance, acceptance, culture.” May it be so.
HOSPITALITY
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE A HOTEL LOBBY
Written by: Rosie Spinks for QUARTZY Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Content by: Ian Schrager
It may have taken them a while, but it’s fair to say that the hotel industry finally sees Airbnb as a bona fide threat. And that threat is much of the reason why hotel groups are launching new products and concepts to go after the same young, lucrative, and digitally-inclined demographic that Airbnb so effectively lures.
However, in trying to emulate the company—which is valued at more than Hilton and Hyatt combined—hotels might be missing an obvious beat. As boutique hotel pioneer Ian Shrager told Skift recently, hotels already have something that Airbnb can’t offer: communal space (known by most folks as the hotel lobby). Sure, it may be a standard, if not a bit ho-hum, concept. But the tried and true hotel lobby offers unique advantages for a variety of reasons—chief among them, as Shrager pointed out, is that Airbnb (with its inventory of private homes) “can’t do it.”
Despite this, the innovation that we’re seeing again and again today seems to be focused on everything but lobbies. Instead, hospitality companies appear obsessed with “customizable” and “connected” experiences as well as surface level features and add-ons that have, for better or worse, become synonymous with millennials. For example, Hilton just released its “Connected Room” which is anchored around modern conveniences like syncing your Netflix account with the in-room TV, using your phone to turn off the lights and adjust the temperature, and solving the great injustice of generic hotel artwork by replacing it with your camera roll.
Hilton’s Joshua Sloser, Senior Vice President of Digital, says that the “Connected Room is rooted in the unique needs of our guests, who have voiced an increasing desire to personalize their stays.” Of course Hilton’s new product may appeal to those beyond the millennial demographic—after all, nearly every traveler is connected digitally these days. Yet this kind of innovation is indicative of the larger trend of brands rolling out “millennial-focused” hotel rooms, with the standard-issue fast wifi, minimalist furniture, and cheaper prices they supposedly desire.
While this can’t necessarily hurt, there’s no guarantee it’ll help, either. What could help, as Shrager hints at, is focusing on the specific reasons why a traveler should stay in a hotel over another disruptive accommodation option. Positioning the hotel lobby as a communal space for collaboration, spontaneity, and an overall atmosphere you can’t get at home—and re-designing them to enhance those very qualities—is a good place to start. It’s an offering that someone’s rented apartment can’t touch and provides a much needed dose of old-fashioned fun and novelty that’s worth leaving home for. This, at the end of the day, might still be a hotel’s most valuable proposition.
Hotel chains like Ace Hotel have built entire properties around this notion of curated pleasure and service mixed with function. They’ve designed many of their properties’ lobbies as quasi co-working spaces, where you’re just as likely to find a local freelancer or relaxing creative as you are an actual hotel guest. Shrager’s newest property, PUBLIC Hotel New York, opened in earlier this year on the Lower East Side and has also clearly embraced the “lobby-as-lifestyle” trend. PUBLIC ditched usual amenities like check-in desks and room service to focus on spacious public and communal spaces where guests can mix, mingle and get a solid sense of the hotel’s DNA. Again, the emphasis is as much on functionality as fun—what else to expect from the man behind not just the boutique hotel concept, but the legendary NYC nightspot Studio 54.
In blurring the line between bar, lobby, and hotel business center, spaces like Ace and PUBLIC invite guests to linger and enjoy the novelty of the hotel experience, whether they’re drinking a cocktail or working on a business proposal—or, likely, both at the same time. Another variation on this theme is the current renaissance of luxury hostels, with travelers seeing the benefit of paying for an experience that comes with a built-in space to meet like-minded people and hoteliers offering them surroundings as appealing as a hipster bar.
It took the hotel industry a while to come to grips with the threat that the sharing economy poses. They now have the opportunity to innovate around their own strengths, in addition to going after the competition.
TECH AND INNOVATION
A BIT ABOUT BITCOIN
Written by: Martin Venezky and modification by THE REVIEW
Content by: wired.com
In November 1, 2008, a man named Satoshi Nakamoto posted a research paper to an obscure cryptography listserv describing his design for a new digital currency that he called bitcoin. None of the list’s veterans had heard of him, and what little information could be gleaned was murky and contradictory. In an online profile, he said he lived in Japan. His email address was from a free German service. Google searches for his name turned up no relevant information; it was clearly a pseudonym. But while Nakamoto himself may have been a puzzle, his creation cracked a problem that had stumped cryptographers for decades. The idea of digital money—convenient and untraceable, liberated from the oversight of governments and banks—had been a hot topic since the birth of the Internet. Cypherpunks, the 1990s movement of libertarian cryptographers, dedicated themselves to the project. Yet every effort to create virtual cash had foundered. Ecash, an anonymous system launched in the early 1990s by cryptographer David Chaum, failed in part because it depended on the existing infrastructures of government and credit card companies. Other proposals followed—bit gold, RPOW, b-money—but none got off the ground.
One of the core challenges of designing a digital currency involves something called the double-spending problem. If a digital dollar is just information, free from the corporeal strictures of paper and metal, what’s to prevent people from copying and pasting it as easily as a chunk of text, “spending” it as many times as they want? The conventional answer involved using a central clearinghouse to keep a real-time ledger of all transactions—ensuring that, if someone spends his last digital dollar, he can’t then spend it again. The ledger prevents fraud, but it also requires a trusted third party to administer it.
Bitcoin did away with the third party by publicly distributing the ledger, what Nakamoto called the “block chain.” Users willing to devote CPU power to running a special piece of software would be called miners and would form a network to maintain the block chain collectively. In the process, they would also generate new currency. Transactions would be broadcast to the network, and computers running the software would compete to solve irreversible cryptographic puzzles that contain data from several transactions. The first miner to solve each puzzle would be awarded 50 new bitcoins, and the associated block of transactions would be added to the chain. The difficulty of each puzzle would increase as the number of miners increased, which would keep production to one block of transactions roughly every 10 minutes. In addition, the size of each block bounty would halve every 210,000 blocks—first from 50 bitcoins to 25, then from 25 to 12.5, and so on. Around the year 2140, the currency would reach its preordained limit of 21 million bitcoins.
When Nakamoto’s paper came out in 2008, trust in the ability of governments and banks to manage the economy and the money supply was at its nadir. The US government was throwing dollars at Wall Street and the Detroit car companies. The Federal Reserve was introducing “quantitative easing,” essentially printing money in order to stimulate the economy. The price of gold was rising. Bitcoin required no faith in the politicians or financiers who had wrecked the economy—just in Nakamoto’s elegant algorithms. Not only did bitcoin’s public ledger seem to protect against fraud, but the predetermined release of the digital currency kept the bitcoin money supply growing at a predictable rate, immune to printing-press-happy central bankers and Weimar Republic-style hyperinflation.
Nakamoto himself mined the first 50 bitcoins—which came to be called the genesis block—on January 3, 2009. For a year or so, his creation remained the province of a tiny group of early adopters. But slowly, word of bitcoin spread beyond the insular world of cryptography. It has won accolades from some of digital currency’s greatest minds. Wei Dai, inventor of b-money, calls it “very significant”; Nick Szabo, who created bit gold, hails bitcoin as “a great contribution to the world”; and Hal Finney, the eminent cryptographer behind RPOW, says it’s “potentially world-changing.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocate for digital privacy, eventually started accepting donations in the alternative currency.
The small band of early bitcoiners all shared the communitarian spirit of an open source software project. Gavin Andresen, a coder in New England, bought 10,000 bitcoins for $50 and created a site called the Bitcoin Faucet, where he gave them away for the hell of it. Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida programmer, conducted what bitcoiners think of as the first real-world bitcoin transaction, paying 10,000 bitcoins to get two pizzas delivered from Papa John’s. (He sent the bitcoins to a volunteer in England, who then called in a credit card order transatlantically.) A farmer in Massachusetts named David Forster began accepting bitcoins as payment for alpaca socks.
When they weren’t busy mining, the faithful tried to solve the mystery of the man they called simply Satoshi. On a bitcoin IRC channel, someone noted portentously that in Japanese Satoshi means “wise.” Someone else wondered whether the name might be a sly portmanteau of four tech companies: SAmsung, TOSHIba, NAKAmichi, and MOTOrola. It seemed doubtful that Nakamoto was even Japanese. His English had the flawless, idiomatic ring of a native speaker.
Perhaps, it was suggested, Nakamoto wasn’t one man but a mysterious group with an inscrutable purpose—a team at Google, maybe, or the National Security Agency. “I exchanged some emails with whoever Satoshi supposedly is,” says Hanyecz, who was on bitcoin’s core developer team for a time. “I always got the impression it almost wasn’t a real person. I’d get replies maybe every two weeks, as if someone would check it once in a while. Bitcoin seems awfully well designed for one person to crank out.”
Nakamoto revealed little about himself, limiting his online utterances to technical discussion of his source code. On December 5, 2010, after bitcoiners started to call for Wikileaks to accept bitcoin donations, the normally terse and all-business Nakamoto weighed in with uncharacteristic vehemence. “No, don’t ‘bring it on,’” he wrote in a post to the bitcoin forum. “The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way. I make this appeal to Wikileaks not to try to use bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.”
Then, as unexpectedly as he had appeared, Nakamoto vanished. At 6:22 pm GMT on December 12, seven days after his Wikileaks plea, Nakamoto posted his final message to the bitcoin forum, concerning some minutiae in the latest version of the software. His email responses became more erratic, then stopped altogether. Andresen, who had taken over the role of lead developer, was now apparently one of just a few people with whom he was still communicating. On April 26, Andresen told fellow coders: “Satoshi did suggest this morning that I (we) should try to de-emphasize the whole ‘mysterious founder’ thing when talking publicly about bitcoin.” Then Nakamoto stopped replying even to Andresen’s emails. Bitcoiners wondered plaintively why he had left them. But by then his creation had taken on a life of its own.
LIFESTYLE AND BRANDS
ABSOLUTE ELIX GOES BUGGY CHIC
Written by: Marcy Medina and modification by THE REVIEW
Content Courtesy of: Absolute Vodka
Capitalizing on the retail trend toward experiences, premium vodka brand Absolut Elyx is growing its burgeoning lifestyle brand with a pair of physical retail outposts in Los Angeles. There is an Elyx boutique at the new Fred Segal in West Hollywood, and on Nov. 27, a mobile version, dubbed the Elyx Boutique Buggy, landed at The Original Farmers Market adjacent to The Grove, through Dec. 24.
Jonas Tåhlin, chief executive officer, said he didn’t set out to sell products other than vodka when he launched the brand three years ago. The focus was on experiential marketing via private events at his historic Hollywood estate, which doubles as a venue for private dinners for the likes of Kate Hudson and Lady Gaga.
The brand developed a copper pineapple cup in partnership with the Edition hotel in Miami a couple of years ago, and started rolling out more items at private events at the Elyx house in Los Angeles. The precious metal is used in its distilling process, with a 1921 still and packets of copper that are used to give the vodka a smooth taste.
“Whenever we had parties, perfectly respectable people were stealing these items, which was frustrating at first. So a year ago we launched elyxboutique.com and the item went out of stock. That’s when we realized we’d become a lifestyle brand, and it just started to grow organically,” said Tåhlin.
Absolut Elyx soon added copper barware and cuff links, and copper sequined bow ties and jackets by Any Old Iron, as well as turbans by Julia Clancey. Retail prices range from $50 to $990 and its first pop-up launched last holiday season in Bryant Park.
“We’ve been getting more requests from customers who want to see and touch these things, so it’s been somewhat of an unexpected turn, like Porsche going into design. It’s never happened in the spirit industry before,” he said. “It’s no longer about what you are drinking, it’s about how you are seated, what you are drinking your cocktail out of, that says a lot about your choices. It could be quite a revolution.”
For every item sold, the brand provides one week’s worth of clean drinking water through the Denver-based NGO Water for People. To date, it has helped 30,000 people access clean drinking water. “Any good luxury brand has a sense of giving back. It might not affect what people buy, but they can feel good about their purchase. I liked that about Toms and Warby Parker, which had philanthropy built into the business model,” Tåhlin said.
While the next step is setting up freestanding stores, the brand first plans to go into select Williams Sonoma locations.
THE REVIEW would like to wish you all a happy and healthy holiday season and a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
October allowed us to catch up a bit and focus on a few things: namely the end of Fashion Week and incredible Tech products flooding the market and changing life as we know it.
Here’s a bit about Fashion and Tech and we’ll see you in December for more overall news happening in November.
FASHION
PARIS FASHION WEEK
GIVENCHY
Written by: NICOLE PHELPS for VOGUE® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of: GIVENCHY®
To mark the changing of the guard at Givenchy, the LVMH-owned house secured the Palais de Justice, a magisterial building of mid-19th-century vintage on the Île de la Cité, never before used for a fashion show. It’s Givenchy’s exclusively for the next three years and it’s dazzling. Clare Waight Keller, the British designer formerly in the creative director’s chair at Chloé, has inherited Givenchy from Riccardo Tisci, who left the label in February after 12 years. That’s an epoch by today’s they’re-in-and-then-they’re-out-again standards. While he was here, he transformed Givenchy into one of the red-hot labels of Paris fashion without so much as a nod in the direction of the archives. Which means that, in a season of debuts, this one was the most keenly anticipated.
In a preview, Waight Keller said she did indeed look back at house founder Hubert de Givenchy’s dynamic sketches, and that she came to the conclusion that he started everything with the shoulder; also, that he was a fan of graphic print. She said she chose two: a clover from 1961 and the animal motifs of 1981. Her color cues came from the archives as well: lots of black and white with pops of mint and red. Waight Keller met the 90-year-old couturier last week and left their hour-long meeting feeling like she had his blessing. He confirmed her impressions about his design aesthetics.
On the runway, that strong shoulder and the graphic patterns were much in evidence. She opened with a double-breasted brass-buttoned coatdress cinched with the season’s de rigueur fanny pack and followed it up with a breezy dress in three different sizes of clover print. Salable stuff, but not high fashion of the kind the industry has been trained to expect from Givenchy. Waight Keller, who had a lot of success with accessories at Chloé, introduced the GV3—a new multi-strap handbag named after Givenchy’s original address on Paris’s Avenue Georges Cinq—and her V-point knee-high boots looked cool and were designed with a woman’s eye for comfort and practicality. Men’s will prove a steep learning curve; her opening salvo looked like Tisci by way of Hedi Slimane. The show ended with evening, which is more Waight Keller’s element. Any one of the little black dresses could end up on Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, or Julianne Moore, all of whom sat front row. Still, the whole remained less than the sum of its parts.
There is no right answer about how to approach a heritage brand in 2017. Do look at the archives or don’t. . . Acknowledge your predecessor or ignore him. . . What’s required are clothes with a heart and soul, something to get the blood pumping. Waight Keller has a big support system behind her at Givenchy and she’s done this before. Let’s give her some time.
CHANEL
Written by: LAUREN ALEXIS FISHER for HARPER’S BAZAAR® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of: CHANEL®
Chanel took over Paris’ Grand Palais for its Fall 2017 couture show. From the Parisian-inspired set to Karl Lagerfeld receiving a very special honor, here’s everything to know from the show.
1) The set was inspired by the iconic fashion house’s home-base: Paris. Models walked underneath a giant Eiffel Tower replica that was created to overarch the runway.
2) The front row was especially star-studded this season. Attendees included Pharrell Williams, Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, Katy Perry, Tracee Ellis Ross, Rowan Blanchard, Cara Delevingne, Kristen Stewart and more.
3) Every look was topped off with a boater hat. Karl Lagerfeld is bringing the early 20th century hat back. The accessory was presented in a variety of tweeds, satin and leather.
4) The collection itself featured a somber color palette of grays and blacks. The first 25 looks were all variations of gray, later leading to head-to-toe black ensembles and a gorgeous Chanel bride in all-white for the finale. Much like the hats, the designs were a nod to the elegance of an early 20th century woman.
5) But the makeup was a technicolor dream. Every model’s look featured an over-the-top rainbow eyeshadow, a bright and welcome contrast to the dark-hued collection.
6) At the end of the show, Karl Lagerfeld received the highest honor of Paris. The city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo presented the designer with a Grand Vermeil medal, the highest distinction the city offers, for his work in the French capital.
ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
Written by: VANESSA FRIEDMAN for THE NEW YORK TIMES® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of: ALEXANDER MCQUEEN®
You do what you can do with the platforms available to you, said Sarah Burton, who built an English bower for her McQueen show, a covered tulle pathway dripping tendrils of blooms. And one thing she could do was offer a moment of grace, a nod to the healing powers of nature, and its regenerative strength.
She did so with cobwebbed crochets in palest blush-pink and raspberry, semidetached frills trailing behind on the floor. With trenches patched together from old posy-strewn quilts. With moth-eaten knits pinned by rhinestone souvenirs. With desiccated tulle and washed organza debutante dresses worn over narrow tuxedo trousers. Even biker boots had clear Lucite heels filled with dried rosebuds and coiled strands of your grandmother’s pearls.
It might have started as an ode to a garden in East Sussex, but implicit in the weft was a reminder: This is one way we remember.
TECH
Here’s a synopsis of a few Tech projects from AD WEEK NY and that have been spoken about throughout the year and are sure to be a hit, inspire others, and blow your mind in the process.
VNTANA
Written by: Natascha French® for BUSINESS WIRE®
Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of: VNTANA®
VNTANA Collaborates with Microsoft, Introduces the HOLLAGRAM: The First Interactive and Social Media Integrated Hologram System
The HOLLAGRAM Combines Real-Time Holographic Video Capture with Interactive Gesture Control, Allowing Consumers to Have an Augmented Reality Experience without Wearables
LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–VNTANA, the augmented reality company that builds the only interactive and scalable hologram systems, launched the HOLLAGRAM, the first interactive hologram system with social media integration and data collection capabilities. The HOLLAGRAM combines Microsoft technology with VNTANA’s hardware and software platform, introducing an advanced social augmented reality experience without wearables.
Hologram Selfies are Here! @VNTANAlive introduces the #HOLLAGRAM in collaboration with @Microsoft #AugmentedReality
The HOLLAGRAM creates a realistic holographic experience that places the digital in the real world. Consumers stand in front of VNTANA’s HOLLAGRAM and immediately see their own hologram LIVE on the display. Using gesture control, they can interact directly with holographic objects, such as a celebrity, product or any other object rendered in the digital space simply by moving their hands in front of the display. Immediately after the experience, users receive a branded email with a GIF, video or photo of the experience that they can share on social media.
The new scalable systems range in size from 32 inches up to 15 feet, and use standalone hardware so everyone can see it. The HOLLAGRAM provides a group experience that can be shared and installed in venues ranging from sport stadiums to conferences to classrooms. Core features include:
Interactive Software: Real-time holographic video capture with interactive gesture control
Social Media Integration: System captures a picture, video or GIF of the user that can be immediately shared on all major social media platforms.
Data Collection: Collects voluntary and passive data from user (captures email contacts, number of impressions, etc.)
“We built the HOLLAGRAM in response to consumers’ proven social behavior and expectations. User-generated content has become so powerful. It is more likely to be reposted, shared and people trust it more,” said Ashley Crowder, Co-Founder and CEO of VNTANA. “Technology is moving towards extreme personalization that will help consumers and brands improve future experiences.”
VNTANA was founded in 2012 with the goal of allowing people to be in multiple places at the same time. Microsoft’s strong entrepreneurial ecosystem played an essential role in the development of the HOLLAGRAM. In 2013, after hacking on the Microsoft Kinect, VNTANA became a part of the Microsoft Early Developer and Microsoft BizSpark programs and gained access to Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, and Visual Studio developer tools. These provided core capabilities for the HOLLAGRAM’s data collection needs and social media integration. “Microsoft has been a huge part of our success, both as a partner and now as a client,” added Crowder. “Their technology provided us the tools to build the next generation of our products.”
Empowering startups like VNTANA is a main driver for Microsoft. “We are always looking for startups and entrepreneurs whose vision is built around innovation of our technology,” said Larry Orecklin, Vice President, Developer Experience and Chief Evangelist of Microsoft. “VNTANA is a story of a startup that had the vision, the innovation, the passion, and we are thrilled to have partnered with them and excited to see what the future looks like for holograms.”
VNTANA’s interactive hologram technologies are applicable globally and across multiple industries including advertising, retail, business communications, sports, automotive, education, healthcare and entertainment. VNTANA has been used by many Fortune 500 brands including Pepsi, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, NBC, Virgin, DJI and others.
About VNTANA
VNTANA is the leader in social augmented reality; creating sharable experiences through its interactive hologram technology. From holographic photo opportunities with your favorite celebrity to gesture controlled drone piloting, VNTANA has built the first and only interactive hologram system with social media integration and data collection capabilities that provide measurable return on investment. VNTANA’s technology is at the cutting-edge of Social Augmented Reality. Its core product, HOLLAGRAM, combines real-time holographic video capture with interactive gesture control, allowing consumers to experience augmented reality in groups and without wearables. VNTANA is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. For more information, visit, www.vntana.com or follow us on Twitter @VNTANAlive.
OUTERNET
WHAT IS OUTERNET AND IS IT CHANGING THE FUTURE OF INTERNET?
Written by: Andrew Tarantola for GIZMODO® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of OUTERNET
For 60 percent of the world’s population, regular internet access is about as common as flying cars. Nearly 5 billion people today lack basic internet access either because they live in remote, rural areas or due to restrictive censorship on the part of the local government.
But where the internet has failed, the Outernet hopes to succeed. It’s working to get a new breed of satellite-based communication off the ground, promising to give even the most remote corners of the globe access to the whole of humanity’s collective knowledge.
The Outernet is the brainchild of the same-named New York-based tech company, a free content distribution system that would provide basic web access broadcast via a series of geostationary and LEO satellites, as well as cube sats using a combination of datacasting and User Datagram Protocols.
Datacasting is exactly what it sounds like: the wide area broadcast of data using radio waves rather than physical mediums (like cable, telephone, or powerlines). User Datagram Protocols, or UDP, is very similar to conventional over-the-air radio or television broadcasts in that it’s uni-directional. The data is beamed from its source to any device within range and there’s no guarantee that it will be received, just like radio stations broadcast their signals without regard to which or how many radios are currently in range to catch it.
UDP is one of the most basic forms of Internet protocol. Invented back in 1980, it’s a connectionless transmission model—in that it doesn’t require someone to be on the other end of the line when the data is sent.
Radio for the digital age
In essence, the Outernet is a modern analog to conventional radio broadcasts. The signal originates from a single, central location—originally a radio station’s broadcast tower, but, in this case, the Outernet HQ in NYC—and travels across a variety of wavelengths until it hits a suitable receiver—previously a pair of rabbit ears, now a 20-inch satellite dish—where the end user can flip between “stations” by modulating the received frequency.
But rather than rely on terrestrial radio stations, the Outernet bounces its signal up to a series of satellites then back down to a suitable receiver. This receiver doubles as a Wi-Fi hotspot then connects to a computer or mobile device and transfers the received data as a digital file. And since there is no two-way communication—just like you can’t talk to your radio and expect a reply—the system requires much lower bandwidth and, therefore, much less money to operate.
“When you talk about the internet, you talk about two main functions: communication and information access,” The company’s co-founder, Syed Karim, told the BBC. “It’s the communication part that makes it so expensive.”
Humanity’s public library
On the information side, the company has begun forming what it calls a “core archive” of knowledge based on information gleaned from 5,000 Wikipedia entries, Project Gutenberg, and a smattering of copyright-free e-books. The early plan—which definitely has some kinks to work out—is to crowdsource what content is broadcast and make decisions based on user requests and upvotes.
What’s more, since the system in uni-directional, it’s far more difficult to censor—just as shortwave radios served as vital information lifelines for those stuck behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Initially funded by a news media investment company, Outernet’s mission is to provide free, anonymous, educational information, available to regions facing government censorship or otherwise off the grid.
In August this year, the startup started beaming this data across 200MB of leased geostationary satellite bandwidth, which reaches throughout North America and most of Western Europe, with plans to expand to the rest of the globe by July, 2015. Should the company’s IndieGoGo fundraising efforts work out, it could boost the daily broadcast limit to 100GB in the near future.
A single receiver in a central African village, according to Karim’s recent Ted Talk, could provide reams of valuable information to as many as 300 local residents—everything from agricultural texts to health, and human services. “If you were in the vicinity of a hotspot receiving the data from the satellite, you would be able to connect with Outernet on your phone and see Librarian—our index software—as if it was just an offline website,” he said. “There you would find the data, stored in files.”
In addition to disseminating evergreen information, the Outernet could very well also be used for emergency alert broadcasts which would be updated multiple times an hour instead of the average rate of once every week or so.
The plan is n0t quite perfect, however, as Mark Newman from the technology research firm Ovum, pointed out to the BBC:
When you start to think about the needs of rural communities in developing markets, what they are going to be most interested in are things that impact their daily lives – subsistence, crops, weather and healthcare. I question whether by sourcing content centrally and distributing it locally, you will meet those local needs – both in terms of content and language. Literacy is also going to be an issue. Delivery by audio rather than text would be something to look at, but that would use up more data.
An ambitious project
Still, some internet is way better than no internet. And with estimates placing global internet reach on par with what Outernet can provide still 15 to 20 years away, the Outernet could provide a valuable stop-gap service until conventional ‘net access becomes viable.
To that end, Outernet has partnered with the World Bank in South Sudan to perform a test run of the service next July. Should it prove successful, the company hopes to increase its coverage area and begin offering the self-contained receivers, called “lanterns,” from its Indiegogo campaign around that time.
And even if the Outernet itself fails to take off, it is far from the only free access system currently in development. Two of the biggest names in tech have already thrown their weight behind similar strategies. Google’s Project Loon would see fleets of high altitude balloons bouncing 3G signals from the stratosphere back down to the Earth’s most remote regions. Facebook’s Internet.org, on the other hand, envisions swarms of drones and LEO satellites performing the same function. Even SpaceX is rumored to be building a satellite fleet to bring internet to the far-flung corners of the globe.
So, regardless of who actually comes up with the winning design, the internet is bound to become a truly global phenomenon—including the third world. [LA Times – Indigogo – Wiki – BBC]
NVIDIA JETSON
Nvidia’s Pascal-powered Jetson TX2 computer blows away Raspberry Pi
Written by: Agam Shah for PCWORLD.COM® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of PCWORLD.COM
The Raspberry Pi may be the most widely known board computer being sold, but Nvidia’s Jetson TX2 is one of the fastest.
The Jetson TX2, unveiled Tuesday, is a full Linux computer on a tiny board the size of a Raspberry Pi. It’s designed to help make robots, drones and other devices that rely on computer vision applications.
Nvidia Jetson TX1 customers include this Toyota robotic personal assistant.
The board’s main attraction is a GPU based on Nvidia’s latest Pascal architecture, which is also in the company’s fastest GPUs, like the Tesla P100. The Pascal GPU brings computer vision to robots and drones, allowing them to recognize objects and navigate around obstacles.
The computer is an upgrade from the original Jetson TX1, and packs two times more performance while drawing two times less power. Nvidia claims the Jetson TX2 delivers 1.5 teraflops of performance, which is unmatched on developer boards.
A comparison between the first and second generations of Nvidia’s Jetson processor. The major change is the upgrade to the GPU, and the addition of more compute cores.
The Raspberry Pi 3 comes nowhere close to the Jetson TX2 in performance.
But the Jetson TX2 performance comes at a hefty price. As a student, you can buy the Jetson TX2 developer kit with major ports including Ethernet for $299, otherwise it will cost you $599. The developer kit will ship in the U.S. and Europe later this month, and Asia-Pacific next month.
Nvidia is also selling a stripped-down version of the Jetson TX2 that has fewer ports. That will start selling for $399 if a buyer purchases 1,000 units.
The Jetson TX2 can run Ubuntu and ROS (Robot Operating System), which is built on top of the Linux OS.
It has 32GB of storage, 8GB of LPDDR4 memory and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The GPU can render 4K video at 30 frames per second, or 2K video at 60 frames per second. The TX2 has two Denver 2 CPU and four Cortex-A57 CPUs.
Much like Raspberry Pi, Jetson was originally launched as a hobbyist product. But its use has now matured in consumer and industrial areas, said Deepu Talla, vice president and general manager of Tegra at Nvidia.
The TX1 is used in devices like Cisco’s Spark Board, a large-screen computer designed for collaboration. It has also been used in drones for search and rescue and surveillance.
The TX2 is not meant for basic robots or drones, but for those that need heavy computing vision applications, which in turn require good GPU performance.
The new Jetson TX2 can also be used for machine learning and edge computing, for example in surveillance systems or cars. The computer could sift through a range of images to identify objects and people.
Bundled with the computer will be Jetpack 3.0, a software development kit that will help write programs that take advantage of the GPU on board. Jetpack 3.0 has deep-learning kits like TensorRT and parallel programming frameworks like CUDA.
The year is coming to a quick close and lots is in process for the upcoming holiday season.
September started with Labor Day in the United States, honoring the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws and well-being of the country. It is considered the unofficial end of summer in the U.S. and is recognized as a federal holiday.
Just as September brought Labor Day, the end of summer and the unofficial start of Fall, it also brought Hurricane Irma and Maria and let’s not forget 3 Mexico earthquakes (followed by a volcanic eruption), fires on the West coast of the U.S. and a minor tremor in Los Angeles along with a train bomb in London, UK.
Further, flooding in Bangladesh and Houston and now Bali’s Mount Agung is on high alert. The world is definitely fighting its’ fair share of battles, natural disasters and otherwise.
THE REVIEW for the month of September focus’s on
“THE FALL” in a literal sense with so many natural disasters and of course the seasonal and symbolic meaning of fall that we’re calling “THE RISE” and which embodies Change, Mystery, Preservation, Protection, Comfort, Balance and Letting Go.
Through witnessing “THE FALL”, we have also witnessed “THE RISE” of everyone working and pulling together to build up their countries, towns, states, businesses, ventures and each other all over again. Life is full of ups and downs and just as we, our homes, communities, and the leaves on our trees fall, shortly after, re-growth happens and we and the leaves, all rise again, over and over, as often as necessary. This is the way nature works and the circle of life. We wish all a speedy recovery, with much love and light and sincerely hope all rebuild speedily and continue on a better trajectory going forward.
Here’s what went down and up in September:
CAUSES AND GOVERNMENT NEWS
THE REVIEW donated to FEMA and UNICEF for Puerto Rico and Mexico AND hopes you did or do too, along with many celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and Rob DeNiro calling out Puerto rico and Mexico and urging people and the U.S. government to donate and send much needed aid.
To donate to FEMA and help Puerto Rico today, go here:
https://www.fema.gov/volunteer-donate-responsibly
To donate to UNICEF and help Mexico today, go here:
Regarding Puerto Rico, all has been devastating and the island was hit by not one, but two massive hurricanes this month, Irma and Maria, back to back.
The good news is that many are now being able to leave and hopefully return as soon as possible and help and relief are now in effect with more on the way. Here’s what J Lo is doing for PR and a bit about Kylie Jenner on the tail end to lighten the mood.
Video by: CBS News
Here’s a bit more in-depth about PR:
U.S. APPOINTS GENERAL TO OVERSEE A MILITARY RESPONSE TO PUERTO RICO DISASTER
Written by: Frances Kerry and Steve Gorman and reported by: Robin Respaut and David Graham in SAN JUAN and Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in WASHINGTON for REUTERS®
Additional reporting by Makini Brice, Roberta Rampton, Richard Cowan, David Shepardson and Idrees Ali in WASHINGTON, and David Gaffen and Scott DiSavino in NEW YORK; Editing by Howard Goller, Lisa Shumaker and Paul Tait.
Pics and content by: CNN®, NY DAILY NEWS® and THE WEATHER CHANNEL®, THE SMIRKING CHIMP, THEBLAZE.COM
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO (Reuters)
The Pentagon named a senior general to command military relief operations in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico on Thursday and the Trump administration sent a Cabinet emissary to the island as U.S. lawmakers called for a more robust response to the crisis.
The U.S. territory of 3.4 million people struggled through a ninth day with virtually no electricity, patchy communications and shortages of fuel, clean water and other essentials in the wake of Hurricane Maria, the most powerful storm to hit the island in nearly 90 years.
The storm struck on Sept. 20 with lethal, roof-ripping force and torrential rains that caused widespread flooding and heavily damaged homes, roads and other infrastructure.
The storm killed more than 30 people across the Caribbean, including at least 16 in Puerto Rico. Governor Ricardo Rossello has called the island’s devastation unprecedented.
The U.S. military, which has poured thousands of troops into the relief effort, named Lieutenant General Jeffrey Buchanan to oversee its response on the island.
Buchanan, Army chief for the military’s U.S. Northern Command, was arrived in Puerto Rico as well. He will be the Pentagon’s main liaison with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. government’s lead agency on the island, and focus on aid distribution, the Pentagon said in a statement.
FEMA has already placed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of rebuilding the island’s crippled power grid, which has posed one of the island’s biggest challenges after the storm.
In yet another move raising the administration’s profile in the crisis, acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, whose department includes FEMA, will visited Puerto Rico with other senior government officials to meet the governor, Puerto Rican authorities and federal relief workers.
President Donald Trump again praised the government’s performance, saying on Twitter FEMA and other first responders were “doing a GREAT job,” but he complained about media coverage, adding: “Wish press would treat fairly!”
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, like Trump a Republican, had earlier called for the appointment of a single authority to oversee all hurricane relief efforts, and said the Defense Department should mostly be in charge.
DISASTER BECOMING “MAN-MADE”
Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said the crisis was shifting from a natural disaster to a man-made one. The government’s response had been “shamefully slow and undersized and should be vastly upgraded and increased,” he told the Senate.
Blumenthal called for as many as 50,000 troops to better coordinate logistics and the delivery of aid and basic necessities.
Even as FEMA and the U.S. military have stepped up relief efforts, many residents in Puerto Rico voiced frustration at the pace of relief efforts.
“It’s chaos, total chaos,” said Radamez Montañez, a building administrator from Carolina, east of capital city San Juan, who has been without water and electricity at home since Hurricane Irma grazed the island two weeks before Maria.
The humanitarian mission, offered free of charge, was arranged between Royal Caribbean International (RCL.N) and Puerto Rican authorities on a largely ad-hoc, first-come basis that sought to give some priority to those facing special hardships.
Defending the relief effort, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said 10,000 federal relief workers had arrived in Puerto Rico, including troops, and that 44 of the island’s 69 hospitals were now operational.
“The full weight of the United States government is engaged to ensure that food, water, healthcare and other life-saving resources are making it to the people in need,” Sanders told reporters.
Army Brigadier General Richard Kim told reporters that the total military force on the island, including the Puerto Rico National Guard, numbered about 4,400 troops.
The Trump administration earlier lifted restrictions known as the Jones Act for 10 days on foreign shipping from the U.S. mainland to Puerto Rico. While that measure might help speed cargo shipments, Puerto Rico is struggling to move supplies around the island once they arrive.
The U.S. government has temporarily lifted the Jones Act following severe storms in the past, but critics had charged the government was slow to do this for Puerto Rico.
Overall, the island is likely to need far more than $30 billion in long-term aid from the U.S. government for disaster relief and rebuilding efforts following Maria, a senior Republican congressional aide said.
The immediate relief effort was still badly hampered by the damage to infrastructure.
Clearing cargo deliveries at the San Juan port remained slow, and several newly arrived tankers were waiting for a chance to unload their fuel, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data.
“Really our biggest challenge has been the logistical assets to try to get some of the food and some of the water to different areas of Puerto Rico,” Governor Rossello told MSNBC on Thursday. He has staunchly defended the Trump administration for its relief response, which Trump noted in one of his Thursday night Twitter posts.
The military has delivered fuel to nine hospitals and helped establish more than 100 distribution centers for food and water on the island, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
Brock Long, the FEMA administrator, told CNN he was dissatisfied with the federal response to Maria, saying operations had been hindered by damage to the island’s air traffic control system, airports and seaports.
FEMA said full air traffic control services had been restored to the main international airport in San Juan, allowing for more than a dozen commercial flights a day, although that figure represented a fraction of the airport’s normal business.
The island has also seen the gradual reopening of hundreds of gasoline stations during the past few days, while a number of supermarket chains were also returning to business, FEMA officials said.
Regarding the devastating Earthquakes in Mexico, here’s an interesting story that explains the uncanny timing and massive implications of the 3 quakes and the unfortunate loss of life and overall negative impact they have caused:
3 STRANGE COINCEDENCE’S AND 1 UNLUCKY FATE: MEXICO’S DEADLY STRING OF EARTHQUAKES
Written and Contributed to by: Trevor Nace for FORBES® Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Pics by: YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images, Google Maps, PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images, NY DAILY NEWS® and USGS®
There have been enough major natural disasters in the past month to concern even the staunchest climate change skeptic.
Zooming into Mexico, which has experienced a string of earthquakes in the past month that would make Californians living on the San Andreas fault nervous. Now, as we look into the recent earthquakes in Mexico scientists are piecing together clues regarding the strange coincidences between the earthquakes.
The details surrounding the timing, location, and mechanism of the earthquakes leaves scientists puzzled as to what connection they have if any. Piecing together the story is complex as Mexico sits at the confluence of five major tectonic plates: the North American, Pacific, Caribbean, Cocos, and Rivera. This leads to a complex tectonic environment with many literal moving pieces.
Strange Coincidence #1: Timing
The first and most obvious strange coincidence is the timing of the recent Mexico earthquakes. Within 15 days there were three magnitude 6 or greater earthquakes that struck Mexico. While those living in earthquake-prone regions may recognize it’s not unusual to have earthquake tremors after a major earthquake, there are a few unusual facts in the timing.
USGS & Google Maps
Location of recent Mexico earthquakes
As you’ll notice on the map above, the three earthquakes were spread out by as much as 500 miles. This makes the likelihood of the second and third earthquake being tremors low. In addition, the three earthquakes were all a bit different in their mechanism, suggesting they’re unrelated. Yet, can it just be a coincidence that three major earthquakes struck Mexico in 15 days and they’re not related? It appears too much of a coincidence to throw that hypothesis out completely, yet there’s not enough evidence yet to fully conclude.
Strange Coincidence #2: Location
The second peculiarity about the string of Mexico earthquakes is the location. By this, I don’t only mean their geographic location on a map, but also their location within the Earth.
The first earthquake to hit, the M 8.1 earthquake near Pijijiapan, Mexico initiated 70 kilometers deep into Earth’s crust. The second M 7.1 earthquake struck near Ayutla, Mexico at 51 kilometers deep just 11 days after the first earthquake. Then, the latest M 6.1 earthquake struck near Matias Romero, Mexico four days later at 9.1 kilometers deep.
The three earthquakes are close enough in proximity to make geologists wonder if they’re related. Yet, far enough apart for each earthquake to be on its own fault surface and potentially unrelated.
Strange Coincidence #3: Mechanism
Another unusual feature of the recent earthquakes is the mechanism which initiated the earthquake. The cold and dense Cocos plate is subducting underneath the North American plate. This means the primary forces are compressional as a result of the collision. However, in the first two earthquakes, the fault movement which caused the earthquake was extensional (normal faulting).
The occurrence of multiple normal faulting initiated earthquakes within a few weeks could be interpreted as being related. The normal or extensional faulting likely occurred as a result of the underlying Cocos plate “falling” into the mantle after subducting underneath the North American plate.
Approximate location of recent earthquake in subducting slab
The cross-section view of the Cocos plate being pushed underneath the North American plate shows the red dot where the M 7.1 earthquake struck. Hence, it makes sense that there were extensional forces where the underlying plate was bending and breaking off into the mantle. This, however, is fairly unusual and for it to occur multiple times in such a short period leaves questions as to their relation.
1 Unlucky Fate
Mexico and Mexico City find itself in an unusually unlucky location with regards to earthquake threats. As mentioned above, the country sits at the confluence of 5 major tectonic plates that are all vying for position. This means a hotbed for earthquake activity as plates push against one another.
Secondly, Mexico City sits on an old lake bed of unconsolidated sediment. That means anytime an earthquake shakes the area, the unconsolidated sediment acts almost as if it were a liquid.
There are many strange things about the recent earthquakes in Mexico, which will undoubtedly be the focus of intense investigation by the geoscience community.
Trevor Nace is a geologist, Forbes contributor, founder of Science Trends, and adventurer. Follow his journey @trevornace.
ENTERTAINMENT AND EVENTS
THE ANNUAL GIANTS OF BROADCASTING AND ELECTRONIC ARTS LUNCHEON
Written by: ILYSE TERRI, LLC® AND THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by and courtesy of: THE IRTS FOUNDATION®, BLACK TIE INTERNATIONAL for BLACK TIE MAGAZINE®, ILYSE TERRI, LLC®, THE REVIEW® and DAVID BRUSON for VIACOM®
Gotham Hall’s iconic grand ballroom was the venue for this year’s
‘GIANTS of Broadcasting & Electronic Arts’ luncheon, the fifteenth such annual celebration of the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation (LABF).
The annual event is attended by prominent members of the broadcasting, media and corporate community, to celebrate distinguished leadership
and achievements in radio and television and was MC’d by Bill Whitaker, Correspondent 60 Minutes. Also in attendance were Anderson Cooper and Richard Leibner, Co-President , Bienstock, A UTA Company & Board of Directors, Library of American Broadcasting Foundation among many notable others.
2017 Honorees
Bill Koenigsberg, President, CEO, & Founder of Horizon Media,
Barbara Eden, Actress: I Dream of Jeannie, Joe Field, Chairman & Founder of Entercom Communications, Andrea Mitchell, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent of NBC Newsand Host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, Jeff Fager, Executive Producer of CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Gary Chapman, Retired Chairman, President & CEO of LIN TV Corp. Standing: David Field, President & CEO of Entercom Communications, Jeff Zucker, President of CNN Worldwide, Michael Fiorile,
Chairman & CEO of Dispatch Broadcast Group
Bill Koenigsberg’s Acceptance Speech focused on a letter he “penned” to interns that gave great advice to the future of this and all industries and passed on the lessons he has learned and the ones that he is still learning today. Notable excerpts were, “lose the words failure in your vocabulary and be patient, success will come”, “give back” and “never think you’ve arrived, keep moving forward, because the minute you think you’ve arrived, you will get run over.”
David Bruson and Anthony DiCosmo of Viacom and Nickelodeon were in attendance with from left: our founder and CEO, Ilyse Terri Shuster-Frohman, Lashada DiCosmo, Carolyn Churchill of Viacom and Nickelodeon, Barbara Eden, legendary actress and entertainment icon, Brenda Vaccaro and Angela Pierce.
I dream of Genie is an American fantasy and comedy sitcom starring Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries. Produced by Screen Gems, the show originally aired from September 18, 1965 to May 26, 1970 with new episodes, and through September 1970 with season repeats, on NBC. The show ran for five seasons and produced 139 episodes.
Meeting Barbara and her delightful husband was a “dream” and she took the podium to say a few words about her wonderful career and how grateful she is for it all. A real inspiration and still such a looker.
Barbara received a standing ovation and of course, the crowd crooned and smiled at witnessing and being in the presence of such a living lady legend.
Andrea Mitchell and Jeff Zucker of CNN had much to say and spoke very well and Jeff mentioned that although the main reason that he said yes to attend the event was to see Barbara Eden and spent his entire childhood “dreaming of Genie” he also said that the true giant in the room was actually Andrea Mitchell. He stated, “Always a joy to work with and you continue to be an inspiration.” about Andrea and went on to graciously thank all of his employee’s and co-workers and colleagues for their hard work and dedication to their craft. He stated that they “have no agenda other than to report the truth and will continue to do that.”
Joe and David Field of Entercom Communications displayed beautifully how family businesses and father and son relationships should be handled. They also congratulated all in the audience for their achievements. David spoke about his father’s wonderful achievements and how they believe that as Jack Myer stated “radio today is like undiscovered beach front property.” He also mentioned his excitement over the Entercom and CBS Radio Merger and the future of radio. Father, Joe then took the stage and thanked David for all of his hard work and dedication and success, and also mentioned how as John Donne once said “no man is an island.” He then thanked all of his early investors and supporters and his wife, Marie for supporting him and his career “especially in the early years when Entercom was a fledgling company” and how he could never have done it without her. He went on to say “Thank you, thank you, Marie.” and also stated how happy he is to be sharing this award and “GIANT” title with his son.
Jeff Fager, Executive Producer of CBS News’ 60 Minutes took the podium to accept his award and during his acceptance speech stated that “60 Minutes cares about fairness and they care about integrity” and that is what he believes has contributed to their success. He also gave kudos to Barbara Eden and agreed with Jeff Zucker on her momentous accomplishments while moving on to thank all of his anchors such as Anderson Cooper and various close colleagues. He thanked his “friend and agent”, Richard Liebner and other members of the board for producing such an important event.
There were many more speakers and awards, all well-deserved and we thoroughly enjoyed being in the presence of and witnessing such Giants of the industry. It was a fabulous affair. Special thank you to Viacom and Nickelodeon and especially David Bruson for participating in this event and as always, being extremely gracious. You are a class act, and an immense participant and contributor to this wonderful industry and its’ positive impact on the world.
ADVERTISING, BUSINESS AND BRANDS
ADVERTISING WEEK LEFT US FEELING STRONG
FEARLESS GIRL STOLE THE WORLD’S HEART, BUT WHAT DID IT DO FOR “THE ART OF” CLIENT BUSINESS?
Written by: KATIE RICHARDS for AD WEEK® Modifications and additions by: ILYSE TERRI® and THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by: GETTY IMAGES® and ADVERTISING WEEK® and ILYSE TERRI® and THE REVIEW®
She arrived in the middle of the night, seemingly out of thin air. Her arrival was quiet but calculated. The following day—International Women’s Day—millions would know her as the Fearless Girl.
Standing roughly 50 inches tall, hands triumphantly placed upon her hips and facing Wall Street’s iconic Charging Bull statue, she took the world by storm. Created for financial advising company State Street Global Advisors by creative agency McCann New York, the Fearless Girl statue quickly went viral online, garnering over 1 billion Twitter impressions in the first 12 hours, and eventually reaching 4.6 billion Twitter impressions and more than 215,000 Instagram posts over 12 weeks. A petition signed by more than 40,000 people demanded that Fearless Girl stay put, opposite the Charging Bull, through 2018.
The fact that Fearless Girl was created on “a shoestring budget” with no paid media behind it made it even more of a marketing marvel, said SSGA senior managing director and CMO Stephen Tisdalle. The effort reportedly generated $7.4 million in free marketing for the company across TV, social and radio, per Apex Marketing. Some sources place the marketing budget for Fearless Girl around $250,000, although SSGA would not confirm.
She was indeed a viral sensation, but how did a statue of a young girl help SSGA’s business, if at all? According to the company, her purpose was not necessarily to become a worldwide icon but to promote the one-year anniversary of the company’s SHE Fund, which invests only in companies that have women in top leadership positions. So did the company reach its goal of putting more women in C-suites?
Following the debut of Fearless Girl, “We reached out proactively to companies we invest in that do not have women on their boards to actually get them to understand that there is greater performance to be gained [by having women in leadership roles],” said Tisdalle. Of those 476 companies, 76 actively worked to promote women. SSGA voted against reelecting the board chairs of 400 companies.
“We have a huge, well-oiled machine that votes on a whole bunch of board initiatives for the thousands of companies that we invest in,” noted Tisdalle. “We are proactively voting for these types of changes.”
Fearless Girl ended up making a huge impact for SSGA’s SHE Fund. Daily trading volume for the fund shot up 384 percent in the three days following the debut of the statue, and 170 percent over the next 20 business days.
Challenge
SSGA had a perception problem: It’s the third largest asset manager in the world with over $2.5 trillion in assets, but within the consumer space, “few people really know how we invest, why we invest and what we have as an organization,” said Tisdalle. Among those values are creating and promoting gender diversity.
Goal
Get the 3,500 publicly traded companies SSGA invests in to truly focus on creating gender-balanced workforces. “It’s not about politics, it’s about performance,” said Tisdalle, citing a recent McKinsey study showing that if women and men participated in the economy equally, the annual global GDP would increase 26 percent (to $28 trillion) by 2025.
Execution
After McCann settled on a statue to help communicate SSGA’s gender equality message, the agency teamed up with sculptor Kristen Visbal to bring Fearless Girl to life. The team scrutinized every single detail of the girl from where her hands should rest to what her stance should be, making sure that the statue’s appearance would support what SSGA stood for.
Some see the girl’s stance as one of defiance of the bull, but according to McCann New York managing director and McCann XBC president Devika Bulchandani, “It’s not a defiant stance. Forward leaning means ‘I want to participate in the American economy in this notion of American prosperity that Wall Street represents.”
Be thoughtful
Brands want to participate in cultural conversations, but as Tisdalle explained, “Brands who tap into big national or international dialogues need to have the goods and the right partner to be able to do it in a way that is not seen as a stunt.”
Communicate with partners
Keeping the lines of communication open throughout the whole creation process of Fearless Girl was key to its success, according to both McCann and SSGA. The name “Fearless Girl,” for example, wasn’t finalized until three days before her unveiling because the two parties continued exchanging suggestions and ideas up until the final deadline.
Be fearless
For a financial services company to step into the world of experiential advertising and make such a powerful statement about society “was perceived as potentially high risk,” said Tisdalle. But both parties knew the idea was a good one, and through constant communication and a little bravery, SSGA was able to create one of the most celebrated marketing campaigns of the year.
Get it Right
Nothing could be worse when trying to make a profound statement than getting the whole thing completely wrong. The team focus intently on getting the girl and her posture and all pertinent details absolutely right and this took up a tremendous amount of time and effort. After all, if was planned and executed all wrong, it would never have been perceived so right.
TARGET WILL BEGIN INCORPORATING PINTEREST’S LENS VISUAL SEARCH TECHNOLOGY
LENS WILL EVENTUALLY BE INTEGRATED DIRECTLY INTO THE TARGET APP
Written by: DAVID COHEN for ADVERTISING WEEK® with modifications and additions by ILYSE TERRI® AND THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by: TARGET/PINTEREST® and THE REVIEW®
Pinterest Lens visual search technology is coming to Target, starting with the mega-retailer’s registry experience.
Target announced the partnership in a blog post and further elaborated on it all at Advertising Week with Rick Gomez, EVP and CMO of Target and Tim Kendall, President of Pinterest openly speaking about this incredible technology and how they are actively designing brands and products with pre-meditated insight from Pinterest users and for Target “guests”.
Further, Target will begin incorporating Pinterest Lens directly into its applications and experiences.
Rick announced “we are investing 7 Billion dollars over the next 3 years to improve our guest experience, both in stores and most importantly, online.”
The retailer and Marketing head said that Lens will be integrated into its registry experience “in the coming months,” after which it will be integrated directly into the Target app.
Pinterest introduced Lens—along with fellow visual search tools Shop the Look and Instant Ideas—in February.
Target senior vice president, media and guest engagement Kristi Argyilan said in the blog post, “We’ve partnered with Pinterest for years—it’s a natural fit thanks to our shared passion for creating inspiration and a sense of discovery. Now, Target’s excited to take our partnership to the next level. We’ll be the first—and exclusive—U.S. retailer to bring Pinterest Lens directly into our apps and experiences, creating an incredibly rich and much easier way for our guests to explore, discover and buy millions of products at Target.”
Chief marketing officer Rick Gomez added, “This Pinterest partnership quite literally helps us shorten the distance from when our guests have an idea to when they’re ready to make a purchase. It’s another way we’re making it easy and fun for our guests to explore and find new products. Plus, as we start to understand what shoppers are really looking for, it’ll help us better anticipate—and plan for—the latest styles and trends. We look forward to unlocking new potential, together.”
After the groundbreaking talk by two incredible and gracious speakers, the back of the screening room turned into a branded photo-op where guests could take a pic with a white and very sweet and friendly pit bull with a Target “bulls” eye painted around his left eye.
Of course our CEO and Founder, Ilyse Shuster-Frohman took a pic with the cutie mascot! A great way to end a poignant and “target-ed” presentation.
GIPHY AND OTHERS SPEAK DURING “FAST FOUNDERS” TALK HOSTED BY FAST COMPANY AT ADVERTISING WEEK
Written by: ILYSE TERRI® AND THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by: ILYSE TERRI® AND THE REVIEW®
Alex Chung Founder, THOUGHT CATALOGUE & Director of Strategy @Giphy, Amy Farley Senior Editor @FastCompany, Jeff Goodby Co-Chairman & Partner @Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Bill Koenigsberg President, CEO, & Founder @HorizonMedia all discussed the perils and up-sides of being entrepreneurs and how they got their businesses off the ground and into the sky and how you can too!
Amy Farley spoke about how the focus of the talk would be centered around “founding and growing a company and how to stay relevant during such a complicated and complex time.”
Bill spoke about raising his first 15 Million and how daunting but necessary it was and when asked about how to do that he said “go to everyone possible that could be an investor” and “make sure you have an NDA. Serious people, including myself will sign them.” Jeff spoke about how his agency, Goodby, Silverstein and partners made a name for themselves by “wanting to do something different” and creating punk-like content that was fast, street style, cheaply produced and “off the cuff” and how they still constantly try to come up with and do something “nuts” to keep viewers engaged with their clients and their content.
Amy asked all the right questions and especially zoomed in numerous times on the obvious shooting star in the room, Alex Chung @GIPHY.
Everyone in Advertising is now talking about short attention spans and busy and fast moving lives and content, not to mention shrinking budgets, and with all that now comes the much wanted and needed 6 second commercial that although isn’t able to be purchased yet on big networks and broadcast television, is available online.
They expanded on this during this FAST FOUNDERS talk and in that vain, Giphy was highlighted as the buzz brand of the week. Alex Chung explained how Venture Capital is helping their company grow and “experiment” and how it “works”. Here’s a little video of him talking about that followed by a great in-depth article by Fast Company on this disruptive company and how they’re poised to make history with small content that is sure to be worth BIG money.
IN SIX SECONDS, GIPHY COULD MAKE BILLIONS
With 300 million daily users and every major media company as a partner, Giphy’s got a feeling it can shake up the internet advertising business.
Written by: NICOLE LAPORTELONG for FAST COMPANY® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by: GIPHY® and ILYSE TERRI® and THE REVIEW®
On a mild Sunday evening in September, a handful of staffers from Giphy gathered in its Los Angeles studios to watch the Emmy Awards. The group congregated in the sleek, modernly furnished space that normally serves as a reception area, and they commandeered the minimalist black couch that is usually for waiting guests, the one opposite the wall of flat-screen TVs that during the week showcases rotating clips from its service.
The vibe felt a bit like a dorm room, as they sat with laptops perched on knees and La Croix cans stationed within arm’s reach, but this is only incidentally a social event. The Giphy folks have been tasked by the Emmys producers to “live GIF” the show, creating those seconds-long video loops used to enliven digital conversations and get shared. The effect is a dizzying bit of pop culture meta-commentary: The show’s value is unlocked in a handful of moments that can be used to comment on the show itself—and then punctuate life’s little moments long after the Emmys are over.
By the time host Stephen Colbert was high-kicking through the opening number along with a group of hooded dancers—a nod to what would be the night’s big winner, The Handmaid’s Tale—Giphy’s team had already populated its homepage with such red carpet preshow gems as Insecure‘s Issa Rae giving a signature “whatever” gesture in her Vera Wang gown, and Better Things creator and star Pamela Adlon deadpanning, “I probably clog my toilet seven to 10 times a week.”
Then came the night’s biggest, and most controversial, moment: Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer rolled a faux presidential podium onto the stage to deliver a send-up of his infamous “largest audience” speech he gave the day after President Trump’s inauguration. Immediately, the Giphy crew began to splice the scene into GIF form. Part of Giphy’s genius lies in not posting the obvious clip, so Spicer himself wasn’t of much interest. Rather, they surveyed the sea of shocked and bewildered faces in the audience, looking for gold. They found it in Veep‘s Anna Chlumsky, her entire body contorted into an OMG expression—eyes bulging, neck veins popping—as she craned out of her seat for a better view of the strange performance. Within minutes, the editors had the three-second clip uploaded onto Giphy. It began to trend almost immediately. A week after the show, it’d been viewed more than 13 million times.
Crazy reaction shots, cats clapping, clips of Joey from Friends baritone-ing, “How you doin’?”, an animated President Obama dropping his mic at the White House Correspondent’s dinner—this is the lingua franca of Giphy, the four-year-old company that has been largely responsible for popularizing a new form of communication. Not only does hyper-abbreviated video allow for more nuance and emotion than a smiley-face emoji ever could, but the limitless nature of GIFs (Giphy reports that it adds millions of moving images daily) also means that picking the right one has become more than just a means of conveying a particular sentiment.
“If I’m sending a Top Gun GIF with Maverick and Goose, that has a different ‘I love you’ relationship from a Disney GIF you might send to your daughter,” says Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, which is a Giphy investor. “That context, that emotion, gets layered back into a text-messaging platform that has historically lacked it. And that makes it more meaningful, more powerful.” The result is that “GIFs are a kind of social currency,” says Dominic Poynter, group communications strategy director at the ad agency Droga5. “The ability to use GIFs in a skillful way that is fresh and new and completely on point has become really important. It’s like being able to text really well. Or take a good selfie.”
Giphy has capitalized on its cultural currency to amass an audience of 300 million people who see a GIF from Giphy every single day, triple its total since just December 2016. They share more than 2 billion GIFs a day across Giphy.com and the many platforms where Giphy is embedded: Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, iMessage, Slack, and even Zendesk, should you ever want to send a Ron Swanson slow burn to a customer-service rep over a late delivery.
Although these numbers are not wholly comparable to other social networks, they are still likely the envy of Snapchat (173 million daily users) and Twitter (the company does not disclose daily users, but Recode has estimated the total at 157 million), both of which are publicly traded companies. The privately held Giphy, though, is still officially in “growth mode,” and cofounder and CEO Alex Chung says, “We think we can grow like probably 3 times what we have now, which is kind of crazy.”
Unlike a lot of digital media executives who scramble to figure out a revenue model only after they’ve built an audience, Chung, who at 42 is old enough not only to remember the 1990s dotcom bubble but to have worked in it, is measured and cool when asked how Giphy, which is reportedly valued by investors at $600 million, will make money. “We have revenue,” he reveals for the first time. “We know we can be profitable in a month if we wanted to. But just like we did with GIF growth, we’re thinking about revenue growth in an exponential and sustainable way.” He and his 75-plus employees have spent years preparing the company for long-term growth. The next phase will unfold as they roll out Giphy’s ad products and measurement tools over the next 12 months or so.
Most people look at the digital advertising landscape and see an unbreakable Facebook-Google duopoly poised to dominate for the foreseeable future. But whenever conventional wisdom forms, there’s often a ripe opportunity to upend it. Chung believes Giphy has that potential. “We all know that internet advertising is a little bit broken,” he says, leaving unspoken the last year’s negative talk about inaccurate metrics, brand safety issues, and tired formats such as banner ads, pop-ups, and even native ads.
Meanwhile, “everyone is moving to the six-second ad format,” he says. “YouTube has done it. Facebook is doing it. We’ve owned that format for years. We have all the tools to make it. We have the largest distribution of that six-second content anywhere in the world—across mobile, desktop, anywhere.” Perhaps most important, Giphy has commercials that look nothing like advertising. “If it’s good,” says COO Adam Leibsohn, “it’s stuff that people want to use—to communicate, to laugh, to inform.”
“We’re thinking about revenue not in terms of millions or hundreds of millions (of dollars), but, like, billions,” Chung says matter of factly. “How do you get to a point where you are making billions in revenue? That’s something that has to be fundamentally disruptive.”
Giphy’s road to this moment started in a rented house in the Hollywood Hills in 2014. Chung had asked a friend who’s a data scientist to analyze all the queries on Giphy, which revealed that “80% of all the searches were cultural content: TV, movies, celebrities,” he says. So the team decided to spend a solid two months on the West Coast taking meetings with movie studios and TV networks in Los Angeles to try to get content rights. Because Giphy was still small—less than 10 employees, in an office on the far west side of Manhattan—it was easiest to just bring everyone along rather than communicate across time zones.
The house was “an Airbnb that wasn’t that great,” Chung says, but it did have a swimming pool and views. To the employees of a young startup, it felt like a mansion out of Entourage. “We were so small, we could literally have a companywide meeting in the pool,” says Brad Zeff, Giphy’s chief content officer.
Chung had spent several years earlier in his career working for Viacom where he had a window into the music licensing process—”probably the most complex licensing in media,” he says—so he knew how to structure deals that would be attractive to entertainment companies. In exchange for getting access to shows like The Simpsons and Broad City, Giphy would work with network and studio marketing teams on their “GIF strategy.” In other words, Chung’s crew would help them set up their pages on Giphy; explain how to make GIFs more discoverable; and even make the GIFs themselves by running content through Giphy’s auto-tagging machine that finds the best moments.
The startup’s strategy was akin to Twitter’s in its early days when it came to Hollywood and offered a kind of white-glove service to get networks, producers, and stars to understand its value. As with Twitter at that time, it was a pre-revenue quid quo pro, which eased the way. “Hollywood is a very lazy lay and will let you do what you want if it’s easy and free,” one digital marketer jokes. According to Liew, who was also an early investor in Snapchat, Chung was the first person to “connect the dots” between entertainment and GIFs in a way that “opened up the entire history of TV and movies to be chopped up.” Giphy’s L.A. summer proved successful enough that Chung would repeat the staff migration—in increasingly larger venues—in 2015 and 2016.
As premium content started to stream in, even from notoriously demanding players such as Disney and CBS, Giphy turned to distributing it widely. Chung and Leibsohn began to carefully map out a plan to “work with social networks to get GIF buttons inside of places where they weren’t,” says Leibsohn. One of the first targets was Facebook, partly because of its huge reach, and partly because, as Chung says, “We knew that if we could get GIFs on Facebook, it would be a thing.”
Back then, in 2014, Facebook did not allow GIFs and had said it would never support the format. Through a bit of engineering derring-do that allowed the GIFs to appear in users’ feeds without violating Facebook’s rules, Giphy succeeded in getting its content on the largest social network, and eventually Facebook officially embraced the format. “Two years later, we were on stage at F8 showing Mark Zuckerberg send [Messenger chief] David Marcus a GIF from Giphy,” Chung says in his calm, even manner one morning in September as he sits with Leibsohn in a dimly lit conference room in the company’s Meatpacking District headquarters.
The two men, who were both philosophy majors in college, ran in the same social circle and bonded over the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. (“We would just hang out,” Chung says, “and play pool, and . . . talk about death,” Leibsohn says, completing the thought. “This is all based in philosophy,” Chung asserts, a bold statement for a company that trades in clips of farting cats saying, “Deal with my sass.”)
Other coups followed. “We got GIFs on Twitter,” Chung says. “No one had ever done that before. GIFs on Slack. No one had done that before. We kept putting GIFs everywhere that you possibly could. We have GIFs in Outlook. Our mission was always to get distribution where no one has ever gotten distribution. And we keep doing that.” Leibsohn, who frequently finishes Chung’s thoughts (and vice versa), adds, “Especially if there’s something static. We’re like, why is that not moving?” (Make Everything Move is a company motto.)
This steady expansion of where Giphy’s content is available has helped the company scale at a dizzying rate. “I think of them as the Google for GIFs,” says ICM Partners’ head of digital ventures Jonathan Perelman. “That’s just where you go.”
Tiffany Vazquez, Giphy’s senior film editor, says she knew Giphy had gone mainstream in February of 2016 when Conan O’Brien tweeted: “Just searched ‘blasé otters’ on Giphy so I could show you how my kids react every night when I come home from work.”
“He didn’t @ us or tag us,” Vazquez says. “That was a huge moment.”
In the 18 months since then, Giphy’s centrality has only grown. Giphy has evolved into “a turnkey part of our digital marketing campaigns,” says Dana Flax, director of digital and social media at HBO. “It’s kind of automatic at this point that we launch a Giphy presence for every campaign.”
HBO has more than 30 Giphy pages featuring in excess of 7,000 GIFs. Not just for obvious water-cooler shows like Game of Thrones, but also off-the-air series such as The Larry Sanders Show and The Comeback, proving how Giphy can keep older material culturally relevant and potentially introduce it to new audiences. In advance of the October return of Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO launched a Giphy page for the upcoming season, and within two weeks, GIFs of classic Larry David moments (“Can I apologize for the apology?”; accidentally tripping Shaquille O’Neal during a Lakers game) had been viewed more than 30 million times. “It allows us to take this show that’s been off the air for six years, reinsert it into the zeitgeist, and create opportunities for fans to use this content in their communications with each other,” Flax says. “We see GIFs have become their own form of digital communication, and as a brand, we want to make sure that our series and our characters are part of the shorthand that these younger generations are using with each other.”
Giphy does all it can to assist this effort by creating extensive databases for popular content. Leading up to the season premiere of the fourth season Broad City this fall, Giphy’s editorial team broke up almost every line and moment from the show’s previous seasons and made them available to users. Giphy did the same thing with the Oscars, working with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create GIFs that go all the way back to 1937.
Even entertainment companies that don’t have an official partnership with Giphy rely on the service for fan engagement. Fans of Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise avidly upload GIFs of their favorite characters’ eye rolls and bitchy take-downs—if ever there was a platform for the line, “Take a Xanax,” it’s Giphy—as the shows air. In fact, all of the Bravo content on Giphy is user generated, says Adam Zeller, VP of social media for Bravo & Oxygen Media, who credits the company for supplying fans with the tools, such as the Giphy camera and keyboard, to create their own content. “What we like to say at Bravo is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and a GIF is worth a million,” Zeller says.
As Giphy starts to explore monetization routes, though, its honeymoon period with Hollywood may come under pressure. Beyond view counts, which were only introduced in late August (much to marketers’ relief), and information on where a GIF travels (from Facebook to Twitter to iMessage, for example), brands and shows are mostly in the dark as to who’s viewing their GIFs. When I ask one marketer about more nuanced data, he jokes, “I’d love it if you’d ask Giphy for that.”
At this point, brands are accustomed to using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to target, say, young women under the age of 25 who are horror fans, in advance of a film release or new TV season. Chung says that in the months ahead, “We’ll be putting out a lot of different technology around tracking for our partners. It will be very comparable to what Facebook and everyone else has.”
Unlike Facebook, though, which has asked brands to pay for the traffic it once provided for free, Chung insists, “We’re not going to charge people for what we’re doing now.” Leibsohn acknowledges that they’ve already had these conversations with Giphy’s content suppliers, and “our plans for [making money] are cooperative to the interests of all of our content partners.”
Giphy is looking ahead to how it can get entertainment companies not only to give it decades of content to parse into bite-sized moments, but also to create exclusives. “We want to have content that’s purpose-built for us,” says Zeff, Giphy’s content chief, his tall, angular frame arranged on a magenta couch with the word “Chill” lit up above it in the company’s L.A. studio. “With our partners, maybe that involves ancillary characters, ancillary story lines. How can we use the content that we’re making with our partners in a way that goes beyond simply an encapsulation or a singular moment from a show. We want to figure out what the next frontier is.”
Zeff, nor anyone else at Giphy, would offer more specifics, but the company says at least one TV series is actively pursuing this strategy, creating GIFs as part of its production process. The approach bears some similarities to what Snapchat has done with snackable, digital series built around network shows The Voice and The Bachelor (and perhaps less appealingly, to the mid- to late-2000s when TV series created “webisodes” to throw obsessives a bone). On Giphy, of course, this content will be even shorter, setting up an interesting creative challenge: How do you evolve the GIF from a medium that showcases a moment to one that relays a narrative?
By adding more original content, including material that it is making itself with a growing network of artists and overseen by a producer who’s worked at SNL and The Colbert Report, Giphy is trying to distinguish itself just the way Netflix is with series like Stranger Things in an effort to create more user demand. By live-GIFing things like the Emmys or the Game of Thrones premiere, there is suddenly an urgency to going to Giphy as events are unfolding in order to be in tune with the culture. “What’s happening on the internet now? What happened on the internet yesterday?” Zeff asks. “We want to be a reflection of that and have a sort of distillation of that represented on our home page at all times.”
In this vision, Giphy is more than just a conversational helper but a kind of ambient, always-on channel, much like the radio, or in more contemporary terms, like Cheddar, the digital financial-news network for millennials launched last year by former BuzzFeed president Jon Steinberg. “When not watching 5 episodes of Ozark,” Steinberg wrote in a Medium post last month articulating his vision for what he calls post-cable networks, “people are going to want to watch something, live . . . to see ‘what’s happening in the world.’”
Although the current vogue favors wide social distribution over trying to create a destination, Giphy.com and its app, which currently draw 250 million users a month, are an underrated asset for the company. “We’ve started seeing more and more people just hanging out to watch content,” Chung says. “We’re like a TV network to some extent,” Leibsohn adds. “We program, we schedule, we have tune-in blocks.” He goes on to suggest that Giphy can be highly creative in serving its content partners, targeting specific regions, times, and distribution services on Giphy’s network.
“Everyone is fighting for this one-hour primetime segment, right?” Chung says, referring to the increasingly expensive battle between Amazon, HBO, Hulu, Netflix, and others to create a Game of Thrones-style, must-see global epic. In contrast, his focus is to “make content that people leave on all day. You know, that isn’t fully interactive content that I have to sit there and pay attention to. We think we can own those 23 hours of the day.”
While Hollywood partnerships are enabling Giphy’s explosion, consumer brands are essentially sending the startup the popular GIF of Fry from Futurama shouting, “Shut up and take my money!”
Last year, the ad agency CP+B created a campaign for Hotels.com in which its spokes character, Captain Obvious, runs for president. At the same time it made the spots, it put the expressive goofball in front of a plain white background and captured a series of reaction shots, from a sarcastic “okay” to an enthusiastic “raise the roof,” and posted them to Giphy. The goal was for the GIFs to be used in social discussion around the actual election; the 40 Captain Obvious “ran for President” GIFs have been viewed more than 150 million times. This fall, Converse had a Giphy hit with a set of reactions from Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) tied to a back-to-school campaign. “Giphy is one of the last remaining pure platforms,” says Quinn Katherman, one of CP+B’s creative directors who works on the Hotels.com account. “If brands want to play there successfully, they have to find a way to contribute to the conversation, not just insert themselves into it.”
Leibsohn, who spent eight years working in advertising before cofounding Giphy, believes most internet advertising is just a series of increasingly desperate instances of brands trying to crash a party to which they weren’t invited. “You’re talking about an intimate communication,” says Winston Binch, chief digital officer and a partner in the ad agency Deutsch. “People will reject things that feel inauthentic. That’s the challenge for brands.” To that point, Leibsohn and Chung only want to invite the Nike (or Converse) person into the conversation, for example, because she’s wearing cool kicks, or he and his friends were just talking about Nikes. “And then they leave,” Chung says. “That is a different, authentic experience with branded content that just doesn’t exist on the internet.”
Giphy’s goal, then is to “own” the six-second ad format and create ads (or convince brands to create ads) that exude that genuine spirit—though, tellingly, this medium is still very nascent. “It’s taking a long time for marketers to understand the value of what a short-form piece of video means in their value chain,” says Jason Krebs, chief business officer at Tenor, a rival GIF company that is preparing to roll out paid ad campaigns with brands. “How does this drive success for them? Just like when you’re in TV and any highly successful medium, the first question is, okay, did we get the exposure that we wanted? Did it get exposed to the right target audience, and was it in the right environment? But then the next question is, ‘Okay, great, now we got exposed. Did it help my business?’ That’s where we’re trying to prove that out to marketers now.”
While working toward this goal, Giphy believes it has something critically valuable to brands: Access to the private feelings of hundreds of millions of consumers. “There are very few places that connect where everyone is, and everyone’s talking, and can tell you why they’re talking about you in every possible context,” Chung says. “When you think about that from a revenue ad platform point of view, that’s the power.”
It’s a potentially salivating proposition: Demographic specifics plus users’ tastes and interests plus an understanding of their emotional behavior. “In the same way that we learn massive amounts from Google Search and what people are searching for on YouTube,” says James Poulter, senior global social media manager at Lego, how people use Giphy is “an expression of their intent for Lego as a brand.”
Although Poulter admits that he hasn’t seen the data yet, “I’d be really surprised if people are searching for ‘Lego’ when they send a Lego GIF,” of which there are nearly 5,000. “They’re probably searching for happy or sad or LOL or some kind of reaction. What we’d want to do is make sure that we show up with the funniest, or best, or most humorous—kind of the coolest—content in that context. Those are the types of emotions we want to play off. When you feel like something is awesome or amazing, we would love to be one of those brands that you choose as a means of sharing.”
As Leibsohn notes, “Coke says, ‘Open happiness.’ We can show brands, content producers, news places, all of them, that you don’t have to tell anybody to ‘open happiness’ anymore. We can just understand if you are synonymous with happy.” When I ask Poulter if that’s something he and Lego would pay to guarantee, all he’ll say is that it has a “tangible value.”
Chung and Leibsohn don’t seem worried about what that exact value is. “It took four and a half years to get all the content owners together, make the content searchable,” Chung says. “Also, it’s time and relationships,” Leibsohn adds. “We’ve already broken the ground. We’ve solidified all of it.”
“We’re synonymous with the content,” Chung says. “If you search for GIF, we’re No. 1.”
If you can’t make money from owning happy birthday, well, there are 1,716 GIFs tagged “face palm” to send Chung and Leibsohn.
Nicole LaPorte is an LA-based writer for Fast Company who writes about where technology and entertainment intersect. She previously was a columnist for The New York Times and a staff writer for Newsweek/The Daily Beast and Variety.
Overall, Ad Week was a blast. Big topics were Virtual and Augmented Reality and everything in between, including a company that allows you to listen to anyone else’s playlist while they’re listening-or not. It’s a great way to JAM alongside your favorite celebrity during theirs and your workout sesh or to hang with a friend or stranger “virtually” and share and bond over each others playlists. We’re planning on linking up with these cool cats in Cali end of October and will report more on them in our next issue-so stay tuned. We will also report overall on the tech side of things after our trip out West where we will follow up with various companies and brands that we came in contact with during Ad Week and that we have come to know via our own resources. We’ll explore their overall platforms and capabilities further and bring you the scoop as part of our upcoming OCTOBER TECH edition which will highlight Tech, but also other relevant news-of course.
MUSIC
Spotify’s Valuation Skyrockets as Investors Smell the ‘Next Netflix’
Written by: DAWN CHMIELEWSKI for BILLBOARD MAGAZINE® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by: GETTY IMAGES®
SPOTIFY’S VALUATION CONTINUES TO RISE IN PRIVATE TRADES
A signal of strong demand for a stake in the world’s largest streaming music company ahead of it going public.
The Swedish company’s reported $16 billion valuation has risen $3 billion since May, when private trades pegged its value at around $13 billion. Industry insiders and bankers say Spotify’s appreciating value in these private trades is a sign of investor confidence that the service will eventually turn a profit, while some say the intensifying investor interest in Spotify is part of a growing recognition that music streaming has “crossed the chasm,” in the words of one source, and become mainstream. They see enormous opportunity for growth in the coming years.
But investment banker Lloyd Greif said that because of Spotify’s 40 percent year-over-year growth in active users, its 50 percent revenue growth from 2015 to 2016 and its rapidly expanding subscriber base — similar traits to Netflix — some investors are betting that its stock will rally as has that of the video streaming service, which has seen shares double in value over the past two years.
“This is kind of like trend spotting,” Greif said. “Investors may be jumping on the bandwagon of the next Netflix.”
The subscription companies aren’t quite analogous, though, music industry and streaming executives such as Jimmy Iovine point out, since the music on Spotify’s paid tier is readily available on-demand for free on sites like YouTube. The feature-length films and series on Netflix are much harder to find for free on the internet. Spotify’s licensing agreements with the major record labels also prohibit it from making its own original music content, while Netflix relies heavily on original films and shows to lure subscribers and control costs.
Spotify’s $16 billion valuation is still modest compared to Netflix $87 billion enterprise value, roughly 10 times last year’s revenues of $8.8 billion, says Needham & Co. media analyst Laura Martin. Applying that same formula to Spotify’s $3.4 billion in revenue would yield a value of over $30 billion — nearly double its current estimated market value.
But bankers and industry observers say it’s difficult to value a company — especially one like Spotify, which has seen its losses deepen even as it gains subscribers.
Spotify reports 140 million regular users around the world, 60 million of whom pay monthly subscriptions. But the combination of royalties, distribution costs, salaries and other business expenses dragged the company into the red in 2016, according to public filings.
“It is in many ways a success story,” said technology analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. “But the reality is streaming is challenging for the distributor.”
Spotify is planning to make its shares public via a direct listing, versus the more conventional initial public offering, according to sources. Instead of hiring investment bankers to hype the offering and set the price, the stock simply becomes available on the public market — with the price is set by demand.
Spotify stock could begin trading later this year or early next year.
SWIZZ BEATZ ON HIS ‘NO COLOR BOUNDARIES’ COLLABORATION WITH BALLY: ‘IT’S NOT JUST A HIP-HOP THING’
Written by: SHIRA KARSEN for BILLBOARD MAGAZINE® Modifications and additions by: ILYSE TERRI® and THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by: BALLY®
Rapper and producer Swizz Beatz is serious about art. So serious, in fact, that when he personally reached out to Bally via Instagram asking to collaborate, he wanted to make sure whatever he created was artistic enough to be considered, well, art.
“It’s a dream collaboration,” Beatz tells Billboard of Bally x Swizz, his new, illustration-centric collection with luxury footwear brand Bally, available now. “I’ve been a fan of Bally since back in the day, growing up in the South Bronx. Bally used to be the signature of making it, Slick Rick, Doug E Fresh with “Fresh dressed like a million bucks/Threw on the Bally shoes and the fly green socks,” and now to come back years later and be the one to bring things to a new generation…it’s amazing.”
Beatz’s life is one of constant airport hopping—while we were on the phone with him he had just passed through security. So it’s no surprise that the idea to collaborate with the second oldest heritage brand in the world (second only to Hermes) came to him while at London’s Heathrow airport.
“I saw these sneakers at the Bally store there and was like, ‘okay, these are cool. But why doesn’t anyone wear them?’ In Bally’s mind, they thought what they were doing was perfectly fine, because the leather, the know-how, the fabrics; those have always been the best. But they were very conservative about it. That’s not what the young people want,” Beatz says.
As a result, their first capsule collection is unlike any Bally line previously produced, and hopefully will be one the younger set is clamoring for. Textured leather backpacks ($825), lace up high tops ($595), slip-on sneakers ($425) and a handful of luxury accessories (iPhone cases, keychains, sweaters and even varsity jackets ranging from $125 to $1,695) are decorated with Spanish artist Ricardo Cavolo’s folk art-inspired protagonists; pious-looking symmetrical symbols designed in bright, Barcelona-like colors. “When I spoke with Swizz about the concept of the collection, he told he wanted me to create something about when the artist works with total freedom, the creation with no borders, free spirit,” Cavolo said of the inspiration behind his exclusive illustrations. “So I decided to create a few characters representing the artists who let the animal they have inside, out. Working with freedom and no borders means to work with that animal inside of us. These characters are a sort of gods or shamans with his/her spirit animal as totems.”
When asked about choosing Cavolo, Beatz said he wanted an artist whose work felt, at its core, “diverse with no color boundaries.”
“It’s very important for art to be freedom of expression, and I didn’t want people to say this is only a hip-hop thing or only a black thing or only an Asian thing. I wanted people to feel like they can be part of it,” Beatz said. “The world is very fragile right now, people are very fragile right now. At the end of the day being an African American from the South Bronx, people think I should only have one style, one taste. But I broke out of that 20 years ago and I want to help other people break out of that too. We’re inspired by the world, not just our surroundings. When I started traveling decades ago, I started collecting art from all places from the world. When I look at art now, I see cultures and united ideals instead of peoples skin.”
The Bally x Swizz capsule collection is available at bally.com and Bally stores, with products ranging from $125 to $1,695.
We are immense fans of Swizz and his wife, of course, and actually visited his office a while back in NYC. As we were introduced to and met him, he then gave us a private tour of his personal paintings. He’s a true artist and the nicest guy. We wish him tremendous success with this venture and all his endeavors.
HOSPITALITY
THE BAIRD/STR HOTEL STOCK INDEX INCREASED 5.3% IN SEPTEMBER, CLOSING THE MONTH AT 4,318. YEAR TO DATE THROUGH THE FIRST NINE MONTHS OF 2017, THE INDEX WAS UP 16.6%
Written by: HOTELNEWSRESOURCE.COM Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content by: HOTELNEWSRESOURCE.COM
“Hotel stocks posted solid gains in September as investors bid up more economically sensitive sectors, including both the hotel brand companies and the hotel REITs,” said Michael Bellisario, Senior Hotel Research Analyst and Vice President at Baird. “Higher interest rates, improved prospects for potential tax reform, and expected hurricane-related demand tailwinds helped stocks easily outperform their benchmarks last month. Fundamentals have remained steady, but investors have extended their investment time horizons and are more optimistic about next year’s growth prospects.”
Chart – U.S. Hotel Stock Performance
“Despite the fact that there was a calendar shift with the Jewish high holidays (October last year), preliminary performance results point to a healthy September and a record occupancy level for the first ninth months of the year,” said Amanda Hite, STR’s president and CEO. “The massive hurricanes in Texas and Florida affected demand and will likely have implications on the development pipeline moving forward. Because of the aforementioned Jewish holiday calendar shift, and the very disruptive hurricane season, September and October data will be hard to parse for trends. By the time a more ‘normal’ November comes around, the year will basically be done, but we still expect that room demand growth will be slightly higher and ADR growth slightly lower than previously projected.”
The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index for September was ahead of the performance of both the S&P 500 (+1.9%) and the MSCI REIT (RMZ) (-0.7%).
The Hotel Brand sub-index increased 6.2% to 6,249 from August to September, while the Hotel REIT sub-index increased 3.7% to 1,618 during the month.
The Hotel Brand sub-index was set to equal 1,000 on 1 January 2000. Last cycle, the sub-index peaked at 3,407 on 5 July 2007. The sub-index’s low point occurred on 6 March 2009 when it dropped to 722.
The Hotel REIT sub-index was set to equal 1,000 on 1 January 2000. Last cycle, the sub-index peaked at 2,555 on 2 February 2007. The sub-index’s low point occurred on 5 March 2009 when it dropped to 298.
As of 30 September 2017, the companies that comprised the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index include: Apple Hospitality REIT, Choice Hotels International, DiamondRock Hospitality Company, Extended Stay America, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Hospitality Properties Trust, Host Hotels & Resorts, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, La Quinta Holdings, LaSalle Hotel Properties, Marriott International, Park Hotels & Resorts, Inc., Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, RLJ Lodging Trust, Ryman Hospitality Properties, Summit Hotel Properties, Sunstone Hotel Investors, Wyndham Worldwide Corporation, and Xenia Hotels & Resorts.
FASHION
THE TOP 10 MOMENTS OF NEW YORK FASHION WEEK
Written by: THE NEW YORK TIMES® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of: TOM FORD, CALVIN KLEIN, THE FASHION CHANNEL,CAROLINA HERRERA, FF CHANNEL, HELMUT LANG, THE NY TIMES, FIRSTVIEW; ALYSSA GREENBERG; NINA WESTERVELT, RALPH LAUREN, ANGELA WEISS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, VAQUERA, ALBERT URSO/GETTY IMAGES, JEREMY SCOTT AND REBECCA SMEYNE, NOW FASHION, ECKHAUS LATTA, VOGUE
Calvin Klein packed his front row full of celebrities, and Ralph Lauren brought everyone to Bedford Hills, N.Y. The fashion editors and reporters of Styles and T round up the highlights of the week.
TOM FORD STARTED THE WEEK WITH A BANG
As many designers opted to show in Paris this season, one very important American designer, Tom Ford, did just the opposite: he returned to New York after seasons of jumping all over the map (to London, Los Angeles — and seemingly everywhere in between). Opening New York Fashion Week last Wednesday evening, the designer transformed the Park Avenue Armory into a slick lounge, complete with moody lavender lighting. The show was just as seductive, with crystal-embellished panties, power-shoulder suiting and gauzy bandage evening dresses. After the show ended, the site transformed into an after-party complete with shirtless waiters and Off White’s Virgil Abloh in the D.J. booth. Only a showman like Mr. Ford could inject this much sex and excitement into one evening. — MALINA JOSEPH GILCHRIST, T magazine style director, Women’s
CALVIN KLEIN HAD A MIND BLOWING FRONT ROW
Calvin Klein’s front row included Lupita Nyong’o, Mahershala Ali, Jake Gyllenhaal and Trevor Noah
Raf Simons, the chief creative officer of Calvin Klein, has set out to reflect his vision of the American experience in his clothes. But even before a survivalist tea dress or logo quilt appeared on the runway, his ambition was clear from his front row: as diverse a mix of talent, ages and identities as appeared anywhere else all week. There were so many assorted boldface names, they couldn’t even fit on one bench. The “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah sat next to a very hirsute Jake Gyllenhaal, who sat next to the “Moonlight” star Mahershala Ali, who sat next to Lupita Nyong’o, who sat a few seats down from the artist Sterling Ruby, who sat across from the former Klein icon Brooke Shields, who was next to the rising star and tween Millie Bobby Brown, who was next to the It girl Paris Jackson. And we haven’t even gotten to where Christina Ricci, Kate Bosworth, Kelela, Rashida Jones and Russell Westbrook were. It was enough to bring out the groupie in us all. — VANESSA FRIEDMAN, fashion director, Styles
A FEW DESIGNERS OPTED FOR CLASSIC SITES
As some American designers, including Thom Browne and Joseph Altuzarra, decamped for Paris, others doubled down on New York and showed in some of the city’s most iconic sites. The Row’s Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen staged their show over scones and coffee at the Carlyle; Derek Lam and Gabriela Hearst took over the newly renovated the Pool, in the former Four Seasons space; Brandon Maxwell brought guests to Doubles, the subterranean members-only club at the Sherry Netherland; and Oscar de la Renta overtook Sotheby’s (using the escalators as an extended runway). Perhaps most notable of all was Carolina Herrera, who staged her show in the garden at MoMA — the first time a full-fledged fashion show had been held there. — ISABEL WILKINSON, digital director, T magazine
CAROLINA HERRERA
CASTING WAS SURPRISING-AND BEAUTIFUL
From left, Helmut Lang, Eckhaus Latta, Maryam Nassir Zadeh. Credit Firstview; Alyssa Greenberg; Nina Westervelt
By the second day of fashion week, Gigi and Bella Hadid began to feel like old friends: The sisters, along with a handful of other Instagram-savvy models, are so ubiquitous on runways that they become almost impossible to avoid. No knock against them, but it’s for this reason that when designers cast unexpected models — artists, singers, friends — it’s something of a relief. At Helmut Lang, Shayne Oliver mixed some of Lang’s original muses, like the model Kirsten Owen, with people he had found on the street. Eckhaus Latta cast the pregnant artist Maia Ruth Lee, among other friends, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh mixed models with the actress Hailey Benton Gates and the artist India Menuez.
Best of all was Abraham Boyd, a Detroit-born singer spotted by the director Spike Jonze a year and a half ago, singing in Central Park. Mr. Jonze cast him for Opening Ceremony’s dance-performance show, in which he sang a poignant rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli. — I.W.
RALPH LAUREN BROUGHT EVERYONE TO A CAR-THEMED ADVENTURE
By Courtesy of RALPH LAUREN and Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Ralph Lauren Fashion Show
In one of the most personal displays of New York Fashion Week, Ralph Lauren arranged for about 250 guests to be chauffeured from the city to Bedford Hills, N.Y., to view his see-now-buy-now collection — and his famous stable of cars, which include some of the rarest models in the world. In celebration of 50 years in business, the show took place in the garage where Mr. Lauren stores his automobiles, and guests were able to inspect vintage Jaguars, McLarens and Alfa Romeos, among others, over Champagne and hors d’oeuvres before sitting down to a runway positioned among the designer’s beautiful machines.
To an espionage-themed soundtrack borrowed from the 1965 James Bond film, “Thunderball,” male and female models walked in clothing inspired by the cars: silvery Prince of Wales check suits for women, Ferrari-red ballgowns, and fringed tuxedos as deep black as the designer’s 1938 Bugatti, one of the most expensive cars on the planet. After, the crowd of magazine editors and actors including Diane Keaton, Jessica Chastain and Armie Hammer were ushered to yet another level of the garage, where a sit-down dinner of lobster and burgers from the brand’s restaurant, the Polo Bar, were doled out by an army of synchronized — and, of course, classically good-looking — waiters. — ALEXA BRAZILIAN, fashion features director, T magazine
VAQUERA REMINDED US THAT YOUNG TALENT STILL THRIVES HERE
Vaquera’s spring 2018 collection. Credit Albert Urso/Getty Images
The vacuum left by designers departing the New York schedule made space for some of the younger brands on the margins to rush in and fill the void. Truth is, there are still scrawny, fledgling labels operating on a shoestring with more gusto than business plan, and they still make New York Fashion Week their home.
Vaquera, a four-person collective dedicated to hysterical oddity, is one, both shaky in its early days and squarely in the spotlight’s glare. A year ago, they barely had the means to produce their collection. Even now, Bryn Taubensee, Patric DiCaprio, David Moses and Claire Sully said backstage before the show, many of their pieces come in only a single size — designer price tag notwithstanding — but they were just nominated for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, and were juggling curious interviewers from The New York Times and Vogue.
“We feel like we’re in the middle of an identity crisis,” Ms. Sully said. “We want to communicate our work through our crazy shows but also through selling things and trying to figure out how to do that.”
Rather than ape polish and assurance, they leaned into the confusion, and their show had a cheeky verve their more established colleagues could only wish for. It was a thrilling chance to see designers working to figure themselves out in real time, with a gonzo sense of proportion and shape and great bits of art-as-fashion: a hand-drawn Abraham Lincoln T-shirt dress, an oversize bathrobe-gown. As Whoopi Goldberg, who reviewed the show for Interview Magazine (!), wrote: “If I were hosting another Oscars show I would wear the terry cloth. Absolutely. I just think it’s beautiful.” Reason enough to hope for a reprise. — MATTHEW SCHNEIER, reporter, Styles
JEREMY SCOTT
Backstage at Jeremy Scott’s 20th anniversary show. Credit Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
Who knew 1997 would turn out to be so pivotal for fashion? That’s the year no less than three — count ’em — New York designers founded their businesses, and they all celebrated their 20th anniversaries this season: Narciso Rodriguez, Jeremy Scott and Maria Cornejo. Though they have notably different aesthetics ranging from the streamlined (Mr. Rodriguez) to the organically sculptural (Ms. Cornejo), they share the same independent spirit and cleareyed sense of sartorial self. Their longevity can be attributed to the strength of these visions as well as the healthy perspective that comes from the responsibility of running your own business. I don’t know what they were putting in the water back in ’97, but fashion should bottle it. — V.F.
THERE WAS TIME FOR THE WEIRD-AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE IT
ECKHAUS LATTA’S SHOW WAS PACKED
Not only with critics and the editors of major magazines — more than usual, it seemed to me — but also with genuine friends and fans. The brand, which is designed by Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, who met at Rhode Island School of Design, has been on the rise these past few seasons, in part because it presents an increasingly fleshed-out vision, both of clothes and community.
You believed that these people would wear these clothes, both those who milled around after the show eating dumplings and sipping weed-leaf cocktails and those who had featured in it: among them, the singer Kelela, the artist Lucy Chadwick, young Coco Gordon Moore (Sonic Youth scion of Kim and Thurston) and Susan Cianciolo, whose art-house fashion shows for her Run line in the 1990s were in some way the progenitors of Eckhaus Latta’s. That makes a kind of thread, one that connects Eckhaus Latta to its community, to the past and to the future — pull it, and it can take you to interesting places.
If New York Fashion Week is destined to be tarred with the “commercial” brush, it was cheering to remember that there are plenty of others making things devoutly weird, small and hand-crafted. Really, they always have. — M.S.
From left, Susan Cianciolo, Kelela and Lucy Chadwick in the Eckhaus Latta show
Credit Photographs by Nowfashion
PRABAL GURUNG BROUGHT GLORIA STEINEM (AND FINE JEWELRY) TO FASHION WEEK
Prabal Gurung’s new jewelry for Tasaki. Credit Firstview
There were plenty of good moments at the Prabal Gurung show. Unlike many of the front rows this season, which feature up-and-coming actresses, Mr. Gurung’s featured Huma Abedin and Gloria Steinem — the first time Ms. Steinem had ever been to a fashion show. The casting, too, was notable: Gigi and Bella Hadid walked alongside Ashley Graham and Andreja Pejic. But despite all this excitement, it was hard for me to take my eyes off of Mr. Gurung’s debut collection with Tasaki, the Japanese fine jeweler, where he was recently been named global creative director. His pieces, including twisting, architectural earrings (in white gold and pearl) inspired by Surrealism, were the perfect accompaniment to the stunning evening dresses. — M.J.G.
MARC JACOBS ENDED THE WEEK WITH SOUND OF SILENCE
The Marc Jacobs show has always been a loud punctuation mark to New York Fashion Week, but this season, as with his last, was shown in complete silence. It was staged at the expansive, high-ceilinged Park Avenue Armory uptown, and there was no elaborate set, no fancy lighting and no music. All one could hear was the sound of the wildly eclectic clothes — some ornately beaded, others heavy with shimmery scales of sequins — swishing as models walked on the old wood floors. There were turbans pinned with jeweled brooches with almost every look, lots of swirling ’60s-style printed column dresses with black opera gloves, and embellishment in all shapes, colors and forms, including metallic colored tinsel on sandals and sparkly boas. Seating was arranged on metal folding chairs on the perimeter of the wide open space, which made guests on the other side of the room seem tiny and the models, who carried weekend totes and wore fanny packs, look as if they were in transit, roaming a giant old European train station en route to somewhere exotic and very, very far away. — A.B.
Content Courtesy of MARC JACOBS INTERNATIONAL LLC
LONDON FASHION WEEK HIGHLIGHTS
Reported By: VERONICA HEILBRUNNER
Pics and Content By: VERONICA HEILBRUNNER, NATASHA ZINKO, CATWALKING.COM, TOMMY HILFIGER, THE UPCOMING, HELLO MAGAZINE, DESIGNSCENE.NET, JUNGLE MAGAZINE, VOGUE
NATASHA ZINKO
TOMMY HILFIGER
ALEXANDER WHITE
MILAN FASHION WEEK
Video and Content by: ANNA WINTOUR, VOGUE, BRITISH VOGUE
INNOVATION
On a another planet err we mean topic, this came up in September on Space X and we had to share. What can be better than flying to our favorite destination in no time at all? Uhh, we think not much actually. Enter Space X’s newest buzz
Written by: ANDY WALKER FOR MEME BURN® and MSN NEWS®
Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
Pics and content Courtesy of: Space X
ELON MUSK’S BFR WILL FLY FROM LONDON TO CAPE TOWN IN JUST 34 MINUTES
Elon Musk may be nuts, but a remarkable number of the South African-born businessman’s ventures have been successful. This month at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia, he announced another “really special” proposal.
His space exploration company SpaceX is pondering a new method of transporting people from one corner of the Earth to the other. And it involves a space vehicle/rocket system called the BFR.
“The BFR will be capable of taking people from any city to any other city on Earth in under one hour,” the company revealed.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX believes a journey from Johannesburg to Sydney could last just 37 minutes using the BFR
More specifically, the company quoted flight times of 39 minutes for a journey between New York and Shanghai, 37 minutes for a Sydney to Johannesburg trip, and a 34 minute flight between London and Cape Town.
Currently, a flight to London from Cape Town requires half a day.
The BFR system will reportedly hold around 100 people, breach the Earth’s atmosphere, reach speeds of 27 000km/h in sub-orbit, and conduct an automated landing on a platform.
Both the passenger-filled space vehicle and launcher will be reusable.
SpaceX gave excited travellers an idea of how the system would work in a video that feels straight out of Mass Effect.
But here’s the kicker:
“Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft,” Musk notes on Instagram. “Forgot to mention that.”
Development of the craft will be funded by the company’s current commercial space contracts. But eventually, the BFR will become the backbone of SpaceX’s ambitions in the Solar System, including transporting cargo to the International Space Station, the Moon and Mars.
As for the first launch date of Elon Musk’s remarkable travel system? Let’s just say you won’t be able to buy a ticket just yet.
ART
MARCEL DUCHAMP AND THE FOUNTAIN SCANDAL IS STILL SHOWING UNTIL DECEMBER AT THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART (April 1 to December 3, 2017), AND A SHOW ON THE SAME SUBJECT AT FRANCIS NAUMANN FINE ART, NEW YORK
Written by: DODIE KAZANJIAN for VOGUE® Modifications by: THE REVIEW®
It’s 100 years since Duchamp upgraded the urinal from an everyday object to the high art of sculpture—by taking it out of the men’s room and putting it on a pedestal. It’s art because Duchamp said so: “Readymade.” One of the world’s most scandalous works of art, it was never actually seen. The original disappeared just before its scheduled debut at the First Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, but the work became famous through replicas, and has been changing the way we look at art ever since.
September was super busy and we’re still catching our breathe. From fashion month to Ad Week New York, there was never a dull moment.
In October we’ll finish up fashion month with Paris Fashion Week, which ended in October and always brings the heat and of course cover Tech X from #AdWeekNewYork in detail, including #Samsung’s downtown NYC tech savvy store and more innovative Tech, AI and VR products. We’ll also highlight products and services in the Health and Wellness sector which we’ll expand on starting in October and into the New Year.
For now, go ahead and take a picture with you and your favorite Technology product or gadget or Health and Wellness fave and tag and follow us @thereviewinc and @ilyseterri with the hashtag’s #TechX, #AWNewYork, #LiveHealthy, #BeWell and #Prosper.
Doing so will automatically enter you to win a special mention in our October post and of course, your pic and product will be posted and mentioned there as well, along with your new business or venture, or a special cause you have chosen to support and donation instructions for our readers.
August was full of ups and downs. The highs were high and the lows, well, low. Let’s start with what matters most-the people of Houston and those affected by Hurricane Irma. More news will be posted for Irma in our September post. For now, please donate to those affected in the Caribbean Islands and Miami by going to CDEMA @cdemacu. This is also posted on 9/11, a day that we will never forget along with those that we all loved and lost.
CAUSES
HURRICANE HARVEY TOOK HOUSTON THIS MONTH AND THE WORLD RESPONDED “IN KIND”
THE REVIEW donated to Hurricane Harvey victims and hopes you did too, along with many celebrities and various do-gooders across the nation and throughout the world.
Beyoncé delivered an emotional speech to Hurricane Harvey evacuees Friday at Houston’s St. John’s Church.
Went a lil’ somethin’ like this…
Written by: DANIEL KREPS for ROLLING STONE®
Pics by: THE REVIEW® and ILYSE TERRI®
“This today is a celebration of survival,” Beyoncé told her hometown crowd. “Y’all are my family. Houston is my home. I thank God that y’all are safe, that your children are safe. The things that really matter are your health and your children, and your family and your life.”
Beyoncé’s Destiny’s Child bandmate Michelle Williams and mother Tina Knowles joined the Lemonade singer, who previously pledged to aid Hurricane Harvey relief efforts through her BeyGood foundation.
“I just want to say that I’m home. This church is my home. I was maybe nine or 10 years old the first time I sat where my daughter’s sitting. I sang my first solo here,” Beyonce said before turning to her pastor Rudy Rasmus.
“I just want to thank you for lifting my family. For praying for me. And for being such an incredible example of what life and love is.”
During her visit to St. John’s Church, Beyonce also helped distribute food to those affected by the historic flooding to Houston and its’ neighbors.
Beyoncé was among a handful of celebrities – including Kevin Hart, Janet Jackson and Jennifer Garner – who visited evacuees at Houston-area shelters Friday, the Associated Press reports.
On September 12th, Beyoncé, Drake, Justin Bieber, Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney were among the artists and celebrities that will appear on the Hand in Hand: A Benefit for Hurricane Harvey Relief telethon, which will air at 8 p.m. EST on ABC, CBS, CMT, Fox and NBC as well as stream live on social media.
HOSPITALITY
ALOFT HOTELS KICKS OFF 2017 LIVE AT ALOFT HOTELS TOUR FEATURING EMERGING MUSICIANS
Public Relations by: VICTORIA HART for HOSPITALITY.NET
Pics by: VICTORIA HART and HOSPITALITY.NET
Marriott International’s Music-Driven Aloft Hotels Support Emerging Musicians with the Kick-Off of the 2017 Live at Aloft Hotels Tour Featuring Artists Max, ZZ Ward, and Drake White
Aloft also announces the 8th annual Project: Aloft Star Competition giving up-and-coming musicians a chance to be mentored by Grammy-nominated, multiplatinum-selling artist, Gavin DeGraw
Music-lovers will once again be able to come together and enjoy stripped-down performances from the next big acts in music as Aloft Hotels announces the launch of its 2017 Live At Aloft Hotels Tour. With a focus on both established and emerging artists, the brand is also kicking off the 8th Annual Project: Aloft Star Competition, a global contest to identify and elevate tomorrow’s hottest artists. The contest is launching in collaboration with Grammy-nominated, multiplatinum-selling musician, singer and songwriter, Gavin DeGraw as a mentor to this year’s winner.
Live At Aloft Hotels
Live At Aloft Hotels is an international program that brings in local sounds to Aloft properties around the world, by hosting free, intimate, live music performances at its W XYZ® bars. Alongside a number of local emerging artists, this year’s lineup includes notable performers like acoustic singer MAX, country star Drake White, and LA-based blues performer ZZ Ward.
“Aloft Hotels is excited to continue to bring together musicians, guests and music-loving locals to deliver a buzzing social scene and support up-and-coming music talent through Live At Aloft Hotels,” said Bridget Higgins, Senior Director, Aloft Hotels. “Our Live At Aloft Hotels events are a unique opportunity to bring fans and musicians together in a laid-back setting to enjoy new music – whether that musician is a well-established artist or the next big thing.”
Previous performers at Live At Aloft Hotels have included artists such as The Lumineers, Colbie Caillat, and “American Idol” winner Nick Fradiani.
Aloft Hotels is joining forces with Coca-Cola, bringing innovative, tech-driven digital extensions to the program including live streaming events from Coke Music TV’s Periscope, an innovative Emoji cocktail menu and more.
“Coca-Cola has partnered with the Live at Aloft Hotels program for the second year in a row due to its ability to bring together incredibly talented artists who represent the next generation of music,” said Joe Belliotti, Group Director Global Entertainment Marketing, Coca-Cola North America. “We will be live streaming performances, bringing an eclectic group of emerging musicians to wherever music fans are. Guests attending the performances live at the hotels will enjoy refreshing complimentary Coca-Cola beverages in the open yet intimate setting created in W XYZ® bars.”
Aloft StarProject: Aloft Star promotes the brand’s commitment to supporting self-expression by identifying the hottest emerging music talent from around the globe, offering them a chance to kick start their careers and take center stage at one of the most innovative hotel brands.
Beginning August 15, until September 30, unsigned bands and artists across North America and Latin America are invited to upload up to two original songs along with a photo at LiveAtAloftHotels.com. A panel of industry insiders will select five finalists for Phase 2 of the competition. From October 20 through October 30 fans and music lovers are encouraged to vote for their favorite two artists via LiveAtAloftHotels.com.
What You Win
Two finalists will be personally mentored by Grammy-nominated, multiplatinum-selling artist Gavin DeGraw, and will perform for key music industry insiders including Mike Easterlin, President of Fueled By Ramen and Roadrunner Records and Danny Bush, Senior Vice President of Promotion and Artist Development at RED Distribution on November 7. The winner will be named that evening and offered the opportunity to perform live as part of the 2018 Live At Aloft Hotels Tour.
The Project Aloft Star competition is already underway in the Asia-Pacific region in partnership with MTV, and will also be rolled out in Europe and the Middle East later this year.
All 2017 Live At Aloft Hotels Tour performances have no cover charge and are open to hotel guests and music-loving locals alike. For a complete and up-to-date list of all performances, please visit LiveAtAloftHotels.com and join the conversation by connecting with Aloft Hotels on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, using the hashtag #AloftLive.
Live At Aloft Hotels Tour Dates Highlights
Rachel Crow, Aloft Miami Doral, Friday August 18
ZZ WARD, Aloft Seattle Redmond, Wednesday August 30
MAX, Aloft Dallas Downtown, Friday October 20
Drake White, Aloft Philadelphia Downtown, Tuesday October 24
Magic Giant, Aloft Denver Downtown, Monday November 13
This naturally brings us to our next hot monthly topic!
MUSIC
COLDPLAY LIT UP HOLLYWOOD’S HARD ROCK STADIUM WITH “A HEAD FULL OF DREAMS”
Written by: CELIA ALMEIDA for MIAMI NEW TIMES®
Content and Video by: THE REVIEW® and ILYSE TERRI®
Chris Martin is a ham. Fans have long known this. Like his fellow Brit, the knighted bassist of history’s most famous and fab band, Martin is a crowd pleaser. He asks the road crew to turn the house lights up to “get a good look” at everyone in the crowd, has the cameramen pan to every single section of Hard Rock Stadium, and repeatedly thanks the audience for braving rain, traffic, and the impending buzzkill of a Tuesday morning to come out to his band’s concert.
Yet the most significant maneuver Coldplay ever pulled to please an audience was the radical transformation of its sound from acoustic and piano-driven dorm-room soundtracks to millennial-whooping, electro-pop/rock hybrids methodically designed to get the people in the cheaper seats dancing at stadium shows.
Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes, contained some strong indications that Martin possessed the potential to write songs that could fill stadiums, most notably the breakout single “Yellow,” which one would think the band would’ve saved for an encore but played early in Monday night’s set, in what was by far the loudest sing-along of the evening.
The band performed some early hits, including “The Scientist,” “Clocks,” and “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” but largely eschewed quieter selections in favor of more danceable numbers off the albums Ghost Stories, Mylo Xyloto, and the latest, A Head Full of Dreams. Surprisingly, the third album, X&Y, in which the band pivoted to an electronic sound, went largely ignored save for the delicate “Fix You,” which Martin sang while lying on the runway between the main and center stages.
With brightly colored confetti, a vibrant laser light show, and glowing tempo-coordinated audience wristbands that shone well after the show ended, Coldplay’s set was a Technicolor feast for the eyes and felt at times like a mix between a tame night at Electric Daisy and the Holi Festival of Colors in India. At one point, Martin asked the crowd to forgo cell phones and camera flashes in favor of their wristbands, which lit up in bright blues, reds, and greens like suburban homes in viral Christmas-light videos.
During “Adventure of a Lifetime,” Martin compelled the audience to get low and jump up when the chorus kicked in. Even the roadies joined in, all while wielding giant pink, yellow, orange, and purple balloons that they later tossed into the pit.
It was a far cry from the Coldplay of old. At the 2003 Video Music Awards, after a performance of “The Scientist,” host Chris Rock broke the somber tension in the room by declaring, “Hope you didn’t slit your wrists to that one!” It’s a joke you’d never make about the band that packed Hard Rock Stadium Monday night.
Coldplay has taken a page out of the U2 playbook, not only in the outright intent to write readymade stadium anthems for world tours, but also in the realization that at their best, stadium shows should feel like agnostic tent revivals, nourishing the souls of congregates via designer-drug hooks and chords like those on “Something Just Like This,” the Chainsmokers’ collaboration saved for the main-stage encore.
The saccharine, nearly focus-grouped melodies of Coldplay’s later work don’t translate into timeless records like, say, A Rush of Blood to the Head, but they sure do make for an exuberant concert experience. The bandmates still allow for reflective moments in their sets, such as the touching “Houston,” a country tribute they wrote to the ailing Texas city in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. “I am dreaming of when I get back to Houston,” Martin sang, alluding to the tour stop they were forced to cancel in advance of the looming storm.
Monday night was proof that — like all pop musicians — Coldplay’s members follow a loose formula, but one that works. If you miss the old records, heed the advice John Lennon gave Beatles fans when the world stopped after their breakup. “It’s not some great tragedy,” he said. The records will always be around, he knew. In the case of Coldplay, a band that’s been around for 20 years — 13 more than the Beatles lasted — is bound to change dramatically over time. Save and listen to the old records, but the newer songs are meant to be heard with 50,000 others, underneath a “Sky Full of Stars” and swallowed in a sea of glowing lights.
GREEN DAY GOES HARD IN WEST PALM BEACH
Written by: BEN CRANDELL for SOUTHFLORIDA.COM
Content, Video and Pics by: THE REVIEW® and ILYSE TERRI®
Just as Green Day guitarist and frontman Billie Joe Armstrong was about to launch into the band’s classic hit “When I Come Around” Sunday night, he tilted his head and fired an impressive loogie straight up into the air, ducking out of the way as it hit the Coral Sky Amphitheatre stage. It was a reflexive act from one of punk rock’s iconic flag bearers, but also emblematic of the casual joy that carried him throughout Green Day’s West Palm Beach concert.
No one in pop music is having more fun onstage than Armstrong, touring with music from “Revolution Radio,” the first Green Day album since he went into rehab in 2012 for prescription-pill addiction. And no audience could possibly have more fun than the crowd that packed Coral Sky Amphitheatre for an exhilarating two-and-a-half-hour show with more than two dozen Green Day favorites stretching all the way back to “Kerplunk.”
Looking trim and still boyishly handsome, the mop-topped Armstrong hit the stage with a contagious, chaotic energy and an objective. As Green Day throttled up the new war chant “Know Your Enemy,” Armstrong had a warning for those seated close to the stage: “Just because you paid more money for those seats doesn’t mean you can sit on your ass!”
Standing, jumping and singing along was the rule as Green Day careened through classic songs that have fueled 25 years of high-school and college parties, including “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Longview,” “Welcome to Paradise,” “Basket Case,” “Jesus of Suburbia” and “American Idiot.” The crowd, ranging from tweens to grandparents, sang not only these hits, but rarities such as “Minority” and “2000 Light Years Away.”
Armstrong again offered fresh evidence of what a seriously underappreciated guitarist he is, and his singing voice was clear and assured to the final encores of the night, two beautifully spare, solo acoustic versions of “21 Guns” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” Drummer Tre Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt were, as always, a well-oiled rock rhythm machine, and longtime guitarist Jason White was a nimble accompanist on incendiary versions of “Welcome to Paradise” and “Are We the Waiting.”
The politically charged and critically praised album “Revolution Radio,” a collection of songs that touch on social issues written during the turmoil of 2016, was well represented Sunday night by the title track, “Bang Bang” (about a mass shooter), “Still Breathing,” “Youngblood” and “Somewhere Now.”
Early on in the show Armstrong told the crowd, “This is your night to be away from the television. I’m so sick of all the politics. That s–t is not coming in here tonight. Tonight is about love and compassion.”
Not surprisingly, it was a promise unkept: During “Hitchin’ a Ride” Armstrong encouraged more noise from the audience to wake up anyone who might be staying at Mar-a-Lago, sprinkling in a few f-bombs as he went. And he closed “American Idiot” with a simple “[Expletive] you, Donald Trump.”
Some of the best moments of the night came when Armstrong himself turned into something of a reality-show host.
“Who knows the words to this song?” he asked, looking for a vocalist in the audience during “Know Your Enemy.” He finally plucked from the crowd a boy of about 14 who looked like a Billie Joe Armstrong clone in a black shirt and pants, red tie and a slash of green in his hair. The boy growled a few verses of the song into the microphone and, as he was drowned in applause, he dove into the waiting arms of the audience and surfed back to his friends.
A little later, a young man who told Armstrong he was from the Dominican Republic scrambled onstage to help sing “Longview,” first holding Armstrong in a long, emphatic hug. The man sang and roamed the stage like a rock star, finally taking a running start and leaping into the crowd.
Armstrong’s ambition almost got the better of him on the Operation Ivy cover “Knowledge,” as he searched the crowd for a guitarist to come onstage. After some discussion about her level of expertise, a 16-year-old girl named Kate was invited up from the audience. Once she arrived onstage and held the guitar, Kate appeared to freeze.
As the rest of Green Day played on, she spoke to Armstrong, who moved closer to her. As the conversation continued, Armstrong seemed to look at her intently and reached up and caressed her face tenderly in his hands. After a minute Kate slowly put the guitar over her shoulder, and Armstrong moved behind her and held his fingers on the fretboard. As the song turned back to Kate’s moment to play, Armstrong counted it down, “One, two, three!” and Kate ripped her hand across the strings. It was rock ’n’ roll, in all its glory, and the crowd went wild.
After a few more bars and a rock star-style leap on the final note, Kate was done. Except for a final word from Armstrong: “Kate, you can keep the guitar.”
Something unpredictable, and in the end just right.
FASHION
CHINA DEBUTS THE FACE-KINI
Written by: MONICA KIM for VOGUE®
Pics by: LUCA CAMPRI
Hop aboard the bullet train from Beijing and hurtle five hours southeast toward the sea to reach Qingdao, the sun-drenched port and largest city in Shandong Province. Its claims to fame include picturesque beaches, smooth Tsingtao beer, and the infamous “facekini”—a supernatural swatch of spandex stretched over the head with nose, mouth, and eyeholes offering extreme sun protective qualities. Invented more than a decade ago by an enterprising local, it has since become a global curiosity.
Across East Asia, a pale complexion is the beauty ideal—milky, near translucent, free of even the suggestion of a freckle or spot. It has nothing to do with the West. Rather, it picked up after the Industrial Revolution, when skin tone became a visible class marker. To this day, many Chinese women take extreme measures to avoid the sun; they religiously carry UV-blocking umbrellas or wear mirrored visors that slope down over the face. In Qingdao, the facekini rules as no passing trend, but a way of life for many.
It is a sticky 98-degree day when photographer Luca Campri arrives on Beach No. 1 (just around the bay from Beach No. 2). The crowds are thick with children encased in inflatable tubes the color of ice cream—mango sherbet, frosted blue rings that float in the water. A few brave beachgoers have decided to forgo the facekini and step into the waves in their everyday street clothes. There’s a woman in a black chiffon blouse and matching straw bonnet, while a father in a full linen suit kicks a rowboat out to sea. Surrounded by a throng of locals dressed in head-to-toe swaths of UV-protective mesh, they seem almost exceptional by comparison.
Most facekinis contain an extended flap that covers the delicate skin along the neck; locals may also cover their décolletage and chest.
Not all locals avoid the bright rays. A teenager hits the beach in sneakers and a red cotton dress—no hat, no shades, nothing to distract from the postcard setting.
Crisp wide-brimmed visors offer shade during dips in the Yellow Sea.
Shielding the face takes priority for most beachgoers; Children learn about the importance of sun protection from an early age.
There are endless ways to cover up in Qingdao: a floral silk shawl and matching umbrella, a woven hat topped with baby blue netting.
BRANDS
THIS BURGEONING VENDING MACHINE STARTUP IS TRYING TO REDEFINE OUT-OF-HOME DIGITAL ADS AND IT’S GETTING TO SCALE ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES
Written by: CHRISTOPHER HEINE for AD WEEK®
Content and Pics by: VENGO®
Kiehl’s has been orchestrating such samples-based prospecting via Vengo Labs’ network of vending machines that serve digital ads on 1,400 screens, most of which are on university grounds or in gyms like Planet Fitness. Vengo is really growing. During the first quarter of 2017, the 2-year-old company doubled its screens to 700, and they’re now in 38 out of 50 states. That growing presence is what drew Pivot Media to ink an exclusive partnership, which is being announced today, with the company and sell its growing inventory, specifically targeting CPGs.
“They always had the right placement, but now they have national scale,” said Pivot Media co-founder Jordan Perlmutter. “It’s a ‘solve’ in the out-of-home landscape.”
Whether Vengo Labs can become a formidable OOH player remains to be seen. In addition to the digital ads and sampling, marketers can buy physical wraps around the interactive machines. The cost for its ads run at a CPM, or cost per thousand, rate of around $8.
The targeting can be interesting. “You can imagine [gym ads] in locker rooms that are gender specific and brands that they need,” said Brian Shimmerlik, CEO of Vengo Labs, which, per CB Insights, competes with U-Vend and VendScreen.
Meanwhile, Vengo Labs’ biggest claim to fame may be getting a $2 million investment on ABC’s Shark Tank from investors Kevin O’Leary and Lori Greiner. It seems safe to say they’ll keep an eye on this Pivot Media deal.
ONCE A RUNNING JOKE, LINKEDIN IS SUDDENLY A HOT SOCIAL NETWORK
Written by: DAN TYNAN for AD WEEK®
Pics by: GETTY IMAGES®
When Microsoft announced it was acquiring LinkedIn for $26 billion last December, the tech world responded with a collective “Huh?”
Why did the enterprise software giant want LinkedIn so badly, and why was it willing to pay so much? Did Microsoft have a secret plan to turn the social network for business professionals, which lost $166 million in 2015, into a moneymaker? Or did it want to embed LinkedIn’s user data into its Dynamics 365 CRM platform and other Office software?
Nine months after Microsoft closed the deal, many of those questions remain unanswered. LinkedIn has only just begun to be integrated into Microsoft products; the LinkedIn business unit continues to cost more than it brings in.
In the meantime, though, something unexpected has been happening. LinkedIn has become more than just a place to park one’s digital resume; it has established itself as an essential destination for marketers looking to reach an executive audience.
Over the last two years, LinkedIn has pumped up its publishing platform, tamped down the spam, streamlined its mobile and desktop apps, and introduced new lead-generation and targeting tools. In August, the network unveiled a posse of third-party partners to help marketers create and manage campaigns. At press time, the company had begun to roll out the ability to host native video directly on the site.
It’s not exactly a head-to-toe makeover, perhaps, but not the same old LinkedIn, either. Less buttoned-down and more accessible, it’s become a real social network for real business people—a strategy shift that’s paying off for many publishers and brands.
The polite social network
Not surprisingly, LinkedIn dominates business-to-business digital marketing, says Will McInnes, chief marketing officer for Brandwatch.
“LinkedIn is the Facebook for b-to-b marketers,” says McInnes. “If you are an Apple, a Cisco or an IBM, LinkedIn is a great place to market your products.”
And while it’s not in the same league as Facebook for consumer marketing, LinkedIn is increasingly part of the conversation among top brands, he adds. One reason is the sheer volume of data the social network collects. LinkedIn’s half a billion users share a lot of information—not merely their digital CVs, but endorsements, recommendations, blog posts, comments, likes, shares and follows.
“More than most social networks, LinkedIn has very robust and deep user data,” says Jessie Liu, senior analyst at Forrester Research. “It’s collecting your location, educational history, professional history and interests. That makes it far more valuable than, say, Twitter.”
But LinkedIn has another big advantage over other, more social networks. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, it’s not besotted with fake profiles, fake news and angry invective. As a result, it’s become a kind of refuge for real people who want to discuss ideas, not hurl insults or swap memes.
“People are more careful about what they say on LinkedIn, because it’s essentially their default resume,” says M. Scott Havens, global head of digital for Bloomberg Media. “We see a much cleaner conversation that’s supportive, positive and actually useful.”
Authenticity and polite discourse are two reasons why business periodicals have embraced LinkedIn as a publishing platform. Since the beginning of this year, Bloomberg’s LinkedIn follower count has doubled to roughly 1.5 million, says Havens, while user engagement is literally off the charts.
“If you look at comments or unique impressions of our content, the growth is exponential,” he says. “We were doing half a million impressions a month before, and now it’s like 5 or 6 million.”
Similarly, over the last seven months, Forbes has seen a 137 percent increase in clickthroughs from LinkedIn and an 81 percent increase in followers, notes Shauna Gleason, Forbes Media’s director of social media.
oriented and less political than its posts on Facebook or Twitter, says Gleason. LinkedIn has even begun to influence the kinds of stories these sites publish.
“We’ve started to pitch editors in the newsroom with ideas we think would work well for LinkedIn, like leadership and career content,” Gleason says. “We’re really taking a social-first approach to the way we tailor content to our platform.”
Less spam, more content
Many of these improvements can be traced to changes LinkedIn began making well before the Microsoft acquisition. Two years ago, the network decided to abandon “shallow growth tactics,” which led to aggressive email and endorsement campaigns, in favor of boosting its value to members, says LinkedIn’s global head of product, Ryan Roslansky.
Today, he says, LinkedIn sends nearly 70 percent less email than it did two years ago, and endorsement requests are less frequent and more relevant. Instead, the network tries to entice users to engage more frequently with the original content on their newsfeeds.
“It used to be very difficult to have any kind of social conversations on LinkedIn,” Roslansky admits. “It was a very disjointed experience, compared to how commenting worked on other social platforms. We had to get a lot of that right.”
An early part of that effort was beefing up the network’s publishing platform, starting with its LinkedIn Influencer program. Launched in October 2012 with 100 handpicked thought leaders like Bill Gates and Richard Branson, Influencer was opened up to all LinkedIn members in February 2014. They now produce more than 100,000 new articles a week, and members share nearly 1,000 posts every minute.
Jeff Selingo, a New York Times best-selling author who writes about higher education, was one of LinkedIn’s original Influencers. Now, almost five years later, he’s attracted nearly 420,000 followers on the network.
“When they reached out and asked if I was interested in becoming an Influencer, I was pretty skeptical,” Selingo says. “I didn’t think many people went to LinkedIn for content. But after a couple of pieces, we started to get huge amounts of traffic—like over 100,000 pageviews.”
Like every other LinkedIn Influencer, Selingo doesn’t get a dime for his work. But he says he uses it to test out ideas and survey readers.
“And, to be perfectly blunt, it’s helped me sell books,” he adds.
Instead of only displaying posts by people within one’s network, LinkedIn tweaked its recommendation algorithms to share content based on members’ interests. It’s also begun to use “sessions”—clocking each time members use LinkedIn more than 30 minutes after their last activity—as a key metric of user engagement. Over the last nine months, the number of sessions has increased by more than 20 percent each quarter, says LinkedIn’s Roslansky. That makes it a much more attractive venue for advertisers, he adds.
Along the way, LinkedIn also enhanced its advertising and sales tools. Advertisers can install code on their sites that lets them create richer user profiles and track conversions from LinkedIn, such as event sign-ups and white paper downloads. Marketing pros can create more precisely targeted LinkedIn campaigns, and users can now auto-fill lead generation forms with a single click.
“LinkedIn is really supporting its advertisers more than it has in the past,” says James Carroll, senior digital media specialist for Tableau, a business intelligence and analytics company. “Eighteen to 24 months ago, LinkedIn had a handful of products but not a lot of innovation. Over the last year, they’ve added a lot of new products and become much more competitive.”
Playing catch-up
Still, some brands see room for improvement.
Alison Herzog, director of global social business and digital strategy for Dell, says that while LinkedIn’s recent changes are all welcome, they’re less about innovation and more about playing catch-up to competitors.
“We’ve been asking for a lot of these changes for a long time,” Herzog says.
She adds that LinkedIn still needs to do a better job of sharing its analytics data with big brands.
“When you’re competing with the likes of Facebook, where it’s less expensive and you have access to much more refined targeting and better numbers, it’s hard to justify the cost, even when it’s the right audience,” Herzog says. “Maybe we’ve just gotten spoiled with Facebook. But when you’re a big brand and you’re spending a lot of money, you expect more.”
Jenny Sussin, research vp for Gartner, agrees that holding data so close to the vest may be limiting LinkedIn’s usefulness, given its status as the world’s broadest and deepest professional network.
“Unlike other social networks and a lot of other sites and software, LinkedIn’s fairly closed off from a data perspective,” Sussin says. “Its APIs don’t allow people or companies to export the data from LinkedIn into a third-party system. The data that’s trapped in there could be used for human resources, sales, marketing, you name it.”
“Members give us a lot of data about who they are and what they know,” he says. “And if the data is out there freely, available to anyone, I’m concerned we’ll lose members’ trust in what we’re doing with it.”
Troll-free numbers
LinkedIn will never match Facebook for volume, Twitter for notoriety, YouTube for eyeballs, and Instagram or Snapchat for fun. But for brands like Tableau, in a social media marketplace where brand safety concerns and fraud issues run rampant on social platforms, it’s all about quality. LinkedIn’s rich trove of professional data allows Tableau to zero in on the precise audiences it wants to reach.
“If we want to go after executives, we can target that,” says Carroll. “If we want to target analysts, we can do that in a very accurate way. That lets us trim the fat of wasted impressions or wasted clicks.”
And there are more changes to come. In July, LinkedIn unveiled a dedicated Windows 10 app, as well as integration between its Sales Navigator tool and Dynamic 365 system. Integration with other Microsoft products is on the way.
“You can imagine a world where you’re in Outlook, you mouse over a person’s name, and you see their LinkedIn profile and all the people you know in common,” Roslansky says.
In the meantime, the social network with half a billion professionals is happy to keep doing what it’s best at—connecting talent to opportunities at scale—far from the turmoil and the trolls.
ART
ALL KINDS OF CRAZY COLORS: STERLING RUBY DISCUSSES HIS SCULPTURES FOR CALVIN KLEIN’S FASHION SHOW
Written by: NATE FREEMAN for ART NEWS®
Pics by: ART NEWS® and MATTHEW HIGGS INSTAGRAM AND CALVIN KLEIN
“Sterling Ruby’s Sophomore (2017) installed at the Calvin Klein offices in New York City.
“On Thursday evening, I walked into the Calvin Klein headquarters on 39th Street in Manhattan, the site of the night’s hotly anticipated Spring 2018 ready-to-wear fashion show by designer Raf Simons, to see, hanging above the snaking runway, an eye-popping new sculpture by the Los Angeles-based artist Sterling Ruby. Titled Sophomore (2017), it was an extended hanging mobile made up of pick-axes, jack o’ lanterns, giant pom-poms, metal pails, gnarled car parts, and red splashes of long fabric—all in the service of a work made by Ruby but pitched to the theme of the evening, which Simons described as “both an American nightmare and the all-powerful American dream.” The show’s program, placed on the seats for attendees, offered a few further words: “The Sterling Ruby installation functions as a panorama, a context, for a collection that plays inherently with recontextualization—utilizing ‘the clues of horror.’“
“Ruby and Simons have been collaborating for years, such that they now occupy a muse-to-muse relationship. The sculpture on the ceiling harmonized with the looks on the models, in a fashion show that doubled as an art opening and vice versa. All the work on view was an extension of the two artists’ past collaborations, including Simons’s Fall 2017 collection, presented at Gagosian Gallery in New York in February, and a show-stopping renovation of the Calvin Klein store on Madison Avenue. When Simons remade iconic early Calvin Klein underwear ads for his first campaign, he had boys in their skivvies stand in front of Ruby’s Flag (4791), from 2014, at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami.
“Simons is maybe the most fawned-over designer in fashion, having successfully reignited the beleaguered House of Dior after the loss of John Galliano and then assuming his post as the first-ever chief creative director at Calvin Klein. “It’s a tough gig to be crowned the savior of American fashion,” Vanessa Friedman wrote at the start of her New York Times review of Thursday’s show. Such is Simons’s stature that this summer saw a tribute song in his honor, “RAF” by the rapper A$AP Mob, hit the charts with an immortal hook: “Please don’t touch my Raf, please don’t touch my Raf.”
Simons is also a discerning and devoted art collector. I’ve spotted him many times at Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, as well as other major fairs. His home in New York has work by Cindy Sherman, Cady Noland, George Condo, Sanya Kantarovsky, Anne Collier, and Wolfgang Tillmans, in addition to pieces by Ruby. So, naturally, there were more art-world personalities than usual milling around before the start of Thursday’s show. Condo sat with Purple magazine editor Olivier Zahm, while younger artists such as Jordan Wolfson, Joe Bradley, and Liz Magic Lazer were in the crowd. White Columns director Matthew Higgs was there, as was Jessica Morgan, the director of the Dia Art Foundation. I was seated next to dealer Monika Sprueth, who owns Sprueth Magers (with Philomene Magers). She said it was her first fashion show in over a decade.
“There were celebrities in attendance, people my seatmate said she “recognized from their pictures in the newspaper:” actors like Jake Gyllenhaal, Lupita Nyong’o, Mahershala Ali, Rashida Jones, and Kate Bosworth along with the model Karlie Kloss and Daily ShowTV host Trevor Noah. Brooke Shields came to watch her daughter Kaia Gerber’s runway debut. And Ruby, the night’s main artist guest, sat next to Christina Ricci and Kyle MacLachlan.
“Once the show started, 45 minutes late, the models bombed down the aisles in fabulous outfits cut from nylon, rubber, and lace, with hues flipping from violent yellow to blood-red on jeans and pulsating skirts. As the rapper Quavo articulated it in a verse in “RAF”: “Raf Simons, all kind of crazy colors.”
“The biggest surprise may have been that, a few looks in, certain clothes were pattered with works by Andy Warhol, the result of a collaboration between Calvin Klein and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. You won’t see any soup cans: many of the designs referenced in the show come from the “Death and Disaster” series. Don’t be surprised when you see shoulder bags adorned with Electric Chair (1964-1965) and Ambulance Disaster (1963-1964).
“After the show, I was ushered into the backstage area, where behind a scrum in line to cheek-kiss Simons stood Ruby, in his jeans and a sweatshirt, stringy hair down to his shoulders. He seemed a little flustered by it all, bearing witness to a splashy fashion spectacle that shared DNA with his own work.
“It’s flattering to see that the artwork I’ve created for Calvin Klein have ceased to be just objects—they’ve integrated themselves into the garments,” he told me. “As an artist, I love that this trajectory of what I’ve done is going to be translated into a garment that someone can wear out on the street.”
“Simons, as a fashion designer, has to create shows at a faster clip than an artist who may have a show or two per year. Visions need to come together quickly—a circumstance that Ruby, as his collaborator, has gotten used to.
“Three weeks ago, Raf said, ‘You think you can do it? Can we repurpose the mobile but integrate horror?’ ” Ruby recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean by horror?’ “
“As Simons began to explain in his thinking—”fashion tries to hide the horror and embrace only beauty, but they are both a part of life,” as he put it in his notes—the collaborative work started to come together.
“We both work on this platform where a topic has to be turned into an abstraction—it can’t exist as it is,” Ruby said. “A horror trip can’t be just a horror trip as you might know it. It has to be something else. It has to be integrated into something more.”
“But the collaborators work on two sides of the country, meaning the final experience—the looks sashaying down the runway with the Ruby works strung overhead—would not come together until right before show time.
“For the past week I’ve been working in the studio on a new iteration of the mobile, and he’s been working in the atelier on things that have appropriated work out of that mobile, and up until yesterday—neither of us had seen what the other was doing,” Ruby told me. “I only saw the collection last night, and I thought it was a seamless translation of what I was doing.”
“As images from the show worked their way online minutes after it ended and well-wishers streamed backstage, it was clear that the Simon-Ruby partnership has worked well.
“Most fashion houses won’t do this—they wont allow a designer to bring in an artist and to make these kind of full-face moves which will identify the brand,” Ruby said. “This is a very sincere, very critical commitment from both of us, and from Calvin Klein.”
Sorry for the slight delay this month getting this out to you all! Hurricane #Irma had us in a tizzy and our little elves have worked through the storm to bring this months REVIEW to our fabulous readers
Our hearts go out to all families and friends affected by the storm and anyone that felt its’ impact in a very negative way. We consider ourselves extremely blessed to be very mildly affected and of course, will donate to those in need. Details for you to donate will follow as the storm clears and needs are assessed.
SEPTEMBER AND FASHION WEEK ARE IN FULL SWING AND UP NEXT
July was a hot month (on this hemisphere at least) and although some consider that a bad thing-others do not! Few things are hotter than Miami swim and so we thought it fitting to start there.
FASHION AND EVENTS
MIAMI SWIM WEEK
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’S NEW LINE AND RUNWAY SHOW CATERED TO REAL WOMEN…
AND THE CROWD WENT WILD
Miami Swim Week is always one of the hottest events of the year. With 90 degree weather and the newest bikinis on the market, you’d be pressed to find somewhere steamier in the summer.
But this year’s swimsuit mecca was extra special thanks to the debut of SI Swimsuit’s first-ever swimwear line during SWIM MIAMI. Walking the runway in a variety of sexy, athletic and functional pieces, the Top 15 ladies of the inaugural #SISwimSearch open casting call showcased just how versatile this line will be. Special guests, SI Swimsuit models Samantha Hoopes and Hailey Clauson opened and closed the show respectively in some of the line’s hottest suits.
Available in sizes 2-20, the line features seductive one-pieces, retro high-cut bikini briefs and teeny tiny triangle top that leave little to the imagination.
Gone are the days of curvy women resorting to swim skirts and motherly floral-print one-pieces. SI’s body-positive swimwear line ensures that women of all shapes and sizes will feel sexy as they hit the beach in style next summer. SI’s swim and activewear line will drop in early 2018 at a price point of $40-$160 per suit.
THE TRENDS
Marrakech is trending
Designers such as Sinesia Karol, Marie France Van-Damme and Audrina Patridge did collections inspired by their travels, particularly Morocco. But each brand uses the inspiration in distinct ways. While Sinesia Karol was inspired by the colors spices such as turmeric and ginger to give her pieces color and flare – deep oranges, yellows and warm tones mixed with pastels – Marie France Van-Damme stayed in the black and white hues but focused more on the striped-prints and metallics, paired with chiffon kaftans for layering. Patridge mixed her Malibu-girl tastes with 1960s and 1970s Marrakech vibes also focusing on color and texture for her brand Prey Swim.
Off the shoulder is apparently here to stay
If you thought you’d seen every blogger in the city (and instagram) with an off-the-shoulder blouse by now, well get ready for more. Swimwear designers have doubled down on bare shoulders and ruffles.
One piece or bodysuit? What’s the difference anymore?
More designers are creating swim pieces that can be worn as both swimwear and bodysuits. While some focus on extremely elaborate bikinis, others such as Sports Illustrated, Gottex and Acacia are making it easier for those who enjoy wearing their swimsuits as bodysuits for a night out, or with a maxi-skirt. Versatility is what the swimwear industry should be all about.
THE BEST SHOWS
Peruvian brand, Aguaclara with phenomenally embroidered and perfectly sculpted suits in an array of oranges and bright yellows, but transitioning into baby blue and turquoise. Pieces included both those warm and cool tones contrasted via geometric shapes. The collection was one of the best of the week.
Hot-As-Hell threw its middle fingers up to society – literally. As always, the show included an array of eccentric, exotic and diverse models and children – so many children! The models danced, screamed and jumped down the catwalk. The collection mixes lingerie with swimwear, continuously influenced by Asian prints, flowers and fonts.
Sports Illustrated was the only show to include plus-sized women, and every time they came out the crowd at the W Hotel went wild. The collection presented an array of simpler pieces that – again – one could wear as a bodysuit, but also to the beach.
Beach Bunny really brought the angels down for their collection “Heaven on Earth.” Their flawless models brought the heat for a runway show full of excitement, bounce, fun poses, and props such as wings or bunny ears.
Luli Fama paid homage to Cuba. The show commenced with a presentation of men dancing while another played the drums, in a flow of rhythms that got the audience pumped and ready. Then an array of designs were seen on the runway, each divided by smaller collections with names such as “Me Voy pa Cuba,” in tribute to the towns and cities of the island, but also to those who left Cuba and never came back. The Luli Fama show was colorful, exciting, and the connection between the designer and her Cuban roots was seen throughout.
MUSIC
WHO’S NEW AND NOTABLE
Many are new and now being noticed, but in our opinion, the few mentioned here are just our cup of tea.
MISSIO
Why You Should Pay Attention: Earlier this year, Missio’s angst-ridden “Middle Fingers” shook SiriusXM’s Alt Nation, cracked Billboard’s Alternative Songs Top 10 and stoked anticipation for their RCA Records debut, Loner. The Austin-based band have since landed on festival bills and some opening slots on Muse’s tour with 30 Seconds to Mars.
“If you look on the surface, we’d seem like a really black sheep,” Missio instrumentalist-producer David Butler says. “Our story is not, ‘We played local clubs and blew up.’ We’re more of an Internet success story. That’s how we got our start.”
Over the past three years, Butler and vocalist-producer Matthew Brue morphed Missio’s sound from ambient roots – an inventive Lana Del Rey cover lurks among earlier tracks on YouTube – to its current booming, razor-sharp state. Loaded with bruising bass, icy synths and dark imagery, Loner is an exploration of Brue’s winding road to sobriety. “If we can have one thing out of this record,” he says, “it’s just to let people know that they’re not alone.”
They Say: Thanks to “Middle Fingers,” Brue says “maybe like 8,000” people have flipped them the bird at once. “It is not an ‘eff you’ song,” he says. “When we play ‘Middle Fingers,’ it’s a chance for everyone in that room to be united. There’s so much stress that people go through in a day. It’s a really unique situation to come into a venue and leave all that stuff aside – political beliefs or whatever people disagree about outside of those rooms. It’s really cool to see 500, 1,000, 5,000, or however many people uniting for that three minutes and 40 seconds.”
Hear it for yourself here:
SUDAN ARCHIVES
Why You Should Pay Attention: In September, revered funk, rap and avant-pop label Stones Throw will be releasing the self-titled debut from Britney Parks’ Sudan Archives, a unique melding of West African strings and contemporary beatmaking. A self-taught violinist, Parks picked up her instrument after a group of fiddlers played Irish jigs before her fourth grade class in Cincinnati. But her family (including her stepfather, who worked at LaFace Records in the early days) envisioned a different sort of musical career for her, originally pairing her with her twin sister as a teen pop act. When Parks rebelled at the age of 16, she was kicked out of the group and out of her house, finding herself on her first plane ride ever out to Los Angeles, where she juggled odd jobs and slowly taught herself how to use her violin and laptop to make her own beats.
She Says: “I realize now those old Irish jigs I first heard remind me of the West African fiddle music I like now; it’s a ‘rooted’ sound as opposed to violin in the classical way. … My mom nicknamed me Sudan when I was 16. When I moved out to L.A. at 19, I started to just YouTube Sudanese music just to see what came up. Ironically, most of the music has violins on it. But I was shy about my stuff. The confidence came from my stepdad [who passed away in 2015]; he was the biggest supporter of my music. He encouraged me to work towards that, to not go to college but instead take a break and find myself.”
Take a listen here:
GRABBITZ
Why You Should Pay Attention: Deadmau5 fans will recognize Buffalo, New York native Grabbitz, real name Nicholas Chiari, as the wistful crooner on his track “Let Go.” The official YouTube video has racked up more than 13 million views to date. That prog-house slab’s minor keys and synth washes meshed nicely with the vocalist’s lyrics of lopsided love. That team-up came by social-media kismet: Chiari, inspired by previous work, wrote his own melody to another Deadmau5 track and uploaded his new version. The man himself eventually found it, asking Grabbitz to collab.
Now, Grabbitz’ debut album, Things Change, is out, mixing moody alt-rock melodies with burbling, breakbeat-inflected rhythms and, yes, the occasional drop, all recalling the era when rock stars flirted with block-rockin’ beats and guested on electronic albums.
Hear for Yourself HERE: Chiari penned his latest single, “I Think That I Might Be Going Crazy,” unsurprisingly, during a personal maelstrom, as he both tried to launch his music career in L.A. and tend to a major family illness back home. The quickfire-repeated chorus over snaking snares and syncopated guitar wraps up the anxiety in a melodic bow.
SANTA CRUZ
Why You Should Pay Attention: This four-piece that comes from Helsinki but sounds like Hollywood have been causing havoc in Europe since the late Aughts thanks to their debaucherous, flamboyant flair. Their third full-length, Bad Blood Rising is due out September.
Listen here:
KATY PERRY IS DOING THE MOON WALK WITH MTV
The MTV Video Music Awards are returning to California and getting a certified “California Gurl” to host.
Katy Perry took to her Twitter feed Thursday to announce her upcoming gig hosting — and performing — at the VMAs in August.
“I’ve been training with MTV in zero gravity, eating astronaut ice cream, and I’m on a group text with Buzz Aldrin and Neil deGrasse Tyson,” Perry said in a statement. “Come August 27th, I’ll be ready to be your MOONWOMAN! Brace for impact, kids.”
Perry will kick off the evening as the first announced performer for the ceremony. On Tuesday, Perry earned five VMA nominations for her video contributions over the last year, tying with the Weeknd, with only Kendrick Lamar earning more.
“We’re thrilled to have global phenomenon Katy Perry as the host and a performer at the 2017 VMAs,” said Bruce Gillmer, head of music and music talent for Global Entertainment Group, Viacom, in a statement from MTV. “She is at the forefront of music culture and the perfect person to anchor this year’s show, which promises to be one of the most diverse and music-filled in VMA history.”
The 2017 MTV Video Music Awards will air from the Forum in Inglewood on Aug. 27.
ADVERTISING AND BRANDS
NIKE HAS AN ALL WOMAN TEAM AND THEY’RE “DOING IT” WELL
“Just Do It.
“That thought can easily pop up when it comes to breaking down gender barriers in the advertising industry. And it happens to be especially fitting for independent digital agency The Program, which is helping tear down those walls with an all-female brand team leading its global Nike account.
The team is currently working on an initiative around Nike Air VaporMax Explorer Pack, which features an “Explorer Light” and “Explorer Dark” pair of shoes. One of the social content posts from The Program that launched this week includes a video on Foot Locker’s Instagram featuring the double sneaker pack.
The agency, which has 27 staffers and is based in Portland, Ore., has been working with Nike since 2009 on everything from developing global content strategies and cross-category seasonal content to creating microsites and social media content for new products. And in the last year, the brand team has been comprised of six women.
Coe Lottis, founder and VP-strategy for the shop, referred to Nike as The Program’s oldest relationship and an “anchor account,” said he doesn’t know how the team became all women. “It just happened –it was very organic,” he said. “We try to find the most talented and smartest people who make the most sense [for each brand] and now we have this team at the helm of our largest relationship.”
Design Manager Kim Ponto, has been at the agency since 2013, said while the agency didn’t intend for the team to be all women, the account team “would love to inspire more women-led teams” at other agencies.
“Although we’ve been lucky enough to be based in a very progressive city, as well as work with incredibly progressive brand partners, we definitely recognize the struggle with gender bias in this industry. It’s still out there for sure,” said Ponto.
She added that her Nike team wants to encourage other shops and women in the industry “to be confident enough to break down those barriers so they can focus more energy on creating kick-ass creative work, and less on the struggle towards equality.”
Recently, Lottis said he walked into one of the Nike team’s meetings and they told him that “no boys were allowed,” but they were joking, of course. Ponto said the women would be fine with a man coming onboard, noting that the agency is a tight-knit group and they ask men in the office for information if they want insights on a male-targeted product.
At the end of the day, Lottis said the team’s passion and craft shine through so much that no one ever thinks about the fact that it’s made up of all women.
“I hope that folks can take inspiration from the forward-thinking men we have here on our staff, who are able to stand back and recognize amazing work when they see it, and not even pay attention to gender lines,” said Ponto.
APPLE IS FINALLY ON INSTA
While most companies have been tweeting and Facebooking for years, Apple has remained largely on the sidelines.
It has an @apple Twitter page, but has never tweeted from it. It has a Facebook page, but it’s blank. (Rather than post to those pages, it uses the accounts to buy ads on those services.) Apple does have a large social presence for Apple Music on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, seeing the value there, given the multimedia strengths of the platforms. It also has a presence for Apple support in social.
But otherwise, it’s been notoriously ambivalent. Until now.
This month, the flagship Apple brand joined Instagram. It will surely attract gobs of followers in the coming days, but rather than signaling a new social strategy for the tech giant, the move is instead designed, at least at first, simply to extend an existing ad campaign—“Shot on iPhone,” which has been running since 2015 and will now get the full Instagram treatment.
Much as the “Shot on iPhone” billboards, print ads and video spots do, the @apple Instagram account will feature content captured by iPhone users, curated by Apple. Each post is credited back to the Instagram account of its creator. To start, Apple has made eight posts, each of which feature content from five users—so, 40 users overall.
That Apple is finally joining Instagram may be a surprise, but the content strategy really isn’t. As a brand with a tightly controlled brand voice, Apple has long resisted getting its hands dirty in social, where spontaneity and honest connections are everything. Using social simply to extend a traditional campaign is about as conservative as it gets. (It’s how most marketers used social at the very beginning, and many continue to—usually badly.)
“Shot on iPhone” obviously does have a community element at its core, in its celebration of user creativity. In that sense, the campaign is already “social,” and bringing it to Instagram was the logical next step. But it’s social in a way that’s pretty airless—risk free and heavily manufactured.
Whether Apple will ever really take the plunge into social media—and build something compelling with social at the core, rather than just linking to playlists and posting nice complilation videos of photography—remains to be seen.
ADVERTISING, CAUSES AND BRANDS
NYC IS ABOUT TO BE “PLUS ONE” ON A REALLY COOL POOL
The idea of swimming in any of New York City’s notoriously filthy rivers is likely to leave most of the city’s residents feeling the same way—incredulous, and probably a little nauseated.
But Heineken and Tribeca Studios (the production arm of Tribeca Enterprises) are looking to drum up more support for a floating—and heavily filtered—public pool in the city’s most local waters, with a pair of new videos narrated by Neil Patrick Harris.
The pool itself is not a new proposition: Shaped like a plus sign, and aptly named “Plus Pool,” it’s the brainchild of a handful of local architects and designers, who have been spearheading stress-testing and fundraising for the project since 2010.
One of the clips, directed by Bianca Giaever of Greenpoint- and Los Angeles-based production company m ss ng p eces, walks viewers through that story, as told by Harris and various stakeholders and advisers, like co-founder Archie Lee Coates IV and Joshua David, one of the founders of New York City’s High Line park—another improbable public project, and one that ultimately became reality.
The pool, though, is still far from a sure thing. Its founders are still hashing out a location with local officials and working on gathering investors to provide the $20 million it will take to build. Heineken, for its part, is promising $100,000 in funds to the project, but only if 100,000 fans of the idea sign a petition supporting it.
“We want people to demand they get Plus Pool,” says Quinn Kilbury, senior director of marketing at the brewer, who has overseen other projects in its in-house, metropolitan-improvement “Cities of the World” campaign—like the “Subway Symphony” collaboration with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. (Side note: Kilbury also led the creation of 2014’s best ad—Anna Kendrick’s foul-mouthed Super Bowl hijacking for Newcastle Brown Ale—while working at that Heineken subsidiary).
The second new clip, a VR video directed Ray Tintori, offers a rendering of how the pool might look if it were nestled between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges off Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. “Heineken has given us the ability to speak to an audience much bigger than the audience that we have currently,” says Coates.
So far, the brewer’s petition, found at swimintheriver.com, has racked up about 5,000 signatures since the brand’s partnership with the pool first hit the press in late April. Hopefully, 95,000 more are willing to jump on board soon, because until it’s built, some New York teens will probably just keep taking dips in the Hudson anyway—as an extraordinarily ill-advised rite of passage.
ANTI-BRANDING IS STILL BRANDING PEOPLE
ENTER BRANDLESS
Brandless is the vision of Tina Sharkey and Ido Leffler, each bringing with them decades of experience crafting brands and communities. Sharkey served as a senior vice president at AOL, right when chat rooms and AIM were all the rage. Before that, she cofounded the online media company iVillage, and later on served as CEO of Johnson and Johnson’s BabyCenter. Leffler is the brand guru of Cheeky colorful tableware, YesTo natural beauty products and Yoobi school supplies, all found at Target.
Everyday goods, Sharkey and Leffler argue, are simply more expensive than they need to be, as shoppers are forced to pay a “BrandTax” — the markup tacked on to most brand-name items. Brandless estimates that the average person pays at least 40% more for products of comparable quality to Brandless’, and up to 370% more for some beauty products, like face cream simply because of the brand name attached to it. With their own production and distribution model, Brandless is able to price every single item at $3 (sometimes three items for $3, such as the case with cans of garbanzo beans). This in itself should be enough to have competing CPG players shaking in their boots.
But what’s most interesting about Brandless’ model is not just the pricing scheme, but the brand’s greater vision: the “Brandless life.”, or is it?
“Life today, for a lot of people, feels like one jumbled up Rubix cube,” says Leffler. “We’re not the solution to all of that, but we want to make it easier.”
Brandless isn’t just selling products; it’s selling a way of life.
“We’re talking about an attribute-led life where the experience and the people are the things that you remember, not the stuff,” summarizes Sharkey. “We want you to spend more time living your life and less time reading labels.”
To facilitate this transition to a Brandless life, each Brandless product is wrapped in uncluttered packaging. Taking cues from brands like Rx Bar, Brandless lists the most important product attributes — such as non-GMO, organic, gluten-free, no parabens and no animal testing — up front and center.
“There’s no guy in a striped shirt with a beret driving a gondola down a canal in Venice trying to sell you tomato sauce,” Sharkey emphasizes. “Tomato sauce is tomato sauce.”
To further simplify, Brandless offers one version of items. “We’ve tested fifty different ketchups,” explains Leffler. “We’ve tested a hundred different types of granola, mustard, everything that you could possibly want. Every type of snack food, supplements, everything. And we’ve tested and created it so that the one that you get from Brandless is the one you want and should have.”
Brandless doesn’t just hope to return time to people’s schedules but also plans to direct how they use that time. While not live at launch, eventually, Leffler says, if you’ve ordered pasta and a sauce, you may receive a notification suggesting some complimentary roasted vegetable recipes and a map to the closest three farmer’s markets in your area. “Or, here’s the local butcher that we think you should go to to get the meat for your bolognese.”
Part of the business plan is to get people back out to, and in, communities. For every order placed on Brandless, a meal is donated to a family in need through Feeding America. By joining Brandless’ membership plan, B.More, the meal contribution doubles for every purchase. Down the road, the founders explain, they hope to encourage B.More members to sign up for volunteer and community-based events.
“We want to enable people to have the experiences and the lives that they want,” says Sharkey. With this, Brandless borrows more from Crossfit and Sweetgreen than Unilever or P&G.
Still, Brandless is just at the beginning of their journey. Kinks are yet to be worked out on their website. The products themselves have yet to be taste, touch, smell and user-tested by finicky buyers. Legacy brands must wait to see if the flavor of Brandless’ one ketchup rivals that of long-beloved Heinz or Hunts items. But the concept of Brandless is revolutionary in its attempt to alleviate modern pain-points , such as the Paradox of Choice, time-starved schedules, lack of community, and concerns around product transparency and health. People’s needs have shifted. It’s time that the CPG model does as well. Perhaps Brandless is the beginning of this transition.
Usually we do not offer thoughts on this-but here we feel we must…
Anti-branding is still branding you see and the best part of this is the price–however–people want good packaging and a good product because it makes them feel great and inspires and satisfies their senses.
Further, it allows people to make connections with a look and feel that they can personalize according to their individualized needs, tastes and preferences.
On one hand-Brandless is revolutionary and brilliant and on the other-just another marketing shtick that consumers are bound to see through.
Further-socialism is inadvertently being promoted here and we all know how we generally feel about that.
This venture is sure to be a success because of it’s anti-marketing ahem MARKETING campaign, but as Mr. Bush used to say…”make no mistake about it”, they are still selling a brand and are absolutely Marketing and utilizing branding and brand messaging, as well.
Regardless, the consumer benefits–as they get a great product that they want or need, at a great price!
Fashion week prep is coming up next month as all will be getting ready for the shows in Sept., so stay tuned for fun, fashion, fans and hoopla!
June went by too soon but we made sure to catch the bright spots for our readers.
So with no further ado, we give you June!
MUSIC AND ENTERTAINMENT
JAY-Z DROPS 4:44 WHILE BEYONCE DROPS TWO NEW HUMANS ON PLANET EARTH
After a monthlong teaser campaign involving no less than five advance video clips, Jay-Z’s new album “4:44” finally dropped, three minutes before its scheduled release at midnight ET on June 30. The advance ads featuring pledged that the album will be a Tidal/ Sprint exclusive, as part of the carrier’s $200 million deal with he Jay Z-owned streaming service. But in a twist that was met with an angry reaction from many fans, only people who signed up for Tidal before the album’s release and current Sprint users will be able to access it, at least for now.
It’s been quite a month for the Carters. Just a couple of weeks after Beyoncé reportedly gave birth to twins — though the family has yet to release an official statement — Jay-Z dropped his 13th solo album. “4:44” debuted Thursday night at midnight on the rapper’s music streaming platform, Tidal, and the Internet has buzzed about it ever since with shout outs from celebs such as Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eric Benet and many more.
And as if twins and a new album wasn’t enough, Jay-Z also revealed this month that he was changing the stylization of his name from Jay Z to JAY-Z.
Check out one of the videos titled “Adnis” for the teaser campaign here. This one is starring Oscar winner, Mahershala Ali playing a boxer:
Upon its release, the 10-track album streamed on iHeartRadio across 160 Pop, Rhythm and Urban radio stations in the U.S., and fans were able to hear the entire album on Urban and Rhythm formats throughout the day until midnight ET on July 1. iHeart also featured exclusive audio from Jay-Z discussing the album.
The album will be available on Apple Music after a week of exclusivity on Tidal, and it seems very likely that it will be available on iTunes as well; another source says it will be available on all major services. It also seems inevitable that “4:44” will also be available on CD and vinyl at some point. Jay-Z pulled his catalog, with a handful of exceptions, from Spotify and Apple Music in April.
The exclusive epidemic of 2014-16 has largely abated, as the realization crept in that the only winners in that arms race were the streaming service with the exclusive and the artist and/or label who pocketed whatever benefits came with it. Spotify never joined in the exclusive wars — as the established market leaders, they didn’t need to — and Apple Music recently has focused more on its burgeoning video service and premieres on its Beats 1 radio station. A key turning point came last August when Frank Ocean delivered an uneven album called “Endless” to finish off his contract with Def Jam, only to release “Blonde,” a much more satisfying album, via Apple Music just two days later. The act inspired Lucian Grainge, chairman/CEO of Def Jam’s parent Universal Music Group, to ban exclusives by the company’s artists.
But Tidal has doubled down on them — according to reports, $75 million of the Sprint deal is dedicated to exclusives — with limited success. For around 18 months, Prince’s catalog was available exclusively on the service — a situation that ended in February — and Kanye West’s “Life of Pablo,” which was marred by a baffling release strategy that was apparently directed by the artist himself, was a Tidal exclusive for a few weeks before it suddenly appeared on other services. In April Jay-Z pulled nearly his entire catalog (with a handful of exceptions) from Spotify and Apple Music.
The most famous example, of course, is “Lemonade,” which Beyonce has kept faithfully exclusive on her husband’s streaming service since its release on April 23, 2016 — to its detriment, at least chart-wise. In Nielsen Music’s year-end report for 2016 — which combines physical sales, track-equivalent units (TEA, whereby 10 song downloads equal one album) and streaming equivalent units (SEA, where 1,500 on-demand streams equal one album) — Drake’s “Views,” the year’s top album, and “Lemonade,” No. 3, were not dramatically far apart in two of the categories: physical (1.607 million for Drake vs. 1.554 million for Beyonce) and TEA (Drake’s 509,000 to Beyonce’s 418,000).
But streaming showed a vast difference: 2.024 million units for Drake compared with 214,000 for Beyonce. Nearly 10 times more streams — than Beyonce.
The discrepancy is not surprising. Earlier this month, Spotify claimed to have reached 140 million users worldwide; in March it said 50 million of them were paying subscribers. Also in June, Apple Music said it had passed 27 million paying subscribers. In March of last year Tidal claimed to have 3 million subscribers, but a January report in a Norwegian newspaper, citing internal company documents, said that as of January 2016 it had just 1.2 million activated accounts and 850,000 paying subscribers.
While the Beyonce and West exclusives probably boosted the service’s numbers, it remains far behind its chief competitors — a situation that “4:44” seems unlikely to change significantly. But this strategy, if accurate, means Jay gets to have it both ways: A splash and a big payday deal for the exclusive, followed by conventional streaming and physical releases at a time of his choosing. We’ll know more about how this strategy panned out for Mr. Carter throughout July, so watch this space for our overall consensus.
So far, it seems that 4:44, if nothing else, is a candid and old school rap lesson on how to effectively call out your foes, family, friends and even yourself.
Cathartic for Jay…either way.
Speaking of calling people out, this next story can only be described as:
THE GAME BLAME
In recent news, Viacom Blasts The Game’s Sexual Assault Lawsuit as ‘Absurd’.
The alleged sexual misconduct that briefly shut down production of ABC’s Bachelor in Paradise has provoked no public litigation thus far. And so, observers will be left guessing how Warner Bros. TV might have attempted to fend off potential claims from BIP contestants, Corinne Olympios and DeMario Jackson, over what happened on the first day of shooting.
Might the studio have raised First Amendment arguments, turned to a cast contract disclaiming responsibility for “unwelcome/unlawful contact or other interaction among participants,” or argued that it had not proximately caused any assault? Perhaps. Maybe a dispute involving Jayceon Taylor, the hip-hop star known as The Game, can help answer legal questions.
Priscilla Rainey, who was cast to be a love interest on the VH1 reality show She’s Got Game, alleges she was sexually assaulted by Taylor during an “afterhours date.” She sued for battery and testified that Taylor was highly intoxicated when the two went to a Chicago-area nightclub and he forcefully reached his hands inside her dress to rub her. After a trial last November, she scored a $7.1 million verdict.
This month, in a twist, Taylor is suing Viacom, alleging the media company owed him a duty of reasonable care to ensure that the contestants were fit and suitable for participation. In other words, the rapper blames Viacom for what happened.
Last week, Viacom brought a motion to strike Taylor’s complaint and raises some of the very defenses highlighted above.
“It is absurd for Taylor to claim that Viacom’s alleged approval of Rainey being cast on the Program is the proximate cause of the jury’s verdict against him for allegedly sexually assaulting her,” states Viacom’s SLAPP motion. “The superseding causes of his purported damages include, most obviously, his alleged sexual battery of Rainey, as well as her filing of a civil lawsuit against him, his failure to appear for trial, and the jury’s decision to credit her testimony and award her $7.1 million. Each is an independent event that breaks any purported chain of causation.”
Viacom tells a California judge that Taylor’s claims arise from conduct in furtherance of its First Amendment rights. Leaning on a body of prior court decisions, the media company characterizes the process of casting as an “integral part of the creation of a television program” and says that Taylor, his dating life, and She’s Got Game qualify as issues of public interest under the California statute meant to deter frivolous court actions impinging upon constitutionally protected activity.
Viacom CEO Bob Bakish Says MTV Set to Be More ‘Upbeat’
If a judge agrees, the next question will be whether Taylor can show a probability of prevailing upon claims. If not, the lawsuit fails.
Viacom expresses doubts as to Taylor’s ability to demonstrate how Rainey’s past made the alleged sexual assault foreseeable. Furthermore, Rainey’s lawsuit and Taylor’s defense of which are deemed to be “subsequent intervening causes of Taylor’s alleged harm.” Viacom, represented by Alonzo Wickers and Jonathan Segal at Davis Wright Tremaine, go so far as to recount some of the odd things that happened in the civil case between Rainey and Taylor. For example, at one point, the judge in the case is said to have reprimanded Taylor’s lawyer by saying, “And you — 90 percent of the time, you end up getting creamed by her, when you talk about the panties and you talk about muffin top. I mean, it’s just irrelevant, and you just get destroyed when you do that. So, for the sake of the jury and the sake of yourself, just focus on the important stuff and don’t chase Ms. Rainey down any rabbit holes.”
Even if the judge thinks there’s some solid connection between Viacom’s casting of Rainey and the $7.1 million judgment, Viacom also brings up the contract that Taylor, through his loan-out corporation, signed in advance of starring on the VH1 show.
“Taylor explicitly acknowledged that his participation in the Program may cause emotional strains upon him, and agreed ‘to accept any and all risks of participating in the Project,’ states Viacom’s motion. “He separately released Viacom from ‘any and all manner of liabilities, claims and demands of any kind … which arise out of or relate to the use of the Footage in connection with the production … of the 22 Series[.]’ Having done so, he cannot now sue Viacom for any such alleged harms related to the Program.”
Read Viacom’s full SLAPP motion at THR.com.
FASHION
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF NO MORE
Alexandra Shulman departs British Vogue.
AFTER 25 years at the helm of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman departed the Media Mogul as she wants to “experience a different life and look forward to a future separate to Vogue”.
So, as the curtain closes on a career spanning nearly 40 years at Condé Nast, the last word went to the inimitable editor-in-chief.
Here is a re-cap of what she shared with Vogue regarding what she will miss, what she won’t, and what she’s looking forward to the most as she embarks on life after.
What She Will Miss…
Working With Everyone At Vogue
“I really like spending my days with lots of people and to spend them with people you have chosen to spend them with is a great luxury”
Walking In The Front Door Of Vogue House
“I’ve been doing it on and off for about 40 years – that will be a huge thing to not have as a part of my life”
Getting The Scoop
“I’m going to miss knowing everything that there is to know about what’s going on in fashion and being in the epicentre”
The Vogue Beauty Cupboard
“Because I get to try lots of new brands out for free and it’s always there for a last-minute emergency”
Having A Pink Office
“I’m going to miss having a lovely pink office – where I’ve been able to keep all my books as it’s an escape from home”
Having An IT Department
“The thought of operating solo with technology is very frightening!”
What She Won’t Miss…
Breaking Bad News
“I won’t miss having to tell people I don’t like something they have done – I hate that”
Monday Mornings
“I won’t miss being in the office every Monday morning – it will be a great treat to treat Sunday evening as a part of the weekend”
Not Getting The Scoop
“I won’t miss being irritated if someone has a story that I wanted to have – but then I will miss being the one to have the story”
And What She Is Looking Forward To The Most
“I’m looking forward most to doing some things I’ve never done before – meeting new people and feeling that I’m moving forward. I’m really looking forward to a sense of a future and it’s as amorphous as that – it’s really exciting”
Victoria Beckham, David Bailey, Christopher Bailey and Rosamund Pike joined the Vogue team to bid farewell to editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman.
Making the most of the summer sunshine, the outdoor terrace of the Dock Kitchen welcomed the fashion industry’s most famous faces to toast Shulman’s 25-year tenure, including contributing editors like Lisa Armstrong, Laura Bailey, Sophie Dahl and Nigella Lawson, among many others.
Guests sipped on Whispering Angel rosé and Belvedere Vodka cocktails, which were paired with a delicious spread of cold and hot mezze plates including hummus, roasted aubergine, lamb and freshly made flatbreads. Salted caramel ice cream rounded off the celebrations to what was a bittersweet celebration of a much-loved and widely admired editor.
ADVERTISING, EVENTS, CAUSES AND BRANDS
THE CANNE AND THE CANNE-NOT’S
Cannes Lions 2017
Congratulations to all of this year’s Lions winners. Check out the work below and take a read about Publicis Group and why they simply Canne-not attend the event next year!
Arthur Sadoun took over as president-CEO of Publicis Groupe, but he’s already made an impact — to the solar plexus of the Cannes International Festival of Creativity. From his table at the Majestic, Sadoun said that the holding company would sit out the industry’s biggest creative event next year, as well as other awards programs and SXSW and CES for good measure. It was a statement that shook many in Cannes, including many Publicis staffers who had not been informed, or had just learned the news while at Cannes.
So the news begs the question: Does Cannes Matter?
Sadoun said he will put the money saved during the one-year hiatus toward the development of an internal, AI-powered professional assistant program called Marcel, which itself is a mystery to many at Publicis.
But the move was also a statement about Cannes and its return on investment, which has been top of mind for many agency holding companies in recent years.
Publicis represents the third biggest group of entries at the festival, behind Omnicom at No. 1 and WPP Group at No. 2. One executive estimated that Publicis networks spend about $2.2 million a year on award entries, with about 25% of that going to Cannes, but others said the total is much higher.
That might not seem like much for a holding company like Publicis, but another executive with knowledge of the matter estimated that when it’s all added up — travel, hotels, food and rose — Publicis put out about $20 million this year to send its contingent to Cannes.
The pullback affects all Publicis networks, including Leo Burnett, Publicis Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi and BBH, whose creatives rely on awards to burnish their portfolios and angle for promotions or new jobs.
One Publicis insider, asked how employees were taking the news about no awards for a year, said: “Rough.”
An executive with a Publicis digital agency said the move was announced internally only about an hour before the news broke, and many Publicis Groupe employees at Cannes didn’t know about it until told by others. Part of that stems from the “Cannes bubble” effect of back-to-back meetings combined with spotty WiFi and wireless coverage.
Trying to make the best of it, one creative said a one-year hiatus would allow more time for planning, free of the mad rush to prepare entries for festivals.
But no one might be crying more than Ascential, the owner of the Cannes Lions. The festival generated $72 million in revenue last year. About 10% of its entries come from Publicis, according to people familiar with the situation. Ascential’s stock that same day was down 3.8% in London late afternoon trading.
‘Really problematic’
There is also the threat that others could follow suit. Festival goers familiar with WPP said its agencies had been told to cut Cannes attendees by 50% this year. And the festival has ads scattered around this year, reminding attendees of the value it brings.
Then there’s the question of how clients are taking it.
The decision is going to be “really problematic,” said Syl Saller, global chief marketing officer for liquor giant Diageo, which uses Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett in Australia. “I do think it’s a mistake because creatives in agencies do value awards and one of the reasons we value awards is we have seen enough data that awards for creativity do lead to better results.”
Diageo uses Cannes to get to know agencies it is considering hiring, said Mark Sandys, who oversees Diageo’s global beer business, as well as Smirnoff and Baileys. This week the company’s agenda includes a two-hour speed dating session with a group of agencies it is targeting.”Some of the agencies I’ve met, big and small, I come away from the dinners or meetings thinking, ‘Wow those are great people to work with, we should be thinking about them next time something comes up for a pitch.’ And that’s something Publicis is just not going to be in the conversation in.”
Chevrolet Global Chief Marketing Officer Tim Mahoney, who works with some Publicis shops in international markets, said the holding group won’t be hurt by the move overall, but had his reservations.
“Both Cannes and Effies for us are important — Effies in particular but obviously Cannes because of the creativity,” Mahoney said, referring to the Effie awards for ad effectiveness. “It creates an incentive [for agencies] to do better work and as a result of it it’s good for them too because it can attract better talent. If you are working for an agency that is really delivering excellence I think that’s a really good thing.”
Too complex?
Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer of Unilever, said Publicis Groupe’s absence will make Cannes and other events “a little less efficient.”
“The one thing that we do at CES is that we meet all of our partners, and then at Cannes we’re also able to meet there and monitor progress,” Weed said. “And then of course we meet in between.”
But he said it’s ultimately Publicis’ choice. “I know some people feel that Cannes has become too big, too busy, too complex, too expensive,” he said. “And I think that’s something for Cannes to reflect on. People vote with their feet and their wallets. Cannes has worked really well for us. But it will be interesting to see how this develops.”
One executive with another global Publicis client supported the year off. “It’s probably a good early move for Arthur to shake things up, signal an agenda of change, and show cost efficiency,” the executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Pio Schunker, global head of integrated marketing at Samsung Electronics, said that entering awards or not was a call for agencies to make.
“It’s a bigger play for the group,” said Leo Burnett Global Chief Creative Officer Mark Tutssel, who was also at the table in a conference room at the beachfront Radisson Blu hotel with Schunker and half a dozen other Samsung agencies. “It’s reinvention.”
Of all the Publicis agencies, Leo Burnett probably is the biggest award winner, and has the most to lose from dropping off the awards circuit for the next year.
This year, the festival made a point of saying that entries from clients, rather than agencies, was up. There is already speculation that clients and production companies might fill part of the gap by entering work themselves for the next year that they hope will win prizes. But Weed said he’s not sure that Unilever will pony up to enter awards for work from Publicis agencies.
Simon Francis, CEO of Flock Associates, agencies reputations were made on creativity in the past, but “the business has changed.”
“The correlation between winning creative awards and agencies winning business is falling,” he said. “So many other factors are dictating an agency’s business success that it is hard to justify the expense of awards, as the awards and the associated travel and expenses cost a lot of money.”
Francis said awards may not be essential to growing business, but he said Cannes is important from a talent retention, acquisition and idea exchange perspective. “Does this justify the cost? Well that is for each business leader to decide,” he said.
Sadoun, clearly, has decided — for 2018, in any case. And there is a growing skepticism in the industry about whether the pricey event is worth the price of admission.
“I think this has jumped the shark. I think it’s done,” said one high-ranking executive at a major agency, speaking on the condition of anonymity. As for the awards, he suggested the big winners will be forgotten as soon as everyone goes back to their work week.
Well-we’re hear to remind those folk!
HERE ARE A FEW OF THE MOST TALKED ABOUT WINNERS:
State Street Global Advisors – Fearless Girl
Fearless Girl, the statue of a young woman confidently facing Wall Street’s Charging Bull, was the talk of Cannes Lions advertising festival, winning four Grand Prix awards. State Street Global Advisors partnered with agency McCann New York to create the statue that celebrated International Women’s Day 2017.
Channel 4 – We’re the Superhumans
U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 wanted to change people’s attitudes to disability with its campaign promoting its coverage of the 2016 Paralympic Games. But this wasn’t just an ad campaign: the channel ran a competition for a brand featuring people with disabilities in an ad to win £1 million ($1.27 million) of airtime, which was won by Mars with an ad for Maltesers.
Amnesty International – The Refugee Nation
A new team entered the Olympic Games in Rio last year: The Refugee Nation, made up of 10 displaced people from around the world, with a new orange and black flag design inspired by the life jackets worn by those that had travelled across seas hoping for a new life.
According to Ogilvy New York, which worked with Amnesty on the campaign, it attracted global media coverage and led to stores and restaurants using stickers featuring the flags to show that they welcome refugees.
Burger King – Google Home of the Whopper
Burger King, working with ad agency David, decided to use Google’s voice technology to its own advantage. Its ad features a guy holding a burger and saying: “You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich, but I got an idea. Okay Google, what is the Whopper burger?” The result? Google Home reacted by reading out the Whopper’s Wikipedia entry, and the spot got media coverage way beyond BK’s initial media outlay.
P&G Tide – Bradshaw Stain
TV presenters usually look immaculate on screen, so when Fox commentator and former NFL star Terry Bradshaw appeared at the Super Bowl this year with a stain on his shirt, Twitter went into overdrive, with Bradshaw appearing to run across the pitch in search of clean clothes. Turns out the whole thing was a stunt by laundry brand Tide and Saatchi and Saatchi, resulting in record high sales according to the campaign’s Cannes Lions entry.
Whirlpool – Care Counts
One in five students struggle with access to clean clothes, according to Whirlpool’s Cannes Lions entry for its “Care Counts” campaign, and this has a direct correlation with high school attendance.
Whirlpool worked with agency Digitas LBi to try to change this, installing washers and dryers into schools across the U.S. Machines were able to track usage for each student and relate that to their school attendance, and there was a 90 percent improvement in the attendance of students in the program, which won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.
Immunity Charm – Ministry of Public Health, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Afghanistan has one of the world’s worst infant mortality rates, according to UNICEF and only 50 percent of babies complete all of the vaccinations required. So its Public Health Ministry worked with McCann Health to turn the traditional lucky charm beaded bracelets given to children into a health record. Each colored bead represented a vaccination against a different disease: red for polio, yellow for hepatitis B and so on, so that doctors and parents could easily see which injections babies had. The program won a Grand Prix at Cannes, and will be rolled out to other provinces in the country, after a successful pilot.
Adidas Originals – Original is Never Finished
Getting attention on the night of the Grammy Awards isn’t easy, with a host of brands including Nike, Apple, Google, Hilton and Target all releasing ads around the ceremony this year. Adidas worked with agency Johannes Leonardo to update an old classic, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, with artists Snoop Dogg, MadeinTYO and Desiigner remixing music videos as part of it, alongside reimagined images such as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. It got more than 47 million views on YouTube and Twitter, its award entry claims, and won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.
ART
BIG BLUE COMING THROUGH
YINMn Blue is now a color!
Mas Subramanian describes how Crayola—and artnet News—helped bring YInMn Blue to the masses.
YInMn Blue, the first new blue pigment identified in 200 years, was always an astounding discovery—it just took the general public some time to catch on.
Now, eight years after the pigment was first identified, YInMn Blue—and its creator—are finally getting their due. Samples of the color will appear in “The Blue Experience,” an upcoming exhibition at the Ôkhra, Ochres and Colors Conservatory in the south of France. And this fall, Crayola will launch a new crayon based on the color.
The hue—the first new blue to surface since cobalt in 1802—was born in 2009, when a lab accident led chemist Mas Subramanian and his team to realize that a super-heated mixture of the elements Yttrium, Indium and Manganese created a vibrantly blue complex inorganic pigment (hence the somewhat-clunky name). The first man-made pigment was Ancient Egypt’s Egyptian blue, making YInMn Blue the latest in a historic line of blue discoveries.
LIFESTYLE AND HOSPITALITY
DIGITAL DETOX = RELAXATION RE-TOX
Digital detox is fast becoming the very new thing and turning “we’ve got wifi” into a very old thing.
When a few entrepreneurs were operating a small surfing inn, which was located in a remote fishing village in China, they always struggled with the poor internet and cellphone signals in that area. At that time it was terrible for most people to live without Wi-Fi, as it is nowadays. They tried their best to solve the problem but the local technology company told them it would need a long time to fix it. They kept apologizing to their guests until one day a guest told them that she had a great time with them because there was no digital disturbance. At that moment they realized that they should shift their marketing strategy.
Sometimes rather than to satisfy guest needs, they realized a better choice is to create guest demand. They prepared a poster with a slogan “Escape from the digital world. Embrace the inner peace.” They also created some activities, like surfing summer camp and watching open-air films, to help guests experience disconnection from the noisy world.
These activities not only brought high guest satisfaction, but also increased their revenue.
This experience references a new concept called “digital detox”, which is focused on silence in hospitality industry. Dr. Franz Linser, founder of Linser Hospitality, said in 2016 Global Wellness Summit: “wellness programming at hotels/retreats today can sometimes feel like nothing more than an “operational line-item”, while future destinations will need to put a deeper, more comprehensive focus on the true “art of living” and that will include a much more powerful focus on silence and nature.”
There are many industry pioneers that have already applied service of silence to their resorts, restaurants, gyms, salons and even airports. A wellness monastery named Eremito in Italy, without Wi-Fi or phone signal, offers services of meditation, yoga, hiking, reading, etc. Its brand is “peace, contemplation and re-finding oneself”. Other examples of applying service of silence can be found in airports like London City, Bristol, Barcelona, Warsaw and Helsinki, where the announcements are only made at boarding gates (except in true emergencies).
The service of silence is not anti-technology, but will embrace new technologies to create a silent experience for customers. We can identify the future trend of this unique service in hospitality industry. As the world will become noisier and more digitally connected, the service of silence in hospitality industry will have the opportunity to became a popular project for guests to escape from noise temporarily.
Mmm, perhaps a hard copy of our new printed magazine (coming soon to stands near you) will be the better bet for your travels?
We shall see.
Thanks so much to all for reading and for your spectacular comments! Please keep them coming and as always:
Thirty years can’t dull searing music, hopeful lyrics or the captivating Irish band behind them.
Like the hardy plant that gives the album its name — a uniquely beautiful survivor in the unforgiving, nearby California desert — the Dublin quartet persists. They’re older, not immune to the sands of time, but they can still put on a show, as they showed in this early stop on the 18-city North American leg of the tour.
The album’s songs, written during the Reagan era, comment on such issues as militarism and greed (Bullet the Blue Sky) and the power of women (Mothers of the Disappeared). Although the name Trump was never explicitly mentioned, save for a clip from a 1950s TV Western featuring a snake-oil salesman named Trump who promises to build a wall, Bono, commenting between songs, made clear the album’s words remain relevant today. Don’t expect him to be playing any Trump events.
Anti-trump message – hold out your hand hand of love
After moving to the main stage to begin the Joshua Tree portion, the band performed in front of a massive, 200-foot-wide video screen featuring stunning video of America’s deserts, mountains and diverse population. The Edge’s identifiable guitar opening of Where the Streets Have No Name, a rhythmic buildup of nervous energy that explodes into Bono’s defiant lyrics, excited concertgoers.
Red Hill Mining Town, a Joshua Tree song played in concert for the first time on this tour, was inspired by a 1980s miners’ strike in England, but Bono finds its message of worker persistence amid hardship resonant in contemporary America.
“Sometimes, songs become themselves years later,” he told the crowd. “This feels right for the moment we’re in.”
Ultraviolet (Light My Way) honored women, with pictures of historic trailblazers (Rosa Parks) and modern-day role models (Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton) earning applause. One (also the name of a U2-supported campaign that fights poverty and disease) featured a fierce, aching Bono vocal, leading to an endorsement of political organizing and social movements.
FASHION AND EVENTS
MET GALA
Colloquially and affectionately referred to as “fashion’s biggest night out,” the Met Gala is a pinnacle of iconic style. A fundraising benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the event welcomes celebrity stars, young creatives, and industry paragons alike. And the excitement doesn’t stop there—the gala also signifies the highly anticipated grand opening of the Costume Institute’s annual fashion exhibition. This year, they honored Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo with an exhibition entitled “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between.”
Katy Perry was cohost and cochair, having recently tried out several of Kawakubo’s most outrageous Comme des Garçons designs for the May issue of Vogue. The attire called for avant-garde black tie, and the guests shined big, bold, and bright that night.
Here are a few celebs to shout out
Rose hey to Madonna!
Madonna brought a canteen of rosé—or “summer water,” as she told journalists—to fashion’s biggest night and chugged it in between posing for photographers on the red carpet, talking to journalists, and Sarah Paulson. Why would she do this, you ask? Why not? She’s an unapologetic bitch. A girl gone wild. Bitch, she’s Madonna.
Leave it to Bella Hadid to wear a glittering catsuit by Alexander Wang. “It was exciting to do a bodysuit for the Met, because I felt that it was something that hasn’t been explored,” Wang says.
Hadid was actually sewn into the catsuit.
After much fanfare, Kim Kardashian West showed up solo to the 2017 Met Galain a surprisingly subdued and streamlined slip dress.
Designed by Vivienne Westwood, the off-the-shoulder number was the most avant-garde we’ve seen of Kim yet.
AFTER THE PARTY
The glamour of the Met Gala is undeniable. Meticulous planning ensures that the event is just as spectacular as the gowns worn, and while the event is one of grandeur and extravagance.
Spending an evening in couture might be the stuff of dreams, but in reality gargantuan skirts and thousands of delicate palettes do not always make for the best dancing attire.
The real fun begins when the star guests walk back down those famous steps. Couture gowns are swapped for natty barely-there party dresses and Guiseppe Zanotti stilettos exchanged for Adidas Superstars as the evening’s shenanigans heads downtown.
ADVERTISING, CAUSES AND BRANDS
The 70th Cannes Film Festival
MAY 28, 2017 Cannes Film Festival 2017 – Highlights, Hotspots and Winners
The 70th Cannes Film Festival has come to an end. Perfect weather, good vibes, new movies and sparkling parties at the Cote d’Azur in Cannes were the best setting to entertain the world’s biggest stars in their magnificent wardrobes. The 10-day by invitation-only festival attracted not only celebrities, the film industry and press, but also the world’s most fascinating luxury brands and their guests. Those who have seen my Forbes Snapchat Takeover last weekend might have gotten a little glimpse into some of the events taking place during the festival. Here are the highlights and hotspots of the past days.
La Palme d’Or – And the winner is….
For over 20 years Chopard has been the official partner and sponsor of the Festival de Cannes. Engaged not only in sponsorship and events, but also in providing the festival’s star trophy, “La Palme d’Or”, which is made from ethical 18 carat fair-mined gold perched atop a crystal rock. It is the festival’s highest prize and a lifetime honor for actors and filmmakers.
This year’s Palme d’Or goes to: Ruben Östlund for directing „The Square“.
Other award winners included Diane Kruger as best actress in „In the Fade“, Joaquin Phoenix as best actor in „You were never really here“, Nicole Kidman for the 70th Anniversary prize or Sofia Coppola as best director of „The Beguiled“.
Chopard Space Party
This year Chopard wowed its guests with its presentation of the “Chopard Loves Rihanna” collection, which featured high-jewelry and jewelry pieces created in collaboration with the famous singer.
Caroline Scheufele’s (Co-President of Chopard) annual private dinner, which took place inside a space shuttle tent, was another festival highlight. The star-studded dinner included futuristic food presentations, personal speeches and as a highlight a Chopard and Ellie Saab fashion show.
The galactic after party featured a live performance by Bruno Mars, which literally flew Caroline’s guests to the moon.
Dior Suite
Dior crafted its bespoke and stylish suite and extended a welcome to their guests to come up to the penthouse level at the Hotel Barrière Majestic, Cannes. This setting overlooks the Film Festival’s heart at Le Palais Royale, as well as the yacht-studded seafront and was the perfect venue for Dior to greet famous actors, models and personalities.
All sorts of film industry figures called in for a beauty treatment, fashion selections, photo shoots or interviews. Led by Christian Dior Makeup Creative and Image Director Peter Philips, a team of Dior backstage professionals and internationally recognised make-up artists took care of Dior’s guests so that they were truly ready for the red carpet.
Fashion for Relief
For the twelfth time, Naomi Campbell invited her friends to celebrate at a glamorous night for a good cause. She laid on a fashion show featuring none other than her top model colleagues like Heidi Klum, Kate Moss and Bella Hadid who strode the catwalk watched by guests such as Queen Rania of Jordan and Donatella Versace sitting right there in the front-row. The fashion show was followed by a gala dinner all to raise funds for the vital work of “Save the Children”.
Nespresso is an official sponsoring partner of the Cannes Film Festival. There was therefore a buzz of excitement with the unveiling of The Plage Nespresso right by the Cannes seafront. The pop up venue with its sleek, contemporary design was the place to relax and enjoy delicious gourmet menus and ice cold coffee creations. As an active supporter of leading chefs and talented filmmakers, Nespresso hosted famous actors and directors for interviews, photo shoots and live discussions or simply for unwinding just a short step away from all the film action.
The annual amfAR Gala at Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes is the most celebrated charity event that takes place during the Cannes Film Festival and is one of the most important occasions in the luxury industry calendar. An A-List of stars such as Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, David Beckham, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Diana Ross, Uma Thurman and many more attended this year’s black-tie gala. Whilst enjoying the live show, an exquisite dinner, fine drinks and the lively auction, the guests raised the incredible sum of more than $20 million in support of amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, and its pursuit of a cure for HIV/AIDS.
Highlights of the auction were: “Football star David Beckham took the stage to introduce a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a chance for the winning bidder and ten friends to join David Beckham in an exceptional 90-minute football match in Paris, followed by dinner and drinks with Beckham. A painted 1977 Chevy Van titled Ice Cream, a work by Street Art movement pioneer Richard Hambleton. A one-week trip for 30 guests aboard the superyacht Serenity. The Egg Number 1, Versailles, a work by French artist and interior designer Jonathan Loubens.”
Trump Leaves Israel With Hope for Peace, but No Plan for It
CRED: IAN FISHER, PETER BAKER and ISABEL KERSHNERMAY
JERUSALEM — In case there was any doubt, President Trump made it exceedingly clear: He wants a deal. “I intend to do everything I can,” he said on Tuesday.
Moreover, he left after a 28-hour visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank convinced that he has partners in peace after meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
“President Abbas assures me he is ready to work toward that goal in good faith,” Mr. Trump said in Bethlehem with Mr. Abbas by his side. “And Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised the same.”
What Mr. Trump did not do was reveal the least hint of what, if anything, was behind it: He put little public pressure on either leader. There was none of the usual talk of borders, of settlements, of incitement of terrorism or of the long and gnarled history of two peoples on the same land.
He did not say anything about moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem or recognize the city as Israel’s capital. Nor was there a process for what comes next.
Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, laid a wreath on Tuesday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times
That does not mean, he and others were quick to add, that the quick trip to Israel and the occupied territories, on Mr. Trump’s first foray abroad, was not useful in building bridges, in setting a different tone, in showing Israelis full support and Palestinians respect.
Mr. Trump made clear that the new relationship Israel seeks with its Sunni Arab neighbors, some of whom he met earlier in Saudi Arabia, was linked to progress with the Palestinians. Mr. Trump seemed to accomplish all of this, most experts here agreed, with few of the missteps that have dogged him at home.
Mr. Netanyahu, pressed by conservatives in his coalition, got much of what he wanted in a speech delivered Tuesday by Mr. Trump at the Israel Museum that adopted much of the prime minister’s own worldview of a dynamic, democratic Israel courageously defending itself against enemies like Iran.
“Through it all, they have endured and, in fact, they have thrived,” Mr. Trump said. “I stand in awe of the accomplishments of the Jewish people, and I make this promise to you: My administration will always stand with Israel.”
That prompted a standing ovation, and Mr. Netanyahu to shake his hand.
Mr. Trump went on to note that Iran has committed itself to Israel’s destruction.
“Not with Donald J. Trump, believe me,” he declared, and again the audience responded vigorously.
“Thank you,” Mr. Trump said. “I like you, too.”
And though the trip was largely focused on Israel, Mr. Abbas, struggling to maintain sway after years in power, got at least some of what he wanted as he hosted Mr. Trump in Bethlehem as a seeming equal. Mr. Trump’s trip and hourlong meeting with Mr. Abbas had all the pomp of a state visit — a quickly corrected public schedule from the White House even referred to “Palestine,” which many Israelis object to as a recognition of a Palestinian state — with little of the public chiding Israelis might have liked.
Mr. Abbas, who met with Mr. Trump this month in Washington, repeated “our commitment to cooperate with you in order to make peace and forge a historic peace deal.”
Decades of American-led peacemaking has resulted in little when it comes to a deal with the Palestinians. But there is precedent for strict secrecy in the early stages, if that is what is happening.
Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization officials met secretly in hotel rooms and country estates and came up with the principles that led to the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, with the Norwegians acting as a conduit. The Americans were not actively involved. The Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty signed in 1994 was also the culmination of decades of secret bilateral contacts.
Mr. Trump’s speech at the Israel Museum was so friendly and considerate of Israeli emotions that one right-wing Israeli legislator described it as deeply expressive of the “Zionist narrative.” But some Israeli analysts say such a warm embrace can be conducive to building the trust necessary for a meaningful process.
“The message that comes out of this speech reflects the whole goal of the trip,” Prof. Avi Ben-Zvi, an expert on Israeli-American relations at Haifa University, said in a radio interview. If a regional peace initiative does begin to crystallize, he said, “Israel will have to pay a price, a painful, harsh compromise. Israel will only be able to make such a compromise from a position of confidence — confidence in Trump’s leadership and the confidence that the United States will be behind it.”
If there is any substance, secrecy may be all the more essential for Mr. Netanyahu because most of his current cabinet members oppose any far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians or the establishment of a Palestinian state. And several were gleeful that Mr. Trump pointedly avoided referring to a two-state solution that most of the prime minister’s allies oppose.
“The president spoke about peace six times, and in all, he avoided supporting a Palestinian state, which would undoubtedly be an obstacle to achieving that goal,” said Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister, who advocates going so far as to annex areas of the West Bank.
ADS AND BRANDS
FACEBOOK
The streaming-crime-on-Facebook problem gets a mention
With its huge reach, Facebook has begun to act as the great disseminator of the larger cloud of misinformation and half-truths swirling about the rest of media. It sucks up lies from cable news and Twitter, then precisely targets each lie to the partisan bubble most receptive to it.
Manjoo’s narrative arc, over a series of visits to Facebook HQ and across multiple conversations with Zuckerberg, is that the company is increasingly taking its “dangerous side” — particularly in regard to the power of its News Feed — seriously, but may just be too hampered by its deep-seated engineering mindset; e.g., “Facebook approaches the feed as an engineering project rather than an editorial one,” as Manjoo puts it.
Delivery on route
Meet your new Walmart delivery driver. Credit: Walmart
Walmart has a new idea for beating the high cost of shipping e-commerce packages – paying store employees to deliver them on their way home.
The program aims at using one of Walmart’s biggest assets – more than a million U.S. store employees – to help close its big e-commerce sales gap with Amazon. Walmart has more than 4,700 stores, putting potential delivery nodes within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population.
In a test that launched a month ago in two stores in New Jersey and one in Northwest Arkansas, employees can opt in to deliver packages on their way home for extra pay. They use an app that offers opportunities to deliver up to 10 packages per commute.
In a news conference in Bentonville on Thursday, spokesman Ravi Jariwala said the program is entirely voluntary. He declined to specify the pay, but said finding the right compensation is part of the test. And he said the retailer will comply with all applicable state and federal labor laws, such as those covering overtime.
“It just makes sense,” said Walmart E-Commerce chief Marc Lore in a blog post.”We already have trucks moving orders from fulfillment centers to to stores for pickup. Those same trucks could be used to bring ship-to-home orders to a store close to their final destination, where a participating employee can sign up to deliver them to the customer’s house.”
April might have started with fools day, but it ended with smarts and sophistication.
Here’s what went down in this fierce and fiery month!
BRAND MARKETING
Various brands used April fools’ day to create video’s that promoted fake and outlandish products. In this day and age-it’s hard not to believe that they could actually be the next big thing! Oh, the signs of the times.
Out of various, here’s a few that made us chuckle.
T Mobile. The “all-in” onesie.
Google “Gnomes” what’s best for your yard
Zappos zaps box thievery!
FASHION
Ikea and Balenciaga are totes hard to tell apart!
Twitter users absolutely lost it this month when news outlets pointed to the design similarities between Balenciaga’s new “Arena” tote and the beloved cult-favorite Ikea shopping bag. Side-by-side comparisons were made, memes were concocted, and morning TV shows were aghast at the price differences. But those taking aim at Balenciaga should remember this: Marrying high-low fashion in ways obvious and not is a key part of what designer Demna Gvasalia does. Brands like Champion, Eastpak, and Levi’s lined up to collaborate with his other label Vetements last year. As bothered as everyone else on the Internet seems to be, Ikea, like the other brands, hasn’t lost any sleep over it.
The company’s initial response was: “We are deeply flattered that the Balenciaga tote bag resembles the Ikea iconic sustainable blue bag for 99 cents. Nothing beats the versatility of a great big blue bag!”
Ikea’s latest statement is one with prankster undertones. The marketing team put together a quick-fire ad that’s been running on the Ikea websites and its social media channels. It features a picture of the shiny blue shopping bag and the words, “How to identify an original Ikea Frakta bag.” Below, there’s a numbered list: “1) Shake it. If it rustles, it’s the real deal. 2) Multifunctional. It can carry hockey gear, bricks, and even water. 3) Throw it in the dirt. A true Frakta is simply rinsed off with a garden hose when dirty. 4) Price tag. Only $0.99.”
The good news is that you get to decide which blue is for you, and how much green you want to spend. Now wouldn’t it be great if all luxury products could have such a colorful price tag choice? Depends who you ask of course.
Either way-it’s all a great illustration of the value of the “B” in a brand name like Be-lanciaga and the “A” in affordable by Ikea.
Johan Holmgren, the creative director of Acne agency, which created the ad, praised Gvasalia’s design and told the press that he liked the “flirt” from Balenciaga and wanted to “flirt back.”
MUSIC
COACHELLA HAPPENED AND THE WORLD KNEW ABOUT IT
Anchored by Lady Gaga, who stepped in for expectant superstar Beyoncé, this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival featured headliner Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar closed the weekends as headliner. Lorde, DJ Khaled, Hans Zimmer also performed. Wait … Hans Zimmer? Yep and he was a highlight.
So how did this supersize Coachella go down? There were some growing pains.
Coachella’s growth seems to be in development, as is the music industry and so it goes.
A few artists to mention:
RADIOHEAD
Radiohead encountered a serious technical difficulty — a rarity at this carefully executed production — when the sound system cut out repeatedly during the British art-rock band’s headlining set Friday night.
After exiting the stage in frustration, frontman Thom Yorke returned and addressed the mishap with his signature deadpan humor.
“Can you actually hear me now?” he asked. “I’d love to tell you a joke, lighten the mood, something like that. But this is Radiohead.” Then he added an unprintable phrase reminding us that lightening the mood isn’t in the nature of a group whose music is haunted by thoughts of technology turning against its makers.
Though the sound system held out from then on, Radiohead never quite recovered from the distraction. The band’s performance, filled with oldies like “Creep” and “Paranoid Android,” felt deflated, as though Yorke and his mates had lost their nerve.
HANS ZIMMER
A packed, totally enthralled crowd flooding the Outdoor Stage. Thundering drums, ethereal vocals, a surprise Pharrell Williams cameo.
A triumphant turn from an EDM superstar? Nope. Just film composer Hans Zimmer absolutely devastating a Coachella crowd that had no idea what it was in for.
When the Coachella lineup was announced this year, Zimmer’s presence was the one chin-scratcher. His scores have, for three decades, set the tone for some of the biggest blockbuster films of our time. “The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” “The Lion King,” for starters. The resume speaks for itself.
But how would it play at Coachella? Would a millennial crowd more used to DJ Khaled’s Snapchat missives take to an orchestra playing instrumentals from movies they may not have seen?
Oh, lord(e), did they ever.
Maybe Zimmer had a hunch that Coachella rewards bigness of all stripes. That’s why he toted out a dozens-strong orchestra to bring his compositions to total, exacting fruition.
Nothing like it has ever happened at Coachella before, from the virtuosity of the players to the ambient, instrumental nature of the material. After a weekend in which a surprise Migos cameo was as expected as sunburns and flower crowns, Zimmer had the good fortune to be doing something both totally recognizable and completely new at Coachella.
It was a stroke of mad genius to put him out here at primetime, and the literal squeals of delight coming from teenage ravers when they recognized his film themes rivaled any reaction to anything else all weekend.
Even Williams’ cameo on “Freedom,” which would have been a highlight of any other set, felt more like alms-paying than spotlight-stealing. The two have worked together at length, but here, even a pop star like Williams couldn’t compete with the 59-year-old German composer willing this ridiculous leviathan of a set into existence.
GAGA
“Don’t be scared — I’ve done this before,” Lady Gaga told the massive crowd gathered for her Saturday night headlining set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. And, sure, this was hardly the Super Bowl halftime veteran’s first experience before a live audience numbering in the tens of thousands.
It opened a new chapter for Coachella, which has long hesitated to book a current pop superstar for its gigantic main stage.
Once known for presenting edgy alternative rock and dance music, the annual desert blowout has moved gradually toward the mainstream as its size, prestige and reputation as an upscale celebrity magnet have grown. Madonna famously performed in one of the festival’s tents in 2006, and last year Rihanna dropped in for a surprise appearance with the EDM star Calvin Harris.
Yet for this year’s edition — Coachella’s deep-pocketed promoter, the AEG-owned Goldenvoice, dramatically expanded the scale of its flagship event, adding 20 acres to the festival site and getting the OK from city officials to boost capacity from 99,000 to 125,000 people. (Tickets, which sold for a minimum of $399 each, sold out well in advance.)
As a result, perhaps organizers felt they needed an especially splashy name to meet the demands of those dimensions.
After starting very powerfully with a series of tunes — “John Wayne,” “Born This Way,” “Sexxx Dreams” — that vividly expressed her cartoon-rebel intensity, the singer then sat down behind a keyboard and transformed her ecstatic “The Edge of Glory” into a piano ballad.
Others from the lineup to special mention:
LORDE
Lorde opened her set on Coachella’s main stage Sunday night with an expert troll, blasting a recording of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” — a winking reference, it seemed, to recent reports — since refuted — that the festival’s founder had refused to book Bush (a clear Lorde influence) because people wouldn’t understand her act.
Almost as soon as Lorde’s set got going, though, the young New Zealander cleaved to established Coachella tradition, promising she had some surprises in store.
Judging by the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction, many fans assumed that meant a guest star or two — maybe her pal Taylor Swift?
In fact, the surprise turned out to be a performance of a new song from her upcoming album, “Melodrama,” which she said is about “the ups and downs of being a twentysomething.”
The track is called “Homemade Dynamite,” she added, and it appeared to tell the tale of an explosive night out.
EVENTS, FILM & ART
COACHELLA EVENTS
Down an unpaved street just off the desert highway, designer Jeremy Scott hosted his annual Coachella party, a brightly lit desert oasis that seemed as unreal as a mirage.
The Candy Crush-themed bash (in honor of Scott’s upcoming capsule collection inspired by the mobile app) featured performances by rappers Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert that were livestreamed by entertainment platform Tidal. At the end of the night, Katy Perry and Scott started a dance party onstage along to DJ Mia Moretti’s set.
Among the stars in attendance were Kylie Jenner, Kristen Stewart, rapper Travis Scott, model Emily Ratajkowski and singers Kehlani and Rita Ora.
Before Scott’s party, Levi’s hosted a brunch at Sparrows Lodge with Solange Knowles, Ratajkowski, model Poppy Delevingne and actress Jamie Chung, among others.
Guests attend a family-style meal at Levi’s Coachella brunch in Palm Springs on Saturday.
(Eric Charbonneau for Levi’s)
Virgil Abloh, creative designer of the fashion label Off-White, provided the music at the brunch, where guests were able to purchase and customize Levi’s denim jackets and jeans with onsite airbrushing and embroidery stations, plus pins and patches.
A view of Popsugar’s Cabana Club pool party at Colony Palms Hotel in Palm Springs on April 15. (Getty Images)
Media brand Popsugar also hosted a brunch Saturday afternoon, immediately followed by a Cabana Club pool party at the Colony Palms Hotel.
Actresses Victoria Justice, Yara Shahidi, Aja Naomi King, Chung and “Teen Wolf” star Tyler Posey attended the party, with guests treated to beauty swag from Nordstrom and Ulta. Grammy winner Daya performed at the event where hair styling and beauty DIY stations were also available.
Katy Perry held an Easter Sunday recovery brunch in Thermal to promote her footwear line. (Rony Alwin)
On Sunday morning, Perry hosted her own Easter Sunday brunch, complete with an oxygen bar, facial and massage station, and Easter decorations including a tree covered in brightly painted eggs. There was even a cameo by a stumbling drunk Easter bunny carrying a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey.
The “recovery” brunch was held in promotion of Perry’s footwear line and guests were treated to vitamin elixirs, an Easter egg hunt, kombucha on tap and a DJ set by Moretti.
TRIBECCA FILM FESTIVAL
The 16th Tribeca Film Festival announced the winners of its competition categories at the awards ceremony at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Top awards went to Keep the Change for Best U.S. Narrative, Son of Sofia for Best International Narrative, and Bobbi Jene for Best Documentary. The Festival, presented by AT&T, ran through April 30, 2017.
Awards were distributed in the following feature film competition categories: U.S. Narrative, International Narrative, Documentary, New Narrative Director, The Albert Maysles New Documentary Director, and the Nora Ephron Prize, honoring a woman writer or director. Awards were also given in the short film categories: Narrative, Documentary, Student Visionary and Animation.
For the fifth year, Tribeca awarded innovation in storytelling through its Storyscapes Award for immersive storytelling, which went to TREEHUGGER : WAWONA.
Rachel Israel’s KEEP THE CHANGE, winner of Best U.S. Narrative Feature at Tribeca 2017.
“It is more important than ever to celebrate artists both in front of and behind the camera who have the unique ability to share different viewpoints to inspire, challenge and entertain us,” said Jane Rosenthal, Executive Chair and Co-Founder, Tribeca Film Festival. “The winning creators from across the Festival program shared stories that did exactly that, and we are honored to recognize them tonight. And how wonderful is it that the top awards in all five feature film categories were directed by women.”
This year’s Festival included 97 feature length films, 57 short films, and 30 immersive storytelling projects from 41 countries.
The Festival’s competition categories continue to incorporate storytelling in all its forms with two awards that were given out earlier in the week, the Tribeca X Award, a juried section recognizing the intersection of advertising and entertainment, and the first Tribeca Snapchat Short Award, a new official category.
The 2017 Tribeca Film Festival came to a close Saturday with the announcement of the two winners for the Audience Awards, sponsored by AT&T.
“The Divine Order,” directed and written by Petra Volpe, won the narrative award for its tale of Swiss suffrage in the 1970s.
Winning the documentary award was “Hondros,” which was directed by Greg Campbell and written by Campbell and Jenny Golden, about the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Chris Hondros, who died in Libya in 2011.
“It is always exciting to see what resonates most with the audience, and this year, both the narrative and documentary winners represent smart filmmaking and impactful storytelling,” Paula Weinstein, one of the founders of the festival, said in a statement.
“On behalf of the Tribeca team, we congratulate ‘The Divine Order’ and ‘Hondros’ as the 2017 Audience Award winners, and hope moviegoers worldwide get to experience these powerful films.”
In addition to cash awards and in-kind services provided by sponsors including AT&T, CHANEL, CNN Films, Netflix, and Nutella, the Festival presented the winners with original pieces of art created by contemporary artists: Urs Fischer, Walton Ford, John Giorno, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Jorge Pardo, R.H. Quaytman, Sterling Ruby, Aurel Schmidt, Ryan Sullivan, as well as longtime supporter Stephen Hannock.
Elina Psykou’s SON OF SOFIA, winner of the Best International Narrative Feature Award at Tribeca 2017.
THE GODFATHER CAST CLOSES OUT THE FESTIVAL
After all these years, they are still a family.
The cast of “The Godfather” and “The Godfather: Part II,” including Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Robert De Niro (young Vito), Diane Keaton (Kay), Talia Shire (Connie), James Caan (Sonny), Robert Duvall (Tom) and director Francis Ford Coppola reunited on Saturday at Radio City Music Hall to close out the Tribeca Film Festival and discuss the landmark films — and moderator Taylor Hackford rightfully called it a historic night.
ART
KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI AT CLEARING GALLERY
The artist Korakrit Arunanondchai was talking a mile a minute recently about “with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4,” his video-and-sculpture show at Clearing, a gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
“I put all of myself, physically and emotionally, into this,” said the amped-up Mr. Arunanondchai, 30, whose friends call him Krit. His dark hair pulled back, he was seated on a couch in a back room at Clearing, explaining how he surfs among different media and combines them.
“Instead of the video being the final product, I think of a film more as a sculpture,” said Mr. Arunanondchai, who will appear in a live performance on May 7.
The show features a 23-minute film accompanied by two separate installations, one a grotesque fantasy landscape with lights and fountains — shells are embedded in the floor — and one a more demure display of his grandmother’s possessions.
There is a man-sized rat suit sitting in one corner, worn by Mr. Arunanondchai and others in the film. He said that the character was inspired by the rat’s prominence in Elizabeth Kolbert’s book “The Sixth Extinction,” which addresses the mass disappearance of species.
“It would be a dominant species after we’re gone,” said Mr. Arunanondchai, who said he often contemplates “the collapse of nature.” He mixes the rat images with footage of his grandparents, looking back with uncertainty about the world’s future.
“I’m from Thailand, and I’m always thinking about Buddhism,” he said. “When you talk about life, it’s always about transforming.”
After growing up in Bangkok, Mr. Arunanondchai moved to the United States to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, then earned an M.F.A. from Columbia. Now he lives in Chinatown and keeps a studio in Ridgewood, Queens.
His multimedia approach has been successful, with a solo show at MoMA PS1 in 2014. Klaus Biesenbach, the director there, calls Mr. Arunanondchai a “synesthetic” artist. “He combines music, sound, fashion, painting, sculpture, cinema in a plot that is both cinematic and biographic,” Mr. Biesenbach explained. “In his live performances, you nearly have the impression you can hear the colors.”
In contrast to his personality, Mr. Arunanondchai’s films are relatively slow and dreamlike — “meditative,” he said. He uses a lot of footage taken by drones, which he calls “a spirit viewpoint,” like the garuda, a divine bird in Buddhist mythology that can change into human form.
THE ANTARCTIC AT COACHELLA
Coachella has never lacked for mind-altering things to look at, but a new digital art installation, was meant to completely overwhelm viewers.
Intro: The Antarctic: a planetarium-style dome near the main entrance. Outside, it looked like a normal white tent, but the interior was rigged like a ravey James Turrell installation.
If you look up from one of the 500 or so bean-bag-like chairs during during each 15-minute session, your entire field of vision was consumed with cosmic images and drippy animations.
The film whips around the cosmos, into DNA strands and through a cubist fantasia of light, color and heavy bass drones.
It looks to be a hit for the San Francisco creative studio Obscura Digital.
Not just a visual but rather an all over experience made this one a wow.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE, HOSPITALITY & LIFESTYLE
FAST CASUAL IS ON THE RISE AND MADE NICE
Daniel Humm and Will Guidara are set to launch Made Nice, their first fast-casual dining concept which will open on West 28th Street, New York – right next to their Nomad hotel.
Humm and Guidara are hot off the back of being named number one on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for their Eleven Madison Park restaurant and promise Made Nice will serve a collection of “composed dishes built on recipes that have been developed over decades of learning and experience.”
The new menu borrows from classics dishes, techniques and combinations perfected at Eleven Madison Park and the Nomad restaurant, with a focus on creating delicious, quick and accessible food.
Dishes include: Pork and carrots, curry cauliflower, chicken rice, salmon rosti and a new take on Humm’s famous ‘Milk and Honey’ dessert. Prices for mains range from around $11 to $15 and the most expensive dish on the menu, a dinner item of chicken frites, is priced at $22 for a roasted half chicken, lemon-parmesan stuffing, herb fries and a pickled vegetable salad.
This opening is part of growing movement across the U.S where many chefs and restauranteurs are stepping into the fast-casual market.
Below you can see a first look at some of the dishes from Made Nice – all pics are taken by Evan Sung.
ENTERTAINMENT
NICKELODEON AND VIACOM GOT DIRTY FOR EARTH DAY
Ilyse Terri, Llc, a subsidiary of I Group Ventures, Inc. and founder of The Review, Inc. is a full service incubator and creative agency with satellite offices in NYC and Miami Beach and various industry disruptive projects currently in development.
This month, the company helped to produce activations for Nickelodeon’s “Get Dirty!” environmental initiative that kicked-off on Earth Day and marks a year-long partnership with the National Environmental Education Foundation.
The multifaceted partnership includes a grants program and the development of a digital Get Dirty toolkit, giving kids across the country the opportunity to participate in environmental expeditions in their communities.
In addition, the casts of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Game Shakers lead Get Dirty expeditions in the Southern California area, revisiting a school in Pasadena where they planted an interfaith Peace Garden with Muslim and Jewish students in 2012, and the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, helping rehabilitated seals and sea lions.
Turns out getting dirty is a good thing and as always, we commend the network for doing such important and innovative work.
May has already begun with The infamous Met Gala and we will be bringing you all the good stuff from that event and many more.
IN OTHER NEWS: WE’RE GOING TO PRINT!
The Review is proud to announce that a printed version of our online magazine and blog is currently in production.
It will be the first ever printed edition of the magazine and will be absolutely beautiful inside and out with ample news and inspiration for our readers.
Samples of new products will also be included in each edition of the magazine!
With this in mind, please feel free to subscribe to our e-mail list at ilyseterri.com to receive your complimentary first edition copy or e-mail us at info@ilyseterri.com to pre-order a personally addressed copy instead.
If you would like your company’s product/samples to be included in our mag, shoot us an e-mail at info@thereviewinc.com with information about your company and the sample product you would like us to include.
Many thanks for all of your continued support and comments.
Please keep them coming and as always WATCH THIS SPACE.
March madness has kept us on our toes so excuse the delayed post this month but we hope you enjoy all the content!
It all started with Fashion Week and we’re just going to focus on Paris because frankly, this is a March post and more frankly, nothing compares to Paris when it comes to…
FASHION
Paris Fashion Week, Tuesday, Feb 28 – March 8
PARIS — The Paris shows — and the whole ready-to-wear season — came to a close in the Cour Marly of the Louvre, under an I.M. Pei glass pyramid and a darkening sky, amid heroic 17th- and 18th-century marble nudes and plunging horses.
Through them ranged the road warriors of Louis Vuitton: women not bound by reference or decade; women rooted to the ground in thick-soled knee-high boots, mixing the pastoral and the urban, the folk and the futuristic. Even though some of them wore lace, they were absent fragility.
The next day was International Women’s Day, but as far as fashion was concerned, it had already arrived.
The woman as sex toy is over; the warrior has returned. Louis Vuitton broke barriers and Miu Miu redefined comfort glamour in a fitting end to the ready-to-wear season.
MIU MIU
LOUIS VUITTON
Nicki Minaj attended the Haider Ackerman show with one breast exposed and nothing but chrome tape over her nipple. We play right into her boobs we mean hands and thought it worth a mention and a pic.
BALENCIAGA
The set for the Balenciaga show, which was held in the basement of the Espace Champerret Salon Saveurs, featured wall-to-wall carpet emblazoned with the brand’s logo. The collection featured reworked trench coats, floral dresses and voluminous knits — but what really dazzled were the final nine looks, all reissued couture dresses from the archives, which were incorporated in the show to celebrate the brand’s 100th anniversary.
CHANEL
Karl Lagerfeld never fails to dazzle his audience — not just with his clothes, but in the set department, too. Each season he converts the Grand Palais into something elaborate and unexpected: a giant supermarket, a Parisian cafe, even a casino. But this season, he went above and beyond: he launched a Chanel rocket.
His fall/winter 2017 runway show unfolded around a life-size rocket that just nudged the atrium of the grand palais, as if it was ready to break the ceiling. At the end of the show (which featured Barbarella-like models in glittery 60s boots), Lagerfeld took a bow with his godson, Hudson Kroeing. He pressed a button and flames erupted as the rocket took off to (what else) Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”
VALENTINO
EMERGING DESIGNERS
This year is one of the strongest groups yet with the likes of Molly Goddard, Charles Jeffrey and Martine Rose all up for the coveted prize, which will be announced this summer.
Fashion has a long way to go. This everyone knows. But as the lights went out in the Louvre, reality had been — for the most part — intellectually and aesthetically engaged.
V Magazine hosted an intimate dinner on Tuesday to close out Paris Fashion Week. Guests included Gigi Hadid, Nicki Minaj, Pharrell Williams and Rita Ora.
MUSIC
CHILI PEPPERS IN L.A. AT THE STAPLES CENTER
“What’s happening hometown?” Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis asked the loud and rowdy fans after ripping through “Can’t Stop” during the band’s first of three sold-out shows at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
He playfully asked bassist Flea where he’d be sleeping that night.
“My house in Los Feliz,” he replied to a cheering crowd. “We’re so happy to be here. Damn, I love Los Angeles.”
The group, which formed in L.A. in the early ‘80s, didn’t disappoint its most loyal devotees. Flea was confident and mentioned fueling up on burritos from some of his favorite local spots.
Out in support of its 11th studio album, “The Getaway,” which dropped last June, a few new tracks were peppered into the set list including the title track, the single “Dark Necessities,” the fun sing-a-long “Go Robot” and it slipped “Goodbye Angels” into the encore.
For the most part it was a fast paced, hit-filled set delivered by a well-oiled machine with very few noticeable technical or musical flubs. The older material such as “Suck My Kiss,” “Under the Bridge,” “Scar Tissue,” “Californication,” “By the Way,” “Parallel Universe” and “Right on Time” mixed in well with the newer material from “Tell Me Baby” and “The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie” to all of the songs from the new record.
Of course the band saved “Give It Away” for its finale.
The music and the performance were definitely solid, but the real star of the evening was the epic light show provided by hundreds of small cylinder shaped color-changing lights that were dropped on cables from high up in the rafters to sometimes just a couple of feet above the heads of the audience and band.
Each light moved independently and throughout the set they were choreographed to be lowered and lifted in a variety of mesmerizing shapes and patterns that left those hitting up the weed-filled vape pens seriously tripping out.
In 2015, rock band Muse brought some synchronized drones into Staples Center for its tour, but RHCP might have outdone them with this spectacular display of light and imagery that at the start of the show just looked like a ginormous ’80s Lite Brite glued to the ceiling.
ULTRA MUSIC FESTIVAL
Ultra Music Festival 2017 took place from March 24- 26 in Miami, Florida, where over 150,000 electronic dance music fans met to party the weekend away.
Shout out to Danny Chasan the Marketing Director of the festival and founder of Creator Entertainment for an incredible job on this epic event.
Some of the live and DJ performers include Major Lazer, Above Beyond and Zedd!
Others from the weekend lineup to special mention:
AFROJACK
THE PRODIGY
ALAN WALKER
NICKY ROMERO
CARL COX
DJ SNAKE AND FUTURE
Before the final day of Ultra Music Festival, rumors were stirring about whether the DJ Snake was planning a surprise appearance from Drake.
During DJ Snake’s headlining set, the lights dimmed and DJ Snake brought out Future to perform his hit songs including “Mask Off” and “Fuck Up Some Commas.” Future closes out his mini-set with “Jumpman.”
Future begins his Nobody Safe Tour in May, so fans can now get a glimpse of what’s to come.
STEVE AOKI
Steve Aoki, the mustachioed master of L.A.-based label and lifestyle brand Dim Mak, is a notorious figure in EDM. He was one of the first producer-DJs to cross over into the mainstream, thanks to high-energy compositions and onstage antics (cake throwing, anyone?). But as recently as 2004, he was standing in the audience like the rest, sharing a cheap hotel room and saving his cash for the shows and magic of Ultra.
Magic came not onstage but in the form of a woman strolling down Ocean Drive, wearing a “huge flowing dress, massive headphones and humongous glasses.” The stranger turned out to be Björk. “She was so majestic,” recalls Aoki. After mustering up the courage to speak to her, the two exchanged phone numbers and kept in touch. No collaborations resulted from their chance meeting but the unexpected interaction resonated with Aoki, who experienced part of what draws millions of people to Ultra every year: the opportunity to see some of the biggest names in music. In 2010, he went from being a face in the crowd to a performer, playing his first show at Ultra.
Steve Aoki premiered what is believed to be his next single during his Ultra Music Festival performance this past weekend.
During his action-packed set, which you can see footage of below, the cake-throwing EDM star brought Grammy award-winning rapper 2 Chainz on stage with him to perform a new cut from both Aoki and Canadian duo DVBBS, called ‘Wouldn’t Be Me Without You’.
The track has been rinsed by Aoki and DVBBS for a while now but has only ever been known as ID.
There’s no official release date just yet but considering it’s now been given a name and its main collaborators — including 2 Chainz — have now been fully unveiled it’s expected to be released soon.
Just Hold On” collaborator Louis Tomlinson also made an appearance.
Says Aoki: “[Ultra] is the perfect ground for experimentation, to play all your new music and get the best feedback you can from a crowd,” says Aoki. “[The fans] know the music. You feel it at the clubs; you see that in their faces.”
Aoki also performed at his Dim Mak label showcase—a label that launched the careers of MSTRKRFT, Zedd and the Chainsmokers. “Electronic music has just as much ability to reach as many people as any other genre,” he adds. “It’s an incredible time.”
An extra fun snippet is this first video of AOKI’S WORLD, his new show!
FILM
Premiere: Wilson
(starring Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, and Judy Greer) – New York
“Wilson” is about a lonely, neurotic and hilariously honest middle-aged man, played by Woody Harrelson, who reunites with his estranged wife, played by Laura Dern. Wilson gets a shot at happiness when he learns he has a teenage daughter — played by “Spider-Man: Homecoming” star Isabella Amara — who he has never met.
The comedy follows Wilson as he sets out to find his daughter.
Laura Dern, Judy Greer and Isabella Amara told Circa what it was like filming with the “amazing” Woody Harrelson and more at the Sundance premiere of “Wilson” in Park City, Utah.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE, HOSPITALITY & LIFESTYLE
MEGU WORLDWIDE
Madonna stopped by our client MEGU WORLDWIDE in NYC this month and Page Six had the scoop!
Madonna was spotted with a mystery man — who resembled French artist JR — at Megu on Wednesday, March 15.
“They were acting like a couple, chatting and laughing closely in a corner” of a private room, a spy said.
Madge’s son Rocco interned for the artist in 2014.
JR’s posted several images of the Material Girl on Instagram, and she recently included a shot of them together with a cryptic message. “Sometimes you just have to take off the mask and confess!” she wrote.
The restaurant was also mentioned on Mashed.com not just because of its’ celeb clientele but for their culinary excellence as well:
Sean Azari, founder of Breakthrough Social (a social media agency based outside of NYC) and the voice behind @NYCHungry, believes that restaurants should construct their decor, food, and ambiance to be more “Instagramable.” Azari told me, “People love taking pictures of food, so if you have food that looks outrageous, with contrasting colors that stand out in pictures then it makes it 10 times more fun (plus it’s a huge benefit for restaurants).”
Which is why he is putting Megu at the top of his list for mind-blowing restaurants of 2017. Best described as a “club restaurant,” the decor is meant to blow you away. An infinity-mirrored staircase leads you down into the subterranean main dining room. Dining room walls seamlessly transform the room with customizable lights and 3-D-activated imaging. And then, of course, there’s the food.
The menu is nuts. There’s edamame that resembles lollipops. There’s vegan tartare that replaces the beef with beets. Sake-braised short rib. Tuna katsu branded with “Megu” on its pink-seared skin. But Sean’s favorite is the tuna tartare. Why? Because it comes in an ice cream cone and it’s topped with crispy bits that look like ice cream sprinkles. Ice cream and sushi, together as one. This place was built for likes.
Megu’s foodie showmanship used to be only available in Delhi, Doha, Moscow, and Switzerland. But you can thank your lucky picture-perfect stars because, as of 2017, this show-stopper has now taken up permanent residence in New York. Where else, right?
Contact us to book and coordinate your next event, reservation and VIP experience at Megu and others via info@ilyseterri.com
All Star Chef Classic, Los Angeles, CA
All-Star Chef Classic is an exciting, intimate, and exclusive culinary celebration bringing together some of the world’s most innovative and celebrated chefs for four days in mid-March. Each event allowed guests to get up close and personal with the chefs, while eating food prepared by some of the greatest chefs in the world.
An outstanding constellation of chefs came together to cook in the Chefs Tasting Arena™ and Restaurant Stadium™, a state-of-the-art venue with stadium seating, lights, cameras and LED screens, giving fans the perfect view of all the action taking place in the round.
ENTERTAINMENT
Viacom became a client this month starting with Nickelodeon and The Kids’ Choice Awards.
Ilyse Terri, Inc. produced a fantastic event at the West Hollywood London Hotel that hosted an incredible crowd of artists and executives, including a special performance by Bruce Gold, an American magician that performs at the famed Magic Castle in L.A.
We then attended the Kids Choice Awards along with Gwen Stefani, Ellen, Heidi Klum and Seal, Mariah and Nick Cannon, and various others.
The star-studded event also featured appearances by celebrities including: Nikki & Brie Bella; The Chainsmokers; Nick Cannon; Ellen Degeneres; Chris Evans; Gal Gadot; Kevin Hart; DJ Khaled; Demi Lovato; Isabela Moner; Chris Pine; Chris Pratt; Rico Rodriguez; Zoe Saldana; Jojo Siwa and Zendaya; plus stars from Nick’s hit series HENRY DANGER (Jace Norman); GAME SHAKERS (Thomas Kuc, Madisyn Shipman, Benjamin Flores Jr.); Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn (Mace Coronel, AiDan Gallagher, Lizzy Greene, Casey Simpson); The POWER RANGERS (Becky G., Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Ludi Lin, Dacre Montgomery ); THE THUNDERMANS (Jack Griffo, Kira Kosarin) and SCHOOL OF ROCK (Breanna Yde, Ricardo Hurtado, Jade Pettyjohn, Aidan Miner and Lance Lim).
Hosted by WWE Superstar John Cena, the show aired live on Saturday, March 11, from USC’s Galen Center in Los Angeles.
Nickelodeon’s 2017 Kids’ Choice Awards is the only live event where kids can cast their votes across 28 categories with a brand-new voting experience on Nickelodeon’s digital platforms including Nick.com and the Nick App on iPad, iPhone, Kindle and Android devices.
Stay up-to-date on all Kids’ Choice Awards news by liking Nickelodeon on Facebook and following @Nickelodeon on Twitter and Instagram using #KCA.
While this was Cena’s first time hosting the global show, he is beloved worldwide by the Nickelodeon family, having previously hosted Australia’s Kids’ Choice Awards in 2008, as well as undergoing a sliming at the first UK Kids’ Choice Awards in 2007.
Sponsors of Nickelodeon’s 2017 Kids’ Choice Awards include Cinnamon Toast Crunch(TM), Crest(R), Hot Wheels(R), Nintendo, Skechers(R), Toyota, Verizon and Walmart.
BRAND MARKETING
STATE FARM
State Farm is hoping to show off its charitable (and hip) side with a new 15-minute film, created in partnership with agency Translation. The film focuses on State Farm’s longstanding Neighborhood Sessions series, where artists from Usher to DJ Khaled host events in cities across the country to thank “neighbors” for volunteering with local charities.
Earlier in the year State Farm collaborated with L.A. Clippers player Chris Paul and rapper DJ Khaled to pull off its next round of Neighborhood Sessions, this time in New Orleans. Jon Batiste, who you might recognize as the musical talent from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, also makes an appearance at the performance.
“This is a great moment that celebrates both basketball and music fans. Chris Paul lead the collaborative efforts with State Farm over the 2017 NBA All Star Weekend to give back to the local New Orleans community,” John Norman, CCO of Translation, said. “Through the Neighborhood Sessions platform, State Farm aims to demonstrate their commitment to help, and inspire good neighbors everywhere to make a difference in their communities.”
The video shows clips from the live performance (around the nine-minute mark) but also tells a greater story about Chris Paul and what makes New Orleans such a special place to him. “I feel like this city helped raise me and mold me into who I am,” Paul says of New Orleans.
“It’s really, really important to have the right mentor and the right leader in the community and that’s how I intend to use my platform however big it grows, I can always give the gift of music and give the gift of my time,” Batiste adds.
Fifteen minutes may seem like a long time, and to some extent it is, but the film does a nice job of highlighting State Farm’s charitable nature, with great shots of Chris Paul and DJ Khaled delivering new computers to a group of local school kids. Plus, the clips of DJ Khaled are a nice bonus for any fans of the artist.
GUCCI
Gucci Memes Itself, With Help From Artists, in Strange and Entertaining Instagram Ads
Gucci wants the kids, and the grownups, to know it’s hip.
For its latest campaign, the luxury fashion house has commissioned a number of memes for Instagram around the theme “#TFW Gucci” or “That Feeling When Gucci”—playing on the popular internet art form to promote a new line of wristwatches.
“When you got that new watch and you have to show it off,” reads one caption on a photo featuring a man’s arm, with a hole torn in the wrist of his suit and dress shirt to show the timepiece underneath.
“When he buys you flowers instead of a Gucci watch,” reads a second, featuring a deadpan 16th century portrait of the Spanish noblewoman Eleanora di Toledo.
“Watchdog,” reads a third, featuring a dog’s leg, wearing, naturally, a watch.
Those pieces, created by photography team @meatwreck (née Mitra Saboury and Derek Paul Boyle), designer @williamcult (William Ndatila) and documentarian @littlebrownmushroom (Alec Soth), are just a handful of many from a variety of internet artists, housed on a website for the Gucci campaign.
The landing page of the #TFWGucci microsite also offers a brief history of memes, for those too old or oblivious to understand them intuitively (generally speaking, they are striking images or animations paired with clever or revealing text, shared online, where others can riff on them, as a form of common expression—a sort of digital high five or fist bump proliferated through visually driven social media sites like Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram).
As other observers have pointed out, the brand’s explainer is both amusing and necessary. Given the high cost of Gucci’s products—one of the Le Marché des Merveilles watches costs about $790—it’s unlikely many but the most well-to-do youngsters are likely to spring for its products, while more aged and wealthy consumers might find themselves scratching their heads at ads that range from goofy and irreverent to garish.
The net result is a curated collection of pieces that feel like an online gallery show, complete with blurbs for each work. While that might seem like a stuffy attempt to bridge two worlds, the truth is, it makes for pretty entertaining browsing—thanks largely to the different perspectives of the talents on display. Even though they’re shamelessly hawking an entirely unnecessary expense, they’re also self-deprecating, timely (groan), and most important, human—i.e., delightfully and honestly absurd.
Just take the one from Italian artist @flamigram (Flaminia Veronesi) featuring a hand gently touching the face of a sculpture, with the caption, “When you wake up late for work and realize you’re actually a clay head.”
We enter the month with nothing short of special with chic and sporty events and content galore.
EVENTS
Super Bowl LI was played at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, February 5, 2017.
Super Bowl LI was the Patriots’ record-setting ninth Super Bowl appearance, their second in three years, and their seventh under the leadership of head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. The Falcons entered the game trying to win their first Super Bowl title, having lost their only previous appearance in Super Bowl XXXIII.
The Patriots defeated the Falcons, 34-28, in the first Super Bowl ever to go into overtime.
The halftime show was headlined by Lady Gaga.
As always-The Super Bowl touts huge brands and commercials are expensive to say the least.
This year, the Super Bowl LI commercials did not disappoint. Brands rolled out beautiful ads filled with humor, celebrities, and mascots. But found nestled between commercials for our beloved snacks and car manufacturers, was also a different kind of message.
Following a controversial election, one which continues to divide our country, most retailers steered clear of political commentary. Others chose to use this opportunity to take a stand for acceptance and diversity, and weigh in on issues affecting our country.
Our favorite pic? JT and Christopher Walken did it best in this one. Hilarious, catchy and memorable and therefore, very effective in our eyes.
In case you missed it or didn’t but want to relive the laughs, here’s Bai Beverages:
MUSIC
The 59th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 12th.
The CBS network broadcast the show live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The ceremony recognized the best recordings, compositions, and artists of the eligibility year, which runs from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016. The nominations were announced on December 6, 2016.
James Corden hosted the ceremony, his first time hosting it. The “pre-telecast” ceremony (officially named The Premiere Ceremony) was held on the same day prior to the main ceremony and was hosted by comedienne Margaret Cho.
Adele’s 25 won Album of the Year. While on stage to accept the award, Adele renounced her win, broke her award in half and stated Beyoncé should have won for her critically acclaimed album Lemonade instead.
Here’s Adele’s victory speech:
And here’s Adele after she broke her award in half:
FASHION
February kicks off Women’s Fashion Week starting with New York.
NYFW Feb 9th-Feb 16th is almost over with one more day to go and has been showcasing the Womens’ lines. Next up will be London Fashion Week (Feb 17-Feb 21) followed by Milan (Feb 22-Feb 28) and Paris (Feb 28-March 8th)
Here are a few shows worth mentioning so far:
BOSS
Earlier in February, Hugo Boss offered up drape and texture in the first stand-alone men’s show by chief brand officer Ingo Wilts, who produced a polished collection that was all about easy layering and a palette largely comprised of burgundy, charcoal gray and black.
OSCAR DE LA RENTA
COACH
PHILIP PLEIN AFTER PARTY
ART
In celebration of New York Fashion Week, Andy Warhol @ Christie’s auction features over 80 original photographs, prints and drawings revolving around all things fashion. From designers such as Halston and Jean Paul Gaultier, legendary editor Diana Vreeland, and models Bianca Jagger and Jerry Hall to Warhol’s iconic self-portraits, the images offer a glimpse of the fashionable world that the Pop artist inhabited.
The online auction opened for bidding at 12pm EST on February 8.
All proceeds went to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Christie’s has partnered with IMG to create an exhibition of these works at Skylight Clarkson Sq, the official venue of New York Fashion Week: The Shows.
HOSPITALITY, FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Ilyse Terri, Llc is proud to announce that we are now representing Megu restaurant in the acclaimed downtown Dream Hotel in New York City.
Contact us either via e-mail at info@ilyseterri.com or at 212.634.7266 in order to book your next event, place a catering or delivery order, or to reserve your VIP table and exceptional culinary experience.
We are also taking on more selective venues to offer to our loyal customers, so watch this space for more on Megu and others.
Alternatively, if you’re a new or existing venue and need representation along with Creative Services, please inquire within.
BUSINESS AND BRANDING
Burger King took the statement “sex sells” and ran with it in Israel over Valentine’s day this month.
Known as the ‘Home of the Whopper,’ and in locations throughout Israel, Burger King is offering “The Adults Meal” that features all of your Valentine’s Day essentials — two Whoppers, two packs of French Fries, two beers and … an adult toy.
That’s right — looks like ‘happy meals’ aren’t just for the kids anymore. And it turns out, this isn’t some marketing ploy either. “This is not a prank,” a spokesperson for advertising agency Leo Burnett told Mashable.
It was only available after 6 p.m. on February 14th, so if you’re reading this now and happen to be in Israel, unfortunately you’re out of luck, and ummm other things.
Can always still pop in for that whopper though.
Until next time and as always, thanks for your support and…
