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1 day ago | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher
Spring has sprung and summer is just five weeks away, which means green shoots are appearing, flowers are blooming and rabbits are fornicating.
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2 months ago | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher
Fletcher on Marketing A few thoughts about why making the A-List is so hard—and why it’s even harder to stay on it Gift Article URL copied to clipboard! × READ THIS NEXT 3 reasons to actually be optimistic about marketing in 2025 Credit: Adobe Stock The 2025 Ad Age A-List is here, celebrating the agencies and productions companies that received the highest letter grade possible. And it’s an impressive list, featuring nearly as many categories as the Tony Awards, including some new ones (B2B...
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher
’Tis the season to ... lay people off? If you work at any of the big networks or holding companies, you’ll know that late in the fourth quarter is the time when agency CFOs are under pressure to make sure all margins are met by year’s end. And for the past several years agencies have mastered the art of “rolling layoffs,” an alternative to major cuts after an account is lost or a big client slashes their budget.
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher |Parker Herren
I’ve been thinking about F-words a lot lately—but not the epithet you hear daily on the subway, in the workplace or shouted at a passing driver who doesn’t signal when he changes lanes. The words I have in mind are more suitable for playing Scrabble with your mom, when a lone ‘F’ lands among your tiles and you search for vowels that don’t lead to everyone’s favorite swear word. One of those F-words is fall and another is football, two things officially in full swing now that October is upon us.
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Aug 19, 2024 | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher
“If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”As every cinephile knows, that’s advice given by the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” the second Batman film directed by Christopher Nolan. And while the Joker may not be the most obvious choice for a life coach, he makes a good point. Which begs the question, why are agencies giving away their best work for free? Ad Age recently celebrated the Small Agency Awards, and for good reason.
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Jul 2, 2024 | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher |Garett Sloane
Apparently, AI is kind of a big deal. If you’re a reader of this publication, you’ve probably already experimented with generative AI. Anyone managing a department or company has surely been inundated with demos, platform pitches and partnership proposals for an AI-enabled interface to streamline your business. And if you attended the sweaty circus of Cannes this year, you probably heard AI mentioned on every panel and saw those two letters embedded into every press release with religious fervor.
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Jun 7, 2024 | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher
When it comes to our industry’s health, the state of creativity is our canary in the coal mine, an early indicator of whether we’re thriving or just getting by. So it might be a good idea to climb out of the mines, get some fresh air and take a good look around.
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May 1, 2024 | 
adage.com | E.J. Schultz |Ewan Larkin |M.T. Fletcher |Brian Bonilla
When luxury automaker Infiniti begins advertising its redesigned QX80 premium SUV next month, it will move beyond its marketing comfort zone. Pricing for the vehicle tops $100,000. But rather than targeting households with incomes of at least $100,000, like it normally would do, it lowered the threshold for its media plan to $75,000. The change was spurred by advice from Infiniti’s new multicultural agency, Third Ear, which has also begun working on sibling brand Nissan.
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Apr 30, 2024 | 
adage.com | Steve Passwaiter |Adrianne Pasquarelli |M.T. Fletcher
Most political ad spending so far in 2024 isn’t in the presidential campaign, but in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. WinSenate, controlled by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, leads all political advertisers and is committed to $250 million in spending early in the election cycle. It is crushing its closest competitor, the pro-Republican Senate Leadership Fund, by a -to-1 margin. WinSenate has placed its money in seven states.
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Apr 28, 2024 | 
adage.com | M.T. Fletcher
They say new business is the lifeblood of any agency, so why does it feel like an entire industry has a bad case of anemia? There have been plenty of pitches lately, with some big wins and new campaigns on the horizon. The victors are hoping to hire, breathing a sigh of relief over not having to make staff cuts this quarter, while vanquished agencies are bereft, scratching their heads over where things veered off course.
