Chief Creative Officer
Pereira O’Dell
How did your agency adjust/adapt to the marketplace in 2021 (new strategies, resources, technology, health/safety expertise) and what is the most relevant business and/or creative lesson you learned in 2021 and how will you apply it to 2022?
2020 was a year of waiting for things to go back to normal and 2021 was the year of accepting that was never going to happen. The biggest shift we’ve made is to fully embrace the fact that this is an era of employee empowerment and are committed to giving our employees more say in when, where and how they work. Finding and retaining talent has been central to the agency’s success and hopefully this will make us truly a talent first organization.
What are your goals or New Year’s resolution, creatively speaking or from a business standpoint, for your agency or department in 2022?
To make people laugh – or at least smile – more. The world is full of negative sh*t right now, it would be great if advertising was fun.
Gazing into your crystal ball, what do you envision for the advertising and/or entertainment industry–creatively speaking or from a business standpoint–in 2022?
“Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.”–Danish proverb. I’m not Danish, but I’ve always loved that proverb. But if you forced me to predict something, I would say that with the changes in data collection/cookies/ad tracking brands will once again put a premium on creativity to attract new consumers.
Tell us about one current commercial or branded entertainment project you are working on for early 2022.
I’m very excited about three branded entertainment projects we’ve got going right now. They are all in varying stages of development but one of them is the second season of a short-form, social media series for Corona , the other is a half hour docu-series about creativity as well a feature documentary project in the cryptocurrency space.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More