Why Do It?
Pour one out. Two iconic brand taglines were retired on Thursday.
The first is “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” the now-former slogan for the City of Las Vegas. It was replaced by “Welcome to Fabulous,” which was introduced during last night’s Thursday Night Football game.
And there’s the end of Nike’s famous imperative, “Just Do It,” which will change to “Why Do It?”
One could ask the same question of Nike’s decision.
Seriously, though, Nike says the change is about reaching younger people who “struggle more than ever with hesitation and self-doubt,” as per Ad Age.
But “it’s not just a slogan,” says Nike CMO Nicole Graham. “It’s really a mindset and almost kind of a spiritual thing. It’s like meditation or yoga. It’s something that has so much reverence and beauty, but it’s your job to continue to contemporize it and channel it in new dimensions.”
Now that’s marketing.
The Price Is Weiss
More details are emerging about David Ellison’s plans to remake the newly acquired Paramount, Puck reports.
Ellison’s strategy includes striking licensing and distribution deals for sports and entertainment content with sources as varied as the UFC, Call of Duty publisher Activision and the Duffer brothers, creators of “Stranger Things.”
But Ellison also wants to refashion Paramount-owned CBS News as another conservative news network.
Ellison is reportedly close to acquiring conservative media darling Bari Weiss’s Substack publication The Free Press for a price exceeding $100 million. It’s rumored, once the deal closes, that Ellison will hand the CBS editorial keys over to Weiss.
Paramount potentially paying so much for The Free Press is a little puzzling because, as a Substack publication, it doesn’t own its tech or its distribution. Also, its annual subscription revenue of $15 million would be a drop in the bucket for Paramount’s TV and media biz. Oh, and Weiss’s divisive, politically charged journalism isn’t likely to win over advertisers.
So why do it? According to Puck, the acquisition betrays Ellison’s desire to bring CBS back to profitability by making it a partisan network.
But there’s also another goal in mind: Aligning CBS with conservative ideology could further appease the Trump administration, which delayed the Paramount/Skydance merger until the combined company donated $16 million to help build Trump’s presidential library.
Dia De Los Chatbots
Enterprise software company Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company, maker of the Arc and Dia web browsers, for $610 million, The Verge reports.
Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes and several of his employees were reportedly devoted Arc users. But the acquisition centers on Dia, which features a built-in AI chatbot that can pull data from multiple browser tabs and different applications.
Atlassian sees opportunity in Dia’s ability to function as an AI assistant across its suite of enterprise workflow apps, including Jira, Confluence, Trello and Loom. The plan is to build Dia into the browser of choice for people at work – in contrast to AI competitors that primarily build tools for personal shopping and general queries.
The timing of the deal is also interesting, with the US government opting this week not to force Google to divest its Chrome browser. The judge in the case essentially let Google off the hook because of increased competition from AI search tools and AI-enabled browsers.
Cannon-Brookes clearly agrees that competition in the browser market is heating up. “I think the winner of the AI browser space is going to be crowned in the next 12 to 24 months,” he says.
But Wait! There’s More!
Apple’s site-scraping behavior suggests it may be developing its own AI-powered search engine. [The Information]
AI searches are four times as likely as Google searches to send users to 404 error pages, a study finds. [Search Engine Journal]
User-created Character AI bots featuring celebrity likenesses triggered harmful interactions every five minutes on average during chats with accounts claiming to be minors. [Parents Together Action]
Guess it’s a good thing, then, that the FTC says it will study the impact of AI chatbots on children’s mental health and require AI companies to turn over documents for analysis. [WSJ]
How ad-free Wikipedia survives amid increasing challenges facing publishers, including AI search and politicized attacks. [The Verge]
NBCU has completely sold out of ad inventory for the Super Bowl. [Marketing Brew]
You’re Hired!
Guideline hires Sean Wright as chief insights and analytics officer to lead its Data Insights Service, a newly announced business unit. [release]
Gregg Zegras joins commerce solutions provider Cart.com as CRO. [release]
Coinbase names Catherine Ferdon as its new CMO. [Adweek]
LoopMe appoints Edward Peterson as SVP of global engineering and Stephen St. Pierre as VP of US agency partnerships. [release]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
