THE VOICE OF MEDIA | APRIL 24, 2017

THE VOICE OF MEDIA | APRIL 24

LARRY PAGE
MARTIN SORRELL
INDRA NOOYI
MARY BARRA
ROBERT IGER
TIM COOK

THE
POWER
LIST
AMAZON’S JEFF BEZOS
BRINGS THE JETSONS AGE TO
LIFE. BY DAVID GIANATASIO
 CONTENTS
APRIL 24, 2017 | VOL. LVIII NO. 12

FEATURES
TOP STORY

THE POWER LIST 15

IBM’s Ginni Rometty
lands on Adweek’s
BYE, BILL
ranking of innovative THE ‘KING OF CABLE NEWS’ LOSES
leaders.
HIS CROWN. BY CHRIS ARIENS
A day that began with a greeting from Pope Francis in St.

UPFRONT Peter’s Square ended with the king of cable news being dethroned.
Last week’s swift and stunning departure of Bill O’Reilly—news of
THE WEEK 5 which was officially announced hours after O’Reilly met with the
O’Reilly signs off; Pope while on vacation in Italy—came after attorneys hired by Fox
Accenture taps UM; News’ parent company 21st Century Fox presented their findings of
NewFronts news. harassment charges against O’Reilly. James and Lachlan Murdoch
convinced their father, company co-chairman Rupert Murdoch, that
TRENDING 6
Kik dives into chatbots;
cutting ties with O’Reilly was a move toward cleaning up a toxic culture
creative agencies that claimed channel co-founder Roger Ailes last summer. O’Reilly
get political; called his departure “tremendously disheartening,” as he denies the
ABC’s pet project. accusations. (The 20-year network veteran will walk away with a reported
$25 million.) Tucker Carlson has been tapped as the lead-off man in the
VOICE 12 network’s new prime time. The challenge now is to hold on to the 60 or
How to tell if your
data is garbage.
more advertisers who fled The O’Reilly Factor, cable news’ No. 1 show, which
raked in upwards of $13 million dollars a month in ad revenue. For a network
whose hosts often deride the need for safe spaces, the message the Murdochs
sent is clear: Fox News Channel will be a safer workplace from now on.

DATA POINTS 13
VR consumer study ACCOUNTS VIDEO
via Magid.
Accenture Picks UM What’s NewFronts’ Woes
Hot at F8
PERSPECTIVE Facebook presented a
long list of new initiatives
BRAND NAME 30 at its annual F8 developers
Nerf’s still got game. conference, which took
C O V E R : W E S L E Y M A N N /A U G U S T I M A G E S ; O ’ R E I L LY: C H R I S L O U P O S

place in San Jose, Calif.

On Thursday, Accenture named UM its
global media agency of record after a review
MOVER 32 to help promote its digital and mobile-first
Twitter’s Anthony Noto services to clients across industries and
on user growth and continents. The IPG media agency will use its
NewFronts. targeted engagement strategies to manage
campaigns promoting Accenture’s
PORTRAIT 33 tech-focused Labs offering and its “New.
How Bullish went from Applied. Now” positioning to key business-
launch to Super Bowl in to-business audiences across digital, mobile
a year.
and social media. The account remains far
LOOK BACK 34 smaller than UM clients like Coca-Cola.
Fashion icon According to Kantar Media, Accenture spent
Diana Vreeland hits $31 million on measured media in the
the Met Gala. U.S. in 2015 and $23 million in 2016.
Highlights included the
announcement that the
company is working on a
new “brain-to-computer
interface” that will
potentially let humans type
with their minds; a second
version of Messenger that
boasts additional discovery
tools, music and many
more branded bots; a
phone-based augmented
reality strategy; and
camera technology that
will allow users
to leave virtual
“messages” on
real-life objects.
S AY C H E E S E !
Are the NewFronts no longer a
must-attend event? Warner Bros.
Digital Networks’ Machinima became
the fourth digital programmer to
officially pull out of the NewFronts,
joining Yahoo, BuzzFeed and Fullscreen
in their decisions to instead hold
outside events for potential
advertisers. AOL also announced
it would hold its presentation as a
closed-door event without media
in attendance, while Studio71, a
multichannel network with nearly 7
billion monthly views, will provide its
presentation as streaming-only.
 D A S H B O A R D > R E C A L I B R AT I N G Y O U R K P I

Different types
of chatbots
available on
Kik’s Bot Shop REACH VS.
RATINGS
Since Kik’s Bot Shop
debuted a year ago, more
TIPS than 2 billion messages
have been exchanged
FOR
How Do You BUILDING
BOTS
with chatbots on the
messaging app. Here are
some examples of the

Measure a
types of bots and how
they’ve fared.
BE CONVO-
CENTRIC GROUP

Chatbot? If a chatbot is a
part of a group
conversation,
BOTS
Bots created to thrive
within group chats
are best measured by
it should facilitate
their retention rate and
DEVELOPERS, PUBLISHERS AND BRANDS ARE conversation
viral ratio. Roll, a group
between users
FIGURING OUT HOW TO LEVERAGE THIS BUZZY rather than become bot created by Kik’s
NEW TECHNOLOGY. BY MARTY SWANT the main attraction. developers, now has
It should feel 1 million users, with
“lightweight,” an 95 percent coming
Since Facebook and Kik debuted their chatbot channels last year, thousands of added form of from friends rather
than from the bot shop.
bots have been built by brands, media companies and developers on the platforms, expression.
with more expected in 2017. (Just last week, Facebook unveiled its Messenger 2.0, ENTERTAINMENT
with brands like Subway, Aeromexico and Food Network coming onboard.) BOTS
However, while bots might seem like just another extension on social FORGET THE
The value of bots that aim
media, there is still a lot to figure out in terms of performance and YARDSTICK to entertain should be
measurement. And just like the early days of social media, understanding what Don’t worry about a gauged by total messages
clicks and what doesn’t is still a work in progress. single metric for all sent and average messages
“When we were creating chatbots and thinking about it as a new medium, bots. Because each per user. A collection
can serve a different
we wanted to go back to the drawing board to assess how these things should of four bots created to
purpose, their promote the movie Teenage
be measured,” said Kik product manager Laura Newton. “Although bots are success is defined
still a niche product and aren’t super widespread, they cover a vast variety of Mutant Ninja Turtles saw
in different ways. average engagement of
use cases and we think they need to be treated different.” For example, read
Despite all the early hype, brands need to be careful to set realistic 7 minutes, with 40 million
rate might be good for messages exchanged. On
expectations for what bots can do now and what they can do a year from now. content distribution, average, users exchanged
“It’s a long-term kind of game,” said Octane AI co-founder Ben Parr, whose but engagement 60 messages with the bots.
company has built bots for musicians and actors such as Maroon 5, Lindsay rate is better for
Lohan and 50 Cent. “The Messenger bot platform is only a year old, and after entertainment. CONTENT
a year of the iOS store, there was no Instagram or Snapchat. We hadn’t hit that DISTRIBUTION
technological level, and we’re still at that early stage [with bots].” BOTS
START Brands and publishers
SIMPLE pushing out content should
DATA FILES Focus on one thing focus on the read rate of
and do it well so their bots. However, they
There are
more than
100,000 that the user has a should be sure to avoid
active clear understanding merely pushing content.
20,000 chatbots on of what the bot CNN’s bot for the 2016
bots on Kik. Facebook is intended to campaign grew 56 percent
Messenger
accomplish. within three weeks, with
20 million Is it meant to 4.5 million messages
businesses entertain? Inform? exchanged on Election
2 billion respond to Assist? Later on, Day. (Users asked
messages Facebook consider adding “who’s winning” 516,000
exchanged messages complementary times that same day.)
on Kik so far every month. features.

6 APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK

ENTRIES
OPEN NOW

MEDIA PLAN
OF THE YEAR CATEGORIES INCLUDE:

Alternative Media Data Native Advertising

Best Campaign Insights Programmatic
Branded Content International Social
Cause Marketing Mobile

ENTER AT
MEDIAPLANOFTHEYEAR.COM
 TRENDING | THIS WEEK’S INSIGHTS

POLITICS

Putting
Potus
On Notice
HOW AGENCIES ARE CHANNELING
THEIR PRE-ELECTION PASSIONS
INTO TRUMP-ERA POLITICAL
ACTIVISM. BY PATRICK COFFEE

onths before Pepsi’s perfect

storm of cultural contro-
versy, 2016 laid waste to
the myth that advertising
is an inherently apolitical
business.
President Donald Trump inspires strong
opinions like he attracts Twitter followers—
and in the months leading up to last year’s
election, the American ad industry appeared to
achieve a rare moment of consensus in opposi-
tion to his candidacy.
Agencies including Droga5, Venables Bell
& Partners, Crispin Porter + Bogusky and
Burrell Communications created pro-bono ads
for the Hillary Clinton campaign, and brands
like Tecate and Corona released big-budget
spots playing off Trump’s signature promise to
“Build the Wall” before 84 Lumber became the
talk of Super Bowl LI.
But the most colorful political work of 2016
and early 2017 came when creatives’ personal
passions bubbled over into explicitly anti-
Trump projects.
72andSunny’s side projects include (clockwise from top left) #First100Ways, The Uproar,
Many of advertising’s biggest names Pussy on Protest and Heritage Flags, which combines the banners of employees’ countries of origin.
weighed in, with Wieden + Kennedy creating a
Portland, Ore., food truck selling only “Don-
ald Trump’s BS” and Goodby Silverstein &
Partners releasing a “personalized anti-Trump
ad generator.” Abundant side projects ranged Yet the agency is also an activist company percent of profits from its “activist kits” to
from a well-meaning #UnfollowTrump plea that encourages employees to “use our in- Planned Parenthood.
to a series of ominous bus signs regarding his ternal channels to get more support for their “These ideas were all hatched by folks at
potential presidency. points of view.” the company,” Cole said. “We gave them just as
Trump won the election despite this well- Cole mentioned recent projects like #First- much attention as launches of big campaigns.”
spring of resistance, and many agencies now 100Ways, a campaign from strategist Eddie “Our work is taken as political, but it’s more
walk a fine line between channeling employees’ Moraga and senior brand manager Rachel about humanity,” argued Droga5 group creative
convictions and helping nervous clients avoid Brandt that helps followers find ways to affect director Kevin Brady, leader of the agency’s
PHOTOS: 72ANDSUNNY

the pitfalls of an era covered in eggshells.
“We have not actively organized in support
or denial of any political party or candidate,”
said 72andSunny founder and creative co-
chairman Glenn Cole. “We are not a partisan
company; we are a purpose company.”
“positive, collective change” during the open-
ing months of the administration. Director
of brand innovation Kelly Schoeffel’s protest
sign generator The Uproar and designer Mindy
Benner’s Pussy on Protest take a more directly
anti-Trump tack, with the latter donating 100
controversial “This Is Wholesome” Honey
Maid same-sex parents campaign and its efforts
to help elect Clinton. Brady, who attended
the January Women’s March on Washington
(alongside a bus filled with Huge staffers), said
employees were “lining up” to work on the

8 APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK

 TRENDING

Clinton ads. But he also said that any input
from Trump voters “would be welcome.”
“As an agency, I want to be respectful of
people across the spectrum,” Brady added.
“There are a hell of a lot of passionate political
people here, and that engine won’t stop.”
In one such example, Droga5 group
creative director Karen Land Short and
freelance art director Michelle Hirschberg
created a series of T-shirts under the “Not
This White Woman” banner after various
reports noted that a majority of white, fe-
male voters picked Trump over Clinton.
Cole and Brady take pride in their agencies’
lack of explicit partisanship, but others are
less concerned about making their personal
politics public.
“A long time ago we picked a side, and we’re
sticking with it,” said SS+K founding partner
Rob Shepardson, a veteran of Barack Obama’s
POSTERS: JEFF GOODBY
Since the election, Jeff Goodby has worked
on a series of #Resist posters as a side project.
‘We are not a
ers who defected to Trump in 2016.
On that note, the ad industry is hardly
a monochromatic sea of “blue” voters, and
several executives interviewed for this article
spoke of conservative employees expressing
discomfort with office politics.
Some prominent Trump critics like Jeff
Goodby have adopted a “wait and see” ap-
proach to a still-green administration. “All the
pre-election stuff is on hold for now. I will try
to have a longer fuse, but the fuse will still be
there,” said the “Got Milk?” veteran, who has
created #Resist posters in his free time while
carefully following all major political news.
Others think the atmosphere calls for activ-
ism. “As a nation we are more divided than ever.
Whether it’s true or not, it’s the undeniable per-
ception,” said AnalogFolk partner and creative
director Carren O’Keefe, whose agency used
images from the Women’s March for a recent

campaigns who calls his political backstory a
key selling point for clients despite the fact that
“the commercial world leans right.”
Shepardson doesn’t shy away from politi-
cally charged work like the “BFF Trump”
chatbot or his current passion project, a
documentary about former Obama support-
Clif Bar campaign. “Don’t temper your voice.
partisan company; Don’t temper your beliefs. Don’t temper your
ideas. Now’s the time to be as loud as hell.”
we are a purpose Many share her belief that the industry’s
company.” political revival is only beginning. As SS+K’s
Shepardson put it, “I still think we’re in the
Glenn Cole, creative co-chairman, 72andSunny first inning here.”

Great
Stories
Need
Heroes
Congratulations to
BILL KOENIGSBERG
on being named to
Adweek’s 2017 Power
List of Top 100
Leaders in Marketing,
Media, and Tech

TELEVISION
Are Ad
Vets Ready
For Prime
Time?
PET PROJECT ‘DOWNWARD DOG’
CREATES UNIQUE MARKETING
CHALLENGES FOR ABC.
BY T.L. STANLEY
artin, the soulful-looking
mutt that stars in the
upcoming ABC show
Downward Dog, is a navel
gazer with an attitude.
That much is obvious
from his soliloquies about his place in
the household hierarchy and his thorny
relationship with the cat.
See, Martin is a talking dog who’s as prone
to existential crises as he is to oversharing. He
speaks directly to the camera and narrates the
half-hour series about his life with his owner
Nan, played by Fargo breakout actress (and
Emmy nominee) Allison Tolman.
The fact that Downward Dog is a different
breed of talking-animal show—not a broad,
slapstick comedy—poses a unique marketing
challenge for its network and producers.
On top of that, there’s the scrutiny from
animal activists that comes whenever a
real dog lands a major role in a piece of
entertainment. The trend, especially in film,
has been shifting to computer-generated
animals instead of live performances to avoid
criticism and potential animal welfare issues,
as was the case with A Dog’s Purpose, which
spurred a boycott of the film.
In truth, nearly everything about
Downward Dog is unconventional, from its
origins as a Pittsburgh ad agency’s passion
project to its well-received launch at the
Sundance Film Festival, the first broadcast
comedy to score that coveted platform.
Any confusion about the eight-episode
series, premiering May 17, could work in its
favor, said Michael Killen, co-founder of
Animal, the production, advertising and visual
effects company that debuted Downward Dog a
few years ago as one-minute webisodes before
10
TRENDING
helping turn it into a prime-time TV property.
“In an era of way too much TV, we hope this
will be able to cut through,” said Killen, an
executive producer on the ABC series, “even if
people have the wrong idea about it.”
Taking a cue from promotions for shows
like FX’s Atlanta and TBS’ Search Party, ABC
is positioning Downward Dog as a dramedy,
stamped with the Sundance laurels in print ads
for indie credibility. On-air and digital promos
are more cinema verité than setup-punch line,
using snippets of Martin’s sometimes dark and
cynical musings. “Life isn’t always a walk in
the park,” says one tagline. Translation: this is
not Dog With a Blog.
Downward Dog looks at the world from
Martin’s perspective, while “projecting
human emotions onto him,” said Samm
Hodges, a director at Animal and executive
producer of the ABC show who provides the
dog’s voice. “The humor is in how angsty he is.
He suffers from modern ennui.”
That keeps the show far from the typical
talking animal trope, he said, even though
‘In an era of way
too much TV, we
hope this will be
able to cut through.’
Michael Killen, co-founder, Animal
WILD THING
The new ABC series
Downward Dog
(above) is the work of
production, advertising
and digital effects
company Animal,
which previously
created critter-centric
campaigns for Taco
Bell (far left) and
Real California
Cheese (left).
execs at Animal cut their teeth, so to speak,
on such commercial fare as Taco Bell’s
Chihuahua and the Real California Cheese
campaign (chatty cows and sheep).
That history grounded them in the rigors
and standards of working with real animals,
which centers on “giving absolute control to
the trainers,” Hodges said.
Martin, who in real life is a rescued shelter
pup named Ned, got to be himself on the
Pittsburgh set, Hodges said, “doing only the
things a dog would really do. There are no
daring rescue scenarios. Sometimes we would
shoot whatever he was doing and write around
it,” making use of Ned’s limited work schedule.
Animal welfare advocates have focused
their efforts in recent years on wild animals in
entertainment, pushing for an all-CGI future.
For domesticated pets like cats and dogs, “we
don’t have any philosophical objection to their
being included as long as there’s no harm or
stress,” said Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane
Society of the U.S. “It’s important from a
cultural perspective to have entertainment
imitate life, and animals are central to that.”
In Downward Dog, Nan rescues Martin
from a shelter, an example of “just the kind
of message we want to convey,” Pacelle said.
“Anything that may help the larger societal
problem of homeless animals and needless
euthanasia is positive.”
There may be tie-ins with animal rescue
groups to go along with the show’s run, and
producers created a behind-the-scenes video
of Ned’s journey from traumatized shelter dog
to small screen star.
APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK

BIG DATA
Oracle’s Ad Cloud
May Reign Supreme
THE SOFTWARE GIANT EXPANDS ITS DIGITAL
MEASUREMENT ABILITIES AND JUMPS INTO TV.
BY CHRISTOPHER HEINE
Some industry observers may still
be getting used to the idea of Oracle as
an advertising power player, but with
2017 U.S. digital ad spend hitting $83
billion, per eMarketer, consultancies
and agencies should be on their toes—
the software giant is on the move.
The Redwood Shores, Calif.-
based company last week held a tony
marketing conference on Park Avenue
in New York, where it announced its
latest ad-tech purchase, plucking
digital measurement firm Moat—
which partners with Facebook,
Congratulations
BILL KOENIGSBERG
PRESIDENT, CEO & FOUNDER OF HORIZON MEDIA
AND NOW ON ADWEEK’S 2017 POWER LIST
Highly deserved! Proud to be a partner.
TRENDING
Google, Pinterest and Snapchat—for
more than $850 million, per Recode.
Moat will join other notable Oracle
acquisitions in recent years like
Datalogix and BlueKai on the Oracle
Data Cloud, a system holding $3
trillion in offline purchasing info that
notable brand clients such as General
Electric, Arby’s, Sur La Table and
Pella can leverage. Oracle has been
in a virtual arms race with Adobe,
Salesforce, IBM, Nielsen and others
that are trying to create the ultimate
marketing cloud, and Moat appears to
From Beryl Raff and all your friends at
be a feather in its cap.
Eric Roza, svp and gm of Oracle
Data Cloud, said its new property’s
analytics will provide “actionable
insights around viewability, brand
safety, nonhuman traffic and ad
creative to over 600 publisher, brand
and agency clients.”
Oracle has serious TV advertising
ambitions as well, as it also revealed
at its April 18 soirée that it was
working with Charter Communications
(part of Spectrum) to deliver targeted
ads to the cable giant’s 16.5 million
subscribers. The endeavor marks
Moat brings
‘actionable insights
around viewability,
brand safety,
nonhuman traffic and
ad creative to over
600 publisher, brand
and agency clients.’
Eric Roza, svp and gm, Oracle Data Cloud
Oracle Data Cloud’s first foray into
“addressable TV,” which constitutes
ad targeting based on household
purchase data, including what people
buy from the consumer packaged
goods, retail and auto categories.
“This allows us to connect
Charter’s information to the data
that we have to make a much better,
appropriate plan around who to target,
what [TV ] programs to connect to,”
said Joe Kyriakoza, head of autos and
TV solutions for Oracle Data Cloud. “So
addressable marketplaces like Charter
are great places for data companies
like us to be able to connect the dots
better on behalf of marketers.”
Just how targeted will the TV
advertising get with the Oracle-
Charter arrangement?
“There’s some granularity we can
get to, but with granularity, you can
compromise scale,” Kyriakoza said.
“And with TV, we usually want scale.
So we don’t go too deep, instead
going after a really good subset of an
audience type that brands are looking
for. Then, we map it to the addressable
footprint of Charter.”

OPINION
How
To Tell
If Your
Data Is
Crap
SEVEN QUESTIONS
TO CONSIDER WHEN
WEIGHING THE QUALITY
OF THE INSIGHTS USED
TO DRIVE YOUR BRAND
MARKETING.
BY JULIE FLEISCHER
The media landscape has realigned
itself with lightning speed to the
power of data. After a century of
being limited by “brute force media,”
marketers quickly glommed onto
the vast potential of digital and
addressable audiences.
The data “exhaust” from the digital
experience has been a game changer
for marketers, powered first by sites,
then by ad networks and finally by
programmatic. Money shifted from
reach-based to “people-based” planning,
augmented by powerful new data
companies, monetizing the categories
and groupings of people brands want to
reach in ever finer granular detail.
But somewhere along the way, the
proposition fractured. We discovered
that data itself is not the key to
addressable marketing and better
business outcomes—quality data is.
And the difference between data and
quality data, or data with integrity,
is difficult to see. To use a buzzword
of the day, the market for data is not
transparent. To use another, it’s a
swamp: an opaque, poorly understood
mess. If you want to be a data-driven
marketer, you need to make your way
through the morass to interrogate your
data. So here are seven questions to
keep in mind in assessing data integrity:
Is your data fresh or stale?
The average life of a cookie is 30
days. About 55 million people change
their phone carrier every year, 60
million physically move, 43 percent
12
VOICE
of customer records are out of date
or invalid, and 60 percent of data is
incorrect within two years.
Data becomes obsolete quickly,
yet many providers continue to use
stale data because it provides the
illusion of scale. The only data that
matters is accurate data. Make sure
you understand how data is collected,
whether it’s corroborated against
authoritative identity standards, and
how often obsolete data is purged.
Is your data 3-D or flat? In the
world of data, there are six key areas
that matter to marketers: demo (age,
gender, income); geographic (where
they live/roam); attention (what they
concentrate on); consumption (what
they buy); behavioral (what matters
to them); and intentional (what they’re
about to do).
Data providers act as if people
exist independently in each of these
areas, as if any of the above is
sufficient to define a person. I’d ask,
are you just a demo? Just a measure
of attention? Just a signal of intent?
No. Real humans are a combination
of all of the above. Collectively,
consumers are diverse. Individually,
they are multifaceted. Flat data (an
individual attribute) is just a signal.
How modeled is your data?
Here’s a truth: All data is modeled.
Here’s another: At some point, models
falter. Do you know at which point?
In order to be useful, data needs
to have scale. Marketers seek a
Specs
Claim to fame “I’m rather
infamous for calling 90 percent
of data ‘crap.’ If I’d known that
would be my calling card, I would
have tried to be a little more
eloquent,” says Julie Fleischer,
vp, product marketing at Neustar.
Base Chicago
Twitter @JFLY
balance of specificity and reach. It’s
important to understand the size of
the initial seed audience versus the
size of the total audience to develop
a degree of confidence in the data
you’re using. If it’s significantly
modeled, how certain can you be that
you’re still reaching your target?
How transparent is the
modeling? Do you know your
look-alikes? The data market tends
to be opaque, and with data, the devil
is in the details. If you don’t know how
a look-alike audience is formed, you
have no idea whether it can be trusted.
For example, most data sets
use only digital identifiers and
connections. Definitive email-to-
cookie linkages generate only a 30
to 50 percent match rate. So the
data you’re starting with may be less
than half right. Statistical modeling
creates hypothetical look-alikes off
the total (which is less than half right),
exacerbating the issue. If you don’t
know the model, you can’t interrogate
the veracity of the data set.
Is your data connected? Most
data is digital, but I don’t know of a
single person who lives life online only.
The world is connected—online and
offline. Connected data encompasses
both. Most data is based on digital
attributes only and is neither linked
to offline identity nor normalized
versus the population. In other words,
it captures a small portion of reality.
Data needs to be connected to reflect
people’s 3-D lives.
Are you targeting individuals or
households? Unless you’re targeting
age or gender, you’re better off
targeting households than individuals.
Here’s an example: It’s amazing how
many marketers still target women
instead of adults, as if only women
are shoppers. Today, 40 percent of
primary grocery shoppers are men,
and the majority of households share
grocery shopping chores.
Targeting only individuals misses
a big portion of the grocery-shopping
I L L U S T R A T I O N : G A R Y W A T E R S / G E T T Y I M A G E S / I K O N I M A G E S ; H E A D S H O T: A L E X F I N E
population. Worse yet, most
purchase data is generated from
shopper card data, which exists at
the household level. But generalizing
the data from individual to
households requires a connection to
the offline world (see prior question).
Does your data capture this?
Finally, how many profiles are
there? There are 220 million adults in
the United States. If your data provider
has 3 billion profiles, it isn’t marketing
to people, it’s marketing to data
points. The data stream that we rely
on as marketers grows exponentially
each year. Today, there are more IP
addresses for devices than people.
New ways of parsing, organizing and
leveraging data will be invented that
will make the media landscape even
more addressable and exciting.
But buyer beware, if you don’t
kick the data tires and get a more
complete understanding of the
modern principles of data integrity,
you may just be getting crap.
APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK
 D ATA P O I N T S

Reality Bites
ARE CONSUMERS READY TO TAKE THE PLUNGE INTO VR? BY EMMA BAZILIAN
Virtual reality has been all the rage among the tech cognoscenti over the past few years, but the real test of VR’s value is whether consumers will catch on.
Looking to gauge the public’s feelings about this emerging technology, research-based consultancy Magid surveyed two groups of 1,000 people ages 18-64
about VR, conducting one wave of questions before the holidays in December and a second wave in January. “The data shows that the level of interest in VR
is significant after what has been only one year of real market activity,” said Mike Bloxham, svp, global media and entertainment at Magid. “As with all new
technologies, many consumers will bide their time in the belief that the price will drop, the device will improve and the overall proposition will be better.” One
challenge, he added, is content discovery. “At present, some consumers clearly perceive difficulty in finding content or at the very least are unaware of all
that is available … . [This] almost certainly represents a market opportunity for a content aggregator in the coming years,” Bloxham said.

Which types of Which VR

VR products did products
respondents plan did they
on purchasing actually
during the holiday purchase? (%)
season? (%)

VR headset that works PlayStation

25 with any smartphone VR headset 14

20 11

17 10

16 9

53% didn’t plan VR headset designed for VR headset that 70% didn’t plan
to purchase any. a specific smartphone connects to your PC to purchase any.

People who intended to purchase People who purchased a VR device:

a VR device but didn’t:
Q: How did the VR device Far better than my expectations
you purchased perform Slightly better than my expectations
given your expectations As well as I expected it to
Q: Why did Q: What would make of the device? Slightly below my expectations
you decide you more likely to buy
against it? one in the future? Far below my expectations
(Top four reasons) (Top four reasons)

I thought my 30% 41%

family/friends 31% 37%
would enjoy it. 64%
37%
30% 13%
I have always
wanted a virtual If VR devices 34% VR headset that works VR headset designed for
reality device. were less with any smartphone a specific smartphone
expensive.
34%
INFOGRAPHIC: CARLOS MONTEIRO

If there was
more VR content
I like to buy
available.
a new technology
when it comes out. 35% 35%
26%
31% 25%
28%

I want a more If I were able 22%

immersive viewing to try a VR 29% 28%
or gaming experience. experience.
If I received a strong VR headset that PlayStation
14% recommendation. connects to your PC VR headset

SOURCE: MAGID

ADWEEK | APRIL 24, 2017 13

Meet the
engineers
of a new
era.
Challenging convention through innovation & collaboration.

Congratulations David Taylor, P&G | Randall Stephenson, AT&T |

John Stankey, AT&T Entertainment

hearts-science.com
 THE
LIST
PRESENTING ADWEEK’S THIRD ANNUAL POWER
LIST, OUR RANKING OF THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL,
INNOVATIVE AND EFFECTIVE LEADERS IN MEDIA,
MARKETING AND TECHNOLOGY. BY DAVID GIANATASIO
To assemble this installment of The Power List, we considered the profiles and results of global corporate
titans, taking into account criteria such as company value, revenue and growth, market performance, consumer
reach, their standing among rivals, industry accolades and media buzz. This list is not intended to chart earnings
or track executive performance year over year. Image counts a lot, as does the volume of news a company
contributes to the Adweek stream. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet’s Larry Page, our No. 1s for 2016
and 2015, respectively, turned in great performances last year. Still, in our estimation, they fell just behind
our pick for the top spot, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Like last year, this list represents a range of disciplines. Along
with agency and media chieftains, leaders of tech giants and CEOs of brand marketers, you will find execs who
typically fly under the radar and innovative divisional heads. Yes, we’re mixing apples and oranges—but that’s the
whole point. Remember: image and influence can sometimes trump quarterly earnings in the corridors of power.
 JEFF BEZOS
CEO, chairman, president, founder,
Amazon
Revenue: $136 billion

When Jeff Bezos plans a moon shot, he literally has Earth’s satellite in mind.
Last month, he asked NASA to back his aerospace startup, Blue Origin, in an
“Amazon-like shipment service for the moon that would deliver gear for experiments,
cargo and habitats by mid-2020.” And that’s just one of many ambitious, forward-
looking projects Amazon’s 53-year-old mission controller has on his launchpad.
Others, in various stages of development, include drones for merchandise delivery,
an activewear line featuring suits, dresses and shirts, and automated grocery stores
where customers simply grab items and walk out.
“In business, what’s dangerous is not to evolve,” Bezos once famously said. Given
his track record for success, few would bet against the man to pilot his flights of
expansion to dizzying heights.
“Amazon is a company committed to innovation,” says industry analyst and author
Rebecca Lieb, who credits Bezos for having “the drive and commitment” to succeed
with diverse initiatives at massive scale. “Richard Branson comes to mind as an
entrepreneur with Bezos’ extraordinarily wide-ranging vision—bold and unafraid to
penetrate new markets.”
When Amazon launched in 1994, the connected age had barely begun, and a
business plan that called for selling huge quantities of books online sounded, to
many, like a moon shot indeed. Since then, of course, the company has morphed into
the general store for the millennial generation—as well as one of its top video-binge
destinations. Along the way, Bezos helped reshape the retail landscape, sending
traditional brick-and-mortar purveyors scrambling for wired strategies—and, in some
cases, screaming into bankruptcy. These days, even Walmart, the world’s largest
retailer, is investing in ecommerce to follow Bezos’ example.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s performance has never blazed so bright.
“By all objective measures, it’s fair to say that 2016 was a quite remarkable year
for Amazon,” says CFRA Research senior equity analyst Tuna Amobi. “It has remained
at the forefront of cutting-edge online retail and technology, driving its shares to all-
time highs, and becoming one of the world’s most valuable companies.”
Sales soared 27 percent for fiscal 2016, and profit increased fourfold to $2.4
billion. (It’s hard to believe the company lost nearly $250 million just two years ago.)
Some analysts who follow Amazon are floored by the scope and audacity of
Bezos’ drive to diversify. “Clearly, the company owns ecommerce,” says Lieb, “but in
the past couple of years, after a late start, they’re nearly head to head with Apple and
Netflix in streaming, a significant new market.”
But, wait, there’s more—much more. Amazon’s cloud business grew 47 percent
in the last quarter, twice as fast as the company overall. And, as the human voice
increasingly becomes the OS of choice for consumer technology, Amazon’s Echo
smart-speaker/microphone—accessing its Alexa AI service—ranks among the leaders.
Bezos also owns the Washington Post, and he’s widely credited with revitalizing
its editorial operations and expanding the outfit’s relevance for millions of readers
born long after the newspaper’s Watergate heyday.
“It’s hard to think of an area of media, tech or commerce the company doesn’t
touch,” says Lieb.
As for the man himself, well, Bezos remains an enigmatic mix of folksiness and
cutthroat intensity—a supporter of progressive causes such as marriage equality who
has nonetheless been accused of fostering a brutal workplace environment (which he
denies), and taken to task for refusing to pull ads from far-right news sites.
Such contradictions define a man of bold vision who, for better or worse, overhauled
virtually every aspect of shopping, with an eye toward creating a more immersive and
holistic user experience. Applying that same template time and again in his quest for
expansion, Bezos rockets ahead, spurred by the belief that no frontier is final.

3 7
LARRY PAGE
CEO, co-founder,
Alphabet
(including Google)
Revenue: $90.3 billion
Page keeps reaching for
the stars. Since forming
Alphabet as the high-tech
industry’s first true holding
company in 2015, this
44-year-old executive has
concentrated on moon shots
ranging from AI and biotech
to self-driving vehicles—all
ventures that could pay off
big down the line. (And, yes,
he’s sunk personal capital
into firms that develop flying
cars.) These “other bets” may
seem like pie in the sky right
now, but 20 years ago, so
did the notion that a simple
window on the web could
become the world’s conduit
to instant information.
Today, Alphabet derives 87
percent of its revenue from
advertising, mainly across
Google Search and YouTube.
That’s an awful lot of eggs
B E Z O S : PAT R I C K FA L L O N / B L O O M B E R G V I A G E T T Y I M A G E S ; Z U C K E R B E R G : D AV I D PA U L M O R R I S / B L O O M B E R G V I A G E T T Y I M A G E S
in one basket, and recent
moves by marketers such as
AT&T, PepsiCo, Verizon and
Walmart to pull campaigns
running near questionable
content underscore the need
for the company to diversify
into new revenue streams.
4
BRIAN ROBERTS
CEO, chairman,
Comcast
(includes NBCUniversal,
Universal Studios,
MSNBC, Telemundo)
Revenue: $80.4 billion
A cute year-end holiday
spot distilled the Comcast
proposition: In its unwired
state, Grandma and
Grandpa’s house is a dull,
dispiriting drag. Ordering
the full hookup—Wi-Fi,
voice remote control,
shows, movies and music
on demand, and Xfinity X1
with Netflix—transforms
the place into a wired
paradise. The message
is clear: Whatever your
pleasure for entertainment
or communications, Roberts,
57, has you covered. The next
frontier: battling A&T and
Verizon in wireless. Xfinity
mobile bows soon, and
Comcast just boasted that
ADWEEK | APRIL 24, 2017
THE
its network is ready to supply
users’ increasing need for
speed as media consumption
hurdles toward the 5G future.
5
DAVID TAYLOR
CEO, president, chairman,
Procter & Gamble
Revenue: $65.3 billion
Taylor, 59, inherits a leaner
operation from A.G. Lafley,
who twice helmed the
world’s largest advertiser
and stepped down (for good—
probably) last summer.
During Lafley’s most recent
tenure, P&G shed some
100 brands, eliminating $10
billion in costs. Now, Taylor
and his marketing chief, Marc
Pritchard, are shaking things
up again, reviewing all P&G
agency relationships this
year across brands, while
threatening digital giants to
be more transparent or risk
losing business. Given P&G’s
softness in some segments,
that’s probably a prudent
move. Though if Taylor’s
plans don’t pan out, one
wonders if Lafley might be
invited back for a third turn
at the helm.
6
ROBERT IGER
CEO, chairman,
Walt Disney Co.
(includes ABC, ESPN,
Disney theme parks)
Revenue: $55.6 billion
Under Iger’s stewardship,
Disney’s been an absolute
beast. Coming off record
2016 revenue, its live-
action Beauty and the Beast
film has already cracked
$1 billion in global sales.
This December, Star Wars
Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
hits screens, expanding
one of the greatest media/
merchandising franchises
ever. Against that backdrop,
and with near universal
acclaim (and no small
amount of envy) for Iger’s
bold cross-platform
innovation, it’s no surprise
that the 66-year-old chief
executive’s tenure was
extended for a year through
July 2019, and that Disney
plans to keep him around on
a consulting basis for quite
some time thereafter.
POWER LIST
8 9
MARTIN SORRELL INDRA NOOYI TIM COOK
Founder and CEO, CEO, chairman, CEO, Apple
WPP Group PepsiCo Revenue: $215.6 billion
Revenue: $19.4 billion (includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Apple’s mojo has fallen a bit
At 72, Sir Martin continues Quaker Foods) farther from the tree. After
to helm the largest agency Revenue: $62.8 billion five years as the world’s
holding company—parent These days, the PepsiCo most valuable brand, the
of Grey, Ogilvy & Mather, glass seems half empty. tech giant ceded that mantle
GroupM and others—with Good intentions fizzled for to Google in February, per
significant swagger, Nooyi, 61, a few weeks ago, Brand Finance’s Global 500.
his frequently acerbic, when a Pepsi ad starring Cook, 56, hasn’t stirred up
insightful pronouncements Kendall Jenner as a model much excitement through
making headlines who ditches work to join a launches or marketing
worldwide. And he’s won peace protest was universally campaigns (which are awfully
praise to back up that derided as the most tone- hit-and-miss these days
bluster, ranked as the deaf commercial of the year as he streamlines global
second-best-performing so far. That faux pas closely efforts). Still, $738 billion in
global CEO by Harvard followed news that Coke market cap value is nothing
Business Review. Last year, would replace Pepsi as Major to sneeze at, nor was Apple’s
the group was stung by League Baseball’s soft-drink first fiscal quarter, with
Volkswagen’s media shift sponsor, undercutting Nooyi’s record sales of $78.4 billion.
to Omnicom, and Unilever’s strategy of leveraging all Cook’s challenge: Guide Apple
recent decision to cut back four major sports leagues. through this period of relative
on ads raises concerns. Overall, however, she’s earned malaise and stoke growth
Meanwhile, Erin Johnson’s praise for cementing Pepsi’s until its next transformational
discrimination lawsuit position on the cultural scene, product comes along—
against WPP, its JWT division focusing on healthier snacks, whatever and whenever that
and the latter’s former CEO and growing sales 5 percent in may be. Because it certainly
continues to drag on. the last fiscal quarter. wasn’t the Apple Watch.
2
MARK ZUCKERBERG
CEO, chairman, co-founder,
Facebook
Revenue: $27.6 billion
“Our mission to connect the world is more
important now than ever,” says Zuckerberg,
who topped Adweek’s Power List a year
ago. “Our business did well in 2016, but we
have a lot of work ahead to help bring people
together.” Just how much more togetherness
does the 32-year-old tech titan have in mind?
Consider: the No. 1 social networking site
increased its daily active users 18 percent
year over year to 1.23 billion, while mobile
DAUs soared 23 percent to 1.15 billion. Still,
issues of truth, transparency and social
conscience remain. To quell marketers’
moans about measurement, Zuck rolled
out a dashboard to better gauge
impressions and results.
After taking hits over the
prevalence of fakery
in news feeds, he
introduced tools
to separate fact
from fiction. On a
more visceral level,
the horror of the
recent Cleveland
murder streamed on
Facebook Live calls
that service’s raison
d’être into question.
17

10
RUPERT MURDOCH
Executive co-chairman,
21st Century Fox (includes
Fox film studio and television
networks, Star TV, Sky);
Executive chairman,
News Corp (includes Dow
Jones, the New York Post);
Acting CEO, Fox News
Revenue: $27.3 billion (Fox);
$8.3 billion (News Corp )
At 86, Murdoch, last of the
old-school media barons,
still wields considerable
clout, especially in
conservative circles, though
his standing has dropped
in recent years. Bedeviled
by advertising declines,
particularly in print, News
Corp initiated a round of
buyouts and layoffs at Dow
Jones’ Wall Street Journal
last fall. On the other hand,
Fox recently reported a 12
percent TV revenue gain,
fueled by sports and political
ads. At Fox News, sexual-
harassment allegations
toppled top-rated host Bill
O’Reilly and network chief
Roger Ailes, as they continue
to generate the kind of
headlines Murdoch would
love—if only they were about
someone else’s empire.
18
THE POWER LIST
11
media landscape. “There’s
going to be basically more
effective advertising, so it
LESLIE MOONVES won’t be as disruptive,” he
CEO, president, chairman, says. Investments in 5G are
also expected, speeding up
CBS (includes the CBS
AT&T’s competition with
network, Showtime, The Movie Comcast and Verizon. One
Channel, Flix, CBS Films) potential hiccup—HBO hasn’t
Revenue: $13.2 billion found a new hit, as Game of
“It was a joke! It was a Thrones and other veteran
joke!” So says Moonves, shows come to an end.
67, of his controversial
quip about Donald Trump
being of questionable value
to America, but “damn
good for CBS.” Still, that
13
statement could prove PAUL POLMAN
CEO, Unilever
eerily prescient if the
FCC moves ahead with Revenue: $55.7 billion
deregulating by raising the Under Polman, 60, the
cap on station ownership, world’s second-biggest
15
MARY BARRA
CEO, chairman,
General Motors
Revenue: $166.4 billion
Barra, 55, the world’s
top-paid auto CEO, capped
off a great ride in 2016 by
delivering record earnings
per share, with an especially
strong performance in North
America leading the way. “I
think she has been one of
the most effective CEOs for
GM,” says industry analyst
Chris Cedergren. “She is very
progressive and forward
thinking and has demonstrated
that she will disrupt her
own company to create new
opportunities that drive
revenue and earnings.”
allowing Moonves to expand advertiser—with a portfolio
his Viacom-owned fiefdom.
including Axe, Dove and
Knorr—rebuffed a takeover
bid by Kraft Heinz, and now
12
says it will trim its media
spend and agency roster. That
news sent shares of WPP,
JEFF BEWKES its main partner, tumbling,
CEO, chairman,
and fueled concerns about a
Time Warner (includes broader market slowdown.
Warner Bros., The CW, DC
Comics, HBO, CNN, TNT, TBS)
14
Revenue: $29.3 billion
After rebuffing Fox three
years ago, Bewkes, 64,
in 2016 agreed to an $85
CARLOS BRITO
CEO, Anheuser-Busch InBev
billion mega-merger with
Revenue: $45.5 billion
AT&T that could remake the
Late last year, the driven,
acquisitive Brito, 56,
completed A-B InBev’s
$100 billion merger with
MillerCoors. In March, all
six major agency holding
companies bellied up to the
bar in pursuit of the beer
behemoth’s massive global
media planning and buying
business, as Brito seeks to
simplify his agency roster.
16
JOHN WREN
CEO, president, Omnicom
Revenue: $15.4 billion
As leader of the No. 2
holding company, Wren, 64,
seems to try harder, and his
efforts have paid off. Recent
launches Hearts & Science
and We Are Unlimited look
like winners, with Hearts
honored as Adweek’s
Breakthrough Media
Agency of the Year. All told,
Omnicom achieved year-
over-year organic growth of
3.5 percent, impressive for a
giant its size.
17
ROGER GOODELL
Commissioner,
National Football League
Revenue: $14 billion (est.)
Despite a ratings slide,
the NFL’s TV ad revenue
hit a record $3.5 billion
last season. That gain,
combined with the
success of the league’s
Thursday Night Football
package and the opening
of U.S. Bank Stadium in
Minneapolis, continues
to propel Goodell, 58, on
his drive for $25 billion in
revenue by 2027. He’s still
struggling to overcome
negative headlines about
concussions.
18
IRENE ROSENFELD
CEO, chairman, Mondelez
Revenue: $26 billion
This 63-year-old exec
accelerated ecommerce
growth by 35 percent, and
continues to focus on healthy
snacking alternatives to drive
expansion against strong
headwinds. Willing to take
chances, she generated
headlines for last month’s
flight of giant Oreo drones
over New York City, though
not everyone saw the stunt
as a slam dunk.
19
AKIO TOYODA
CEO, president, Toyota
Revenue: $252 billion
Volkswagen recently
surpassed the Japanese
auto giant as the world’s
largest car company by
sales. Regardless, Toyoda,
60, earned praise for his
commitment to vehicle
quality and technological
innovation in an increasingly
competitive marketplace. He
raised the company’s full-
year profit forecast to about
$15 billion, up a full billion
from the previous projection.
20
LOWELL MCADAM
CEO, chairman, Verizon
Revenue: $126 billion
Acquiring Yahoo and merging
its operations with AOL to
form the oddly named Oath
gives McAdam, 62, a potent
and pliable content, video
and advertising engine to
drive future growth. AOL’s
Tim Armstrong will lead the
rebranded entity, as Yahoo
chief Marissa Mayer departs.
Meanwhile, McAdam’s
next deal may be for cable
operator Charter.
22
MARK PARKER
CEO, president,
chairman, Nike
Revenue: $32.4 billion
While another runner—
namely, Under Armour’s
Kevin Plank—stumbled by
praising Donald Trump,
BARRA: BILL PUGLIANO/GETT Y IMAGES
Parker, 61, took off on
the high road, launching
a powerful campaign
dedicated to equality. He
also used the hashtags
#blacklivesmatter and
#stoptheviolence in his note
to employees blasting the
president’s immigration
proposals in no uncertain
terms—a move seen by
some observers as risky.
APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK
 power
noun.
ABILIT Y TO DO OR ACT,
TO ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING
THIS LIST WOULDN’T BE COMPLETE WITHOUT HIM.

Congratulations to our own

TERRY J. LUNDGREN
EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, MACY’S, INC.

named to Adweek’s Power List for a third consecutive year


23
RANDALL
STEPHENSON
CEO, president,
chairman, AT&T
Revenue: $163.8 billion
Sorry, Rupe! Murdoch failed
to acquire Time Warner
in 2014, but, last October,
Stephenson put an
$85 billion merger in motion.
“The world of distribution
and content is converging,
and we need to move
fast,” says Stephenson,
57, who foresees the
colossus becoming a “viable
nationwide competitor” to
Comcast in the mobile space.
24
REED HASTINGS
CEO, co-founder, Netflix
Revenue: $8.8 billion
Though the fighting’s
been fierce on the video
battlefield, Hastings, 56, an
ex-Marine, keeps gaining
ground, as Netflix posted
record quarterly subscriber
growth to close out 2016.
He’s become a savvy
marketer as well, with
ingenious, at times edgy
campaigns for Black Mirror,
House of Cards and Santa
Clarita Diet. It doesn’t hurt
that the content is buzzy.
25
MUHTAR KENT
CEO, chairman, Coca-Cola
Revenue: $41.9 billion
In May, Kent, 65, passes the
CEO mantle to president,
COO James Quincey, though
he will remain Coke’s
chairman. In eight years as
chief executive, Kent helped
the company expand beyond
soda (his Monster Beverage
deal is one example), but,
bedeviled by fickle consumer
tastes, business never really
popped. The future may be
water-based.
26
EVAN SPIEGEL
CEO, co-founder,
Snap Inc. (Snapchat)
Revenue: $405 million
20
THE
At 26, Spiegel led a March
IPO, raising $3.4 billion.
Last week, the company
faced a furor over the
CEO once reportedly
saying the app was “only
for rich people,” and that
he didn’t want to expand
into countries like India
and Spain. (He’s denied
making such comments.)
Elsewhere, Spiegel
continues to leverage
the app’s popularity with
millennials, selling ads
against Nielsen’s TV-like
ratings system, pitching
advertisers on sequential
video ads and targeting
users via offline sales data.
27
BOBBY KOTICK
CEO, president,
Activision Blizzard
Revenue: $6.6 billion
Gaming’s preeminent
player, Kotick, 54, led
Activision to a 42 percent
revenue surge last year.
And the innovations just
keep coming. They include:
the Overwatch League
for professional esports
competitors; a Netflix
partnership and Skylanders
Academy TV series; a
POWER
proposed cinematic push
based on Call of Duty; and a
book publishing arm.
28
SATYA NADELLA
CEO, Microsoft
Revenue: $85.3 billion
Nadella, 49, is all about
opening windows. From
buying LinkedIn to forging
partnerships with Adobe, GE
and Lowe’s—plus launching
Surface Studio and Microsoft
Teams, and growing the
company’s cloud business—
he’s helped the tech behemoth
diversify and compete
on multiple fronts with
Amazon, Google and Apple.
29
STEVE
EASTERBROOK
CEO, president, McDonald’s
Revenue: $24.6 billion
Leo Burnett wasn’t lovin’ it
last summer, when McD’s
terminated its association
with the network and
consolidated $1 billion in
business at Omnicom. That
shift, along with the hiring
of PepsiCo’s Morgan Flatley
LIST
as CMO, represent bold
strokes by Easterbrook, 49,
whose efforts also include
launching mobile ordering
and app payment in 20,000
restaurants.
30
JEAN-PAUL AGON
CEO, chairman, L’Oréal
Revenue: $27.6 billion
21
GINNI ROMETTY
CEO, president, chairman, IBM
Revenue: $79.9 billion
Named chief executive five years
ago, Rometty, 59, ranks among
the world’s most powerful
women in business. She’s
championed cloud services,
acquired agencies to bolster the
branding component of IBM and
accelerated development of the
Watson supercomputer, now a
cultural fixture and very much
the public “face” of Big Blue. All
that said, hardware and business
services continue to decline,
with Rometty (and even Watson,
presumably) unable to find
an answer for the company’s
financial malaise.
French cosmetics giant
L’Oréal, the world’s third-
largest ad spender, has
grown and diversified under
Agon’s leadership—and
the 60-year-old chief exec
has been a trend-setting
marketer. Prime examples
of his playful millennial
outreach include a Smart
Hairbrush that recommends
products and a Snapchat
lens filter that applies
makeup to selfies.
31
IVAN MENEZES
CEO, Diageo
Revenue: $14 billion
Despite a global sales
slide, industry watchers are
toasting Menezes, 57, for
eking out 3 percent annual
growth in North America,
along with similar organic
gains overall. Anomaly and
Barton F. Graf added more
assignments, with the former
serving up a simple, sobering
Johnnie Walker message
about optimism and diversity.
32
ALEX GORSKY
CEO, chairman,
Johnson & Johnson
Revenue: $71.9 billion
Gorsky, 56, and CMO Alison
Lewis have adopted a
streamlined strategy for
the health and beauty-aid
giant, thinking globally in
scope but acting locally
in execution across
brands such as Listerine,
Neutrogena and Carefree.
Gorsky put his values into
action last month, joining
other companies in pulling
ads from YouTube/Google
over hate-speech issues.
33
ADAM SILVER
Commissioner, National
Basketball League
Revenue: $8 billion
This socially conscious
leader, 54, deftly handled
controversies (North
Carolina’s “bathroom bill,”
Trump’s travel ban), while
driving the NBA’s full-court
press for greater cultural
relevance and ad dollars.
2016 brought record
revenue, a huge minor-league
sponsorship with Gatorade
and an esports initiative, the
first such venture by a major
sports league.
34
ELON MUSK
CEO, chairman,
co-founder, Tesla Motors
CEO, founder, CTO, SpaceX
Chairman, co-founder,
SolarCity
Revenue: $7 billion, Tesla;
$1.3 billion (est.), SpaceX;
N/A, SolarCity
Forty-five-year-old Musk
straddles the line between
ROME T T Y: IBM
executive and folk hero,
inspiring generations of
inventors, investors and
entrepreneurs as he works
APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK
Andy,
Congrats on making the Power List—that’s a big achievement! We’ve known each
other a long time, and I know you don’t like the attention that accolades bring.

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DFKLHYHPHQW<RXNQRZVRPHWKLQJOHVVSXEOLF

I call it, “The Most Interesting ‘Main’ in the World.”

Congratulations again, and you’re welcome,


42
JOHN MARTIN
CEO, chairman, Turner
(division of Time Warner)
Revenue: $11.4 billion
How does Martin, 49, chief exec
at CNN’s parent company, view
Donald Trump’s criticism? “It flies
by,” he says. A transformative
force during his three years at
the helm, Martin has extended
Turner’s reach via platforms
like Apple TV, Hulu and Sling,
and forged partnerships with
iStreamPlanet, Mashable and
Refinery29. Last month, Turner
joined Fox and Viacom in OpenAP,
which works like digital ad
programs, allowing marketers to
“laser target” TV viewers based
on extremely specific criteria.
to revolutionize automotive
and rocket travel—and
harness the power of
the sun. As for risks and
setbacks, he’s said, “If things
are not failing, you are not
innovating enough.”
35
STEVE BURKE
CEO, president,
NBCUniversal
Revenue: $31.6 billion
At Comcast’s NBCU, Burke,
58, has become a master
of multimedia. Along with
a strong showing by the TV
network (leveraging the
Rio Olympics), The Secret
Life of Pets howled in
cinemas, Hollywood’s Harry
Potter theme park packed
‘em in, and a $500 million
investment in Snap Inc.’s IPO
pointed the way to the future.
36
ARNE SORENSON
CEO, president,
Marriott International
Revenue: $17.1 billion
Following the acquisition
of Starwood last year,
Sorenson, 57, leads the
world’s largest hotel group,
22
THE
and he’s taking innovative
steps to remain on top.
These include beefing up
Marriott’s loyalty program
with castle rides, camel
tours and communal spaces
in order to compete in the
experiential space against
rivals like Airbnb.
37
BERNARDO HEES
CEO, Kraft Heinz
Revenue: $26.5 billion
Hees, 47, continues to stir
the pot in a pressure-filled
market where few get to
enjoy big-time success.
Though his bid to take
over Unilever failed, other
growth recipes include a
food line with Oprah Winfrey,
plus reformulations to
suit evolving consumer
preferences, such as
ketchup with 50 percent
less sugar and salt.
38
BERNARD ARNAULT
CEO, chairman, LVMH
Revenue: $37.6 billion
France’s richest man, 68,
makes luxury pay off for
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis
POWER LIST
Vuitton, with 2016 yielding
record results as spirits,
bags/luggage and beauty
brand Sephora all gained
momentum. LVMH’s Paris
museum attracts millions of
visitors, and Arnault recently
unveiled plans for a venue
devoted to craftsmanship,
art and live performance.
39
KEVIN SYSTROM
CEO, co-founder, Instagram
Revenue: $3 billion (est.)
For Systrom, 33, the picture
keeps improving. Analysts
predict that revenue at his
Facebook-owned photo-
and video-sharing app will
continue its impressive rise,
driven by 500,000 monthly
advertisers seeking to
connect with a growing base
of 400 million daily users. A
recent push to make posts
more shoppable should help
fuel further growth.
40
SHARI REDSTONE
President, National
Amusements
Vice chairman, CBS, Viacom
Co-founder, managing
partner, Advancit Capital
Revenue: N/A
Redstone, 63, played a key
role in last year’s soap-
operatic upheaval at Viacom
that saw CEO Philippe
Dauman exit in September,
replaced by Bob Bakish. A
deal to merge Viacom and
CBS was floated, but appears
dead for now, as are plans
to sell a stake in Paramount.
But what will happen when
her father Sumner finally
passes away?
41
SUNDAR PICHAI
CEO, Google
Revenue: $89.5 billion
(independent of other
Alphabet divisions )
After Google’s 2015 reboot,
Larry Page became CEO
of parent Alphabet, and
Pichai succeeded him atop
Google, which houses the
company’s core businesses
and accounts for almost all
of its revenue. Pichai, 44,
has significantly increased
ad dollars, though lately
YouTube has generated static
for not doing a better job of
safeguarding ads from from
appearing near questionable
content.
43
GRANT REID
CEO, president, Mars
Revenue: $33 billion (est.)
The candy business isn’t
nearly as sweet as it once
was, but spending on pets
is sky high, so Reid paid
$7.7 billion in January to
acquire VCA Inc., which
operates animal hospitals
in the U.S. and Canada.
The move makes sense for
Mars, long an alpha dog in
the pet-care market.
44
ARTHUR SADOUN
Incoming CEO, chairman,
Publicis Groupe
(Currently CEO, Publicis
Communications)
Revenue: $10.4 billion
This 45-year-old exec takes
the reins at the French
holding company, which
ranks as the No. 3 global
agency group, on June 1,
when Maurice Lévy retires
after 30 years at the
helm. Sadoun inherits an
organization that has seen
some ups and downs as
it increasingly focuses on
helping clients transform
their businesses for the
digital age. The merger of
SapientNitro and Razorfish
to provide services across
data, AI, IT and ecommerce
underscores that mission.
45
BOB BAKISH
CEO, president, Viacom
(flagships: MTV, Comedy
Central, Nickelodeon,
BET, Nick Jr., Paramount
Pictures)
Revenue: $12.5 billion
Bakish, 53, is tasked with
revitalizing the company
following a year of corporate
drama that culminated in
the exit of his predecessor,
Philippe Dauman. Now,
the new boss plans to
emphasize Viacom’s six
flagship properties. “This is
about focusing resources to
drive the highest possible
performance,” says the
former head of international
networks.
46
SUSAN WOJCICKI
CEO, YouTube
Revenue: $12 billion (est.)
The ad picture at YouTube
grew especially fuzzy for
Wojcicki, 48, as players like
AT&T, Johnson & Johnson
and Verizon withdrew from
Google properties over
concerns about placement
near offensive material.
The company moved to
give brands more control
over where ads appear,
but it’s unclear yet if that’s
sufficient.
47
MICHAEL ROTH
CEO, chairman,
Interpublic Group
MARTIN: TURNER
Revenue: $7.85 billion
In recent years, this 71-year-
old leader has transformed
the No. 4 holding company
from a slacker into a solid
APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK
Chobani congratulates
Bill Koenigsberg on being selected
for Adweek’s Power List 2017.
 THE POWER LIST

performer. For 2017, Roth
is targeting organic growth
of 3 to 4 percent. Continued
investment in the media side
through IPG Mediabrands’
data capabilities, as well as
innovative offerings such as
R/GA’s consultancy practice
should lead the way.
working with Nielsen and role in AT&T’s decision to forward-thinking initiatives to explain and advance its
comScore. VW’s defection to consolidate at Omnicom should keep Adidas in mission. Examples include
Omnicom stung. (after also securing P&G). growth mode,” says industry branded virtual reality
analyst Matt Powell. content about science and
using Instagram Stories
51 53 55
to promote GE’s Snapchat
series about volcanoes. His
secret weapon? Vice chair
MICHAEL CORBAT KEVIN PLANK Beth Comstock.
CEO, Citigroup CEO, chairman, founder, MICHAEL
Revenue: $70 billion Under Armour BLOOMBERG

48 Citigroup made headlines

DOUGLAS
MCMILLON
CEO, president, Walmart
Revenue: $486 billion
The success of McMillon’s
quest to revamp the retailer’s
image remains largely in the
last month when The Wall
Street Journal revealed that
the banking colossus keeps
a Princeton theologian on
call to consult “on weighty
questions of right and
wrong.” Zacks subsequently
Revenue: $4.8 billion
Michael Phelps’ Olympics
spot scored Adweek’s Ad of
the Year Award. Plank, 44,
later took heat for praising
Donald Trump, and had
to run an ad clarifying his
position. Regardless, analyst
CEO, president,
founder, Bloomberg
Revenue: $9 billion (est.)
57
ULF MARK
This former New York City
SCHNEIDER
mayor, 75, has grown his
CEO, Nestlé
eponymous business data
and media empire beyond Revenue: $89.4 billion
its iconic financial terminals He succeeded Paul Bulcke
atop the world’s largest
food and beverage purveyor

eye of the beholder. Still, you
have to give the 50-year-old
exec credit for taking on
Amazon through efforts that
include a recently announced
program that gives shoppers
discounts up to 5 percent
when they pick up online
orders in Walmart stores.
59
following a year of basically
flat revenue as the Swiss
company struggles along
with its peers in a fast-
changing industry. To
sweeten sales, the 51-year-
old leader vowed to cut
BRIAN CHESKY sugar by 10 percent across
CEO, co-founder, Airbnb chocolates such as KitKat
Revenue: $2 billion (est.) and After Eight.
This 35-year-old entrepreneur helped

49
RANDY FALCO
CEO, president, Univision
Revenue: $3 billion
Falco, 63, keeps Hispanic
media giant Univision at the
forefront of the multicultural
conversation, expanding its
distribution footprint and
digital portfolio to reach
106 million consumers each
month. He’s made a content
play with Story House and
targeted young audiences
by buying Gizmodo Media
Group, investing in The
Onion and launching
Fusion Media Group.
58
revolutionize the hospitality industry
with Airbnb, making it a fixture on
the digital landscape. Now, seeking
to transform the company from a JOHN BRYANT
home-sharing resource into a “holistic CEO, chairman, Kellogg’s
travel” business, Chesky aims to make Revenue: $13 billion
all marketing experiential, and that Bryant, 51, tried to bring
approach has yielded some smart some snap, crackle and pop
results. Examples include inspiring to the mix, adding organic
vacation planners with 360-degree live brand Pure to the Kashi
video on Twitter and Periscope and a portfolio, acquiring Brazilian
new app feature called Trips that lets food company Parati and
users immerse themselves in local opening a cereal-themed
culture and cuisine. café in New York’s Times
Square. Still, Kellogg’s
served up a bowl of meh, as
sales slumped 3.8 percent
year over year.
upgraded Citi shares to a Matt Powell praises Plank (mostly just software licenses
“buy,” so perhaps Corbat, 56, for having “not wavered these days), diversifying

60
really does have an in with from his goals of growing content to broaden advertiser
somebody upstairs. the footwear business, appeal and open new revenue

C H E S K Y: D AV I D PA U L M O R R I S / B L O O M B E R G V I A G E T T Y I M A G E S
50
establishing a sportswear streams. The latest: a plan
range and increasing speed to take Bloomberg Live’s DAVID DROGA
IRWIN GOTLIEB
Chairman, GroupM
52 to market.” conferences around the world. Creative chairman,
founder, Droga5

54
Revenue: $170 million (est.)

(parent: WPP)
Revenue: $4.2 billion
Gotlieb leads the world’s
largest media-buying
operation, and will soon be
inducted into the American
Advertising Federation
Hall of Fame. Of late, the
67-year-old exec oversaw
the consolidation of WPP’s
data assets at GroupM under
the [m]Platform umbrella,
and initiated multiplatform
measurement efforts,
DARYL SIMM
CEO, chairman,
Omnicom Media Group
Revenue: $3.6 billion (est.)
Under Simm, 55, OMG
surged on the new business
front in 2016, with PHD
(Adweek’s Global Media
Agency of the Year) winning
Volkswagen’s massive $3
billion media consolidation,
and the newly formed
Hearts & Science (Adweek’s
Breakthrough Media Agency
of the Year) playing a pivotal
KASPER RORSTED
CEO, Adidas
Revenue: $19.3 billion
The 55-year-old exec took
over last October from
Herbert Hainer and didn’t
miss a step, keeping the
German athletic footwear
giant’s momentum firmly
on the good foot. “His
commitment to the U.S.
market as well as other
56
JEFFREY IMMELT
CEO, chairman,
General Electric
Revenue: $123.7 billion
GE’s awfully chill these
days. Yes, GE! That’s
largely because Immelt,
61, has transformed the
industrial giant into a
storytelling machine that
uses cutting-edge media
Though his shop’s ads
failed to pilot Hillary
Clinton into the White
House, this 48-year-old
Aussie still guided Droga5
to a standout 2016 that
culminated in Adweek’s
U.S. Agency of the Year
honor, and its Ad of the
Year prize for an Under
Armour spot showcasing
Michael Phelps preparing
for the Rio Olympics.

24 APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK


69
MITCH BARNS
CEO, Nielsen
Revenue: $6.3 billion
Barns, 53, has helped move
Nielsen past its legacy as
a supplier of traditional TV
ratings, positioning the 94-year-
old company as a provider of
actionable information and
analysis for marketers, agencies
and media outlets. Nielsen data
drives more than $70 billion
in annual ad sales, and Barns’
commitment to total audience
and content measurement—
spanning video consumption
across all platforms and
devices—could ultimately
establish a new currency for
media buying and revolutionize
the industry.
61
NANCY DUBUC
CEO, president,
A+E Networks
(parent: Hearst/Disney)
Revenue: $4.1 billion (est.)
Dubuc’s content strategy
through A+E Studios
is paying off, with Six,
Roots and Leah Remini:
Scientology scoring viewers
and critical acclaim. In a bid
to diversify, the 48-year-old
exec launched 45th & Dean,
a storytelling hub/social
media agency to develop
short-form content for A+E
brands and ad partners.
62
STEVE KING
CEO, Publicis Media
Revenue: $3.1 billion (est.)
King, 57, reigns supreme
over the French holding
company’s media
operations, which span
Starcom, Zenith, Mediavest/
Spark, Blue 449 and
Performics. After a shaky
2015, King’s legions came
roaring back over the past
12 months, scoring major
new business, including
26
THE
impressive gains from KFC,
Lowe’s and Molson Coors.
63
RAKESH KAPOOR
CEO, Reckitt Benckiser
Revenue: $12.3 billion
In February, Reckitt agreed
to acquire Mead Johnson
for $16.6 billion. Per Kapoor,
58, that deal should boost
the company’s consumer
health sales by 90 percent
as it adds brands including
Mead’s Enfamil infant and
children’s nutrition to a
roster that already includes
Durex, Gaviscon, Mucinex
and Nurofen.
64
GREG CREED
CEO, Yum Brands (includes
KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell)
Revenue: $6.36 billion
“2016 was a landmark year
for Yum Brands,” according
to Creed, 59, who led the fast
feeder’s separation of the
company’s China holdings
into an independent entity.
Meanwhile, he continues
to plan for an increasingly
POWER
automated future, telling
CNBC that, by the mid-
2020s, robots could take
over many restaurant jobs.
65
SCOTT KAUFFMAN
CEO, chairman,
MDC Partners
Revenue: $1.4 billion
Kudos to Kauffman, 61, for
stabilizing holding company
operations after taking over
in the midst of a 2015 SEC
investigation. Last year, he
added to MDC’s creative
cache (it owns Anomaly,
CP+B and 72andSunny) and
expanded its global footprint
through the acquisition of
Swedish hot shop Forsman
& Bodenfors, while
also growing integrated
media services under the
Assembly banner. This past
February, he strengthened
finances through a $95
million equity investment
from Goldman Sachs.
66
ANDREW WILSON
CEO, Electronic Arts
Revenue: $4.6 billion
LIST
Wilson, 42, enjoyed some
high scores last year, with
FIFA 17 ranked as the
top-selling console game,
while Battlefield 1 was an
explosive hit (heck, the
game’s trailer got 52 million
views in the lead-up to the
title’s release). And, like
rival Activision, Wilson
doubled down on esports
by launching a competitive
gaming division.
67
JOHN MALONE
Chairman, Liberty Media
Revenue: $5 billion
Malone, 76, an aggressive
wheeler and dealer, likes to
be in the driver’s seat. Not
only has the “Darth Vader” of
telecommunications agreed
to buy Formula One for $4.4
billion, he’s also a big investor
in Charter, which could be on
the block, with Verizon tipped
as the likely buyer.
68
TERRY LUNDGREN
Chairman, Macy’s
(includes Bloomingdale’s)
Revenue: $25.8 billion
Double-digit growth in
Macy’s digital business was
one of the few highlights
for Lundgren, 65, who just
passed the CEO mantle at
the long-troubled retailer
to president Jeffrey
Gennette. A commercial
saluting the Thanksgiving
Day Parade, with a sinister,
stalker-ish Santa balloon,
ranks among the creepiest
holiday ads ever.
70
TRAVIS KALANICK
CEO, co-founder, Uber
Revenue: $6.5 billion
It’s been a bumpy ride for
the car-hailing service’s
40-year-old leader. His
own bad behavior and an
apparently toxic corporate
environment generated bad
press and brand bashing.
Some industry watchers say
he should shift into a new
gear—say, neutral, instead
of obnoxious—or consider
letting someone else drive
the company.
71
JOHN STANKEY
CEO, AT&T Entertainment,
AT&T Services
Revenue: $80 billion
(est., includes Consumer
Mobility)
Stankey, 54, absorbed
serious static for the messy
rollout of DirecTV Now,
an OTT streaming service
panned by pundits and the
public as unusable at times.
Regardless, the subscription
offering is a key element of
AT&T’s strategy to target
cord-cutters. “It’s going
to be a big game changer,”
Stankey says.
72
JOHN SEIFERT
CEO, chairman,
Ogilvy & Mather
Revenue: $2 billion (est.)
This 59-year-old exec racked
up prizes, as Ogilvy won top
network honors at Cannes
and the Effie Awards, along
with Adweek’s nod for Global
Agency of the Year. He’s
championed gender balance
in the executive ranks and
led the charge to transform
the WPP operation from a
collection of vertical business
units into a unified brand.
73
JACK DORSEY
CEO, co-founder, Twitter
Revenue: $2.5 billion
When Donald Trump is the
foremost proponent of your
platform, it’s probably not a
comfortable place to be. But
Potus is the least of Dorsey’s
problems. Seeking new
revenue streams as Twitter’s
ad business slumps, the
40-year-old leader is mulling
a paid subscription service,
and will allow brands to buy
video spots on Periscope.
74
BARNS: KEVIN SCANLON
HARRIS DIAMOND
CEO, chairman,
McCann Worldgroup
Revenue: $3.4 billion (est.)
Diamond, 64, continues to
produce good results for
APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK
 THE POWER LIST

IPG’s McCann, one of the
most storied names on
Madison Avenue. Business
gains included Verizon and
MasterCard’s consolidations,
plus expansion with Reckitt
Benckiser. “The Field Trip to
Mars,” a VR experience for
Lockheed Martin, was the
single most awarded entry
at Cannes.
soared a few weeks back
after Dish picked up
EchoStar’s 10 percent stake
in Sling TV. Analysts see
Verizon—always looking to
strengthen its position in the
endless war against AT&T,
Comcast and Time Warner—
as a potential buyer.
upcoming “mobile-first”
series); partnering with
mobile providers to craft
local Olympic content; and
joining with Group Nine
Media to better target
millennials.
81
most creative network for
the 11th straight year by the
Gunn Report, and topped
the IPA Awards honoring ad
effectiveness.
83
ABIGAIL JOHNSON
the stress of overwork.
Yamamoto must reestablish
trust in Dentsu and build a
sustainable growth path for
the long term.
85
BRIAN WHIPPLE

78 BRIAN MOYNIHAN
CEO, chairman, FMR
(Fidelity Investments)
Head of Accenture
Interactive

75
KEN POWELL
CEO, chairman,
General Mills
Revenue: $16.6 billion
Can new agencies help
Powell, 62, boost sagging
sales at the venerable food
company, which has been
slow to keep pace with
consumer demand? We’re
about to find out, with a
fresh lineup named last year
including 72andSunny and
Redscout for U.S. creative,
YANNICK BOLLORÉ
CEO, chairman, Havas
Revenue: $2.4 billion
Bolloré, 37, reorganized
the Paris-based holding
company last month to
unify creative and media
under one P&L; meanwhile,
North American ops saw
leadership changes. Perhaps
the shakeup will move the
needle in a more positive
direction, as overall growth
slipped to 3.3 percent
in 2016 following a 17.3
percent surge the prior year.
CEO, chairman,
Bank of America
Revenue: $83.7 billion
Welcome to BofAI, where
Moynihan, 57, is rolling
out Erica, a 24/7 digital
assistant that responds
to an assortment of
voice and text queries.
That might sound like an
impersonal touch, but BofA
consistently polls low in
customer care, so hopefully
the bot will provide some
added convenience.
Revenue: $15.9 billion
This 55-year-old exec
succeeded her father,
Ned Johnson III, as
chairman of the mutual
funds giant in December.
She’s maintained a steady
hand during periods of
market unrest, focusing
on customer service,
technology and product
innovation, and guided
Fidelity through disruption
from rivals, regulators and
shifting competition.
Revenue: $4.4 billion
Whipple, 51, makes
traditional agencies nervous.
That’s because he’s built the
marketing unit at consulting
giant Accenture into a
formidable foe that handles
significant work from clients
like BMW and Visa. Last
November, he boosted the
group’s creative profile by
absorbing Karmarama, and,
three months later, added
mobile and ecommerce shop
SinnerSchrader.

plus Joan, Erich & Kallman
and The Community
handling projects.
76
WENDY CLARK
CEO, president,
DDB North America
Revenue: $425 million (est.)
The 46-year-old Clark
brought much-needed
energy and focus to DDB
when she joined from
Coca-Cola as 2016 began.
Her efforts generated
considerable new business,
most notably the integrated
U.S. McDonald’s account
(DDB led an Omnicom team),
which ranks as one of the
agency’s biggest coups in
ages—and spawned the
launch of dedicated McD’s
shop We Are Unlimited.
She’s become a thought
leader on the conference
circuit, sharing her
progressive views on social
and operational issues that
C AT Z : J U S T I N S U L L I VA N / G E T T Y I M A G E S
79
ANDY MAIN
Head of Deloitte Digital
Revenue: $3.1 billion
Main, 52, stands in the
vanguard of consulting
company execs leading
the charge into traditional
agency territory. He made a
big noise last year with the
acquisition of San Francisco
shop Heat, bringing Deloitte
creative input in its quest
for more client dollars.
Such efforts, in turn,
are pressuring holding
companies to launch or
build out their own business
transformation practices
in order stay relevant
and compete for plum
assignments.
80
DAVID ZASLAV
89
SAFRA CATZ
Co-CEO, Oracle
Revenue: $37 billion
Serving as co-CEO with Mark
Hurd, Catz, 55, an 18-year Oracle
veteran, has edged the company
into the advertising space. Last year,
Oracle formed a partnership with
Publicis’ DigitasLBi to leverage cloud
technology for marketing campaigns,
and, in recent weeks, teamed up
with Simulmedia and Charter for
ad targeting. Catz could also move
the company into management
consulting if its rumored union with
Accenture comes to fruition.
82 84 86
ANDREW TOSHIHIRO SHANTANU

impact agencies and clients. CEO, president,

Discovery Communications ROBERTSON YAMAMOTO NARAYEN
(includes Animal Planet, CEO, president, BBDO CEO, president Dentsu CEO, president,

77
CHARLIE ERGEN
CEO, chairman, co-founder,
Dish Network
Revenue: $15.1 billion
Is Ergen, 64, polishing up
Dish for a sale? Speculation
Discovery Channel, TLC, OWN)
Revenue: $6.5 billion
Zaslav, 57, made significant
moves to build his
networks’ audience and
expand across platforms.
These include uniting
with Snapchat to create
new content (including an
Revenue: $2.5 billion (est.)
Robertson, 56, oversaw
the agency’s successful
bid to secure AT&T’s
consolidated business,
teaming with Omnicom
sibling Hearts & Science
to offer creative, data and
analytics. Meanwhile, BBDO
was named the world’s
Revenue: $7.5 billion
Yamamoto, 58, was elevated
in January, succeeding
Tadashi Ishii, who stepped
aside after being referred
to federal prosecutors
following the 2015 suicide
of a 24-year-old employee
who, according to labor
inspectors, suffered from
chairman, Adobe
Revenue: $5.85 billion
Already on a roll, Adobe is
making further incursions
into the media and
marketing realm under
Narayen, 53. New initiatives
include the recent launch
of Advertising Cloud, which
leverages the TubeMogul

ADWEEK | APRIL 24, 2017 27

 THE POWER LIST

acquisition to compete in the
ad-tech space, and a deal
with IBM to introduce AI
tools for brands.
91 93
wrapped, and Old Man and offering integrated services
the Gun, which soon starts ranging from advertising
production. to media and business
JIM BANKOFF BILL KOENIGSBERG transformation. She’s
also given back to the

95
CEO, chairman, Vox Media CEO, president, founder,
community by spearheading

87
Revenue: $120 million (est.)
While many publishers slip
and slide, Bankoff, 48, has
DANIEL EK grown audiences across
CEO, founder, Spotify Vox’s eight editorial brands,
Revenue: $2.2 billion which reach 200 million
Horizon Media
Revenue: $225 million (est.)
For 28 years, Koenigsberg,
61, has charted a course
for his independent media
agency through advertising’s
an innovative education
program designed to help
LORI SENECAL nonprofits become smarter
CEO, Crispin marketers.
Porter + Bogusky
Revenue: $190 million (est.)

98
people each month, and stormy seas. And it’s been
Ek, 34, has orchestrated She keeps expanding
generated 3 billion video full speed ahead in recent
considerable growth CP+B’s standing among
views. With NBCU, he months, with a winning
for his music-streaming global creative shops.
service, which boasts 50
launched an ad marketplace streak that includes Tim MDC’s flagship prevailed
STEVE SWARTZ
million paying users. And CEO, president, Hearst
revenue is up, but losses Revenue: $10.8 billion
grew too, to the tune of The 55-year-old exec led

97
nearly $200 million in the venerable publisher
2015. Still, Ek has an eye to record profits last year
on expansion, acquiring despite basically flat
MightyTV last month to revenue. TV properties were
boost programmatic, and aided by an influx in political
preparing a Hi-Fi music tier. ads, while Hearst Health
LOGAN GREEN was also a strong performer.
Acquisitions bolstered the

88
MELLODY HOBSON
President,
Ariel Investments
Chairman, DreamWorks
Animation SKG
Revenue: N/A Ariel; $1.5
billion (est., DreamWorks)
Hobson, 48, established
herself as force to be
reckoned with long before
her 2013 marriage to
Star Wars creator George
Lucas. For two decades,
she’s been a prime mover
at Ariel, one of the largest
black-owned financial
services firms, and she’s in
demand by media outlets
for her insightful business
commentary.
called Concert, which Condé
Nast quickly joined.
CEO, co-founder, Lyft
Revenue: $700 million (est.) group’s entertainment, data
and media ops, and Swartz
In the realm of ride-sharing services, anticipates more moves in
Green, 33, is no Travis Kalanick—which coming months.
many see as a good thing. While Uber’s
controversial front man swerves
wildly, Green maintains a steady pace.
Meanwhile, Lyft keeps picking up
speed, with reports suggesting that
99
KENNETH FRAZIER
profitability could be just a year away. A
CEO, president,
progressive thinker, he recently floated
chairman, Merck
a plan to relieve congested highways via
Revenue: $39.8 billion
nationwide “smart lanes” that charge
vehicles with fewer than Under Frazier, 62, the
three passengers. pharmaceutical giant’s
revenue inched ahead 1
percent last year, helped
by the strong sales of
cancer drug Keytruda, and
a few others. Animal health
products have also performed
well, driving Merck’s decision
last month to close on its
Hortons, La Quinta, Chobani controlling stake in Vallée
in pitches for American for about $400 million.
and LG Electronics, 400 new

90
Airlines, Letgo, Jose Cuervo
hires and an expanded New and Hershey’s. The work’s
York office.

92 100
been consistently strong,

G R E E N : D AV I D PA U L M O R R I S / B L O O M B E R G V I A G E T T Y I M A G E S
KENNETH particularly two spirits

CHENAULT
CEO, chairman,
American Express
Revenue: $32.1 billion
Year after year, Chenault,
65, seems to struggle
94
campaigns: the cheekily
apocalyptic “Tomorrow Is
BOB PITTMAN MATTHIAS MÜLLER
CEO, chairman, Overrated” push for Cuervo, CEO, Volkswagen
and 1800 Tequila’s relaunch
iHeartMedia BOB SAUERBERG Revenue: $232 billion
with Chance the Rapper.
Revenue: $6.3 billion CEO, president, Müller, 63, succeeded
Pittman, 63, has shuffled Condé Nast (a unit of Martin Winterkorn as CEO

as AmEx lumbers along,
never gaining ground.
Still, he deserves credit
for making some smart
marketing moves: AmEx
became the first financial
services firm with a
Facebook Messenger
bot, while signing on as
the inaugural sponsor of
Buzzfeed’s Nifty channel.
iHeart’s playlist in recent
years, employing VR,
Snapchat and livestreaming
in an effort to grow the
company beyond its roots
in radio and outdoor media.
That strategy helped narrow
iHeart’s year-over-year loss
to $296 million (from $755
million in 2015) and provides
hope for the future.
Advance Publications)
Revenue: $2 billion (est.)
Teen Vogue’s sudden
cultural relevance was a
highlight, along with two
Pulitzers for The New
Yorker. The 56-year-old
exec also made Hollywood
strides with TV series
Last Chance U and two
big-budget film projects:
Granite Mountain, which just
96
SARAH
HOFSTETTER
CEO, 360i
Revenue: $180 million (est.)
One of the most prominent
leaders on the digital agency
scene, Hofstetter, 42, has
built 360i into a thriving
multifaceted operation
in September 2015. Since
then, he’s received mixed
reviews as the automaker
tries to put Dieselgate (for
which it must pay $2.8
billion in fines) in its rear-
view mirror. Meanwhile,
volume increased nearly
4 percent to 10.3 million
vehicles last year, allowing
VW to overtake Toyota in
the global sales race.

28 APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK

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 ON THE ORIGINS OF BR ANDS AND THE PEOPLE WHO BUILD THEM

BRAND NAME

Nerf
HOW A FOAM ROCK TURNED INTO A
HIGH-CALIBER, BILLION-DOLLAR TOY «
EMPIRE. BY ROBERT KLARA

THE B-BALL
Still a brisk seller
THE TAILFINS after 45 years on the
The Nerf Football shelf, the Nerfoop
evolved into the basketball set now
Vortex Aero Howler, comes with this
whose shaft and slightly firmer blue
fins purportedly foam ball.
allow for improved
aerodymanic
performance in flight.

THE AMMO
These innocent-
looking little dimpled
balls are the rounds
for Blasters like the
Nerf Rival, a serious
shooter that pops
them out at 68 mph.
 The Foaminator
Nerf inventor
Reyn Guyer in
his workshop
Nice shot
Nerf’s basketball
set first appeared
O P P O S I T E PA G E A N D V I N TA G E N E R F B A L L : R A Q U E L B E A U C H A M P ; S I D E B A R : G E T T Y I M A G E S ; A L L O T H E R P H O T O S : C O U R T E S Y O F H A S B R O
in 1972.
n a Monday morning in 1968,
Reyn Guyer discovered one
of the world’s most famous
toys by accident.
Guyer, the inventor who’d
come up with Twister, was in
his conference room, testing a new caveman
game with colleagues. The protoype included
a bunch of foam-rubber rocks that, the men
soon discovered, were more fun to throw
at one another than use in the game. And
then something really hit them: “We had
inadvertently created the world’s first indoor
ball and broken the parental rule ‘no throwing
balls in the house,’” Guyer recalled.
After shaping the foam rubber into a ball,
Guyer shopped it around. Milton Bradley
didn’t want it, but Parker Brothers did.
Then America did. When the Nerf Ball
hit store shelves in 1970, it was a revolution
that brought backyard ball into the living
room. “Throw it indoors,” barked the
package copy. “You can’t damage lamps
or break windows. You can’t hurt babies
or old people.” By year’s end, 4 million Nerf
balls had sold.
Today, Nerf is the profits juggernaut
of Hasbro’s boy’s division, whose 2016
revenues of $1.85 billion are a big slice of
Hasbro’s $5 billion revenue overall. Nerf is
little more than molded polyurethane foam,
yet it’s changed the nature of play. As Guyer
put it: “Who knew the world wanted a ball that
wouldn’t bounce?”
ADWEEK | APRIL 24, 2017
Game changer
The original Nerf
Ball of 1970 was
an immediate hit.
THEN
NOW
Have a blast In 1992, the appearance of the Sharpshooter
(top) marked a significant shift for the Nerf foam, which began
to be used for projectiles. Still wildly popular, the Blaster line
has morphed to include otherworldly creations like 2017’s
Nerf Doomlands The Judge Blaster (above), which boasts
10 turrets, each with three rounds.
Actually, this was just the start of what the
world wanted. To their credit, Nerf’s owners
never stopped diversifying. The product mix
first expanded in 1972 with the Nerfoop (a
basketball game set) and then the Nerf Football
Fast Facts (actually invented by Minnesota Vikings
1969 Parker
kicker Fred Cox.) But the true game changer
Brothers buys
Reyn Guyer’s ball.
began in 1992 with the Sharpshooter, a spring-
1970 Nerf Ball loaded dart gun that shot Nerf projectiles and
debuts in stores. marked the start of the Blaster era.
1992 Start of the It was this innovation—an unlikely melding
Blaster era of what’s essentially a firearm with completely
136 Number harmless ammunition—that’s helped Nerf hold
of Nerf products its own for nearly half a century, according The name of Nerf
today to Patricia Hogan, a curator at the National A common belief—
Museum of Play. Nerf—and especially the Nerf popularized by the
blasters—“remain popular because [they] tick web—is that Nerf
off a number of boxes. It’s great social play. It’s is an acronym for
also outdoor play. [And since] parents play with “non-expanding
their kids with these blasters, there’s an inter- recreational foam.”
generational aspect to the play.” Nerf, she adds, But it isn’t. The toy
takes its name from
“is parent friendly and parent liked.”
the “nerf bar,” the
In fact, parents might just want to play with
cushioned bumper
Nerf gear and leave the kids out of it. Nerf’s assembly on the
arsenal of blasters includes the Nerf Rival, truck used to nudge
whose Artemis XVII-3000 high-capacity drag racers into
blaster holds 30 rounds of Nerf balls and fires pole position.
them at 68 m.p.h.
According to Nerf’s VP of global marketing
Michael Ritchie, Nerf hasn’t stayed relevant
despite the digital age, but because of it.
“Today’s kids can feel overscheduled,” he
says, and Nerf “gives kids… the freedom to
play how they want, without rules.”
31
 MOVER
Q+A
Anthony Noto
TWITTER’S COO AND CFO TALKS
USER GROWTH, LIVESTREAMING
AND THE COMPANY’S NEWFRONTS
DEBUT. BY MARTY SWANT
32
How have your past roles in
advertising, finance and the
military shaped your approach
to Twitter? I think Twitter is the
culmination of a series of experiences
that have built the foundation of
what’s required to be an executive
at Twitter. I was in the military as
a communications officer, where I
first learned about asynchronous
transformation of technology, IP-
based technology. From there, I went
to Kraft as a brand manager, so I
was on the advertiser side. I had to
evaluate distribution channels like
the internet, but also advertising
vehicles like television and print and
radio and outdoor as well as digital,
and optimize for marketing mix and
return on investment. After that I was
on Wall Street, primarily [focusing
on] the emergence of the internet as
a commercial industry. Then I spent
time at the NFL [as CFO] working
with content partners, and then as
a banker working with media and
technology companies.
Why is Twitter doing a NewFronts
presentation for the first time this
year? A year ago, we had premium
content partnerships and highlights,
in-progress clips of events as they
unfolded as well as preplanned
events. We’ve extended that to a much
broader array of content, so over 250
premium content partners are in our
marketplace for advertisers to do pre-
roll video. In addition to that, we now
have our premium livestream content
business. We’ll have 850 hours of
programming in this first quarter of
2017—up from 500 hours in the fourth
quarter [of 2016], which was our first
quarter of live programming. In a
year, we’ve gone from having just one
video product that was customizable
to having a self-service premium,
scaleable video content offering in
addition to a mid-roll live offering.
What does Twitter losing out
to Amazon on a second year
of streaming NFL Thursday
Night Football mean for its
livestreaming business? We took
the approach of leveraging nationally
and globally recognized content to
build awareness of underserved
content. And so the NFL, MLB, PGA …
we’re using those to build awareness
that Twitter does have live video.
The NFL was a great launch partner,
but it was just one part of a broader
strategy to have a great selection.
We still have a relationship with
the NFL and [our partnership still
includes] live components.
Where do you plan to expand live
programming this year? First,
we’re going international. We’ve
had our first events in the U.K. and
Japan and they’ve been incredibly
successful, and we’ve had our first
events in Australia as well as in
Germany—also successful. Second,
between 50 and 55 percent of our
content has been sports. News
and politics was next, and the rest
has been entertainment, so we
want to increase the amount of
entertainment on the platform as
well as esports and news. We want
the mix to be more even.
The company has continued to
struggle with user growth. Does
the user base have to grow?
We’ve used a very specific strategy
with growing our audience. We’ve
accelerated from 3 percent growth
to 5 percent to 7 percent to 11
percent, and when we report first
quarter earnings [this Wednesday],
we can give additional detail there.
That growth has been driven by
product changes and specifically
to instantly give our consumers the
answer to the question of what’s
happening in the world.
You’ve been exploring ideas
for possible paid subscription
options, etc. What’s your plan
for that? There is a lot of activity
that takes place on Twitter where
we’re not directly driving revenue
today. So we want to investigate
those areas of high usage to see
if there are different ways to drive
revenue. Our ad technology MoPub
is a major resource [for monetizing
data]. TweetDeck is another asset
that has a very passionate user
base that’s highly engaged and
there’s an opportunity to give even
more value to them and explore
different ways to monetize that.
Specs
Current gig
COO and CFO,
Twitter
PHOTO: ELLIAN RAFFOUL
Previous gig
CFO, Twitter
Twitter
@anthonynoto
Age 48
APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK
 PORTRAIT

AGENCY
Specs
Who Co-founders

Bullish and managing

partners Michael
Duda (l.) and Brent
HOW ‘AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS AGENCY’ WENT FROM LAUNCH Vartan (r.)
What Creative
TO THE SUPER BOWL IN JUST OVER A YEAR. BY ERIK OSTER agency and
P H O T O : C H R I S T I N A S A L A Z A R , L’ E F F R O N T E E

consumer
investment firm
Dubbed “America’s most dangerous agency” by its co-founders, Deutsch veterans Michael Duda Where New York
and Brent Vartan, New York-based Bullish already has a Super Bowl spot under its belt despite
being just over a year old. It would have been two spots, in fact, but the NFL pulled Bullish’s ad for
launch client GNC from the 2017 game, citing GNC’s sale of supplements containing substances
banned by the league. The agency’s prevailing Super Bowl effort, for GoDaddy, was the beginning
of an extensive campaign for the web services provider that CMO Barb Rechterman called the
“backbone of GoDaddy’s marketing platform this year.” Rechterman, who previously worked with
Vartan while he was at Deutsch, began talking with Bullish over the summer and was impressed
enough by its strategy-centric approach to name it AOR. Currently seeking to add employees to
its team of 16 and moving into a new office in Chinatown, the agency’s future plans include “world
domination” or taking things “one day at a time”—depending on which co-founder you ask.

ADWEEK | APRIL 24, 2017 33

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34 APRIL 24, 2017 | ADWEEK

 FINAL DAYS TO ENTER
isaacawards.com

TERESA HERD
VP, Global Creative Director
Intel Corporation
KATE JEFFERS
Partner, Managing Director
Venables Bell & Partners
NICK JONES
EVP, Innovation & Growth
Leo Burnett and Arc

2017 JURY
GUSTAVO LAURIA
Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer
We Believers
Jury Chair LYNN LEWIS
THAM KHAI MENG President, East Coast Region and
Co-Chairman and Global Marketing Officer
Worldwide Chief Creative Officer UM
Ogilvy & Mather
ZAK MROUEH
JOHN BIONDI Founder, CEO and Chief Creative Officer
Executive Creative Director Zulu Alpha Kilo
SapientNitro Midwest ANUSH PRABHU
CHRISTINA BOLDT Chief Strategy Officer
SVP, Global Strategy Lead MediaCom USA
Starcom Worldwide BRIAN SCHULTZ
Founder and Chief Experience Officer
KATHLEEN BROOKBANKS
Magnetic Collaborative
Chief Operating Officer
Hearts & Science ADAM SINGOLDA
Founder and CEO
JOE CORR Taboola
Executive Creative Technology Director
Crispin Porter + Bogusky Boulder DEBBI VANDEVEN
Global Chief Creative Officer
MARCUS FISCHER VML
Chief Executive Officer
Carmichael Lynch
CON WILLIAMSON
President and Chief Creative Officer
RICK HAMANN Erwin Penland
Executive Creative Director
Cramer-Krasselt Chicago

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