Film about McDonald's "Founder" Ray Kroc to be released this summer

Here's another "bio pic" about a big brand - this time it's McDonald's. This film is more about Ray Kroc than the brand itself. Of course it is nearly impossible to separate the two. What Jobs was to Apple, certainly Kroc was to the Golden Arches. I'm looking forward to a strong performance by Keaton as the former milk shake machine salesman who, while not the actual "founder," became the  driving force behind this global brand.

The Founder stars Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc and a very good cast that includes Laura Dern, Linda Cardellini, Patrick Wilson and John Carroll Lynch.

Directed by John Lee Hancock. The release date is August 5, according to IMDb - so you'll have to wait a bit to see it.

Brands Are Making Packages the Media of the Future

What are consumer packaged-goods marketers doing to fight back against consumer ad-avoidance trends? As reported by Jack Neff in AdAge, they’ve have been making packages more of a priority. The new generation of such “smart packages” or “connected packages.” includes McDonald's recent Happy Meal boxes in Sweden that convert into virtual reality headsets for kids to view videos.

This is one of the trends for 2016 that I mentioned in my recent “Been There, Done That” podcast session (look for episode #37).

Some capabilities that might ultimately be incorporated into smart packages are already being embedded into products. Clorox Co., for example, last week launched a Brita Infinity water pitcher that as its filters are used up can automatically reorder them through Amazon's Dash program. And Church & Dwight Co.'s First Response recently announced a pregnancy test that sends results to a smartphone app that also encompasses a pregnancy education and relationship program.

Is “Product-Centric Marketing” a New Concept in Food & Beverage Advertising?

Remember when ads for soda pop were simple? That close-up shot of the fizzy water being poured over ice – ahhh, the refreshing taste of (fill in the blank). Simple and effective.

Coke remembers, and is getting back to basics. As reported by Ad Age’s Ken Wheaton and E.J. Schultz, after using “Let’s change the world” concepts and messages that vastly overstated the simple benefits of its product, Coke is getting back to basics. But in typical industry fashion, this is being discussed by “consumer and marketing experts” as a hot new trend!

Sure Coke “taught the world to sing” with it’s hilltop ad all those years ago, but after its seven-year-old “Open Happiness” campaign went wildly adrift with messaging that spoke of lifting spirits, making the world a better, more peaceful place –Coke’s “Taste the Feeling” will now indeed bring it back to basics: this stuff tastes good, and refreshes. Score one for the bottlers, who presumably don’t care about all that high-minded stuff. They just want to sell more fizzy water.

Wheaton says, “It says a lot about the state of the industry that it’s major news when a giant brand announces it’s going to do a product-centric campaign.”

Another Ad Age editorial by E.J. Schultz reports this “new reality in food and beverage marketing.” More emphasis on product benefits, ingredients and quality – less on high-minded concepts.

Could it be that the big brands – and Coke is certainly the biggest – have gotten way too “full of themselves?”

#WomenNotObjects campaign sparks a conversation about sexism in advertising.

This week advertising executive Madonna Badger of New York’s Badger & Winters announced a new campaign against the “objectification of women” in advertising.

“I am your mother, daughter, sister, coworker, ceo. Don’t talk to me that way.”

Badger and her business partner Jim Winters created a video featuring various women holding copies of ads and calling for change.

Featuring controversial ads from Tom Ford, Balmain, American Apparel, Burger King and Carl’s Jr. among others, the video had 5.3 million impressions as of Monday, January 25.

In announcing the #WomenNotObjects campaign, Badger promised that her shop “…will never objectify a woman again in any of the advertising, content, posts — any form of communication that we do for any of our clients.”

Because sexism in advertising has been around for years, this is going to be a big conversation. We can all agree that advertising has used images of the female body or female sexuality in a positive way for a long time. But this campaign exposes the worst offenders. I know you’re itching to include Donald Trump in this context, but I will resist the  – uh oh, too late.

Some of the work shown in the video is downright cringe-worthy. In my view, it is the result of clients who don’t have the capacity to discern between a thoughtful idea that celebrates the female mystique, and an overt objectification – tits and ass – for a cheap laugh. They have no good ideas, or even a clue of what good creative is. And sharing the blame for these atrocities are the “yes people” who work for them – at their agencies or in-house departments. They’re not exactly the “best and brightest” either.

Another thought comes to mind in the form of a question. It’s important to ask: Do women objectify themselves by being slaves to fashion, following ridiculous trends, and buying into the “unrealistic body images” pushed in advertising and entertainment programming?

Is there room for women to have their own personal style, outside of all this nonsense, without being downtrodden, image-wise?

Is this just another clever, agency self-promo? I’m not cynical enough to go there. To Madonna and Jim I say, “Let’s keep the conversation going.”