Can’t Plan Lucky
In June, McDonald’s mascot Grimace, a purple lump of a monster (and a viral sensation), threw the opening pitch at a New York Mets game. That preceded a long winning streak and an improbable run to make the playoffs.
The Mets and McDonald’s have been capitalizing on their fortuitous brand linkup for all its worth ever since.
And now, McDonald’s has seized another opportunity. The subway line running to Citi Field, where the Mets play, happens to be a Grimace shade of purple. At 1 pm on Wednesday – just a few hours before the Mets played the Phillies – one 7 train was bedecked in a Grimace-themed wrap and sent on its way from Hudson Yards to the stadium.
The Athletic has an interesting write-up on this odd but somehow perfect relationship, including the detail that McDonald’s allows only two people to wear the Grimace suit, and they do not remove it or break character in front of anyone.
The campaign, if it can be called that, is a testament to marketing that isn’t planned, optimized and attributed.
“There’s ways for us to measure the impact of earned conversation,” says Amanda Mulligan, director of social media and influencer at McDonald’s. “In this case, we weren’t looking at it so much from a business standpoint, but more so just like, this is a completely unexpected thing that happened in culture, and we reacted very quickly, and we just wanted to continue to feel that conversation.”
All Roads Leads To Zeta
Zeta Global, the challenger mar tech and data cloud, has acquired email marketing and identity company LiveIntent for $250 million, The Wall Street Journal reports.
It also plans to debut a publisher cloud suite encompassing traditional publisher tools and retail media.
Zeta has been relatively flat since IPO-ing in 2021 – until June of this year, that is. Since then, shares have more than doubled, attributable in no small part to Oracle abandoning its own advertising and data sales business.
Zeta is a collector of sorts. It’s acquired numerous companies over the years that are themselves third-party data providers, but also accrue identity data (namely, emails).
It owns Disqus, a comment board service used by many news and digital media sites. It has newsletter software that aggregates and auto-generates content for thousands of niche interests. And now it’s got LiveIntent, which competes with the likes of LiveRamp and should strengthen Zeta’s identity spine.
But that’s not all. In 2019, Zeta bought the Sizmek DSP and Rocket Fuel DMP, the IgnitionOne DSP and location data company PlaceIQ.
That was back when ad tech vendors collected cookie IDs en masse. Now, with IDs disappearing from the bidstream, companies must dig deeper for vendors with access to email addresses.
Oh, the Humanity!
Don’t put all your Robux into Roblox just yet.
Per Aftermath, the popular gaming platform has a less-than-stellar reputation among adults. But unlike other parts of the metaverse, Roblox’s user base is (reportedly) huge and actively growing, so of course brands want in on the action.
Still, it’s unfortunate that on the exact same day WPP announced a major partnership with Roblox, investment firm Hindenburg Research also released a report alleging the platform is a “pedophilic hellscape for kids.” Yikes.
Content moderation issues aside, Hindenburg claims Roblox consistently inflates its growth metrics. This comes down to Roblox conflating individual “people” using the platform with DAUs. Many folks operate numerous accounts that are sometimes run by software (aka bots), so it’s an inaccurate phrasing.
Hindenburg is also a notorious short seller. It doesn’t bet on companies; it releases scathing reports like this and bets against them.
Either way, good thing WPP’s first order of business is a multi-module Roblox-centric training course for marketers, huh?
But Wait, There’s More!
The DOJ is considering asking the court to break up parts of Google’s business as a potential remedy after Google was found guilty of operating a search monopoly. [Adweek]
It’s not Gen Z’s fault they don’t have their own Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg – and maybe they don’t even want one. [Business Insider]
Roku expands its partnership with Instacart. [release]
Brazil lifts its ban on X after the platform pays a $5.1 million fine and complies with court requests to block certain accounts. [Wired]
Apple sells privacy to consumers, but it’s quietly helping police use iPhones for surveillance. [Forbes]
TAG touts $10.8 billion in estimated savings from anti-fraud efforts in 2023. [release]
A Nepali filmmaker has produced a documentary about Team Dayā, a nonprofit organization founded by ad tech execs that builds schools around the world. [Watch it here.]
