Geico backs MLB’s ‘Field of Dreams’ game and McCormick makes a hot deal: Trending

Build it, and MLB will come to Iowa.
A quick look at the week’s winners, losers and newsmakers.
Winner
Droga5 is rolling. The Accenture-owned shop this week picked up the Petco account from Anomaly, continuing a new-business streak that has also included Maserati and Allstate.
Loser
Sherwin-Williams went viral for all the wrong reasons this week after critics pounced on the paint marketer for firing part-time college student Tony Piloseno over running a TikTok account featuring its paints. Piloseno got the last laugh, landing a gig with rival Florida Paints, which brought him on full-time and asked him to develop his own line of paints. Read more here from his interview with Ad Age. As for Sherwin-Williams, it violated some very basic rules of modern-day marketing: Listen to your employers, and by all means, don’t stifle their creativity.
Popular
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ Big Apple return was our most-read post of this shortened holiday week. The shop is back in New York after closing its doors in 2015.
If you build it, Geico will come
Iowa has never hosted a Major League Baseball game. That will change next year when the league hosts the “Field of Dreams” game in the state at a site made famous by the 1989 movie that spawned the now-famous quote, “if you build it, he will come.” The game, sponsored by Geico, was originally slated for this year, but was canceled due to the pandemic. The Aug. 12 matchup between the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees will be televised nationally by FOX and played at an 8,000-capacity ballpark that MLB built. Of course, as with anything these days, plans are contingent on the status of the pandemic. No word yet on which team the gecko will suit up for.
Quote of the week
“Surprise, surprise, the error was favorable to Facebook.”—an ad agency exec on Facebook’s disclosure of a measurement mistake that overstated the effectiveness of brand ads on the social platform.
Tweet of the week
Sorrell’s S4 lures Oreo maker
Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital scored a win by landing a Mondelēz International account. S4’s MediaMonks will handle global content production and management for the snacks giant as part of a group that also includes a Publicis Groupe team, dubbed Team Pop. MediaMonks will manage global tech infrastructure and websites, as well as content production for North America, Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Africa. Publicis’ Team Pop will manage content production for the snack marketer’s Europe region, which is its largest. The maker of Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers previously worked with a wide range of agencies in more local and regional capacities.
Number of the week
167%: Year-over-year increase in online sales for Target in the week before Thanksgiving week, according to Edison Trends. Similarly, sales on Etsy jumped 117%, while Best Buy sales were up 88%.
McCormick adds heat
Spice maker McCormick & Company is buying the maker of Cholula Hot Sauce from L Catterton for $800 million. The Mexican hot sauce, which comes in bottles with wooden tops, has annual sales of about $96 million. McCormick predicts Cholula can grow in a mid-to-high single digit range following the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted restaurants, a key part of its business. The deal comes three years after McCormick bought brands including Frank's RedHot from Reckitt Benckiser.