Winner
Detroit-based Doner built some new biz momentum this week by snagging the creative accounts for Johnson & Johnson’s baby and Aveeno Baby business in the U.S. The MDC Partners shop will work in tandem with Stagwell Group’s Code and Theory. Both agencies will soon be under the same roof, once the MDC-Stagwell merger closes. The win shows that Stagwell founder and MDC CEO Mark Penn’s move to get his shops to play well together could be working, at least in this case. More here on the J&J win.
Loser
It’s not often that an ad campaign gets you into trouble with financial regulators—but that is the situation Volkswagen finds itself in today, after news broke this week that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is probing its “Voltswagen” April Fools’ Day prank to see if it influenced the automaker’s stock price. Coming along for the ride is Johannes Leonardo, which helped concoct the prank that fooled some automotive journalists into thinking that the automaker was changing its name to Voltswagen to push its electric vehicle ambitions.
ICYMI
The marketing industry is closely watching how Fernando Machado makes the move from fast-food marketing to the gaming sector. This post on his first interview since taking the CMO gig at Activision Blizzard was among our most popular stories of the week, based on reader engagement.
Food as art
NFT-mania keeps coming, with three more brands jumping on the trend.
Dole, now called the Dole Sunshine Company, got artist David Datuna to create a collection of NFTs which will be available on Rarible on May 6. Proceeds will be donated to Boys & Girls Clubs to help fund nutrition and hunger-focused programming, Dole announced. Datuna, art lovers may recall, is the performance artist who ate the $120,000 banana at Art Basel in 2019.