This week’s marketing winners, losers and newsmakers.

Winners

Geoffrey the Giraffe: The Toys R Us mascot will get a new lease on life when the toy retailer opens shops inside 400 Macy’s stores next year, according to a deal announced this week.  Toys R Us declared bankruptcy in 2017. Reports the Wall Street Journal: “The return to physical retail locations marks another effort to revive Toys R Us’s footprint after two locations that opened in late 2019 in New Jersey and Texas closed in January because of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving it without a brick-and-mortar presence in the U.S.”

Accenture Interactive: We won’t know for a while how David Droga will do at the helm of the consultancy—and some industry observers are questioning the fit.  But there is no doubt that Accenture generated plenty of buzz this week when elevating one of the most highly regarded creative figures to the top of the world’s fourth-largest agency company. And for a consultancy that must constantly reinforce its creative chops, that is a pretty good thing.

Walmart: The retail giant reported earnings that exceeded expectations. As Bloomberg News reports “The world’s largest retailer has momentum heading into the crucial back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons.”

Losers

“Jeopardy!”: The game show’s quest to replace Alex Trebek took a turn for the worse when Mike Richards today left the role he had assumed last week as news came to light about offensive comments he made on a podcast a few years ago. The Ringer earlier this week reported that Richards called “The Randumb Show” that he hosted “repeatedly used offensive language and disparaged women’s bodies.”

The alcohol industry: Not that it will cause a major dent in sales, but American Airlines’ move this week to extend its ban on alcohol in the main cabin of its planes until Jan. 18 is another example of how COVID has hurt the booze business. The airline took the step to align with mask mandates, but it also comes as reports grow about unruly passengers in which alcohol has often played a role, as ABC News points out. 

And in more bad news for the alcohol industry, a new Gallup poll shows that 60% of adults drink beer, wine or liquor, which “puts current alcohol consumption on the low end of the range Gallup has recorded over the past two decades.” What’s more, “not only are fewer adults drinking alcohol today, but those who do are consuming less than they have in the recent past,” Gallup reports. (But beer ad spending is up; see our Number of the Week below.)

Traditional TV networks: The Academy of Country Music Awards is headed for Amazon Prime Video in 2022, which “could be a catalyst for more such tentpole events to move from broadcast to streaming,” Ad Age reports.

Tweet of the week

Number of the week

50%: The increase in ad spending on beer year-to-date, according to iSpot.tv, which reports that brands spent $525.8 million on national linear TV ads Jan. 1-Aug. 15. The return of a somewhat normal live sports schedule is playing a role.

Quote of the week

“You’ve seen [PepsiCo] do this before in fits and starts, but what I think you are seeing now is full-scale effort to go after Coke Zero Sugar drinkers.”— Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of trade magazine Beverage Digest, on PepsiCo’s move to spend more on Pepsi Zero Sugar.

On the Move

Guitar Center hired Mitch Lee as VP of marketing. He had been working as a consultant and startup advisor, according to his LinkedIn.

The NFL named Paul Ballew as its chief data and analytics officer. He had held the same job at Loblaw Companies, a Canadian food company.