T-Mobile names new media agency

Good morning! It's only January, but T-Mobile might have already delivered on one of its New Year's resolutions. On Monday, the mobile communications giant announced it chose Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Initiative to take over its media account, which amounted to approximately $2.3 billion in measured media in the U.S. in 2019, according to Ad Age Datacenter.

The decision comes after T-Mobile launched a review in September. Initiative, according to people close to the matter, was the only newcomer and beat out incumbents GroupM’s Essence, Horizon Media and Publicis Media. The review came after T-Mobile’s $26.5 billion merger with Sprint last April.

“Now that Sprint is part of T-Mobile, we’re operating on a bigger scale and taking on bigger and bolder goals," T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Matt Staneff told Ad Age’s Lindsay Rittenhouse.

Parler fights back

After Amazon Web Services removed conservative social media site Parler from its servers following the Capitol riot on Wednesday, the app has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit in Seattle seeking an order forcing AWS to maintain its account. Parler told Bloomberg News that Amazon shutting down its service “is the equivalent of pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support” and would kill its business. It isn't known whether Parler plans to sue Apple and Google for withdrawing its app from their app stores. 

Facebook fulfills boycott demand

By hiring former Obama Administration official Roy Austin Jr. as its new civil rights executive, Facebook fulfilled a demand from July’s Facebook ad boycott. The NAACP, Anti-Defamation League and other civil rights groups asked Facebook to create the role because they felt the platform was ignoring racial injustice issues. Facebook also says it will bring more civil rights expertise in-house and is in the process of developing civil rights training for employees.

Ad Age’s Garett Sloane writes: “The new role comes at an urgent moment, with the nation dealing with the fallout from an insurrection in Congress last week, an action that was partly instigated by hateful rhetoric on social media.”

Just briefly:

Fortnite record breaker On Monday, Fortnite streamer David Martínez, better known as “TheGrefg,” broke audience records on Twitch. His livestream, in which he revealed his Icon series Fortnite skin, had more than 2 million live viewers. The previous record was held by Tyler Blevins, aka “Ninja,” who drew 635,000 live viewers in March 2018. Even Martinez couldn’t believe it. Throughout his livestream, he Googled previous Twitch records as he crushed them.

Under new command Donna Speciale, who oversaw ad sales at WarnerMedia, has been named president of advertising sales and marketing at Univision. She will lead new ad products and solutions as the company reorganizes under new ownership.  

L’Oréal taps Publicis Groupe L’Oréal China has officially appointed Publicis Groupe as its media planning and buying agency partner in China, thought to be worth $800 million. Publicis says it has created a bespoke agency solution, OneL’Oréal, to handle the account. Mindshare was the incumbent.

Watch this Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was born in Allied-occupied Austria in 1947, compares the attack on the U.S. Capitol to the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany in a new video that is both heartfelt and profound.

Kind’s new Equality bar Daniel Lubetzky, Kind Snacks founder and chairman, took to LinkedIn on Monday to share Kind’s second edition Equality bar, which features silhouettes of BIPOC. The new bar arrives with a commitment by Kind to donate $100,000 to racial justice organizations, $100,000 to BIPOC student scholarships, and more.

That does it for today’s Wake-Up Call. Thanks for reading and we hope you are all staying safe and well.

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