Don't expect a refund from Cannes Lions, and Snapchat snags Hulu's head of ad sales: Friday Wake-Up Call

Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. If you're reading this online or in a forwarded email, here's the link to sign up for our Wake-Up Call newsletters. All sales final Cannes Lions is strongly discouraging refunds for passes to the now-canceled 2020 Festival of Creativity. Instead, the Ascential-owned awards show wants attendees to roll their passes over to 2021, when the next festival is scheduled to take place in June at Cannes. The festival will change names on passes for free. “I just want to say to the industry: We'd really like their help in getting through this,” Cannes Lions Chairman Philip Thomas told Ad Age’s Lindsay Rittenhouse. “A lot of the people who can go to Cannes, our delegates, come from really large, multibillion-dollar companies. They are much bigger than we are. We have taken a big hit this year.” Cannes Lions isn’t quite refusing all refunds outright. Thomas said they are willing to talk to anyone “in difficulty.” As for the work, entries will be automatically rolled over to next year, presumably to be combined with entries from 2020, however many that may be. Snapped up Snapchat snagged Peter Naylor, head of advertising sales at Hulu, to lead its advertising in the Americas. “For the past seven years, Naylor has been a fixture in the ad world from his perch at Hulu, where he was the face for the company’s ever-evolving digital video ad products,” writes Ad Age’s Garett Sloane. “Naylor has been a central part of Hulu’s growth strategies over the years. Hulu's ad revenue has grown from under $1 billion in 2017 and is expected to hit $2.25 billion in 2020, according to eMarketer.” At Hulu, Naylor pioneered new ways of serving ads, like during paused shows, and lured direct-to-consumer brands to the platform. Snapchat, for its part, is seeing more usage from people stuck indoors and is expanding its video offerings, which will need more advertisements. “The company's ad platform has evolved over the years,” Sloane writes. “When it started showing ads in 2014, it was offering high-priced placements for big brand campaigns. It also offered expensive augmented reality filters for major events like the Super Bowl. It has since automated its ad offering and made it more accessible to internet advertisers bidding in auctions for in-app inventory.” Longing for the bad old days Another 6.6 million people filed for unemployment last week, bringing the total to nearly 16.8 million lost jobs in just the last three weeks. That’s more job losses than the Great Recession caused over two full years, according to the New York Times. Some economists speculate the U.S. unemployment rate will hit 15 percent by the end of April. Even these terrible numbers don’t capture the full scope of the carnage. In heavily populated areas, many people haven’t been able to get through to unemployment offices, which have been inundated with claims, and so they aren’t yet counted in the totals. Other states only instituted shut-downs of nonessential businesses this week, so those claims will roll in over the next few weeks. Layoffs continue to hit agencies, as well. Yesterday, MullenLowe laid off 10 percent of its workforce, following previous cuts at Giant Spoon and Anomaly. Podcast of the day: Pregnant during the pandemic Thinx CEO Maria Molland talks about dealing with a global pandemic while she’s nine months pregnant with her second child, on the latest episode of the “Ad Block” podcast. Three weeks before New York City’s stay-at-home order, Molland drove cross-country with her 3-year-old and her cat to stay with her parents in California for the remainder of her pregnancy. “It’s a constant state of terror,” Molland says. “Pregnancy is supposed to be beautiful and something to be excited about. I think those of us who are pregnant have not been excited for one single day since this thing really broke out.” Just briefly Bravely beautiful: Dove is shifting its beauty campaign to focus on faces of courage. And who is more courageous these days than healthcare workers? New ads feature faces deeply imprinted by protective masks. “Sometimes even these conversations about beauty, however relevant they might have seemed a few months ago, now seem superficial,” Alessandro Manfredi, executive vice president of the global Dove brand, told Ad Age’s Jack Neff. Laughter, the best medicine: “Saturday Night Live" is back on the air tomorrow night, in a way, after a social distancing-induced hiatus in effect since mid-March. Skits, including “Weekend Update,” will be produced remotely, though it’s unclear if any of the show will be performed live. Soap opera-themed teaser “The Longest Days of Our Lives” serves up a taste of what might be in store for audiences. Chipping in: Snack brand Frito-Lay is calling out other companies for not taking enough real action in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, in a new spot that touts its philanthropic moves, including creating 3,000 full-time jobs. “Then comes the not-so-subtle dig at brands that have separated spacing of their famous logos during the pandemic,” writes Ad Age’s Jessica Wohl. “‘We’re not changing our logo,’ the white text reads on a black screen. ‘We’re not asking America to donate for us. This is not about brands.’” Playground rules: The NBA has revealed the contestants and rules for its HORSE competition. Yes, the kids’ game where players must exactly copy the previous shooter's moves and actions or be eliminated. In an effort to fill some of the void left by the cessation of all sports, eight current and former NBA and WNBA players will take part in the State Farm-sponsored event, playing—individually, of course—from their own home gyms, beginning this Sunday. That does it for today’s Wake-Up Call, thanks for reading and we hope you are all staying safe and well. For more industry news and insight, follow us on Twitter: @adage. From CMO Strategy to the Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, we’ve got newsletters galore. See them all here. Subscribers make the difference. Individual, group and corporate subscriptions are available—including access to our Ad Age Datacenter. Find options at AdAge.com/membership.

Don't expect a refund from Cannes Lions, and Snapchat snags Hulu's head of ad sales: Friday Wake-Up Call

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