Seventh Generation strikes a blow for climate change and Publicis wins Bank of America: Wednesday 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. The next greatest generation Seventh Generation issued a response to President Trump's State of the Union address last night with a 60-second commercial that followed the speech and roadblocked across ABC, NBC and CBS. The black-and-white spot is narrated with the voice of former president Franklin D. Roosevelt and set against a backdrop of scenes from September’s Climate Strike and a shot from a 1945 VJ-Day celebration. In the commercial, writes Jack Neff, "FDR can be heard, in a clip from his 1943 State of the Union address, saying: 'People have now gathered their strength. They’re moving forward in their might and power. And no force, no combination of forces, no trickery or violence can stop them now. They see before them the hopes of the world—a decent, secure, peaceful life for men everywhere.'" The ending of the ad, from the Unilever unit's agency, Opinionated: “What if we were meant to be the next greatest generation? Climate change is our problem to solve. The solution will be our legacy.” Publicis takes it to the bank Bank of America has deposited its account with a dedicated Publicis Groupe team called GroupeConnect led by Leo Burnett on creative. As a result, the financial services company will be parting ways with Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Hill Holliday. "Bank of America is consolidating external marketing agency resources with one network, Publicis Groupe, to accelerate our data-driven creative approach and enable us to continue to focus on efficiency," Meredith Verdone, Bank of America chief marketing officer, told Lindsay Rittenhouse. The win is a notch in the belt of holding company CEO Arthur Sadoun, architect of its “Power of One” approach, and a nice chunk of change: According to COMvergence, Bank of America spent $122 million on measured media in the U.S. for the 12 months ended last July. More bleeding at Macy’sCNBC reports that Macy’s plans to shutter another 125 stores and part with 2,000 employees over the next three years. It will also close its San Francisco tech office and Cincinnati headquarters. Macy’s is scheduled to hold an investor meeting today in New York outlining its plan to revive the flagging retailer, which could use another miracle on 34th Street. This is worth watching YouTube is becoming an important part of Google's ad business, and is increasingly competing with major digital players. But how competitive is it, really? In Google’s fourth-quarter earnings report this week it was disclosed for the first time that YouTube reeled in $15.1 billion in ad revenue last year. A day later, Bloomberg News, citing unnamed sources, put Instagram’s ad revenue at $20 billion in 2019, and said that more than a quarter of Facebook’s total revenue comes from the photo-sharing app. The bloom’s off the rose In a letter to readers this week, Cosmopolitan Editor-in-Chief Jessica Pels explains why the magazine ditched plans to run a digital cover featuring a contestant on “The Bachelor.” In an episode aired on ABC this week, Cosmo and Pels were shown winging their way to Costa Rica for a steamy fashion shoot with the hopefuls romancing this year’s hunk, pilot Peter Weber. The Cosmo crew chose one contender for that final rose, Victoria Fuller, to spotlight in its editorial feature. Writes Pels: “It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I found out that the woman I’d chosen had, in her past, modeled in an ad campaign wearing White Lives Matter attire.” The Fuller-free photo shoot is online with the other fun and fearless females, however, with the headline: “You jealous? We spent the day with Pilot Pete in Costa Rica.” Just brieflyNike’s note: As the coronavirus continues to make news, Nike is taking precautions in China. “Similar to others in the marketplace, approximately half of Nike-owned stores have been temporarily closed, with corresponding dynamics across our partner stores,” the company announced. “In addition, we are operating with reduced hours and experiencing lower than planned retail traffic in stores that do remain open. In the short term, we expect the situation to have a material impact on our operations in Greater China.” Bloomberg doubles down: In response to the “chaotic outcome” of the Iowa Caucus, Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg has authorized his campaign staff to “double his spending on television commercials in every market where he is currently advertising and expand his campaign’s field staff to more than 2,000 people,” the New York Times reports. It’s now a dead zone: Novelist Stephen King announced on Twitter that he’s quitting Facebook, saying he is “not comfortable with the flood of false information that's allowed in its political advertising, nor am I confident in its ability to protect its users' privacy.” No word on what, if any, Facebook groups he belonged to, but given the nature of his writing, we may be better off left in the dark. That does it for today’s Wake-Up Call—thanks for reading. 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 atAdAge.com/membership.

Seventh Generation strikes a blow for climate change and Publicis wins Bank of America: Wednesday Wake-Up Call

Featured Stories