Tinder picks up Pizza Hut's CMO, and NFTs are bad for the earth: Tuesday 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. Date with destiny Pizza Hut’s chief marketing officer is consciously uncoupling with the Yum Brands chain. George Felix is headed to Tinder, five months after Jenny Campbell, the dating app’s previous CMO, kissed it goodbye to join Kate Spade. “Tinder had its busiest year to date in 2020 and, according to the brand, nearly half of its users had a video chat with a match during the pandemic. After all, with people following protocols to stay home, they were less likely to meet up in person,” writes Ad Age’s Jessica Wohl. “Tinder set a record-breaking day of swipe activity on March 29, 2020, breaking 3 billion swipes in a single day, then proceeded to see that record broken 130 times, it reported.” Of course, Pizza Hut has been quite the catch during lockdown, too. Same-store sales are up 3%, driven by hungry customers stuck in their homes and unable or unwilling to cook. But with a vaccine-fueled dating boom likely in the offing in the coming months, Tinder might be in for yet another surge. Bringing up business President Joe Biden signaled his willingness to negotiate in order to pass a huge infrastructure bill. And like such measures in the past, his proposal includes spending that would help redefine which public services are viewed as infrastructure. Progressive groups want it to change the way parents, especially women, view the workforce. According to the National Women’s Law Center, a universal childcare system in the U.S. that provides for children up to the age of 13 would add $130 billion to American women’s lifetime earnings. The pandemic has hit women harder, and 2.3 million of them have left the workforce, largely due to the cost and availability of childcare. Those benefits would fall disproportionately to Black and Hispanic women and senior women, who would have the most to gain from affordable childcare and the ensuing boost to earnings and retirement savings. But the economy as a whole would benefit from the increased spending power. Businesses would also be able retain talent they otherwise would have lost to the harsh math of parenthood. Add it up In a new series, “Just a Minute,” Ad Age's Datacenter takes a quick look at the latest marketing intelligence. According to a report from Analytic Partners, companies whose competitors double their ad budgets stand to lose 15% of their business. There’s no additional data on whether countering with ad spend of one’s own can mitigate this outcome, but it stands to reason. (Otherwise, big advertisers would just drive each other into bankruptcy). Sure, you may not know which half of your advertising is wasted, but neither does the competition. The past year has threatened to reverse decades of economic progress for women with the so-called “she-cession” and the “chore gap.” That's why, more than ever, we need to champion the female executives we know who continue to break barriers and elevate the people around them. Submit your nomination for Ad Age Leading Women U.S. at AdAge.com/LeadingWomenUS. Money to burn The explosion in popularity of NFTs will likely have an unintended consequence on the environment. Since they’re bought and sold with cryptocurrency, they have a huge carbon footprint. Bitcoin, Ethereum and other crypto mining is energy intensive by design—a method to keep users and dealers honest by making it more trouble than it’s worth to try to cheat the system. But, as Fast Company reports, that’s causing ethical conundrums for some of the environmentally conscious or anti-corporate artists getting in on the NFT craze. Newer versions of blockchain technology promise lower emissions, but for now, it can cost thousands of dollars to offset the carbon emissions caused by a single NFT transaction. Just briefly Direct to consumer: Don’t feel bad about not tipping the delivery driver. Domino’s is testing out pizza delivery via self-driving car in Houston, Texas, CNBC reports. Customers in Woodland Heights can order and choose the option. A digital PIN unlocks the delivery robot and release the pizza inside. Of course, what will happen when Houstonians find out there are defenseless robots filled with tasty pizza roaming the streets? New hire: Katie Klein joins Omnicom’s PHD as president of integrated investment, following the retirement of Harry Keeshan. Previously, she was senior VP, national video investment at Zenith Media, and a member of the agency’s client leadership team. Peach pits: Will Smith pulled the production of his film “Emancipation” out of Georgia in response to voting restrictions enacted by the Republican-led state legislature, the New York Times reports. The Civil War-era film follows the life of a man who escaped slavery to fight In the Union Army and became an iconic figure in the abolitionist movement. “We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access,” Smith and director Antoine Fuqua wrote in a statement. “The new Georgia voting laws are reminiscent of voting impediments that were passed at the end of Reconstruction to prevent many Americans from voting.” 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. 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Tinder picks up Pizza Hut's CMO, and NFTs are bad for the earth: Tuesday Wake-Up Call

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