Twitter says some staff can work from home forever and Coke’s top marketer departs: 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. Twitter to let some staff to work from home foreverCompanies in the tech sector were some of the first to let people work from home in the pandemic, and Twitter has now gone a step further, saying that some of it employees may be able to WFH permanently. As first reported by BuzzFeed News, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey emailed employees on Tuesday telling them that they’d be allowed to work from home on a permanent basis. The company later confirmed that in a statement to CNN Business, with a spokeswoman saying: "If our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen.” Twitter does not expect to open most of its offices, or support business travel, before September. It’s also canceling all in-person events for the rest of the year. According to the company, the experience of working from home for the past several months has shown that it can work at scale. But if the rest of the tech sector follows suit, it will be a major shift for companies that have spent millions on lavish office space. Coke's top marketer departsGeoff Cottrill, Coca-Cola’s top marketing executive in North America, is leaving the company just as it's battling plummeting sales during the pandemic. Cottrill, a former president of MullenLowe Boston, has served as the beverage giant’s senior VP of strategic marketing since 2018. As Ad Age’s E.J. Schultz reports, Coca-Cola has not named a replacement, but Alpa Sutaria, the company’s U.S. VP of strategy and planning for bottler delivered brands, will oversee marketing in the interim. Cottrill's departure comes as Coke has paused most of its marketing globally, including in the U.S., where it has not aired a national TV ad since late March. The company’s global volume fell 25 percent in the first three weeks in April. An internal memo at Coke said that Cottrill would retire from the company on June 1, and “plans to take some much-needed time with his wife Allie and two daughters Abby and Claire, enjoy fishing, and go to music festivals to see his daughter perform.” In case you’re wondering, the latter refers to his daughter Claire Cottrill, aka rising pop star “Clairo,” who had a viral hit with “Pretty Girl” on YouTube. Ad Age TV Pivot continuesYesterday was the first day of Ad Age’s TV Pivot event, which is bringing together TV media sales leaders, marketers and media buyers to discuss the pandemic’s fallout on the TV business, in the week that would normally have seen the TV Upfronts. Ad Age’s Jeanine Poggi spoke with TV leaders including Jo Ann Ross, president and chief advertising revenue officer at ViacomCBS, Fox’s president of ad sales Marianne Gambelli, and Peter Olsen, president of ad sales for A+E Networks, about the state of TV during COVID-19 and what the fall schedule could look like. Catch up with what they had to say here, and stay tuned for today’s session, livestreamed from 11AM EDT. Agency layoffs hit PR giantsYesterday saw more news of agency layoffs across both the advertising and PR sectors. Ad Age’s Lindsay Rittenhouse reports that among those affected are employees at PR giants Weber Shandwick and Golin, as well as more staff from ad agency VaynerMedia. Golin said it had laid off up 5 percent of staff; a spokeswoman said it had extended healthcare benefits to those affected and hired consultants to help them find new employment. Weber Shandwick declined to say how many employees were affected. Meanwhile, a VaynerMedia spokesperson said that less than 2 percent of staff was cut in the latest round; that’s in addition to an earlier 5 percent in April. Just brieflyUber bids for Grubhub: Shares in both Uber and Grubhub rose sharply yesterday after reports emerged that Uber has made an offer to acquire food delivery service Grubhub. The two companies are said to be in talks about a deal and could reach an agreement as soon as this month, although neither has confirmed it. Paying out: Facebook will pay $52 million to current and former moderators to compensate them for mental health issues developed on the job, reports The Verge. Each moderator will receive a minimum of $1,000 and will be eligible for additional compensation if they are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or related conditions. Trump “death clock”: A billboard on Times Square is displaying a so-called “Trump Death Clock,” which tallies the number of lives lost to COVID-19 it blames on “POTUS inaction.” Take a look here. Nursing shoutout: Brands including L’Oréal Paris, Jeep and Lego were among those marking International Nurses Day yesterday, as they paid tribute to nursing efforts during COVID-19. As Ad Age’s Ilyse Liffreing notes, “brands usually remain silent unless nursing is related to their company or purpose—but not this year.” See some of their efforts here. Doggy Zoom time: If you’re in need of a furry friend to get you through lockdown, Pedigree has a solution: Zoom calls with dogs. The brand is hosting virtual canine adoption events select shelters, allowing consumers to meet and adopt a new pet over video conferencing. Take a look over at Creativity (there’s a super-cute ad by BBDO New York to support the project). Plus, catch up with Creativity’s Top 5 campaigns from last week here, including Eva Longoria’s home hair-dye session for L’Oreal Paris. 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 atAdAge.com/membership.

Twitter says some staff can work from home forever and Coke’s top marketer departs: Wednesday Wake-Up Call

Featured Stories