Ryan Reynolds Doesn’t Get 5G

There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation around 5G—though many mobile carriers have attempted to remedy this with educational content (and cake mix). Ryan Reynolds is apparently as lost as the rest of us in a new ad for his budget carrier Mint Mobile, which shows the brand’s head of technology Rizwan Kassim explaining 5G in complicated jargon. Before long, Reynolds gives up on the explanation and simply explains that Mint is going to give it away for free with every plan.

Watch: Apparently he didn’t tell everyone about this idea.

Creativity Fit for a King: Budweiser has continued its “Be a King” campaign in a new spot created in partnership with Grammy-nominated music artist Halsey. The ad follows her story as she made her way to stardom and developed her stage persona. It’s a story fueled by all-American ideals, focusing on ambition and culminating in the phrase “Kings aren’t made overnight.” [Watch: Women can be kings, too.]

Disappearing Act: Kraft Mac & Cheese erased all presence of its "Send Noods" campaign, which resulted in 20,000 free boxes of mac & cheese being sent to lovers of the brand. But it also generated backlash in the form social media users accusing the brand of “sexualizing mac ‘n’ cheese” and accusing it of being “predatory” toward children. And now the campaign is gone.

In an unconventional stunt last week, The Martin Agency created a guessing game to announce both its 45 new job openings and the new client wins (totaling seven pieces of new business) that fueled the positions. This week, it continued the game with a digital treasure hunt on Instagram, dropping more clues about the brands. The move was calculated to drum up some buzz around the jobs it was seeking to fill in order to attract top talent and more diversity in the advertising community, while also having some fun.

Join the game: The strategy worked, with 1,200 applications (a 30% increase since the initiative began) pouring in.

As major brands including the NBA, Home Depot and T-Mobile reevaluate their marketing investments, they are also reviewing their media accounts, in many cases following a pause of review earlier in the year. Estimates suggest a total of $6 billion is under review globally, up $2.5 billion sincere July. These upsets are the collective result of many factors including a disrupted marketing landscape, shrinking budgets, limitations on traditional advertising venues like sports and internal shifts that place more emphasis on ecommerce.

What clients want: As brands transform to rise to the increasingly digital present, they’re looking for new ways to measure success.

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Facebook’s crackdown on misleading content continues. The platform followed its ban of Holocaust denial content with another prohibiting anti-vax ads. This latest move is aimed at helping people get reliable information about the pandemic and vaccines. Although a vaccine for Covid-19 may be a long way off yet, the platform wants to prevent bad information, and support officials who are pushing for more people to get flu shots.

Here are other ways the platform is encouraging users to get vaccines.

Related: While many platforms are banning political ads in general, a handful of them are making exceptions for ads that promote civic engagement, including get out the vote efforts.

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