Hulu recently celebrated the release of the horror-comedy film Bad Hair by sending some late ‘80s nostalgia to Black influencers and press, and in turn supporting Black-owned businesses. The streaming service partnered with agency Allied Moxy to create promotional kits themed around director and producer Justin Simien’s new horror send-up, which Hulu released Oct. 23.

The film follows a young Black woman named Anna (Elle Lorraine) who’s told to get a new hairstyle to advance her career at a music television network in 1989. After Anna decides to get a weave, she realizes her new hair has a mind of its own … literally.

Marcus Best, vp of Allied Moxy, told Adweek that the agency and Hulu wanted to create a kit that would stand out from other mailers and appeal to the Black community.

“It was important for us as an agency, and for Hulu, to do something that would support Black businesses,” Best told Adweek. “That was one of our top priorities as we put together the genesis of the mailer, while making sure it fell within the themes of the actual film.”

Best said the agency designed the kits to resemble a gift from Cult Live, the film’s fictional BET-esque network run by Vanessa Williams’ character Zora. For an ’80s vibe, the design incorporates splashes of pink, green, yellow and lavender.

“Even though Bad Hair is a horror film, we didn’t want to have that sensibility with the mailer,” Best said. “We wanted to make it lively and upbeat.”

Best said in curating the products for the kits, the agency wanted to provide items that its recipients could actually use.

Inside, the kits offer items including ‘90s-style press-on nails by She’s Pressed Nails; a hair care kit from Tracee Ellis Ross’ company Pattern Beauty; hair clips by 3 Woke Girlz; and hair wraps by Nicole Ari Parker. The kits also offer items that specifically tie into the film’s narrative, including a Cult Live hoodie and a folk tale about the Moss Haired Girl.

Best said the agency mailed around 150 kits to influencers and press. The campaign encourages recipients to share their kits on social with the corresponding hashtags, and tag all of the participating businesses, whose social handles are listed inside the boxes.

“For us, this campaign is about understanding the film’s audience and things that will be a passion point for them,” Best said. “We also understand that during this time, it’s important to celebrate and support minority-owned and Black-owned businesses.”

Bad Hair also stars Lena Waithe, Laverne Cox, Jay Pharoah, Kelly Rowland, Usher Raymond IV and Blair Underwood.

Network science’s underlying theory predates the internet, but social media’s rise was an important cultural innovation that implored the need for a science of how people are connected. And while there are myriad fun and interesting questions about the way that people interact, few have been more pertinent than how social movements are born.

Take this year’s #Hashtag Activism, for example, in which Brooke Foucault Welles, Sarah Jackson, and Moya Bailey use network science to uncover the growth of social media activism.

Foucault Welles, an associate professor at Northeastern, says that network science “lets us distill vast, chaotic online communication data down to its essence” and “pull out important themes, people, and events for close reading.” This intersection with big data is critical: that it can extract patterns from terabytes of social media interactions strengthens the reach of its conclusions—the findings aren’t about how a small set of users behave, but about aggregate behavior.

The approaches highlighted in #Hashtag Activism can reveal fundamental principles of social movements that apply to the digital activism movements of recent times. From a network of activist narratives built from quantitative and qualitative data, Foucault Welles describes how, “in #MeToo, we discovered that talking about sexual assault online is really powerful because it reduces stigma and encourages other people to disclose. The first few people to come forward have to be really brave and talk about what happened to them, even though they might not be believed, they might not be supported, and they might be blamed. But each time someone is brave and comes forward, it reduces the risk for other people to come forward.”
The work of Foucault Welles and colleagues provides part of a blueprint for how to construct hashtag movements moving forward. “In any given social justice movement,” she says, “there’s a committed core of activists who work really hard to craft and spread a message. Then there’s a huge periphery of allies and supporters who amplify that message. I love this finding because it shows how activists and regular people can work hand in hand—how we have to work hand in hand to keep things going.”

While social movements have recently come into network science’s crosshairs, the field has long focused on epidemiology. It takes little imagination to consider how a science dedicated to understanding how connections between people is important in infectious diseases. Network science has driven a large number of breakthroughs in epidemiology, from identifying the role of airline transportation in the global spread of epidemics, to revealing how the replacement of sick workers with healthy ones can drive the dynamics of influenza.

The dynamics of Covid-19 have proven especially challenging to understand, as questions have persisted about the importance of asymptomatic transmission and superspreading events. Network perspective has added layers to how we consider basic aspects of an epidemic, such as the basic reproduction number (the R0), a signature of contagiousness. The study of networks highlights that this number is truly an average, and doesn’t consider how select individuals embedded in a network can infect others in numbers much larger than predicted by the R0.

Dina Mistry, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Disease Modeling, has conducted cutting-edge work on human interaction networks, and social mixing patterns. That is, she builds careful and detailed simulations of how exactly people interact, to inform public health intervention patterns, all of which are highly germane to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We don’t know how to model contact patterns, especially in metro areas, and households,” says Mistry. Work like this is central to conversations about contact tracing, the safe reopening of schools, and other central conversations that have arisen during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mistry further suggests it’s important “to collect and report on distributions of data, rather than point estimates. For example, if we think that way then maybe we can explore heterogeneity in things like behavior adoption—I want to know more than just the percent of people adopting a behavior, rather what’s the distribution of willingness to adopt behaviors, for example, mask wearing, and the covariates that go with it.”

Network science and our perilous future

The cases of both Foucault Welles and Mistry demonstrate network science’s fungibility, and the importance of integrating theory with data science, which aid in their ability to describe large, complicated patterns. But the true measure of a field is in what it offers for the future.

The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that of the 1.1 million people who left the workforce in September, 80% were women. That’s 865,000 women who will no longer be contributing to our economy (or bringing additional funds into their families). And research shows this is just the beginning.

Women are shouldering a disproportionate share of increased housework and childcare responsibilities during the pandemic— approximately 30 extra hours a week, reportedly. We’re now seeing the results of that, as more women begin dropping out of the workforce.

This trend could hit the marketing and advertising industry particularly hard. Not just because women make up two-thirds of the industry, according to a 2019 ANA study, but also because the ad business has been criticized for not being family-friendly.

Unfortunately, this bloodbath is only going get worse. A recent McKinsey/LeanIn.org report found that one-in-four women in corporate America is considering downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce altogether. That could remove another 2 million women from the workforce, erasing six years’ worth of gains.

While this pandemic will eventually come to an end, the damage it is doing to women in the workplace could last for decades.

How can we stem the losses? Temporary accommodations will help more women stay in the workforce through the pandemic, and in the decades that follow. But not enough companies are offering those. So women have to ask.

If you are thinking about quitting, my message to you is this: Before you go, negotiate. 

Thinking about what you would need to continue supporting your company during this time. Some ideas include:

• A temporary stipend to help cover the cost of additional childcare
• A modified schedule to help manage childcare demands
• A temporary stipend for an office rental so you can get work done outside of your home
• A relocation bonus if moving somewhere else (for example, closer to family who can help with childcare)
• An administrative assistant or additional team member to delegate lower impact work to, enabling you to focus on key projects

I’m hearing from human resources professionals that very few women are negotiating before heading out the door. This shouldn’t surprise us. Research done by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shows fewer women negotiate than men, and when they do, they have less confidence. This difference is commonly seen as a contributor to the gender pay gap, but during this pandemic we are seeing it contribute to a gender work gap.

Once you figure out what you want to ask for, prepare your ask. Find facts where you can: other companies that are doing this, the additional value it will drive for your company, etc. Then, when asking, put your request in terms of how it benefits the company. For example, the cost of replacing an employee is typically between 125% and 200% of the employee’s salary, so companies would much rather retain great employees than have to identify, recruit and train new ones.

While this pandemic will eventually come to an end, the damage it is doing to women in the workplace could last for decades. To avoid this, companies must offer their workforce more temporary support, and women must feel empowered to ask for what they need.

For fast casual restaurant chain Chipotle, social listening is a key component of their social media strategy. They are keenly aware of customer habits and quickly respond to user-generated content, including the often-comedic mis-pronunciation of the brand’s name.

Beginning today, the company is offering $100 each to the first 1,000 individuals who take a pledge and submit photo evidence to eat any energy bar prior to physical activity. The brand hopes the money will go toward a fitness-related expense, such as exercise equipment or a gym membership.

Energy bars contain more calories than snacks designed for casual munching between meals and are best had before or after a workout. According to a consumer survey funded by Kind, however, nearly three in four energy bar users consume the product while working at their desk or sitting on the couch at home. In other words, when they’re not supposed to.

“The goal of our campaign is to educate people so they can make the best food choices for themselves,” said Mike Barkley, CEO of Kind. “The misuse is within the category as a whole, which is why we expanded the pledge to include all energy bars. Whether you’re a Clif user or a Kind user, the intended use remains the same.”

Kind is also running an ad that calls out rival Clif Bar and Company. A 30-second spot created by ad agency Peanut Butter and Imagination has appeared on national TV and online since mid-September. The ad shows unamused people pouring syrup out of a Clif Bar package while a narrator tells viewers that Kind’s version contains less sugar.

The two brands have a history of going after each other in a very public manner. In March 2019, Clif Bar ran a New York Times ad touting its organic ingredients and challenging Kind to do the same. Like its latest ad, Kind replied with a spot showing a man pouring syrup out of his Clif Bar package as the narrator states that the product’s first ingredient, brown rice syrup, is “just another name for sugar.”

When asked if the strategy of calling out Clif Bar has benefited Kind, Barkley replied by saying, “Since day one, we’ve felt the most important and kindest thing we can do is provide people with straightforward information as they choose their snacks.”

The strategy of calling out the competition, such as Bud Light accusing Miller Lite and Coors Light for using corn syrup during the 2019 Super Bowl, comes with potential pitfalls.

“In today’s world, especially in the U.S., consumers are fatigued by negative energy and, more importantly, senseless bickering,” said Coltrane Curtis, founder and managing partner of creative agency Team Epiphany. “If a brand is to employ this strategy, they need to ensure they are ‘reading’ the threshold for continued bickering in the eyes of their consumer.”

Curtis noted that the success of this sort of campaign depends on a company understanding its “core consumer and properly evaluating the type of ‘energy’ they want from the brand.”

In the U.S., the snack bar category has grown 17% since 2015, from $7 billion to $8.2 billion, according to figures from market research firm Euromonitor International. For the past few years, Clif Bar has led the category, followed by General Mills’ Nature Valley then Kind.

Kind has been developing its energy bar, the brand’s latest innovation, for the past year.

“We had always wanted to enter the fitness space,” said Barkley. “When we realized that the energy bar category is filled with offerings that promote performance, yet typically contain higher amounts of sugar, oil blends or powders, we knew there was an opportunity for Kind.”

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Don’t miss the Brandweek Sports Marketing Summit and Upfronts, a live virtual experience Nov. 16-19. Gain insights from leading sports figures on how they navigated a year of upsets and transformation and what’s in store for the coming year. Register. 

I’ve been reporting on esports since 2011, and over the years, I’ve had the great privilege of interviewing dozens of Korean pro gamers. Outside of press interviews, I often spoke with these players casually in Korean during lunches, smoke breaks, and after parties. From all those conversations, a curious pattern emerged: Virtually every Korean pro gamer I spoke with told me they came from a working-class family.

When I brought this up to Korean coaches and players I spoke with in the Overwatch League, many of them were surprised. None of them had considered this common thread they may all share, nor how it might’ve contributed to their decision to join the esports industry. But upon reflection, most of them agreed that it was true. When I asked them how many Korean players they could think of who are the children of college graduates, they could only name a handful of exceptions.

“We don’t really talk about our parents a lot,” Pan-seung “Fate” Koo said, who is currently the main tank of the Florida Mayhem. “But from what I can gauge, there are barely any people who fit that description.”

I spoke with over a dozen sources, including academics and Korean players and staff in the Overwatch League to find out why. What emerged from those interviews was a story about how a high-risk endeavor like esports has traditionally attracted a certain class of competitors who come from families that have the least to lose and the most to gain.

Going Pro and the Promise of Escape

Jung “Xzi” Ki-hyo of the Paris Eternal grew up as the son of a bus mechanic. At the New York Excelsior (NYXL) Homecoming in 2018, Park “Saebyeolbe” Jong-ryeol told me he was working as a barista before going pro and that his father was a cab driver. Even Fate, who was described by his peers as an outlier since his father runs his own law firm, resisted the assumption that he grew up financially stable.

Much of their decisions to go pro hinged upon schooling. South Korea is a famously well-educated country where roughly 70 percent of students pursue higher education after high school. However, the academic environment is also intensely competitive, to the point where cram schools are a given for most Korean students who hope to score well on the Suneung, South Korea’s nationalized college entrance exam.

For Korean students whose families can’t afford private tutors or cram schools, the odds are stacked considerably against them. PC bangs—gaming cafés where you can rent a PC and play popular games for hours on end—however, are innumerable and very affordable. Most PC bangs charge about ₩1,000 an hour, which roughly comes out to $1.

So here’s the math: South Korea is the most fiercely skilled gaming region on the planet, but that’s because it has a bunch of working-class kids with little social mobility and a lot of free time (no tutoring, no cram school) with ubiquitous access to dirt-cheap internet cafés. South Korea’s gaming infrastructure and culture is what gives Korean kids the means to become the best players in the world, but the country’s structural inequality is a big part of what drives them to go pro in the first place.

Kim “WizardHyeong” Hyeong-seok, a coach with the Seoul Dynasty, is a product of both these worlds. He’s an alumnus of Daewon Foreign Language High School, an elite feeder school that prepares students to enter a “SKY school” (an acronym for the big three of Korean universities—Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University—and other prestigious institutions abroad.

But he also described a difficult childhood with a mother who was handicapped and a father who was in and out of prison.

“At many points,” WizardHyeong said. “My family was so poor that we couldn’t even pay the electricity bill, so I had to take a cold shower in the fucking winter.”

Burger King Summons the Ghost of Ronald McDonald in Voice-Activated Bloody Mary Stunt

By now it’s hardly surprising when Burger King takes potshots at McDonald’s with its marketing. But its latest one takes surprise to the next level—terror. If you’ve ever played “Bloody Mary” in front of the mirror, you know the drill, but it comes with a twist: BK in Sweden and Denmark is daring people to say “cancelled clown” (a dig at Ronald McDonald) in front of smart mirrors in its restaurants’ bathrooms. When the mirrors detect the phrase, the room is plunged into darkness and a gaunt Ronald appears. 

Watch: Are you brave enough to see the clown appear?

Another Creepy Campaign Gets Controversial:

In a campaign that didn’t land quite as well, Burger King’s “Scary Places” stunt tells customers to drive to dilapidated, abandoned fast food restaurants and use the app to get a coupon. Critics are calling it tone-deaf and lacking in empathy for the economic hardship the businesses have faced.In a campaign that didn’t land quite as well, Burger King’s “Scary Places” stunt tells customers to drive to dilapidated, abandoned fast-food restaurants and use the app to get a coupon. Critics are calling it tone-deaf and lacking in empathy for the economic hardship the businesses have faced. Read about it here.

Morton Revamps Its Packaging so Shoppers Will Know the Brand Sells More Than Just Table Salt

There have been a number of brand mascot retirements this year, but the Morton Salt Girl, who was born in 1914 and remains one of the most iconic and recognizable mascots of brand history, is not one of them. In fact, Morton’s new brand identity honors her, with the descender on the “R” it its logo featuring an upturned tail that harmonizes with her foot. What Morton aims to achieve with its sleek new design is helping consumers recognize that it’s not just about table salt, but also makes pool salt, water-softener pellets and ice melt.

Explore the new look: The more uniform design system seeks to be instantly recognizable no matter the aisle.

One of the Top Discrimination Lawyers in America Is Working With 600 & Rising

Advocacy and racial justice group 600 & Rising has a powerful new ally in Cyrus Mehri, founding partner of Mehri & Skalet PLLC, who has been involved in two of the largest class action discrimination suits in history and has pushed forward a key NFL diversity policy. Perhaps most notably for this industry, he worked on the 2009 Madison Avenue Project, which exposed underrepresentation of Black ad professionals. Now his firm will receive legal counsel from his firm on “a wide range of topics.”

Mobilization: 600 & Rising has revealed diversity data, but Mehri could help the org translate that into change.

• Also in agency news: Last week, Mother London launched Other, a new indie agency aimed at revitalizing the industry and boosting creativity.

Social Media Platforms Are Providing More Resources to Register Users to Vote

A recent study has shown a significant dropoff in voter registration since 2016, largely thanks to the pandemic, but social media platforms are taking up the call to encourage users to vote and inform them about the process and locations. More states are allowing online registration, allowing these platforms to direct users straight to portals where they can register or verify that they’re all set to vote. These efforts are a critical move for platforms, which many people believe to be a cause of much of the political divisiveness that has defined the year.

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For a solid overview of the issue, have a quick look at “The Middle Management Error Vendors Love Most.” It is a personal story about a famous director’s request for a blue disco ball. It will make you smile, cringe … or both.

The short version is that on my first job on a film set, the director asked for a 60-inch blue disco ball. An assistant producer ordered one from a vendor. It arrived on time and on budget. For reasons that I shall go into, it was never used.

Told this way, the “Blue Disco Ball” story doesn’t sound like much of a case study. But I can assure you, there are lessons to be learned.

The vision

In the director’s mind, he saw blue dots dancing on the set. His solution? A 60-inch blue disco ball hung out of frame. That would do the trick!

Lesson 1: If you’re not a professional in a specific field (in this case lighting and real-time effects), do not assume your solution is best—or even good. Share your goals with people schooled in the art and let them help you understand your options.

The meeting

The scene was scheduled to be shot in two days. In a production meeting with his department heads, the director asked for a 60-inch blue disco ball.

Lesson 2: If you are in charge, people will simply do what you tell them to do. It’s their job. This is great under most circumstances, but if your outcomes are not aligned with this incentive structure, the results will be suboptimal.

Three key department heads were missing from this meeting: props, art and lighting. The three of them were each holding production meetings of their own in different locations. So key people who could have offered high-level solutions were completely out of the loop.

Lesson 3: If you have the wrong people in the meeting, you are having the wrong meeting.

The vendors

The vendors all came back with similar pricing, including a significant rush charge. The pricing, while inside of the total production budget, was clearly out of line with the value of the purchase. No one said anything except, “When do you need it?”

Lesson 4: Vendors say yes. That’s how they get paid. That’s how they keep clients. Vendors do not push back, except with rush charges or outlandish price quotes. From a vendor’s point of view, you (the client) never seem to have the money to do it right, but you always seem to have the money to do it over. And when you need it in a hurry, money seems to magically appear. Vendors love orders for blue disco balls!

The alternative ending

In the real “Blue Disco Ball” story, the director threw a temper tantrum about an hour before the prop was scheduled to arrive. The property master, a solutions provider, just happened by in the middle of this tantrum and asked what the fuss was all about.

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The holiday lands on a Saturday with a full moon, for starters. Plus, daylight saving comes to an end in the wee hours of Nov. 1, giving revelers an extra hour to stay up late eating candy and bingeing horror flicks. This convergence of events is so rare that it won’t happen again for at least another century and a half, according to the Halloween Industry Association, a trade group formed to promote the holiday.

Unfortunately, the current public health crisis has dampened the Halloween spirit.

To help slow the spread of Covid-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned against traditional trick-or-treating. Haunted houses, hayrides with strangers and crowded indoor costume parties are also out. Hosting an outdoor scary movie night is less risky—assuming attendees remain six feet apart—but “if screaming will likely occur,” the agency explains on its website, “greater distancing is advised.”

In the weeks leading up to Halloween 2019, total U.S. candy sales hit $4.6 billion, according to the National Confectioners Association, whose members include industry heavyweights Mars, Ferrero and Hershey’s. That dollar amount is larger than those generated by Valentine’s Day ($3.5 billion), Easter ($3.5 billion) and the winter holidays ($4.5 billion).

But between Sept. 1 and Oct. 11 this year, candy ad spend across TV, digital and print was down 22% compared to last year, according to data intelligence platform MediaRadar.

To overcome the obstacles this year has presented, candy brands are approaching Halloween by embracing what the day is all about: creativity and imagination.

“It used to be we get the kids to the candy,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, director of insight for market researcher Mintel’s food and drink division. “Now they’re trying to get the candy to the kids.”

Hershey’s-owned Reese’s has created a remote-controlled, 9-foot-tall robotic door that drives and dispenses king-size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. When the device detects someone say “trick or treat,” it delivers the candy through its mail slot. Sour Patch Kids, owned by Mondelēz International, is orchestrating a “reverse trick-or-treat experience” where the brand will deliver bags of candy to lucky households in 12 U.S. cities.

Mars Wrigley, maker of M&M’s, Snickers and Skittles, created a virtual world that allows people to give and receive candy from home through October.

In an app called Treat Town, users select a Halloween-themed profile, then knock on other doors within the platform’s universe. Digital candy amounts to credits that can be exchanged for physical treats at select retailers. By mid-October, more than 100,000 people had downloaded Treat Town, according to the company.

“We’re trying to simulate trick-or-treating as much as possible and tap into some of the fun rituals,” Chris Brody, brand content and communications architect at Mars, told Adweek prior to the app’s Oct. 1 debut. “We have users and candy credit sales in every state,” he added.

Candy brands are also creating content and activities for families to celebrate safely at home. Ferrero, owner of Butterfinger, Crunch and Baby Ruth, is posting a new way to enjoy Halloween on Pinterest every day in October, with help from influencer partners.

“Parents are always ingenious and creative when it comes to their children and the joy of their children, but our approach is to add to that,” said Mark Wakefield, svp of marketing for Nutella and chocolate snacks at Ferrero North America. Work for the initiative began in the summer months when the brand realized it needed to plan for a different type of Halloween.

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