AUTOMOTIVE Avis/Apps Car rental service Avis is testing a smartphone app that enables customers to order a vehicle, pay for it, unlock it and drive it away – all without a key fob. Also, the app lets customers know which vehicles in a lot are available. How it works: after the customer orders, Avis authorizes the transaction and transmits the customer’s ID to the vehicle’s transponder. After the customer enters the car, visual controls on the smartphone act as a smart key fob. CONFECTION Ferrero/Nestlé Italian candy manufacturer Ferrero (Rocher chocolates and Nutella spreads) agreed to purchase Nestlé’s U.S. chocolate business, which includes Butterfinger and Baby Ruth brands, for $2.8 billion. The acquisition will make family owned Ferrero the third biggest chocolate seller in the U.S. Nestle/KitKat/Ruby Nestlé introduced a variation of its KitKat bar: a dip in a pink tinged, berry like- Chocolate chocolate. The limited-edition KitKats, called KitKat Chocolatory Sublime Ruby, will be sold online, in KitKat boutiques and in roughly 80 Japanese pop-up shops that will be open in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day. The company claims it is the first confectioner to sell Ruby chocolate, which arrived on the scene in September and was created by Swiss chocolate maker Barry Callebaut. CORPORATE Corporate/Unremitted A Wall Street Journal analysis indicated that 311 companies reported more Foreign Profits than $2.5 trillion in unremitted foreign profits at the end of their most recent fiscal years. The U.S. government expects $339 billion in taxes from repatriated profits over a decade from all companies. By sector: Sector Firms/Most Firms/Biggest Taxation (Billions:Profits) Repatriation Cash Piles (Billions) Tech ($978) Apple Apple $104 Microsoft Microsoft IBM IBM Alphabet Alphabet Cisco Systems Cisco Systems Oracle - Intel - Healthcare ($583) Pfizer Pfizer $51 Johnson/Johnson Johnson/Johnson Merck Merck Gilead Sciences - Amgen - 1 of 8 CORPORATE(cont’d) Corporate/Unremitted Sector Firms/Most Firms/Biggest Taxation Foreign Profits (Billions:Profits) Repatriation Cash Piles (Billions) (cont’d) Consumer ($378) - - $33 Industrials ($321) - General Electric $28 Energy ($158) - Exxon Mobil $20 Finance ($233) - - $13 Viacom/CBS Rumors are circulating – again – that Viacom and CBS are contemplating a merger. The last time an attempt scrutinized was September 2016. Note: Viacom and CBS became separate operating companies in 2005 after initially merging in 1999. FAST FOOD BK/Double Quarter In an effort to further challenge rival McDonald’s, Burger King has unveiled a Pounder hefty new burger made with a half-pound of beef, called the Double Quarter Pound King Sandwich – a direct aim at McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder. Note: Unlike the Double Whopper, the new Double Quarter Pound King has no lettuce, tomato or mayonnaise but it does have two slices of cheese. Also, the sandwich claims 60% more beef than the old Big King Burger at 900 calories and 54 grams of fat. By contrast, McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese has 770 calories and 45 grams of fat, according to the chain. GAMING 2018 Revenue According to tech advisory firm Digi-Capital, video game software and hardware could approach $170 billion this year. Highlights: ♦ mobile gaming software to deliver $55+ billion range ♦ PC gaming hardware sale to hit $30+ billion ♦ PC games (of the online variety) could drive $20+ billion. Nintendo/Switch 2017 saw the launch of Nintendo’s home console/portable hybrid Switch in March. To date, the company has sold 4.8 million machines. GLOBAL Google/Tencent Google and Tencent pacted to license each other’s technology patents, a deal that could help Google firm up its toehold in the Chinese market and accelerate the global expansion of the latter. The long-term cross-licensing agreement covers a broad range of products and technology. PERSONALITIES Fred Bass Fred Bass, the son of New York’s Strand Book Store – opened in 1927 – who persuaded his father to relocate the store in 1957 to its present location at the corner of Broadway and 12th Street instead of closing its Manhattan Fourth Ave structure and building a mail order business, has passed away. He was 89 years old. Meat In 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that farmers and meatpackers produced a record 99.7 billion pounds of red meat and poultry. Week of January 22, 2018 2 of 8 PERSONALITIES(cont’d) Dolores O’Riordan Irish singer Dolores O’Riordan, who was the lead singer of the Irish band Cranberries (Zombie, Linger), has passed away. She was 46 years old. Mike Trout Baseball’s Mike Trout, the two-time American League MVP for the Los Angeles Angels, is taking over the lead position as the sport’s top earner, as his salary jumps to $34.083 million in 2018. The torch was taken from Clayton Kershaw, also a Los Angeles Angel, whose $33 million salary was tops in 2016 and 2017. RETAIL CVS/Beauty CVS Health Corp. announced that commencing April it will no longer touch up Images beauty photos in advertising on social, digital and in stores and will add a watermark to the real imagery with a “CVS Beauty Mark.” Holiday Season/ Shoppers spent a record amount online during the holiday season, according to Online Spending Adobe Analytics, which reported that online shopping reached $108.2 billion, up almost 15% from $94.4 billion the prior year. Internet Tax/ The Supreme Court agreed to revisit a 26-year-old decision that prevented states Supreme Court from requiring many online retailers to collect sales tax. The court said that it would consider South Dakota’s attempt to revive a 2016 state law that requires out of state retailers with more than $100,000 in annual sakes to South Dakota residents, or more than 200 transactions per year with South Dakota customers, to report and collect sales tax. Online retailers Wayfair, Overstock and NewEgg challenged South Dakota’s law, arguing that it was invalid due to a 1992 Supreme Court decision. Walmart/Opioids Big box retailer Walmart will become the first national drug chain to offer a safe solution to dispose of unused prescriptions at its pharmacy locations. How it works: Walmart is teaming with DisposeRX, a Southern Pines, N.C. company to offer a small packet with an FDA-safe chemical blend that, when emptied into a pill bottle with warm water, lets patients dispose of any leftover medications in the trash. The medications (powder, pills, tablets, capsules or liquids) are converted into a biodegradable gel. VIDEO Amazon/Prime Amazon is raising the monthly fee for its Prime service – which offers customers free two-day shipping of products as well as streaming video and music – by 18% to $12.99, adding that annual subscriptions for the service remain at the $99 price point. Crackle/Sony Carckle, the free streaming video service, which launched in 2004 as Grouper and Crackle was acquired by Sony in 2006, has been re-branded as Sony Crackle. The service claims 18 million monthly viewers. Week of January 22, 2018 3 of 8 VIDEO(cont’d) Cross MediaWorks/ Cross MediaWorks and 605, an advanced data and analytics company focused on 605 the media and entertainment industry, have partnered to provide a measurement standard to help scale the addressable TV marketplace. Facebook/News Facebook is introducing changes to the kinds of posts, videos and photos that its Feeds more than two billion members will see most often: it will prioritize what their friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands. The solution is reported to create an independent, third party verification of performance providing a standardization of impression based TV campaigns as well as providing a unifying analysis of linear and addressable TV campaign performance. Also, Facebook announce that in the future it planns to prioritize high-quality news on the social network by allowing its users to rank news sources that they see as the most credible and trustworthy. Facebook/Watch Facebook is testing a feature called Watch Party that would allow the Party synchronization of video so Facebook groups can watch together. How it works: videos are chosen by group admins and moderators and can be any public videos on Facebook, live or recorded. Lionsgate Independent entertainment entity Lionsgate (The Hunger Games, Mad Men, Orange is the New Black) is contemplating a sale. Reported interested suitors include Amazon, Viacom, CBS and Verizon. Local TV/ The 4As and the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) have petitioned Measurement measurement company Nielsen to modify its published data streams to better approximate daily consumer consumption and capture more delayed viewing behavior. The proposed modification: replacing Nielsen’s Live Only data stream with Live +1 with the caveat that the Live Only data would still be tabulated and available through Nielsen but would not appear as a published stream. The argument: Live Only captures households tuning or people viewing a program on a specific station or cable network at the actual time the show is telecast. Any delayed viewing in excess of 25 seconds from the recorded time is not captured in Live Only data. Whereas Live +1 data captures households tuning into or people viewing a program at the actual time it was telecast and also captures any delayed viewing within 24 hours of a recorded program. The rationales: Live +1 accounts for the new viewing habits of today’s households, where consumers are starting programs but then pausing them and finishing them at their own pace and viewing programs on other devices that do not follow traditional program airing schedules. Paramount Last week (January 18), the Paramount Network, which took the place of Spike Network TV, launched, “dedicated to bringing premium storytelling on every screen.” Week of January 22, 2018 4 of 8 VIDEO(cont’d) Roku/Data OTT set-top box device service Roku (19 million active accounts) introduced a new in-house advertising data tool, Roku Ad Insights, which will allow marketers more audience measurement as well as cross platform video reach analysis for both OTT and linear TV to help advertisers more effectively plan OTT media campaigns.