Reading up on the most compelling social media, tech, and brand stories is one of the joys of being the editor of Marketing Dive.
From the "subconscious menu" to Google's bad news for advertisers, here are the most important stories of the week.
Arby's makes apology commercial to Pepsi
They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In Arby's case, when life gave the fast food chain a potential PR crisis, the company somehow turned it into PR gold.
The chain has a deal with PepsiCo that calls for Arby's to feature Pepsi in at least two TV ads this year. The end of the year rolled around and Arby's marketing team realized they had... forgotten. Before Pepsi could call them out and turn it into a potential PR crisis, Arby's made a humorous ad apologizing to Pepsi that also doubled as a public apology and fulfilled its promise of featuring the soft drink. It looks like there are still new ideas after all.
Pizza Hut knows just what you're thinking
Between its new logo and out-there flavors, Pizza Hut appears to be going for splash with its rebranding efforts. Now the chain is piloting a 'subconscious menu' that picks out pizza options based on what your mind wants.
Confused? This is how it works: The tablet software— used at 300 of its UK locations right now—tracks eye movements and picks out pizza toppings based on how long the eye lingers on an option. And if you don't like the choices your inner-self picks out, you can intervene before placing the order. If the pilot goes well, we could be seeing eye-ordering in the U.S. soon.
Girl Scout cookie sales go digital
On Monday, perhaps the last-remaining organization relying on paper spreadsheets for sales moved to the Internet: the Girls Scouts of America.
Using an app and a personalized website for each individual scout, the rebrand is being touted a new way for the girls to track goals and handle money. While it definitely took the organization a long time to adapt to the Internet age, are we ready for a world where thin mints are just a click away?
Google: More than half of digital ads are never seen
Sorry, advertisers. Google had some bad news for you this week. More than half of digital ads are never seen by human eyes, according to the company—56.1% of them, to be exact. The explanation given was that the 56.1% appear outside of the viewable area of the browser, or are just seen by bots. With the widespread fraud and no easy solutions to the viewability problem, it's clear the digital ad world has some major hurdles to clear. Only time will tell what solves the issue.
Yahoo to surpass Twitter in U.S. mobile ads
The good news keeps on coming for Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. On Thursday, it was announced that Yahoo is about to become the third-largest company in U.S. mobile advertising by revenue, outpacing Twitter. Gross revenue for Yahoo is set to exceed $1.2 billion this year.
"We've invested deeply in mobile, and those investments are paying off," Ms. Mayer told analysts in October. Clearly. Given the turnaround Mayer has engineered in such a short amount of time, will 2014 be remembered as the year of Yahoo?