Staples

Ten Most Memorable Back-to-School Ad Campaigns

The Drum published a feature listing ten notable back-to-school advertising campaigns, spanning retailers and charities such as Staples, Old Navy, JCPenney, Target, Sandy Hook Promise and The Diana Award. The piece highlights creative approaches — from parent-focused humor and child-directed work to shock-value PSAs and cause-driven activations — and cites measurable outcomes like view counts, recall rates, donation commitments and sales uplifts that demonstrate long-term impact beyond seasonal selling.

Publishers Shift Away from Google Search Traffic

Publishers are increasingly trying to reduce dependence on Google search traffic by diversifying audience and revenue sources, according to analysis of recent earnings calls. The New York Times is investing heavily in video production; News Corp’s Dow Jones relies primarily on subscriptions; People Inc., USA Today Co. and Ziff Davis are building audiences across social, video and newsletters while growing non-traffic revenue; and BuzzFeed is cutting costs and moving to a flexible contributor model. Publishers face trade-offs — for example, blocking Google crawlers would also remove search referrals — so many are pursuing multi-channel strategies rather than a single replacement for search. The briefing also highlights trends around ads aimed at AI agents, AI-generated summaries, and publisher/industry responses to AI-driven changes in search traffic.

Target names Chandhu Nair as first Chief AI Officer

Target appointed Chandhu Nair as its first chief AI officer, joining the company on Aug. 24 after more than six years at Lowe’s where he most recently served as senior vice president of stores, data, AI and innovation. Target also promoted Purvi Shah to senior vice president of user experience; both Nair and Shah will report to Prat Vemana, chief information and product officer. The moves are part of CEO Michael Fiddelke’s broader turnaround strategy aimed at modernizing customer experience and accelerating growth. Target positioned the new AI C-suite role to focus on coordinating AI across the enterprise and closely aligning AI efforts with user experience to move from insight to action faster.