The Counterpuncher: The Guardian’s new CRO Hamish Nicklin is on a mission

For our latest issue of Pulse, Digiday's print quarterly magazine, we spoke to The Guardian's new CRO, Hamish Nicklin, about his plans for the publisher's commercial mission. "We’re chasing the wrong things," he says. "The idea of bombarding people with ads for the sake of scale, at cheap costs, is a bit rubbish. It doesn’t work for advertisers or consumers, or publishers. We’ve forgotten what really matters."

The definitive Digiday guide to what’s in and what’s out for 2017

It's almost 2017. And that means it's a time to look ahead. So here's the annual Digiday guide to what will be in and what will be out for next year

Instagram’s Eva Chen: ‘Fashion’s always been over the top’

Eva Chen left media to work full time at Instagram as the platform's head of fashion partnerships. Chen has become somewhat of a social media mogul, and, here, she shares insights on the impacts Instagram has had on the fashion calendar, influencer culture and brands' relationships with customers.

How to get big without sucking: Under Armour has grand ambitions

An unfettered hunger for success goes some distance toward explaining Under Armour’s meteoric rise over the two decades. The brand has continuously disrupted the sports-apparel market, with 26 consecutive quarters of 20 percent-plus growth. It has offered surprising competition to global behemoths like Nike and Adidas by continuously investing in newer categories, consistently pushing the envelope in terms of its marketing and amassing the world’s largest connected fitness community with over 190 million users. But growth often comes at a cost, and with a degree of sacrifice. As Under Armour sets its sights on new international locations, new categories and connected fitness, the Baltimore-based brand is facing increasing headwinds.

Media deals that should happen in 2017

OK, so maybe 2016 wasn’t the “bloodbath” that Vice pichman/CEO Shane Smith predicted. But it did have its share of big deals, chief among them Verizon’s gobbling up of AOL. We asked industry insiders for their takes on the deals that absolutely should happen in the next 12 months. These aren’t predictions that they will happen; in fact, they’re so logical that they probably won’t.

When personal brands go wrong: How Nasty Gal suffered while its founder soared

Nasty Gal's future is up in the air. The online retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, following a series of layoffs and high-profile employee lawsuits. While Nasty Gal faced a series of setbacks, however, its founder, Sophia Amoruso, saw her own star -- and net worth -- climb, perhaps at the expense of her company.

Year in Preview: Brands will get insular in 2017

People have marginalized hateful speech on social media for a long time but this recent election cycle is something of a validation of our uglier impulses. This has become challenging for brands especially as they find themselves being involuntarily dragged into hot-button ideological issues like immigration and politics. In that sense, 2017 could be the year when brands become insular and real-time riffing falls by the wayside.

Year in Preview: Hello, zero-margin agency

Zero margin agencies are coming. After DDB and McDonald's signed a low-margin deal this year, more of these deals will follow. “It’s agency terminology to refer to these things as zero margin, from an advertiser perspective it’s a heavily incentivized performance-based contract,” says Tom Denford, chief strategy officer at consultancy ID Comms.