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Influencer marketers put their TikTok ban contingency plans into action
- TikTok faces a likely US shutdown after the Supreme Court rejected its appeal.
- Brands and marketers are preparing contingency plans to shift content from TikTok.
- Managers shared their plans, including new clauses in their campaign contracts.
Creators are finalizing their post-TikTok plans.
TikTok is hurtling toward a US shutdown after the Supreme Court rejected its appeal of a divest-or-ban law. The app may "go dark" entirely on Sunday.
Ahead of a likely ban, TikTok influencers and their teams are offering contingency plans to assure brands and marketers that sponsored posts can move elsewhere if TikTok abruptly closes.
"We haven't seen anybody try to kill a contract, thank goodness," said Jennifer Powell, a talent manager who works with creators like Tezza and Ty French. "The good news is that most of the brands came into this year cautious about putting all their eggs into the TikTok basket, knowing that this judgment was looming."
Songfluencer, a platform that facilitates influencer campaigns for music marketers, has a "platform uncertainty" guarantee that promises marketers that creators will automatically repost TikTok content to Instagram or YouTube shorts if TikTok goes down.
"We want to make sure clients are not scared to run campaigns on TikTok," Songfluencer's CEO Johnny Cloherty said. "All of the creators in our network must agree to this new policy during this uncertain season."
Talent-management firm CFG has also been proactive in including clauses in its contracts with brands that ensure campaigns can migrate to a creator's "next highest-engaged" platform.
Powell, similarly, said her team has offered to move content to an "equal value" social platform if a sponsored TikTok post disappears.
Some of these preparations began months ago.
Gregory Littley, a freelance creative director and content producer, has been working with brand partners and clients on campaigns that aren't so tied to TikTok since November, he said.
"The language has shifted," Littley said about campaign deliverables. "It starts to really focus on the content as opposed to where you're posting it."
"Many of our current campaigns in progress that involve TikTok are preparing contingency plans for changing deliverables to different platforms," said Barbara Jones, founder of Outshine Talent.
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Not even a Cameron Diaz comeback can save Netflix's utterly banal 'Back In Action'
- "Back in Action" is Cameron Diaz's first film role in over a decade.
- Unfortunately, it's a poor comeback vehicle with rough dialogue and a thin plot.
- The film works fine as a casual watch, but not much else.
"Back in Action" is Cameron Diaz's first film role in over a decade. She should have made a better choice for a comeback.
The film, directed by Seth Gordon, is capital-F "Fine" at best and mediocre background watching at worst. Given that this is the movie Jamie Foxx miraculously recovered from a stroke to complete, one would hope the end product inspired stronger enthusiasm.
The aptly titled film stars Diaz and Foxx as Emily and Matt, suburban parents who were elite spies before having their first child and pivoting to coaching soccer and selling puzzles on Etsy. "Back in Action" kicks off 15 years in the past during their last mission together to steal an Industrial Control Systems key (don't worry about it) from a Eastern European crime lord. They succeed, but terrorists attack them on the plane back to safety. Presumed dead, Matt and Emily use the plane crash to disappear and raise the child that Emily has just learned she's carrying.
This opening sequence does little to establish Matt and Emily's relationship, or even their individual characters, past a few entertaining punches, quippy one-liners, and saccharine expressions of sincerity. "My favorite person is about to create my new favorite person," Matt tells Emily, despite having to clarify moments before that they were exclusive.
Their extremely normal life only gets blown up because Matt and Emily are caught on tape beating up a few guys ("BOOMERS WRECK DANCE PARTY") while picking their underage daughter Alice (McKenna Roberts) up from the club. With Alice and their son Leo (Rylan Jackson) in tow, they go on a quest to pick up the ICS key from Emily's mother Ginny (Glenn Close β why not?) and unite their family through espionage. Andrew Scott and Kyle Chandler are also in this film, for some reason, and are mostly wasted in their roles.
Aside from one tepid but somewhat surprising twist, "Back in Action" is a mΓ©lange of spy tropes, embarrassingly bad and self-explanatory dialogue, and trite familial conflicts. The film's emotional appeal hinges on Emily's relationships with Alice, who rebels against her for standard Teenage Girl Reasons, and her mother Ginny, whom she hates for being absent in her childhood. Simple friction leads to simple payoffs.
The film's fight sequences slightly redeem it, mostly because it's fun to watch Diaz and Foxx beat up some classic goons in tandem. However, the movie insists on soundtracking those fights to classic hits like Nat King Cole's "L.O.V.E." and Etta James' "At Last," seemingly in a bid to create a romantic, nostalgic atmosphere for its leads. To be fair, they have more chemistry in those moments than literally anywhere else in the film.
In the end, "Back in Action" is an unfortunate comeback choice for Diaz, and its script gives her and Foxx little to stand on through the film's nearly two-hour runtime. For audiences, it's a passable enough choice for a Friday night flick or folding laundry, but not much else.
"Back in Action" is streaming now on Netflix.