Zimmerman Advertising employees say they feel pressure to return to the office

Good morning and welcome to Insider Advertising for March 16. I'm senior advertising reporter Lauren Johnson, and here's what's going on:

• Zimmerman's return to the office.
• Memo's funding raise.
• Netflix's TikTok followers boom.

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Tips, comments, suggestions? Drop me a line at [email protected] or on Twitter at @LaurenJohnson.

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Employees at Omnicom-owned Zimmerman Advertising say the agency is pressuring them to return to the office

• Lindsay Rittenhouse reports that employees said agency execs have been pressuring them to return and that some are doing so for fear of losing their jobs.
• The employees said execs told them that remote work was hurting the company financially.
• According to the staffers, the execs said if they did not return to the office, there would likely be layoffs.

Read the story.

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Public relations startup Memo raises $7 million from investors in Uber, Robinhood, and The Trade Desk, to take on giants like Cision

• Sean Czarnecki reports that Memo, a startup that measures public relations work, has raised $7 million in seed funding.
• Susa Ventures and MHS Capital led the funding round.
• Memo plans to use the proceeds to more than double its headcount to about 50.

Read the story.

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Netflix and ESPN gained the most TikTok followers among brands in the last year, according to new research. Here were the other top performers.

• New research from Conviva found that Netflix and ESPN added the most followers among brands on TikTok last year, reports Dan Whateley.
• Netflix has also leaned into its own TikTok account as an avenue for promotion, posting 536 videos between February 2020 and February 2021.
• Other fast-growing brand accounts included Overtime, Barstool Sports, and the WWE.

Read the story.

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More stories we're reading:

• WATCH: Top execs from Roku, UTA, and Molson Coors explain how to navigate the future of streaming-video advertising (Insider)
• 30 current and former Mailchimp employees detail the conditions that led to a 'mass exodus' of women and people of color (Insider)
• The biggest shareholder of Reddit darling AMC downsized its stake after the theater chain's record $4.6 billion loss last year (Insider)
• Scott Galloway says a tough road for 'second-tier VCs' is good news for startup founders raising money: 'It's a great time to be a seller.' (Insider)
• People are reporting that thousands of dollars' worth of crypto art was stolen on an NFT marketplace (Insider)
• Grammys television audience shrinks to a new low (New York Times)
• Polar spins off its programmatic buy-side business into a new company called Nova (AdExchanger)

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow! You can reach me in the meantime at [email protected] and subscribe to this daily email here.