The Ad Council is embarking on its most extensive rebrand in the organization’s 75-year history to better adapt to changing industry trends, reports MediaPost’s Agency Daily, which added that the Ad Council “is expanding its own internal production capabilities and content creation model to complement the group’s traditional ad agency partnership model.

“The group will now increase its ability to work directly with digital and linear media channels, platforms and talent in order to “optimize” content for various partners. The company’s own internal content studio will create original graphic and video assets for campaigns and the Ad Council brand.

“This new direction will evolve as to how the organization works with corporate brands, expanding beyond the more traditional client model. It will develop a strategy in which nonprofits and federal government agencies serve as campaign sponsors and convening corporate coalitions fund and support individual campaigns.”

By way of background, the Ad Council states “The idea for the Ad Council was born in November 1941. Days later, with the entry of the U.S. into World War II, we were christened The War Advertising Council and soon created a campaign to sell War Bonds.

“More than seventy years and hundreds of campaigns later, the Ad Council remains America’s leading producer
of public service communications,” including Smokey Bear.

(A Virginia artist, Rudy Wendelin of Arlington, depicted the friendly firefighting bear with the ranger hat and shovel for four decades, and is often credited with immortalizing Smokey Bear in pop culture history.)