Sam Jackson Joins The Secret Service

Director Matthew Vaughn has crossed comic-book universes to nab Nick Fury himself, Samuel L. Jackson, to play the bad guy in his upcoming The Secret Service.

Variety has the report on the film, which is based on the comic by Kick-Ass writer Mark Millar. Colin Firth and Taron Egerton have previously been cast in the project.

"Vaughn had always intended to have a big star as his main antagonist, having already pursued Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio," says the trade.

Next up will be finding the female lead, with Emma Watson and Dark Shadows' Bella Heathcote reportedly under consideration.

Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottIGN, on IGN at scottcollura and on Facebook.

Advertising: Robert Murray of iProspect Joins Skyword as President

In another sign of the growing role that content marketing is beginning to play in advertising, Robert J. Murray, global president of a leading digital agency, iProspect, which is part of the Aegis Media division of Dentsu, is leaving to join Skyword, a content marketing specialist, as president, a new post. Mr. Murray is to begin at Skyword, based in Boston, on June 3.

Content marketing — also known as branded content or branded entertainment — refers to editorial content like articles, video clips, movies, television shows, photo galleries and even comic books that is created on behalf of marketers that serve as presenting sponsors. The content is bought in place of traditional pitches like commercials or banner ads.

Content marketing follows the venerable “brought to you by” model of consumer engagement, popularized in the 1930s through 1950s by radio and television, updated for a digital age to encompass platforms that include Web sites, streaming video, search engines and social media.

In a survey conducted among more than 2,000 marketing students in four European countries, which was published this week by the MediaSchool Group, 81 percent said they agreed or agreed strongly that content marketing would be an essential part of their jobs in a decade.

“The content space is incredibly hot right now,” Mr. Murray said in a phone interview from Singapore before the announcement of his new job, scheduled for Friday. “Content is king.”

“Brands need to be part of the conversation,” he added, “and the key is content.”

“Anytime you make a big move like this, it’s a leap of faith,” said Mr. Murray, who is 45. “I had to believe in the product and I had to believe in the people.”

Helping to cultivate that belief, he added, was his experience at iProspect working with Skyword since last summer for several clients, “most notably General Motors.”

Mr. Murray, who goes by Rob, has worked at iProspect for almost 15 years. Before becoming global president in 2009, he held posts that included chief executive of iProspect U.S. and president, and he led the company through its acquisition by Aegis in 2004. (Aegis was acquired by Dentsu in March.) Before joining iProspect, Mr. Murray was a consultant for Bain & Company.

In addition to General Motors, Skyword clients and customers include AutoTrader.com, I.B.M., Iron Mountain, the MarketWatch unit of Dow Jones & Company, TransUnion and United Way. Skyword offers a content marketing platform to produce and promote original content aimed at consumers.

Skyword was founded in December 2010 by Tom Gerace, an entrepreneur who also founded Be Free and Gather.com. Skyword has attracted investors that include the Cox Media Group division of Cox Enterprises; a round of financing that was obtained last week by Skyword, which totaled $6.7 million, was led by Cox Media.

“Creating content is responding to consumer information needs, what they’re searching for and sharing” on social media, Mr. Gerace said in a separate phone interview.

Another reason content marketing is becoming popular, he added, is that “marketers are starting to think about connecting with consumers in the digital space differently” than they do in traditional media.

Mr. Murray’s experience “running a business that spans the globe” will serve Skyword well, Mr. Gerace said, particularly as “our business is becoming increasingly global.”

“I’m headed to London next week, looking at opening our first office internationally,” he added, “and we would likely do that in London.” In addition to its Boston headquarters, Skyword has a technical center in Pittsburgh.

An issue that could slow or blunt the growth of content marketing is concern over how it can blur the line between editorial content and advertising. The worry is not new; in the 1951 movie “Ace in the Hole,” a hard-boiled reporter played by Kirk Douglas asks his young co-worker, “Say, what did you take in that school of journalism? Advertising?”

Mr. Gerace agreed that branded content “can be problematic if it’s not transparent,” describing himself as no fan of “inserting brand-influenced content into existing, respected media properties.”

“Audiences will come to brands if they’re creating great stuff,” he said.

Mr. Murray acknowledged that “there’s definitely an underbelly” to content marketing.” The way to address those qualms is to produce “high-quality, authentic content,” he said, rather than products like advertorials, which consumers often dismiss as ads masquerading as articles.

“We’re trying to work with the world’s biggest and best brands,” Mr. Murray said. “As part of that challenge, you have to maintain the brand standard.”

IProspect has filled the vacancy created by Mr. Murray’s departure by promoting Ben Wood — president for Britain and the Europe, Middle East and Africa region — to global president. And Misty Locke, global chief marketing officer at iProspect, will also serve in a new post, president of iProspect Americas.

Bits Blog: Ellen Pao, Who Sued Kleiner Perkins, Joins Reddit

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Ellen Pao, a former partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

You still can’t ask Ellen Pao anything. But Reddit announced Thursday that the former venture capitalist will now be working with the social networking site, home of the popular Ask Me Anything chats.

Ms. Pao shocked Silicon Valley when she filed a discrimination suit last spring against her employer at the time, the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. The suit was much debated but brought up widespread accusations that the Valley, for all its 21st-century tech, had medieval attitudes toward women. Ms. Pao has maintained her silence about the suit.

Yishan Wong, Reddit’s chief executive, said on the company’s blog that Ms. Pao had been “a formal and informal adviser to Reddit for more than a year, and recently decided to finally join us full time. She’ll be working on helping us build strategic partnerships that benefit the community.”

Ms. Pao herself went on to add: “I grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, raised by enginerds on ‘Star Wars,’ computers and books. I live in San Francisco, via New York City, Boston and Hong Kong. I’ve worked with dozens of tech companies, traveling to 11 countries on five continents, to help build a variety of consumer and business platform companies.”

She said her favorite Reddit categories were Ask Me Anything and pareidolia, which is pictures of things that look like things they are not (trees that seem to have faces, etc). That is a perfect choice, because a court will eventually decide whether her suit is what it says it is or is something else entirely.

David Cameron Joins Twitter, and Pith Follows

Give him points for effort. But Mr. Cameron, who had already attracted more than 80,000 followers by Sunday afternoon, clearly had not reckoned with the sharp, anarchic sense of humor that Twitter can unleash, particularly among the annoyed and the restive.

Angry at the government’s economic philosophy, at an austerity budget filled with measures cutting jobs and services, at the reorganization of the National Health Service, at recent suggestions by Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, that he would like to limit abortion rights, the Twitter-using public unleashed a torrent of witty, mean remarks.

Some teased Mr. Cameron’s privileged background and rich friends. Others attacked his policies. Others were just funny.

Jonathan Marriott wrote, “Times are hard. Do I sack the cleaner, the gardener or just use tax avoidance techniques?”

Johnmc72 asked: “Do you know anyone who has ever eaten soup from a cereal bowl?”

The whole exercise apparently started when Lord Prescott, a Labour politician and former deputy prime minister who is now out of office and spends a lot of time on Twitter, noticed that Mr. Cameron had joined the Twitterati. He responded with a fakely innocent suggestion.

“Now that @david_cameron is on Twitter, why don’t we ask him a few questions?” he posted.

And the #askdave thread was born — possibly an allusion to #askboris, the hashtag the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, uses when he opens the floor on Twitter and takes questions from constituents. Those chats are generally fairly jolly, like Mr. Johnson himself.

By contrast, #askdave did not turn out to be the most flattering of threads.

Many of the questions to Mr. Cameron involved matters of upper-crust etiquette, including things like how to find an “average Joe” kind of Champagne when one is tired of Dom Pérignon; how many cooks to hire in one’s kitchen; and what to do with a trust valued at £30 million, or about $48 million — the amount that Mr. Cameron and his wife stand to inherit, according to one account, from their families.

There were more:

¶ “Our neighbour works in trade, would it be inappropriate to invite them to our next country supper?” Bryan Nott asked.

¶ “How do I know which way up my cummerbund goes?” Stephen Thomas asked.

¶ “I wonder if you could tell me which wine goes best with roast swan?” Amanda asked.

Other posts showed a bitterness toward Mr. Cameron’s policies:

¶ “When you said the Tories would promote growth in UK, you did mean in unemployment, homelessness and the deficit, right?” Tiernan Douieb wrote.

¶ “Please tell us @david_cameron, what exactly is it about women that makes you want to erode their human rights?” Dusty asked.

¶ “Do you wear special contacts that render the poor invisible?” Ben Bartlett said.

Many on Twitter accused Mr. Cameron of breaking various promises. But he has stuck at least to his Twitter promise of not sending “too many tweets.” As of Sunday evening, he had written four, one explaining that he was about to go on television to talk about how his government is “on the side of people who want to get on in life.”