Groupe Marcelle Partners with Dentsu Creative Canada — LBB - LBB - Little Black Book

Somewhere down the line, a brand will probably hire Dentsu as its global entertainment agency, with a brief that has nothing to do with the creative or media accounts. That would have sounded far-fetched a couple of years ago. The branded entertainment hype has kept going for long enough now that it no longer does. It started with people getting rather good at ignoring ads, which pushed brands toward making things they chose to watch. Handily, the entertainment industry is short of cash and far less sniffy about taking a brand’s money than it once was. Social media has opened that door wider. Feeds that once showed a friend’s holiday snaps now run on shows made by creators that cost a fraction of a typical TV series.

Here’s your NYT Strands hint for today, plus the spangram and all of today’s Strands answers for puzzle No. 959 on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. Today’s Strands theme was tricky. It helps to be a runner. Read on for all the answers.

A supply-chain attack involving ConnectWise’s cloud services has exposed Microsoft 365 customers to unauthorized application access, with researchers reporting successful sign-ins across 173 partner and customer tenants. The incident centres on credentials associated with ConnectWise Cloud Backup, formerly SkyKick, and raises concerns about attackers exploiting permissions already entrusted to business software. ConnectWise has confirmed unauthorized access to application identities within its Cloud Backup environment. In an October 17 update on its service-status page, the company said it was shutting off application access, interrupting customer backups while investigation and remediation continued.

Huawei’s next budget phone, the Enjoy 100 Pro, just leaked with a battery above 8,000mAh, a Kirin 8-series chip and four new colors, according to well-known Weibo tipster Digital Chat Station. The Enjoy line is how Huawei sells phones to millions of price-conscious buyers in China, and this leak shows that huge batteries have become a budget feature, while screens may be where costs get cut. Here’s what the leak says, what we think it means, and what to expect before launch.