Hasta La Creative!

LONDON – Sky News has expanded its online news offering with podcasts dedicated to foreign affairs and business.

OK, who doesn’t love Scooby Doo? But this spot featuring the clan just doesn’t seem to click. It’s not really the agency’s (Deutsch LA) fault. It’s more the fault of the notion you can just suddenly implant a commercial…

While brands certainly don’t want people using their products, logos and other related imagery to create products of their, own, the hammer that Ford legal dropped on the Black Mustang Club seems a bit heavy handed. Recently the club…

Looks like MySpace is working on a gaming portal. The URL for this page is games.myspace.com. This could be a hit if the games are less like the ones you can find on other casual game destinations (Yahoo Games, for example) and more like Facebook app games with a stronger social component to them. Social advergames on MySpace would also be an interesting ad channel.

There are plenty of Flash games out there for MySpace users to embed already, but I haven’t seen any that let you play with your friends.

Oh, and to the readers of this blog: I just got back from a vacation with no internet hook-up, but now we are back to our regular programming.

Also, this is the 2008th post on this blog since the beginning.

According to The New York Times, Zagat Survey is for sale and may fetch as much as $200 million.

The Zagats, who met at Yale Law School, could not find a publisher for their annual Manhattan restaurant rankings guide in the early 1980s, so they began publishing it themselves and delivering copies to any bookstore that would stock them. They set up a publishing company in part to get tax deductions for meals.

The business has since expanded wildly with international guides in multiple languages and into new categories. The company also began making custom guides for corporations. For example, Walt Disney commissioned a guide for attractions at its theme parks and WellPoint, the health insurer, commissioned a guide on doctors in its network. In both cases, the rankings and reviews were completed independently of the companies that paid for them.

The article suggests that the media company would make a great acquisition for a carrier looking for a mobile content play. I can also see a credit card company wanting to buy this firm. Am Ex is already deep into custom publishing with titles like Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine.

LONDON – Times Media has made four senior marketing appointments, boosting the team under recently appointed sales and marketing director Katie Vanneck.

LONDON – Tidalwave, the technology sector marketing agency, has launched an offshoot called Hurricane that will offer creative marketing services backed by web-based technology to B2B and consumer brands.

LONDON – A stockbroker that used high-pressure sales techniques has been fined £250,000 and is being forced to write to its customers and tell them how they can make complaints.

There were bound to be a few glitches when Chrysler decided to promote the 2009 Dodge Ram on Sunday by escorting a herd of Texas Longhorn cattle through the streets of Detroit. Things seemed to go pretty smoothly until Chrysler LLC vice chairman and president Jim Press tried to describe the revamped model’s benefits, just as some of the cattle started mounting each other. “The bulls want to see the trucks, they don’t want to leave,“ Press said as the romance began. “Oh, look at that. … Well, let’s not watch that.” Auto writers have praised Press for his ability to roll with the situation, but I think he missed a few good opportunities: “Here, watch what we’re gonna do to the competition.” “See? Dodge always comes out on top!” “Hey, looks like someone is playing John Mayer on the new Dolby 7.1 in-dash MP3 player!” Or, for maximum awkwardness, he could have just yelled “Ram!” into the microphone until it was over. Photo via The GarageBlog.

—Posted by David Griner

LONDON – Motorola has consolidated its £200m advertising account for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) into Ogilvy following a six-month review of its agency arrangements, Marketing can exclusively reveal.