Hasta La Creative!

How many times have I muscled my way to the hole and, hanging off the rim as the backboard gloriously shattered around my head, wished that my sneakers smelled like grape Kool-Aid? The answer is zero, since I’m barely 5-foot-5 and don’t play basketball. Even if I were 6-foot-5 and did play basketball, however, the answer would be the same. Even though Reebok and Kool-Aid (there’s an obvious match!) have joined together to create scented footwear, I’m afraid I’m still not interested. Consider: In a pickup game among 11-year-olds, who’s going to get beaten up? The kid whose shoes emit the sweet scents of lemon-lime Kool-Aid, that’s who. Oh, according to Brandweek: “The soles of the shoe depict Kool-Aid’s iconic Kool-Aid Man.” Thus ensuring that you’ll get pounded in the locker room, too.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

It’s always fun to visit a corporation’s Web site when the company has just lost billions due to massive fraud. The site of Societe General is no exception. Go to the “Careers” section in the English-language edition of the site and you’ll see pages headed by the motto, “Growth, if it works for us, it works for you.” Hmm. Guided by such a delphic statement, no wonder Jerome Kerviel (now known in the French press as “the mad trader,” according to a piece in The New York Times) took it upon himself to circumvent Societe Generale’s financial safeguards and make illicit trades that have cost the company some $7 billion. The behavior that should have been a red flag to his colleagues? As the Times article notes, Kerviel “reported to work early, stayed late, and took only four days off in 2007, in a nation where six weeks of vacation is de rigueur.” It can’t be long before he turns up in some company’s advertising as a rogue-madman-trader celebrity endorser. In so doing, he’d be following somewhat more grandly in the footsteps of Nick Leeson, the rogue trader whose dealings bankrupted the venerable Barings Bank in 1995. Leeson’s own Web site says he “continues to speak regularly at conferences and dinners” in his post-prison career.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

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LONDON – Ryanair is refusing to back down in a battle with the advertising watchdog and says it will not pull a ‘provocative’ schoolgirl ad that has been banned. The Advertising Standards Authority is instructing media owners not to run the ad.

MySpace is now “open” for business.

According to The Wall Street Journal, MySpace will formally launch the MySpace Developer Platform next Tuesday with a kickoff event and workshop at its new San Francisco office.

The company said the program should result in innovations in how friends connect and communicate.

MySpace already has informally allowed developers to create interactive applications known as “widgets.” The photo-sharing service Photobucket became so popular that MySpace’s parent company bought it for about $300 million.

By creating a formal developers program, MySpace plans to give programmers “deeper access” to the site and the ability to “build richer applications as part of it,” said Amit Kapur, 26, named Tuesday as MySpace’s chief operating officer.

LONDON – England rugby star Jonny Wilkinson is joining other high-profile sportsmen in promoting the Gillette shaving brand.

LONDON – Packaging design agency Touchpoint has redesigned the packaging for Glengettie, the Welsh heritage tea brand from Typhoo, to help drive sales throughout its homeland and the rest of the UK.

LONDON – Below-the-line agency Mason Zimbler has been acquired by Texas-based digital and direct company Harte Hanks for an undisclosed sum.

LONDON – Eurosport has again topped the list of most-watched pan-European TV channels, though it and second-placed MTV’s weekly reach fell, according to the EMS 2007 Winter Survey.

NEW YORK – Omnicom, headed by president and CEO John Wren, has successfully defended a lawsuit from investors, who were claiming $1bn (£502m) in damages over the way it accounted for its internet assets following the dotcom bust.