NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Joe Levy is defecting from Rolling Stone magazine, where he is executive editor, to take over as editor in chief at rival music mag Blender early next month.
LONDON – BT has handed its consolidated £65 million media planning and buying account to the Publicis agencies Starcom and Zed Media.
LONDON – Learndirect has hired marketing services agency Golley Slater to its advertising account following a protracted pitch process.
LONDON – The proportion of unsolicited emails compared to all emails reached a record high of 97.02% during December 2007, according to figures released by UK email security provider SoftScan.
LONDON – InterContinental Hotels Group and Emap Magazines have teamed up to promote the hotel company’s Express by Holiday Inn’s short breaks.
LONDON – BusinessWeek is launching an Israeli edition in Hebrew, featuring editorial from BusinessWeek as well as local stories developed by Tel-Aviv publishing company Hirsh Media.
The ubiquitous iPod has not only spawned hordes of similar products, but ads as well. And often if it’s not a blatant rip off of the the classic iPod style, it’s a feeble attempt at borrowed interest. You can almost here the marketer saying “Hey, I’m cool. I have an iPod in my ad.” Well a recent campaign from DDB Sydney turns that model on it’s head and slams it down on the ground — quite literally. The ads for the NSW Police Department seek to bring attention to the alarming rise in the number of teen deaths that have been occurring as the teens, lost in tunes, fail to pay attention as they cross the road. All of the ads feature a single line of copy “Watch for cars when wearing headphones.” Nice work. Simple. Clean. Arresting. It will be interesting to see what sort of response they get from Apple.
Technorati Tags: iPod,PSA, review, advertising, beyond madison avenue
It’s a tough marketing challenge, since you can’t rely on any individual’s repeat business to sustain a customer base. But a wire-service story suggests there’s a “potentially huge†market for biodegradable coffins as part of a broader trend toward “natural†burials, which avoid formaldehyde embalming and other planet-hostile practices. The story notes that cremation used to be viewed as the eco-friendly way of disposing of oneself but has fallen out of environmentalist favor due to its use of fossil fuels. No doubt ad agencies will come up with catchy slogans to tout competing brands of biodegradable coffins.
—Posted by Mark Dolliver
Did you ever have that fantasy about looking so hot that other hotties literally pause on the street to look at you? Or make love to themselves against your windows? Or put on period costumes to play kinky games…
In terms of media exposure, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in office less than a year, certainly gets around. There’s his romance with former supermodel Carla Bruni; his son’s “outing†as a hip-hop producer; his tirades against reporters; a YouTube video in which he looks tipsy; and a proposal to ban commercials from French TV and recoup the revenue by taxing the Internet and mobile phones. All I can say is: They’ve got hip-hop in France? Sacre bleu! 50 Cent would be Cinquante Cent, but he’d also be known as Ciddy. As for Sarkozy, the man who once apologized by saying “My English is very bad,†he has no trouble getting his messages across loud and clear.
—Posted by David Gianatasio
LONDON – RadioCentre has created a new team to bring together its research and insight capabilities.
This Ford Ranger ad is billed by Jalopnik as “the craziest you will ever see,†and it actually lives up to the hype. If this is what tallying bananas entails, then it’s no wonder the guys in that song wanna go home so bad. It’s also hard to believe the truck’s owner didn’t notice one giant ape disciplining another for picking up his truck and running it into the side of a cliff. Or for that matter, that a giant ape picked up his truck and ran it into the side of a cliff. He must’ve been holding it in all day, that’s all I can figure.
—Posted by David Kiefaber
With help from Stink and TBWA\China, Psyop put together “Together” for Adidas and the ’08 Olympics. Tagline: “Impossible is nothing.” It’s very Nike, with a little power-to-the-people in concentrate. Victory, meet China….
Brandkeys publishes this thing called the Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. According to this year’s index, Starbucks lost serious ground in ’07 for forgetting what made it a big name in the first place: the coffee experience. Who’s winning the…
LONDON – British Airways (BA) has unveiled details of its offshoot airline, called OpenSkies, offering flights between Continental Europe and the US.
Dave and Eddy claim they’ve found THE GREATEST AD EVER. (And it’s not that damn Volkswagen ad.) In an attic! Visual fetishists, prepare to be disappointed. It lacks color, imagery or music to boost its emotional cred — just…
LONDON – The Times Higher Education Supplement will relaunch on 10 January with a new website, plus a full-colour magazine format, with a new name – Times Higher Education.
LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland has moved its £15m retail advertising account from M&C Saatchi to CHI & Partners without a pitch.
President Nicolas Sarkozy is proposing a complete ban on public TV commercials in France. To make up for revenue lost, the country will tax the internet and mobile phones. The IHT calls the move “virtually without precedent.” The move…
LONDON – The AA has kicked off the expected review of its £33 million above- and below-the-line creative accounts with a view to consolidating them into one agency and placing greater emphasis on direct response.
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