Hasta La Creative!

Scottish airline Loganair is readying a PR campaign to attract tourists and business travellers from around the UK.

The sweets company behind iconic brands Love Hearts, Parma Violets and Drumsticks has signed a new agency as it celebrates its 80th anniversary. Confectioner Swizzels Matlow has hired Cheshire-based Peppermint PR to raise its profile and promote the family-run business’s heritage. The agency will report to Swizzels Matlow communications director Andrew Matlow.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Taking after the lackluster results of its previous three quarterly reports, the Publishers Information Bureau's 2007 magazine-ad-revenue report has concluded ad revenue grew 6.1% over last year. But that belies the fact that total ad pages were down 0.6% overall, a less-severe drop than expected from the incremental drop over the year, thanks in part to a slight uptick in the fourth quarter (0.1%).

It seems like only yesterday when Tivo first came on the market much to advertisers dismay. Marketers everywhere attacked the service, with the CEO of Turner going so far as to accuse commercial skippers of theft. A lot has changed since then. Advertisers have slowly come to terms with the fact that people will fast forward through ads and Tivo has introduced a new products in an attempt to appease these advertisers including pop-up banners and other more interactive units.

But even as this un-easy alliance has been forged, no one seems to be taking much notice of Apple TV. With the latest version now supporting not only a slew of popular tv shows but the ability to rent movies — and with both options being available in HD — I’m surprised we haven’t heard more screaming from marketers. Imagine if everyone started consuming all of their tv and movie entertainment in this a la carte style and the implications it would have not only for advertisers but cable providers as well. Let’s do the math. I’ll use my own television and movie consumption as an example. As someone employed in advertising I figure it’s my duty to watch tv, and I do enjoy a HD picture so I currently subscribe to DirecTV. My package includes some premium channels, the HD and the DVR options and currently runs me $101.97 a month. I also use Netflix which runs another $18.43. So a month of tv and movies costs me $120.40. The reality is I don’t watch that much tv and often don’t get through my 3 movies a month — who has that amount of time? Out of the zillions of channels I have I really only watch a handful of shows: 30 Rock, Lost, The Office, Project Runway, Top Chef and a few others that I’ll just refer to as guilty pleasures — so 7 shows in all a week or about 28 a month which is probably a little high since I never seem to catch them all. If I were to purchase those same programs through Apple TV I’m looking at $55.72. If I throw in 3 movies, which again is a little high, I’m looking at another $14.97 assuming I’m going with just new releases in HD. So for only $70.69 I can have access to all of the content I regularly watch (with much of it in higher quality HD) at a savings $49.31 a month and all without any advertising! Hmmmmm. Advertisers and cable providers need to prepare themselves as an increasing amount of different entertainment distribution models become available. TV spots, it’s been nice knowing you. Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Technorati Tags: review, advertising, broadcast, beyond madison avenue

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Attention men: Cramer-Krasselt has your midlife crisis covered.

Bad boys, bad boys, what’cha gonna do, what’cha gonna do when they come for you? The Design Police are here and they will cover your documents with screaming red alerts pointing out all the mistakes you’ve made. You too can be a design police deputy, download the visual enforcement kit and stick it to bad design. *

* sorry, my puns get worse the later it gets.

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Imagine trying to start a new car dealership network from scratch. That’s what SMART USA is doing. The first of the Smart Fortwos have arrived on U.S. soil and will be hitting the roads to 68 Smart dealerships to be open by the end of January 2008.

The Smart is eagerly awaited by buyers who have…

Fans of specialty beers should be on the lookout for Budweiser/Bud Light and Clamato Chelada. Latinos have been mixing beer with Clamato juice for decades. Anheuser Busch had an “aha” moment and will be rolling it out nationwide after great success testing the fizzy red cocktail concoction in test …

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In what seems a most unlikely ploy to drum up pre-Super Bowl buzz, Hyundai Motor North America today ended its Hamlet-like indecision and said it is committed to keeping the ad time that it has bought for the Super Bowl.

No, I don’t really think this macabre European ad for Burger King is taking aim at Pakistan’s “president for as long as I want to be” Pervez Musharraf. (It actually looks a bit more like Manuel Noriega.) But you know someone’s bound to raise a ruckus (or at least an eyebrow) over a political assassination- themed ad that comes so soon after a major political assassination. For that matter, has there ever been an ad that succeeded in finding humor in assassination? (If so, it wasn’t this one.) All that said, I’m still more freaked out by the BK campaign’s highly unappetizing whorehouse, which says you can choose whether you like it “pickle in” or “pickle out.” I’m going to vote “pickle out.” Or better yet, “pickle really far away from my food.” Via Ads of the World.

—Posted by David Griner