Hasta La Creative!

To be fair, the two great Birminghams of the world have a lot in common. Both were hubs of the Industrial Revolution, and today they’re both ethnically diverse and focused around service industries. So, can we really blame city officials in Birmingham, England, for accidentally featuring the Birmingham, Alabama, skyline in a recent flier? Well, yes, apparently we can. The poor Brummie City Council has been getting mocked relentlessly by folks on both sides of the Atlantic since featuring Alabama’s buildings in a recycling flier labeled “Thank you, Birmingham!” But as a proud resident of the American Birmingham, I refuse to join the chortling masses. I mean, we’ve had our own silliness to deal with lately. Instead, I will simply extend a warm, conciliatory note across the pond and say, “You’re welcome, Birmingham!”

—Posted by David Griner

I saw this commercial for Himani Fast Relief done by Ambience Publicis on Creativity Online. I think it’s clever, but I’m not sure it’s not offensive. And was the goat really necessary?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

On Thursday, WFAN’s “Mike and the Mad Dog” became just Mike, when Chris Russo left the station abruptly, ending the most formidable duo in sports-talk radio.

Today’s New York Times features an article that pulls no punches in suggesting that in recent years, more aggressive advertising prodded consumers to take out risky home equity loans:

“Live Richly.”

That catchy slogan, dreamed up by the Fallon Worldwide advertising agency, was pitched in 1999 to executives at Citicorp who were looking for a way to lure Americans to financial products like home equity loans. But some in the room did not like it. They worried the phrase would encourage people to live exorbitantly, says Stephen A. Cone, a top Citi marketer at the time.

Still, “Live Richly” won out. The advertising campaign, which cost some $1 billion from 2001 to 2006, urged people to lighten up about money and helped persuade hundreds of thousands of Citi customers to take out home equity loans — that is, to borrow against their homes. As one of the ads proclaimed: “There’s got to be at least $25,000 hidden in your house. We can help you find it.”

The portion of people who have home equity lines more than 30 days past due stands 55 percent above its average since the American Bankers Association began tracking it around 1990; delinquencies on home equity loans are 45 percent higher. Hundreds of thousands are delinquent, owing banks more than $10 billion on these loans, often on top of their first mortgages.

None of this would have been possible without a conscious effort by lenders, who have spent billions of dollars in advertising to change the language of home loans and with it Americans’ attitudes toward debt.

Yes, I know, I know: Personal responsibility. Advertising doesn’t force people to do anything. Consumers need to read the fine print. Don’t write checks your butt can’t cash.

But in example after example in this article (along with an accompanying visual slide show of ads), advertising sure made falling into debt sound easy and attractive. And throughout the economy, we’re paying the price for it.

One of our favorite trawlers of the Internet, Dear Jane Sample, found this tremendously disturbing 1976 ad for Love’s Baby Soft while innocently (sexily?) searching for something else. Was there really a time when this ad was kosher? Or did Roman Polanski just ruin this creepy subgenre for everybody when he was arrested a year after this ad came out?

—Posted by David Griner

LONDON – Fashion community website Stardoll has come top in a ranking of websites among ‘tweenage’ web users, with 32% of its British users under the age of 12, according to Neilsen Online ratings.

LONDON – ITV1’s medical drama ‘Harley Street’ was watched by a lowly 2.6m viewers last night, with BBC One documentary ‘Traffic Cops’ easily winning the primetime slot.

Brief: Create a business card for a diving instructor.

Solution: Manually make cards that have actually been wet to imply that this guy spends most of his time in the water.

Response: Diving instructors classes were fully booked for up to four months in advance.

Kudos: BBDO Bangkok
Designer: Raj Deepak Das (also Creative group head/ Art Director)
Contango (Photographer)
Suthisak Sucharittanonta (Chief Creative Officer)
Weerachon Weeraworawit (Creative Director/ writer)
Kajnarong Inpornvichitr (Creative Group Head/ Art Director)

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LONDON – Yahoo has appointed former Viacom and Universal Studios chief Frank Biondi and former Nextel Partners boss John Chapple to its board of directors, fulfilling a pledge it made to settle a shareholder tussle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

LONDON – Invesco Perpetual has decided not to appoint an agency after whittling its pitching agencies down to one.