LONDON – The quarterly Bellwether survey of marketing budgets has recorded the worst results in the survey’s eight-year history, with another negative quarter for direct marketing.
Given the video craze, it would seem proper yet another capitalization on the trend should arise.
“Mention DraftFCB to an ad-industry professional or a casual industry observer, and odds are you’ll be able to guess the reaction.”
Look at that! Adage is speaking some truth about DraftFCB in it’s recent issue. How many times have you heard George Parker tell the agency to “shut the fuck up”? DraftFCB and its head honcho, Howard Draft just might be the most disliked figures out there in the ad world. Despite having a Chicago street named after him, the “Howard Draft Way” is generally frowned upon.
The ad journo’s piece goes on to mention that:
“the merger has yet to yield any significant proof that it’s accomplishing what it set out to do, or the fact that the agency has failed to generate much big news since, well, Wal-Mart.”
Oh it’s true. Rivet is has almost vanished back into DraftFCB. There were the layoffs in New York and the shop’s creative chief Chris Becker getting slashed from the payroll. And yet, Draft is going to post single-digit growth for the second year in a row.
When asked if the agency was in good shape, Draft said:
Have we gotten the culture right yet? I don’t think so. Do I feel like we could have always done better and won more new business along the way? Absolutely. Do I still have a lot to learn? Absolutely. Will we feel great a few years from now and that we built the right culture and succeeded? Yeah, I hope so. Am I 100% we have all the people and disciplines correctly balanced on a global basis? Not yet. I personally don’t think you are going to see this agency at the 100% level on a global basis for a couple of more years. Are we creatively better? I think, yeah. I think some of the creative work coming out of this company is better.”
Oh, he doesn’t know what’s going on! Lets face it – Draft is operating under a bad sign. Employees are unhappy and the shop isn’t sought out when the review hunt begins. The merger will surely take time, but so will coming out from under the Julie Roehmn scandal. The shop is a little lost as Howard points out above. It’ll be years before someone else takes the top slot of the “most hated.” Eons even.
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LONDON – Amnesty International warns people not to sleepwalk into an assault on their basic human rights in an ad, voiced by former Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston, against the Government’s plans to extend detention without charge to 42 days.
(TrendHunter.com) This little piggy named Cinders suffers from a fear of dirt. No kidding, she didn’t seem to like getting her tootsies mucked up in the mud. The syndrome, called mysophobia, caused her to be left out when…
LONDON – Ford is to promote its redesigned Ka model with a 12-page ad feature in next month’s edition of Glamour magazine.
The gaming blogosphere is abuzz about images of an in-game advertising billboard that appears to have been paid for by the Obama campaign.
Why should truth in advertising only apply to goods and services? The soul of marketing is to provide benefits that meet consumer needs. The FCC regulates the industry to ensure that consumers receive accurate information to assess the solution that best meets their needs.
Let’s start the morning/week off in true espionage fashion. We hear Campbell-Ewald dropped out of the Farmers Insurance review, albeit a couple weeks ago. Recall that we told you about the review a while back. What we didn’t (and couldn’t) know then was that the agency’s relationship with the client wasn’t exactly lovesy-dovesy. Know what I mean?
Scuttlebutt is, according to our source, “(CE) finally came to the stunning realization that Farmers was actually not interested in them, and they dropped out. There was (ed’s note: allegedly) an incident in which they were going to present, and Farmers postponed it at the last minute, and that was the last straw.”
“There was (IIRC) a party to celebrate winning some minor business at GM, and at the same time, they made an announcement that they were dropping out of Farmers. Which effectively means that the LA office will close (all the Kaiser work is now being done out of Detroit anyway).”
The last part coheres nicely with a tip we received (and kinda poked fun at) last week, which plainly read, “campbell-ewald la”. Thanks to today’s second source, we were able to fill out what (could be the part that) was missing from the earlier Holmsian clue. That is to say, unless there’s something else going on at CE-LA that we haven’t yet heard about. E-mail me at matt@mediabistro dot com to fill me in.
More: “How Campbell-Ewald Really Lost Farmers and May Lose More”
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(TrendHunter.com) The Britney Spears comeback seems to be in full force these days. In addition to the spanking hot Womanizer video, Britney Spears has released these teaser ads for a new perfume, “Hidden Fantasy”.
Britney…
LONDON – Timberland has launched a global advertising campaign in support of its Earthkeepers initiative.
LONDON – Berghaus is using two of its sponsored athletes in an cinema ad to appear ahead of the new James Bond film, The Quantum of Solace.
LONDON – Microsoft and Disney-ABC-ESPN Television, the international distribution arm of The Walt Disney Company, have sealed their first European agreement to offer Disney’s new media content to MSN Video viewers.
Oil prices are killing us, but don’t vote… Borders Perrin Norrander ad agency uses the same reverse psychology approach as the recent star-packed video PSA we featured. They both ask you not to vote.
The…
LONDON – Polly Cochrane, Channel 4’s director of marketing, communications and audiences, is to leave her role next year following of a restructure of her team.
According to this ad from DDB London, Philips makes a baby monitor that doesn’t pick up competing signals from radio stations, which is great news. They also appear to be working on an in-baby sound system, which would be just as great. Who wouldn’t want one? All babies do otherwise is cry and poop, so we’re sure parents would appreciate a little variety.
—Posted by David Kiefaber
(TrendHunter.com) Flickr is once again proving to be THE source for disaster photography as images of the Angel Island fire are spreading like wild fire on the popular photography sharing site.
As you can tell from these…
I just spent a couple of eventful days in Eindhoven, NL. Endless thankyouverymuch to my lucky star (in this case the MU art space) who brought me there as the Van Abbemuseum had just opened a fascinating and very timely exhibition dedicated to contemporary art and culture of the central and southern states of America. I’ll come back with more details on Heartland but here’s the appetizer:
Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the WTC twin towers, authored another set of buildings that would end in gravel and dust in front of TV cameras, this time in St Louis, Missouri.
Designed in 1951, when the city was still segregated, the Pruitt-Igoe was a complex of 2,870 apartments. Originally, the city planned two partitions for the housing project: Pruitt for black residents, and Igoe for whites. But as segregation was ruled unconstitutional in the 1954, the project was opened as racially integrated that same year. Within two years, most white residents had found the means to relocate elsewhere.
A building in the Pruitt-Igoe housing development collapses during its widely-televised demolition
Yamasaki’s initial designed incorporated Le Corbusier’s ‘3 essential joys of urbanism; sun, space and greenery’. Severe cuts in the budget forced the architect to compromise its original plan, leading eventually to the deterioration of the gym, playground and landscaping. The complex was vandalized and quickly fell into disrepair and disuse.
After several unsuccessful attempts to rehabilitate the area the St. Louis Housing Authority began demolition of the complex on March 16, 1972. It was regarded as a failure of architecture as a tool to solve complex social problems.
Ironically, the rubble was carted off to serve as landfill for luxury homes being built in the suburbs of Ladue, Missouri, the wealthiest and most expensive neighbourhood in the U.S. at the time.
Michael Rakowitz, Dull Roar, 2005
Reports of the time say that the public attending the demolition let out a dull roar as the buildings fell. Artist Michael Rakowitz, famous for the paraSITE plastic shelters, recreated the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in the form of a big inflatable building. He called it ‘Dull Roar’.
The inflatable structure is right at the center of a circular wooden ramp, and the public can walk up, gather around and watch the building deflating and then resurrecting, again and again. The spectacle evokes those images we all saw on TV a few years ago: on the screens the Twin Towers stood erected than fell, you’d switch channel and here they were again, up then down.
Michael Rakowitz, Dull Roar, 2005
Small drawings hanging around the inflatable evoke the local baseball team’s loss the night of the implosion, the sad death of architect Louis Kahn in a Penn Station bathroom and, once again, the collapse of Yamasaki’s World Trade Center.
The installation, featured in the the Heartland exhibition, is on view at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven until January 25, 2009.
LONDON – Haymarket Media Group has officially closed its women’s monthly magazine Eve today (13 October), following a period of consultation in which a buyer could not be found.
(TrendHunter.com) Oil prices are killing us, but don’t vote… Borders Perrin Norrander ad agency uses the same reverse psychology approach as the recent star-packed video PSA we featured. They both ask you not to vote.…
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