The New York Times Company reported a 51.5 percent decline in third-quarter profit as deeper-than-expected expense cuts could not keep pace with falling revenue.
Vauxhall Insignia has unveiled the first drive-on grille and light shine service for cars.
A quirky twist on the famous New York shoeshine chair, the ‘Insignia Shine Service’ has been built to highlight…
Use it or lose it. That’s often the mindset when managing an annual marketing budget.
Airbag Industries knows what I’m talking about:
The Fall season always has some weirdness when it comes to announcements of new work. It’s usually around this time that I get a handful of last minute RFPs with aggressive schedules for completing work before the end of the year. In most cases after talking through the project with the potential client they realize that their scope of work would require a Christmas miracle. Not to say that these timelines are impossible, just very improbable. And after receiving proposals from Airbag and our unknown competitors typically the client puts the project on hold until sometime in the next year.
Of course this doesn’t happen for every RFP received in the Fall but I bet I’ve described more than half the RFPs floating around from late September to early November. The whole situation is a bit awkward, frustrating yet rewarding in that everyone could use more practice with interviewing for a job.
At least the RPFs aren’t drying up. That would be a much sadder situation.
We hear that moments ago at Mindshare, some employees were told there will be layoffs. The agency supposedly hasn’t been hiring since June, and according to an inside source, many staff members have been promoted to fill internal positions that would normally be staffed by new hires.
As a result of this, many departments are already very understaffed, and though the agency seems to have held off as long as possible, the inevitable may be finally happening.
AgencySpy contacted Mindshare for details on the situation, but an agency representative declined to comment.
We’re not being told how many will be let go, but an e-mail is to come shortly on the matter. However, the WPP company has been suffering from the same hiring freeze that’s created a stall for its brethren.
Refer to this post on Martin Sorrell‘s memo on the issue. See the actual memo, here.
More: “Exclusive: WPP’s Hiring Freeze Inconsistent With Practice?”
function() {
links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
query = ‘?’;
for(var i = 0; i = 0) {
query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;
}
}
document.write(”);
})();
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
MINNEAPOLIS (AdAge.com) — Chase Utley's first-inning two-run homer gave the Philadelphia Phillies a lead it didn't relinquish in what turned out to be a low-scoring game. The same could be said for Fox, as its baseball coverage won the chase in a relatively low-rated night in the ad-centric adult 18-49 demographic.
All parties went home happy. The media got its story. The agency got some press. Pirrmann got his ring back.
Update: A representative from the agency contacted us to confirm the bad news we reported below — IMC2 is letting 17 percent of its staff go. Click continued to read a heartfelt letter from agency president Doug Levy, who attributes the layoffs to media cutbacks.
We’ve contacted Dallas based digital agency IMC2 (squared) more than once about a rumor that they’re undergoing layoffs this week, but they haven’t gotten back to us. So here’s what we’ve heard — apologies for the redundancy.
— “imc2 is cutting ~20% of their workforce — all offices affected (with dallas getting the brunt of the force. layoffs started yesterday and continue through today. everyone is sitting around waiting for the tap from their manager to either say they’re out or they get to keep their job (for now).”
— “imc2, a little digital agency in Dallas, with offices in NY and Philly, is set to layoff 70 (about 1/4 of the total staff). But I’m sure client work for P&G, GSK, Pizza Hut, diet Coke, etc. won’t be interrupted… I guess they should have sold out to a holding company when they had the myriad chances”
— “Apparently, Dallas agency IMC2 had huge layoffs today… like 15% of their staff. (according to an insider). Not sure what business they lost though..”
More: “Linda Kaplan Thaler Gets An Award And Brings You Chocolates“
function() {
links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
query = ‘?’;
for(var i = 0; i = 0) {
query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;
}
}
document.write(”);
})();
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
Decon Record's new creative agency promises to wrap together a footing in multimedia production, hip-hop record label expertise and new-media design.
Talk about heading into enemy territory. The American Cancer Society is taking its ad account to Richmond. From Adweek:
The American Cancer Society said it has selected Interpublic Group shop The Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., and Omnicom Group’s Brodeur Partners here to handle general-market advertising and public relations, respectively, following a review.
Greg Donaldson, vp, corporate communications for the client, said: “We have had a long and extraordinarily productive working relationship with (Atlanta agency) T.G. Madison. Sadly, times change and so does the nonprofit landscape. After the process, it became clear that we had a tough choice to make. In the end we chose to take our brand in a radically different direction. Both Martin and Brodeur demonstrated innovative thinking and an innate ability to yield keen insights.”
Taking cancer awareness in a “radically different direction”? That ought to be interesting. Maybe Martin can give those Geico cavemen and the Gecko an injection of fatal carcinoma.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Layoffs returned to Time Inc. this week as its Southern Progress division in Birmingham, Ala., began eliminating some 30 positions across departments and titles. Southern Progress, which publishes magazines including Cooking Light and Cottage Living, had employed 922 full-timers.
Goodwill of Southern California is driving would be ghouls to retail, care of this spot from The Miller Group, Santa Monica.
The 2008 Planner Survey results have been out for a hot minute now, but they just landed on our radar. This is the fourth year that Heather LeFevre has called upon planners to answer questions about their salary, experience, satisfaction, etc. The survey respondents were 56% men and 44% Women with 461 from USA and 337 from outside the country.
Highlights include that the number one blog read by planner is Russell Davies, followed by Fallon Planning and PSFK.
If they could work anywhere, 63% said they would stay where they were currently. Fifty-six said Wieden. Twenty-nine, Crispin. Anomaly, StrawberryFrog, Naked, Goodby, Ideo and Google also got mentions.
Deeper in the survey gets to salary with results for Sr. Planner’s in the US clocking in at an average of $104,000 after six years in planning. Head of Planning in the US with 9 years under your belt will get you a cool $167,000. Of course, ladies are still pulling in less.
Planners? There’s more good stuff in the deck above. It’s a must read.
More:
function() {
links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
query = ‘?’;
for(var i = 0; i = 0) {
query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;
}
}
document.write(”);
})();
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
Here’s a fun little spot by the Miller Group — for Goodwill (arguably the best costume shop, ever) that was sent to us earlier today. If you need 15 seconds to unwind, we suggest you click play.
More: “The List Of 10 Advertising Dastardly Deeds“
function() {
links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
query = ‘?’;
for(var i = 0; i = 0) {
query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;
}
}
document.write(”);
})();
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's appearance was very good for "Saturday Night Live," bringing the show its best ratings in 14 years. But the number of people who have watched the clips on the web is closing fast, and will soon surpass the 15 million that watched on TV, if it hasn't already.
One fine day, Bob Pirrmann, the associate creative director with Mullen in Boston went on certified recreational dive at the New England Aquarium. Pirrmann was a part of a group of Mullen staffers who got to enjoy the oceanic playground after creating pro-bono award-winning work for the aquarium’s new exhibit, “Sharks & Rays.”
While petting a 560-pound sea turtle named Myrtle, Pirrman lost his wedding ring. Seriously, this is where it starts to get very, very cute. The Aquarium’s divers were alerted to the missing ring, but after three months, Pirrman purchased another ring. And then… eureka! This past week, Mike Whyte, a part-time diver for the Aquarium since 2001, was vacuuming food debris from several inches of sand near the bottom of the tank. As he worked through some delicate finger corals (oh the irony!), he noticed an unusual shape. He put the band on his own finger.
Okay, so cute right? Wait, wait… it gets even more sickening. Whyte and Pirrman are going to do a joint dive together to see the three-month resting place of his wedding band. Yeah. I know. It’s almost too much.
More: Mullen Gets Some GM Love
function() {
links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
query = ‘?’;
for(var i = 0; i = 0) {
query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;
}
}
document.write(”);
})();
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
On par with the embarrassingly horrid Bank of America internal ballad, Ogilvy Athens has unleashed its own horror show in the form of an ode to the agency’s founder.
Benjamin Palmer, CEO of The Barbarian Group, wants to hire people like Danny G and me.
We review people’s portfolios here quite often and one thing that stands out is how few advertising copywriters actually blog. It’s really amazing. An entire copywriting Web site might consist of 500 words. What’s needed now are copywriters who not just write entire Web sites, but actively blog.
For creatives, maybe look for someone who has made a popular YouTube hit on his or her own, or who shares his or her photos on Flickr. Hire based on someone’s genuine personal motivation to be part of the current social fabric.
Now, if Barbarian would just open Atlanta and Portland offices, things would surely fall into place.
[via Adweek]
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
