Hasta La Creative!

LONDON – Haymarket, publisher of Media Week, posted a 43% drop in pre-tax profit to £4.5m in 2008, after taking a £7.2m hit for what it termed a “significant reorganisation” relating to the recession.

LONDON – The Chrysler and Dodge car marques will be phased from the European market under plans by new owner Fiat to rejuvenate the company.

Jonathan Harman, president of Carlson Marketing UK and EMEA, is a direct agency veteran: he spent 10 years with Omnicom at both WWAV Rapp Collins and Claydon Heeley. He left Claydon Heeley after three years as MD in 2004 – the year it scooped Campaign magazine’s Agency of the Year.

by Josh Fahey

The Mac ads from Apple are among the most iconic in the past decade, but they seem to be getting creatively stale, a little mean, and, dare I say, a bit desperate. The latest three spots are all aimed at the Windows 7 launch. The common hook Apple keeps hanging its hat on is being number one in satisfaction. Great. That’s a good thing and certainly worthy of talking about, but that PC guy can’t be all bad. Can he? Is Apple being fair?

I don’t want to debate a bunch of Mac diehards on the technical differences between the machines and operating systems. I don’t think Apple is being fair. These ads create the perception that PC’s are drastically inferior and riddled with problems. In creating this perception, they alternately imply that Macs are superior in every way and have no problems at all. Despite what people say, this simply isn’t true. There were many minor-to-severe problems, some are ongoing, when people upgraded to Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system in September. You can read about them here,  here, here, and even here on their own discussion board.

I’m not saying Apple makes bad software; they don’t. In fact, it’s really good most of the time. However, Apple went through many of the same problems any developer will inevitably go through when changing or upgrading an operating system. I think a lot of people understand this, but I also think a lot of people who don’t know much about computers draw unfair conclusions about Macs and PCs from these ads.

Inevitably, if Apple continues down this path, they’ll lose favor with people. I believe they already have. You can see a lot of comments from Mac fans who don’t like the ads anymore. People don’t like being lied to or deceived. Ultimately, though, people grow tired of ads that attack another product instead of those that highlight their own attributes.

LONDON – Google is addressing users’ privacy concerns with the launch of a new tool that will reveal the data is stored in their Google accounts.

LONDON – Kraft chocolate brand Milka is giving away a free 100g chocolate via an online voucher as it seeks to drive consumer trial in the run-up to Christmas.

A simple search on the social-media chatter around Walmart's new caskets reveal strong positive sentiment. What it can't tell you is that much of it was facetious.

In this video will can follow the journey of a water drop from the mountain to the city… Advertiser: Bavaria Agency: Selmore

Lançado em conjunto com duas empresas especializadas em mobile, a UsTwo e a Inside Mobile, do Reino Unido, o mais novo aplicativo da Reebok promete fazer sucesso entre os iPhone addicteds.

O mobile game recebeu o nome de iSprint – e simula uma corrida de 100 metros – só que com os dedos. O usuário precisa fazer o melhor tempo em quatro cursos diferentes. É simples, mas exige agilidade. Basta movimentar rapidamente os dedos (como você pode ver no vídeo demo, abaixo) e pronto. Agora é competir com seus amigos ou tentar bater o seu próprio recorde.

Baixe aqui o aplicativo.

LONDON – The Government has come under fire from sections of the TV industry over plans to reclassify the production arms of television companies outside London, in an attempt to boost the amount of content produced by the rest of the UK.