Hasta La Creative!

WPP chief Martin Sorrell is continuing to take shots at the merger of rival agency companies Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group, knocking its planned management structure and its effect on their clients and employees at a conference Monday.

“Structurally, it’s clunky,” Mr. Sorrell said at the annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York on Monday. He would like to know whether the biggest merger in adland history will result in an “American takeover” or a “French takeover”, he said, equating the situation to an arms race between the Americans at Omnicom and the French at Publicis.

Under the merger plan announced in late July, Publicis CEO Maurice Levy and Omnicom CEO John Wren will serve as co-CEOs for the first two and a half years of the merged company’s existence. After that, Mr. Levy will become non-executive chairman and Mr. Wren will continue as CEO.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A&E Networks’ telecast of the first part of the “Bonnie & Clyde” miniseries Sunday night drew 9.8 million total viewers across three sibling cable channels, the company said on Monday.

The combined figure tops the competition on broadcast TV except “Sunday Night Football” on NBC and “60 Minutes” on CBS, according to preliminary numbers.

The miniseries about the infamous outlaw couple aired on A&E, History and Lifetime on Sunday night. The second part of the miniseries will run tonight.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The universe's obsession with smartphones is overripe for parody. Viral video stars Rhett & Link have obliged with an able skewering of the all-too-common practice of ignoring everyone and everything around you in favor of gluing your face to Facebook or Instagram or whatever the hell it is the kids are doing with their screens these days.

It's an easy target in many ways, but the video hits the more obvious targets (e.g., foodies) dead on, and throws in couple of fun, unexpected twists. That helps make it a welcome addition to an increasingly rich subgenre.

For more on why you shouldn't use your smartphone all the time, please use your smartphone to check out the more understated comedy bit "I Forgot My Phone" and McCann Melbourne's effort to give the social slight an appropriately ridiculous name.

UPDATE: DigitasLBi worked on this campaign, helping to broker the partnership between Rhett & Link and Buick for this video, which is part of a larger #InTheMoment campaign.

We’ve watched this video three times and still don’t know what we’re being sold. We’re not quite sure what it is but something must be distracting us from the video’s main message.

Apparently, we’re not alone. Pretty much every YouTube commenter has no idea what the video’s about either.

Attention brands. No disrespect to anyone but be careful who you cast as your spokesperson…and how you dress them. You may not get the results you expected.

Here’s a cheery Monday item: Ogilvy&Mather Japan’s created a “Dream Printer” project for Konica Minolta, asking children what they dreamed of being when they grew up and then showing them what it would look like if their dreams came true.

Playing off the brand’s core concept of “Giving Shape to Ideas,” Ogilvy&Mather set up shop in Gantry Plaza State Park in New York, placing their “Dream Printer” in the middle of the park. The printer asked curious children what to write down their dream. Within minutes, the “Dream Printer” dispensed an illustration of the child fulfilling his or her dream, much to their delight. Ogilvy&Mather and Konica Minolta spread a lot of smiles during the process, and you can check out the project in the video above. At the end of the video, as night falls, the printer’s true identity is revealed.

“We wanted to encourage children by showing them that the more you imagine, the more your dreams take shape,” explained Yuki Kobayashi, general manager of Konica Minolta’s CSR, Corporate Communications & Branding Division. “Dream Printer” is a cute little project, part of a larger campaign employing the ”Giving Shape to Ideas” concept in different ways. Whether or not it helped spread brand awareness, “Dream Printer” made a bunch of kids happy, which we think is a great accomplishment in itself. If you can spare the 3:26 to watch “Dream Printer,” it just might be the positive start to the week that you need. Credits after the jump.  continued…

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