Google have announced their “real name” policy on Google plus today, and clarified that they no longer require your real name to be publicly seen on Google Plus. In fact you can use any name you want. The Nymwars are over!
JWT London has appointed Neil Godber as its head of planning to replace Tracey Follows.
We Buy Any Car, the car-buying service, has put its £10 million advertising account up for review.
Campaign is launching a training programme powered by the digital training company The Knowledge Engineers to prepare adland’s brightest talent for running tomorrow’s top businesses.
McCain Foods has launched a review of its £20 million UK advertising account, putting the incumbent, BMB, on alert.
Syfy, the digital and satellite channel owned by NBCUniversal, is seeking an agency to create a brand campaign.
E.ON has appointed Engine to handle its entire digital business.
Aer Lingus, Ireland’s biggest airline after Ryanair, is speaking with advertising agencies about its European business.
Wieden & Kennedy London has hired Danielle Noël and Thom Whitaker, the Mother duo behind the gold Lion-winning “playin’ with my friends” work for Ikea, as a senior creative team.
Skoda UK has signed a multimillion-pound two-year deal to sponsor ITV’s mystery drama package of programmes, including the second series of Broadchurch.
The International Rescue Committee, the humanitarian aid organisation whose chief executive is David Miliband, is looking to appoint a creative agency.
Dave Buonaguidi, the co-founder of Karmarama who left the agency last week, is preparing to launch ACME-Studio, a company offering non-traditional creative services, in January 2015.
Main media advertising and internet marketing are driving the continued rise in marketing budgets, according
to the latest IPA Bellwether Report.
The Labour Party will pledge to tighten the rules on advertising aimed at children in a white paper on public health to be published in the next few weeks.
Molson Coors, which owns the Carling, Coors Light and Cobra beer brands, is reviewing its international media planning and buying business, including the £22 million UK account.
Despite marketers’ insistence on kicking off back-to-school advertising in July, more consumers will be shopping closer to the start of school this year.
According to the National Retail Federation, 33% of shoppers will begin shopping less than two weeks before school starts, including a small but growing percentage who will wait until after school starts. By comparison, 27% shopped during the same period last year.
NRF, which conducts its annual back-to-school survey with Prosper Insights & Analytics, expects combined back-to-school and back-to-college spending to reach $74.9 billion, down 11% from last year’s $84 billion. According to NRF, there are fewer students in households this year, but those families spending will be spending a little more. The average family with K-12 students will spend $669.28 this season, up 5% from a year ago. The average family with college students will spend $916.48, up 10% from a year ago.
Recent years have seen a slew of hidden camera prank ads, and many of them are of dubious authenticity. But this new effort from Bosch in Belgium might take the prize for most laughably fake stunt commercial yet.
(You can watch the clip below before reading further, if you don’t want us to spoil the supposed twist for you.)
The plot line, such as it is, goes like this: Apparent cat burglars turn out to be creepy do-gooders (a.k.a. Bosch representatives) who just want to break into homes so they can vacuum downstairs while the owners are upstairs sleeping. The takeaway here is, of course, that the vacuums are surprisingly quiet.
Come daybreak, the owners are met at the door by strange men with video footage from within their homes while they slept. You know, the stuff of horror movies. But instead of slamming the door and calling the police, each homeowner seems quasi-delighted about the whole thing.
Sure, it’s a cute idea tailored to the merits of the product. But they couldn’t even get one or two of the residents to pretend to be indignant? Instead, the brand and agency BBDO Belgium in Brussels seem to have abdicated any sense that they were trying to make the illusion seem real.
In the end, ads like this need to go one way or the other: Either go for vaguely realistic (if largely questionable) reactions or just take a hard turn and let audiences enjoy the ride.
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.
