Hasta La Creative!

The period can be a reader’s best friend. We should use them more often.

Looking for a new business tool? You might want to try dead mice.

That worked for Barton F. Graf 9000, which has just nabbed the full account for Scotts Miracle-Gro, the $2.8 billion lawn and garden products marketer. The agency had already worked with Marysville, Oh.-based Scotts on its Nature Care line of products and its rodent control product Tomcat, for which the agency created “Tomcat’s Dead Mouse Theater.”

“This is how it’s supposed to work, right?” said Gerry Graf, founder and chief creative officer at Barton F. Graf 9000. “You meet a like-minded client, they give you a shot at some smaller projects, you create great work that sells lots of product, and they trust you enough to take on their biggest brands.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

As the number of competitive music streaming services increases, so will Pandora’s marketing efforts.

Pandora has named DigitasLBi’s San Francisco office to be the internet radio company’s lead media agency. The Publicis Groupe shop replaces Compass Point Media, part of Interpublic Group’s Mithun, and joins lead creative agency TwoFifteenMcCann on the Pandora agency roster. Several agencies pitched for Pandora’s business, though the company declined to name specific shops. A spokesman for Compass Point Media did not respond to a request for comment.

Pandora CMO Simon Fleming-Wood said the company tapped DigitasLBi for its digital marketing experience and “great respect for data and what can be accomplished with data.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Investigation into the massacre at My Lai revealed the warped perceptions that enable soldiers to kill.

by

From Adbusters #120: Manifesto for World Revolution PT.III

During the Vietnam War, American soldiers engaged in several massacres of the civilian population. The best known and most horrific of these, at the village of My Lai, was the subject of several judicial investigations. The interrogation records express in grotesque terms the soldiers’ perception that they were killing enemies. The following extract gives us a flavor:

• A: I held my M-16 on them.
• Q: Why?
• A: Because they might attack.
• Q: They were children and babies?
• A: Yes.
• Q: And they might attack?
• A: They might have had a fully loaded grenade
  on them. The mothers might have throwed them at us.
• Q: Babies?
• A: Yes.
• Q: Were the babies in their mothers’ arms?
• A: I guess so.
• Q: And the babies moved to attack?
• A: I expected at any moment they were about to make a counterbalance.

— Harald Welzer, Climate Wars

• #120
• heavy reader
• vietnam

Source

Originally approved and marketed as a “safer” sleeping pill, less addictive than barbiturates, the drug was both sedating and hypnotic.

Federal judges can rule on cases in which they have a stake in a company that files an amicus brief. But the appearance of impropriety raises questions.

Miles Nadal is stepping down as CEO of MDC Partners and as chairman of the Board of Directors, the company announced Monday evening.

Scott Kauffman, who has served as presiding director on the company’s board of directors, will succeed Mr. Nadal as chairman and CEO. Irwin Simon, a current member of the board, has been appointed as presiding director.

Mr. Nadal’s retirement comes amid an SEC investigation, beginning in October, into MDC’s accounting practices, trading information and Mr. Nadal’s expenses. In May, the company announced that Mr. Nadal would pay back his employer $8.6 million, and that the investigation would be ongoing.

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Outdoor, Print
Untold Festival

Romania is among the last 3 countries in Europe in terms of the number of blood donors. Only 1.7 % percent out of a population of 20 million people has actually donated blood and only 14% of those are young donors. UNTOLD Festival takes place in Cluj Napoca, in between 30 July and 2 August, in the very heart of Transylvania, a place made famous around the world thanks to blood hungry vampires, notably Bram Stocker’s Dracula. In the context of the local blood donors shortage, UNTOLD Festival and INTS decided to take a stand and help raise awareness around the problem by launching a campaign inspired by the very same stories that made the country famous.

Advertising Agency:McCann, Bucharest, Romania

Tony Pace’s departure as chief marketing officer of Subway also leaves the Association of National Advertisers looking at who should be chairman, a post generally filled by a sitting marketing executive.

Advertising Age reported earlier today that Mr. Pace will be leaving Subway to launch a consultancy, Cerebral Graffiti. The move comes less than a year since Mr. Pace assumed the ANA chairmanship, a post generally held for two years.

“Tony will stay on as chair for an interim period,” ANA President Bob Liodice said in an e-mail. How long that period will be and who will succeed him remains to be determined, Mr. Liodice said. “We don’t get too hung up on the structure, since much of policy is conducted through our Executive Committee. So it should work pretty seamlessly.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com