So Sad

A man jumped to his death from the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Chicago yesterday evening.

Word is, it was Paul Tilley, Executive Creative Director at DDB/Chicago.

That the man’s job performance and personality were consistently diminished in the press and on blogs makes this news all the harder to take.

Our deepest condolences go out to his family and friends.

Poached Crispin

GSD&M Idea City has recruited and entrusted their top creative post to industry powerhouse Mark Taylor.

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Taylor comes to GSD&M Idea City from Crispin Porter + Bogusky where his work as creative director won wide critical acclaim. His accomplishments include the re-creation of the King and the interactive-sensation Subservient Chicken for Burger King, the launch of the MINI, and work for Miller Highlife, Nike and VW among many others.

“I’ve always admired the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit behind an agency that has made such a mark so far from Madison Avenue,” said Taylor. “They’re mavericks and have built their agency by adding value as true business partners with their clients.”

[via Marketwire]

Dan Just Does It

CNBC’s hour-long documentary on Nike debuts on the business news channel tomorrow night.

[via Paul Isakson]

IPG Invests In Urban Advertainers

Steve Stoute is is an American record executive, most famous for being rapper Nas’s off-and-on manager since 1995. Stoute is also the founder of Translation Marketing, a company that matches pop-star spokespersons with corporations that want to promote their brands. He has worked to pair Gwen Stefani with Hewlett-Packard, Justin Timberlake with McDonald’s, Beyoncé Knowles with Tommy Hilfiger, and Jay-Z with Reebok.

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According to today’s New York Times, Stoute–who sold Translation last October for an estimated $10 million to $15 million to the Interpublic Group of Companies in New York–is launching a new entity, Translation Advertising. Interpublic will own 49 percent of the new ad shop, while he and Jay-Z (a.k.a. Shawn Carter), will own the majority share.

“If we sit in a room,” Mr. Carter said, “and offer our ideas of how to reach consumers, how to speak to them — and this is not a cocky statement — put us up against anything, and we’ll win our fair share of battles.”

The article notes that Jay-Z is not the only urban entertainment figure to become involved in advertising.

Spike Lee leads an agency, Spike DDB, that is part of the DDB Worldwide division of Omnicom. And Damon Dash has announced the start-up of BlockSavvy.com, an interactive ad agency and social-networking Web site.

How Ad People Watch the Super Bowl

David t. Jones provides us with his latest Ad Land (the cartoon).

adland the cartoon by David t. Jones - Super bowl edition

Maddock Douglas Encourages A Sense of Wonder

[via Monday9am.tv]

Creature Tosses Some Shit Our Way

If you have yet to join Ad Club Seattle, this spot from Creature might persuade you.

Catharine P. Taylor’s interview with 4As CEO Nancy Hill

Hi folks. I know David Burn said I’d be posting on here, and I’m finally doing it. Though I sincerely doubt anyone has been checking their AdPulp RSS Feed to see when Cathy Taylor was finally going to start doing some posting here, the moment is at hand, and, I admit, for this week anyway, it’s blatantly self-promotional. So here’s the topic: I got a call late last week from the 4As, seeing if I wanted to do an interview with incoming president-CEO Nancy Hill. My first thought in these instances is that they must have forgotten that I’m no longer at Adweek, but, then again, I know the 4As PR person Kipp Cheng well, so that wasn’t the case. Turns out that Hill wanted to include the blogosphere in the press tour, and so the 4As reached out to me. You can read her comments over at my blog. I promise not to be so self-promotional next week and enjoy the opportunity to post for a broader audience.

Mad Women

Nina DiSesa, chairman of McCann Erickson, New York, and author of the new book, Seducing the Boys Club, says the ad world is still a sexist place.

The most dramatic change in advertising since 1962 is that most of us have stopped smoking.

She adds, “Forty years after women burned their bras to liberate their sex, only 2 percent of the Fortune 1000 CEOs are women. Two percent!”

[via Adweek]

Della Femina Loses Diners Over Poor Taste In Editorial

Ad man Jerry Della Femina owns a restaurant and a free weekly newspaper in The Hamptons.

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According to Newsday, his newspaper is causing trouble for his restaurant.

A recent column about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in a free weekly owned by Hamptons luminary Jerry Della Femina so infuriated members of the East End Gay Organization that they canceled a fundraiser in Della Femina’s restaurant, leaders of the group said Friday.

Ken Allan, co-chair of the gay organization, said the language about Clinton in Rick Murphy’s “Low Tidings” column of Jan. 16 could not be ignored. “Terms were used such as ‘bull — — on steroids’ and ‘steely-eyed lesbo — — from hell.’ There was no reason to put homophobic slurs in that article,” Allan said.

“Oh, my God. We wrote that?” Della Femina said. “I’m in Manhattan. I didn’t read that.”

Postaer Rejects Integrated Marketing

Stephan Postaer, in an otherwise nice piece on his dad’s legacy at RPA, wanders off into a rant about integration.

Pops couldn’t keep up with the times. The brave new world of banners and microsites was too much for him. Time to let the Facebook generation take over. Social networks are where it’s at. Give them something viral. Integrate or die!

Or recognize, as my father did, that integration is just a word we marketers use to sound smart; that in fact, the wizard beyond the curtain of Integration is basically a dumbfuck. An avatar of a know-it-all. A Google-eyed Yahoo.

When Postaer started his blog he tried to convince readers that integrated marketing is the saving grace for agencies in trouble. But this new entry sounds more real/less scripted.

But what of the message? “Dumbfuck behind the curtain” is pretty strong language for a marketing practice that is standard operating procedure today.

Oh Snap!

According to Ad Age, WPP Chief Martin Sorrell, isn’t impressed by Puclicis’ deft use of the press to forward its agenda.

When Sorrell, in Davos for the World Economic Forum, was asked by a Reuters reporter about WPP’s “esteemed rival Publicis” and its deal with Google, he interrupted to say, “I think our most esteemed rival is Omnicom.”

Mollá Originals

Men’s Vogue paid a visit to Miami, which is home to scorching hot Hispanic marketing agency, La Comunidad.

It’s the kind of office where flip-flop-wearing employees kiss on both cheeks when they arrive on Monday morning. It’s the kind of office where business meetings are held by the pool and where the company chef lures staff with a family-style lunch. And there’s a nearly perfect duplicate of it 4,000 miles away, in Buenos Aires, where another three dozen staffers work under Joaquín Mollá, 38, José’s brother and partner.

Joaquín explains that they are driven by the notion of community (the literal translation of comunidad), which is why they’ve turned down business that would have allowed them to grow even more quickly at the expense of their culture of on-site yoga and painting classes. “You can’t change the world, but you can do something about the people that surround you,” reflects Joaquín, who studies Buddhism.

La Comunidad/Miami will soon be moving in to a 20,000-square-foot warehouse renovation in the heart of Miami’s Wynwood Art District. The new office will have an adjoining gallery space.

Did You Bring Your Moral Compass To Work Today?

In his latest blog post, Steffan Postaer examines some weighty issues (while promoting his fiction).

In my novel, The Happy Soul Industry, God and the Devil engage one another in a modern fable about advertising, good and evil. Needless to say, the topic interests me deeply.

Selling cigarettes, liquor and gambling has been called “dark marketing.” Well, what if everything we sell is shaded? When we build a brand are we, in a way, creating an idol?

I think we all (at least those of us with a working conscience) struggle to some degree with what we do in this business. Yet, it’s interesting to see someone who’s gone as far as Postaer struggle too. Why is it interesting? Because the concept that “more money” or “better clients” will solve what ails you is a hollow dream.

Armano On Armano

David Armano of Critical Mass knows how to talk the talk.

We’re focused on relevant, groundbreaking solutions that fuse style and substance—insight driven creative, supported by technology, which ultimately leads to measurable results. Not merely flashy creative or fleeting viral campaigns, but rather, applications that shift consumer behavior, brand experiences that deepen customer relationships and game-changing strategies that meaningfully impact the bottom line.

Apparently, Armano also walks the walk. In this same post he mentions that he’s “making a leap from leading teams to leading an entire department of over 40 people.” In an interesting twist, Armano humbly asks himself (and his readers) if he’s ready for the promotion.

Networks Are Ecosystems

[Leigh Himel via CrapHammer]

Barreling Brunelle

I like Tim Brunelle’s enthusiasm for the business.

In a piece prepared for Talent Zoo, Brunelle says he’s teaching a class at Minneapolis College of Art & Design. He also reflects on the changes he’s seen in his career and how monumental shifts are still coming at blinding speed.

Compared to 10 years ago, today’s strategizing, budgeting, staffing, production processes and maintenance of marketing and advertising ideas is both wicked awesome and wicked hard to wrap your head around. Get used to it.

Before I retire, I believe we will see ourselves completely tear apart and rebuild Marketing, perhaps even Business. We are abandoning long established trading and promotion cycles, media, tactics, metrics and compensation methodologies. In their place are “always-in-beta” practices, consumer empowerment and the conversation economy. The key to understanding, implementing and harnessing these forces comes from a willingness and ability to comprehend the new ecosystem.

Speaking of the new ecosystem, in class yesterday, Brunelle tried selling “the kids” on Twitter. I wonder how that went. I tried to demonstrate its merits to some friends on Saturday night, but I failed to convince, much less convert anyone. Maybe I need to be more like Brunelle. More enthusiastic.

Tor Myhren Takes One for the Team

Legendary Thatcher Saatchi (M)adMan Returns

John Sharkey, who defied the idea of England as declining Empire and helped Thatcher in wake of Falkland War, appointed by Nick Clegg.

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