Hasta La Creative!

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian tea producer BOH Tea has narrowed its search for a creative agency to two contenders, with M&C Saatchi to line-up with one other undisclosed agency in the final round of pitching.

I don’t think this is so much of a site launch, as a site I’ve just noticed.

Help is a pharmaceuticals company with a trendy little site. Kinda like if Nudie/Innocent took over Panadol.

I reckon the web is more in need of better writing than design. And Help delivers. Especially for a company that sells something so un-web2.0 as headache tablets:

Extract from the website:

Coatings and dyes can make a pill look prettier but they don’t really help you with your headache, and that’s what we are trying to do. If you enjoy coatings and dyes, you will have to eat them separately.

Thank you. You have given me relief from my headache without adding to my pain by making me read your overly verbose T’s and C’s or look at heavily-flared photoshop designed packets.

Nice.

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Today, total integration — of structure, processes, resources, decision-making authority and, yes, talent — is both the challenge and the opportunity.

If your customers are young, you need to be moving forward to connect with them in the social world — the world we call the groundswell — because that's where they're spending their time. But this phenomenon is like no medium you've dealt with before. There are a lot of reasons, but the main one is this: The groundswell resists campaigns.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — That recession gripping the country and many of its biggest businesses is skirting around the internet. Google and Yahoo's first-quarter earnings grew more than 30%. And while Microsoft's fiscal third quarter disappointed many, ad revenue was a bright spot, growing 29%.

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Nike has been touting its new cross-trainer line as "better than your better" in ads, but its launch wound up worse than that of its barely promoted predecessor.

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — The new chief research officer of the Advertising Research Foundation wants market research to be seen as cool. You can stop laughing now.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — David Verklin once gave a speech in which he coined the phrase "the crackle of change" as a way to get at the digital transformation sweeping the ad business. The crackle caught up with the loquacious media thinker last week, when he announced that he's leaving Carat, the platform from which he became one of the industry's most visible figures during the past 10 years.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Starbucks is trying to replicate the store experience — for consumers in their own homes.