Hasta La Creative!

LONDON – Creative Lynx, the design and marketing agency, has been bought by its existing management team from one of the original founders for an undisclosed sum.

Let’s face facts: Advertising can be slightly superficial. Image matters. That’s why I think an awesome name can be a great advantage. Considering the penchant to slap the founders’ names on the door of new shops, let’s at least hopes the names are good. Here are four of my favorites:

Johnny Vulkan: The Anomaly partner has a name that speaks to a weird, all-knowing power. If Johnny and his cohorts really want to reinvent the agency compensation model, they’ll need all of his ability to mind-meld with clients.

Jelly Helm: I’m told this is some kind of Southern thing. Whatever it is, the name rocks. Would the Wieden + Kennedy creative director and VCU AdCenter professor have risen so high if he stuck with David Helm?

Benzo: Like a Brazilian soccer player, Benzo needs just a single name. The L.A. director even goes in front of the camera for the “Catch” Ray-Ban viral hit. Someone this cool simply cannot go around letting people call him Ben. That would be an injustice.

Scrappers Morrison: The most famous (in our eyes) graduate of W+K’s 12, Scrappers
burst on the scene in style: shirtless, hirsute and sporting a dead raccoon across his shoulders. This kind of personality can’t be confined to a fuddy-duddy given name like Justin.

Vote for your favorite, or contribute your own, after the jump.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Brian Morrissey of Adweek is writing about Web 2.0 companies that are built on customer-centric models. He names Zappos, Etsy, Threadless, Craigslist and Yelp as leading examples and gives his piece depth by describing the lengths Zappos goes to engage with customers.

But there’s something else in the article that I’m attracted to.

Google’s home page may have nothing but a search box and links to Google’s services — which means the company is forgoing tens of millions of dollars in advertising — but it’s doing something more important: putting its customers first. Untargeted ads, even simple text links, goes the rationale, would put too steep a cost on its users.

This decision is “revolutionary,” wrote Havas Media Lab director and London economist Umair Haque on Harvard Business Online in February. “By choosing to invest in consumers over advertising, Google is a living example of a deeper truth: The future of communications as advantage lies in talking less and listening more.”

At the heart of these decisions is a simple fact of life with the Internet: Everyone is connected, and hiding behind glossy images won’t work when a Google search can turn up the good, bad and ugly of your company. In the analog world, it was different. Haque believes brands thrived on how difficult it was for people to get information. Logos, spokespersons and slogans combined to give consumers a way to make choices. But now, the Internet has turned that on its head. “The entire economic rationale for brands is gone,” Haque said in an interview. “Interaction is too easy now for brands to have power.”

That last bit is pretty tough talk. And it seems a bit misguided. Brands can’t hide behind their branding is more to the point.

This was probably fun to film but, um, huh?

Operators and vendors to test and demonstrate best practices in monetisation, content delivery, advertising and innovative services. New participating commercial partners are Amdocs, BT, Call Genie, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, EBIZmobility, Subex and Telcordia

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LONDON – Gail Amber, one of Campaign’s best known journalists for a decade from the mid-70s, has died aged 62.

LONDON – Britain’s lowest priced DAB radio has gone on sale in Asda stores today (Monday) for £15 – half the price charged by many retailers.

Sally Hogshead writing in Ad Age says “there’s no such things as the idea.”

If you can break out of the mind-set that you have to create that one almighty concept, you can stay more open to client feedback, integrate other media platforms and forage outside of your comfort zone for creative thinking.

This is good advice. Too many times I’ve watched in horror while creative staff impaled themselves on a sword for their precious big idea. It’s not necessary.

What is necessary, is the inner knowledge that ideas are infinite and your ability to create them unparalleled. Get to that place and you’re free.

First email spam, now cell phone spam.

The New York Times has your hook up:

The fees that customers pay to receive messages are a source of profit for the phone companies. It is hard to estimate how much they make. Many consumers pay for a monthly plan that allows them to send and receive large numbers of messages. But for those without a plan, getting as few as 10 unsolicited text messages a month at 20 cents each would cost an extra $24 a year.

Communications companies say they are not interested in spam as a profit center. They want to one day exploit the power of customized advertising on mobile phones, and tawdry spam pitches threaten to make their customers hostile toward all commercial messages. The companies are trying to head off the

That’s just b.s. If they weren’t interested in this spam as profit, they wouldn’t allow it in the first place. Anyone who has had an accidental internet pay-per-use charge can tell you how unsympathetic the cell phone industry is to your plight if you get a message that links to a video of some sort that ends up costing you 400 bucks (he speaks from personal experience).
Plus, since regulators have had a tough time getting rid of email spam, I don’t suppose the vigilance for cell phone spam will be there. Phone companies already sell my information to interested parties, why should I take their word that *NOW* they’re not in it for profit but rather research purposes on the extent of customized advertising.

I love technology but all this meddling is making me want to find a cabin in Montana and start writing my manifesto. Preferably on a typewriter, which is immune to porn spam.

Spam spam sausage spam

Technorati Tags: mobile technology, cell phones, spam, stuff that sucks, Monty Python nerds

LONDON – Cadbury has appointed CMW (formerly Clark McKay and Walpole) with the digital account for Wispa following a three-way pitch.