Hasta La Creative!

So what do you to to promote yet another shopping mall in a place as big and busy as Hong Kong?

LONDON – Brand Republic users have gone all philosophical, asking if there can ever be ethical marketing and whether advertising has any influence. But before getting to the heavy stuff, there’s Wife-O-Meters and digital train spotting to discuss. Read on for this week’s roundup of what community members are talking about in response to our forums, blogs and news articles.

LONDON – TNS Healthcare, the medical market research sector of TNS, has appointed Ceri Thomas to the new position of executive vice-president of global accounts.

Advertising Agency: EURO RSCG Warsaw, Poland
Creative Director: Jacek Szulecki
Art Directors: Sylwia Rekawek, Marcin Kruk
Copywriter: Justyna Nakielska
Photographer: Jason Hindley
Other additional credits:
Postproduction: Happy Finish
Published: September 2007

LONDON – The sale of Emap’s Consumer Group to German publisher H Bauer has been approved by shareholders at an EGM held this morning.

People in Sweden don’t sleep very well at night, judging by three new McDonald’s ads produced by DDB Stockholm. Each one takes place in a disturbed dreamland, where men share long noses, birds anchor motocross coverage, and blobs moan inconsolably. McDonald’s coffee, it turns out, can help you emerge from your troubled bed and get on with your day. As we learned earlier this week, Swedes want to ban sexist ads. But they may have bigger issues to wrestle with first.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

LONDON – Hachette Filipacchi UK has appointed Rick Herman as its head of digital sales.

For another example of how bizarre the world is getting, we turn to Hershey, which has stopped making Ice Breakers Pacs — which are “nickel-sized dissolvable pouches with a powdered sweetener inside” — because the law-enforcement community feels that they look too much like heroin. Their main concern is that the Pacs would desensitize children to the more potent snortables in today’s flourishing drug market. That risk, I feel, is overshadowed by how bad it would hurt to shove one of those things up your nose, let alone catch a snoot full of the mint powder. But I can understand the concern, given the challenges of policing other drug look-alikes, such as oregano and confectioner’s sugar.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Anyone who’s seen Activia’s ads knows they’re bizarre. But do they also make false health claims? Dannon, say it isn’t so! Attorney Timothy Blood (cool lawyer name) tells Brandweek: “Deceptive advertising has enabled Dannon to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ordinary yogurt at inflated prices to responsible, health conscious consumers.” Dannon says Activia and DanActive aid digestion and boost immunity, but a new lawsuit by a client of Blood’s maintains there’s no evidence to support such claims and asks Dannon to issue $300 million in refunds. Now that I can make a few bucks off it, I’m running out and buying cases of the stuff. The ads always were a bit loose in most respects—sort of appropriate, considering the supposed health benefits of the brand in question. A Los Angeles court will now decide if they were loose with the facts as well.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

It seems more things have been gummified than I thought. Aside from your typical gummi worms and gummi bears, there’s a whole range of items that, according to YesButNoButYes, shouldn’t have been gummied at all. They include internal organs, bacon (which, inexplicably, is strawberry flavored), banana slugs, haggis (gross, but there are worse bits of Scotland to gummi), and finally, tapeworms. And then, of course, there is the horror that is gummi genitals.

—Posted by David Kiefaber