LONDON – Guardian Unlimited, the most visited UK newspaper online, is set to jump on the social networking bandwagon after striking a deal with Pluck, a provider of social networking platforms.
LONDON – Michael Parkinson, the recently retired and knighted chat show host, is the new face of AXA Sun Life Direct.
LONDON – Outdoor advertising outfit Look Media and specialist media agency Ambient Media have teamed up for a campaign to promote a new computer game based around Disney’s High School Musical.
The four year battle over having a croc as a logo is officially over – Lacoste lost. Dentists Dr Tim Rumney and Dr Simon Moore have been using a green grinning croc on the sign to the The Dental Practice in Cheltenham since 1991. It wasn’t until 2004 when they went to register their new logo that Lacoste yelped “it’s too similar to our croc!” and the court dance began. The Dentist’s defence: That people were not likely to mistake their single-storey brick building behind a car park and next to a petrol station for a boutique selling Lacoste fashions. 
If that logo hasn’t been done by tracing the Lacoste one, I’ll eat my hat with A1 steak sauce.
Lacoste was ordered to pay £1,000 towards the dental practice’s legal costs at the initial hearing as well as a further £450 towards the costs of the second hearing.
Back in 2004 Lacoste lost its trademark suit against rival Crocodile International over a similar croc logo – but that one did in fact look different.
There are many reasons to affiliate oneself with a political party. Proximity to one’s political beliefs is a good start. You can weigh moral stances, track records and cooperation (or lack thereof) with other parties. You can also spin around a few times and pick a name from a hat. Any of which might be preferable to the method suggested by Canada’s Conservative party, which is urging college students to veer to the right … simply to piss off their stupid, tree-hugging professors. Annoying one’s teacher might seem like a middle-school strategy cooked up during recess, but a spokesman says the ads are meant to “play against the stereotype†that all big Canadian institutions support the Conservatives. Of course, it may reinforce another stereotype: that young conservatives are argumentative crybabies.
—Posted by David Kiefaber
LONDON – James Bennett has been promoted to the new role of group head at thelondonpaper.
Some might say user-generated ad campiagns are so 2007 but not Samsung who partnered with Brickfish to bring us a video contest in whick people can submit their own versions of Pussycat Doll lead singer Nicole Scherzinger’s single “baby…
LONDON – Toby Courlander, a partner at the production company Outsider, has resigned to concentrate on writing a feature film.
Gordon Brown has appointed Brunswick Group chief executive Stephen Carter as his chief of strategy.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Liberty Media is paying more than $100 million to buy the stake of BodyBuilding.com from the site’s founding family and a private-equity firm.
Once known primarily as an investor in media companies, Liberty has taken steps in recent years to become more of an operator of its own businesses. In the past couple of years it has assembled a sizable portfolio of Internet ventures to complement its QVC home-shopping network, whose growth has slowed as retail sales shift to the Web. Last year, Liberty purchased Buyseasons Inc., which operates an online costume site, and a controlling stake in Backcountry.com, an outdoor and action-sports retailer. In 2006 Liberty paid nearly $500 million to buy Internet flower and food seller Provide Commerce Inc.
Liberty Chief Executive Gregory Maffei said the company is committed to acquiring more high-growth Internet businesses targeted at narrow customer segments, viewing them as highly attractive as audiences fragment online. “We would do as many such deals as we could get our hands on,” he said, stressing that the number of independent companies that meet those criteria is relatively small.
These are big numbers dished out by a media company for what is essentially a retail business, but online. We live in interesting times.
Around AdFreak, I’m known as a big thinker, always considering the nature of the human condition in the universe and mulling existential ways to stretch out my lunch hour and such. So I naturally checked out BigThink, despite its description in The New York Times as a “combination YouTube and Facebook for intellectuals.†Sounds pretty deadly, huh? The site itself, well … it launched with “selected ideas†(and closely cropped headshots) of Sen. Ted Kennedy, American Enterprise Institute fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer and actress/playwright Anna Deavere Smith. Makes you want to visit, right? “Poking†Ted Kennedy is such an abhorrent concept, I was relieved there was no such functionality. This reminds me of a Web-2.0 take on PBS, but without the endless pledge drives or Barney the Dinosaur, so at least that’s an improvement. Now, if BigThink would like to feature my big thoughts on advertising, media or whatever, I’m available.
—Posted by David Gianatasio
Word on the street is Obama won the first-ever MySpace primary for the Democratic side, taking 46 percent of MySpace Democrat votes. Having stolen the love of social networking’s working-class, Bob Garfield — ad commentator-cum-resident sociologist — is willing…
LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest will sponsor 4Homes, Channels 4’s property strand. From January, RBS and NatWest’s mortgage and insurance businesses will sponsor a raft of programmes returning in 2008, including Relocation, Relocation; Grand Designs; Property Ladder and Location Location Location.
After seeing Entertainment Weekly’s list of the best love songs ever, RedEye decided to compile a list of the 10 Corniest Love Songs on Earth. Noble intentions, but the list is flawed from the get-go, with Journey’s “Open Arms†in 10th place. No one is cornier than Journey, not even Michael Bolton (who’s sitting in seventh place) or Extreme (the most disingenuously named band in rock history, in fourth place). The choice for No. 1 is a tad suspect as well. Not that Jessica Simpson isn’t terrible, but she’s too new on the scene to head up a list like this. What about “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend� Or “Stupid Cupid� Or “Together Forever In Love� Or hell, why not forget making a list and just beat up Neil Sedaka?
—Posted by David Kiefaber
Loath to miss out on the open applications hype but too lazy (or busy hunting?) to build one, PETA is hosting a contest for people keen to develop a Facebook or OpenSocial app promoting PETA or its campaigns. (Does…
Gotta love a logo battle. French firm Lacoste just lost one against a dental practice in UK-based Gloucestershire, which uses the image of a crocodile to promote its service. The battle raged for four years between the goliathan clothing…
To draw eyes to its eco-friendliness, UK-based energy company EDF put together this Frankenstein’s hide of an ad. It includes cuts from Thunderbirds and The Wombles, and bits of speeches by John F Kennedy and former President Clinton. The…
LONDON – The Financial Times has increased its cover price for the second time in seven months by 20p to £1.50.
In macho baseball parlance, a “slump buster†refers to an unattractive woman with whom a struggling slugger has sex in an attempt to break out of a slump. That goes a long way toward explaining why the pros are always adjusting themselves at the plate. In his autobiography, Jose “Squealer†Canseco said he’d rather go 0-for-40 than seek out a slump buster. He preferred steroids, and hasn’t shut up about it since. Slump Buster is also the name of a new energy drink endorsed by Boston Red Sox first-baseman Kevin Youkilis, who doesn’t go into slumps that often. I guess the name will be controversial, which was probably why they chose it. The Red Sox are world champs, so you’d think Youk could get a classier ad gig, like shilling (or is it Schilling?) for Dunkin’ Donuts. (It was, in fact, Schilling.) Still, Youk’s assignment isn’t really any more downmarket than David Ortiz’s efforts for D’Angelo’s sandwich shops. Most guys would take Slump Buster over that cheese-steak stalker any day.
—Posted by David Gianatasio
LAS VEGAS (AdAge.com) — The scene felt as if the president of the U.S. was speaking, from the heavy security presence complete with bomb-sniffing dogs to a line wrapped around two levels of the hall at the Venetian Palazzo Ballroom here two hours before a keynote speech was to take place. And when it comes to the Consumer Electronics Show, Bill Gates might just be the honorary commander in chief. But for his last CES keynote as a full-time employee of Microsoft — he's delivered nine — the hour-long presentation was short on nostalgia and long on entertainment.
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