Hasta La Creative!

It’s a tough marketing challenge, since you can’t rely on any individual’s repeat business to sustain a customer base. But a wire-service story suggests there’s a “potentially huge” market for biodegradable coffins as part of a broader trend toward “natural” burials, which avoid formaldehyde embalming and other planet-hostile practices. The story notes that cremation used to be viewed as the eco-friendly way of disposing of oneself but has fallen out of environmentalist favor due to its use of fossil fuels. No doubt ad agencies will come up with catchy slogans to tout competing brands of biodegradable coffins.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

In terms of media exposure, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in office less than a year, certainly gets around. There’s his romance with former supermodel Carla Bruni; his son’s “outing” as a hip-hop producer; his tirades against reporters; a YouTube video in which he looks tipsy; and a proposal to ban commercials from French TV and recoup the revenue by taxing the Internet and mobile phones. All I can say is: They’ve got hip-hop in France? Sacre bleu! 50 Cent would be Cinquante Cent, but he’d also be known as Ciddy. As for Sarkozy, the man who once apologized by saying “My English is very bad,” he has no trouble getting his messages across loud and clear.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

This Ford Ranger ad is billed by Jalopnik as “the craziest you will ever see,” and it actually lives up to the hype. If this is what tallying bananas entails, then it’s no wonder the guys in that song wanna go home so bad. It’s also hard to believe the truck’s owner didn’t notice one giant ape disciplining another for picking up his truck and running it into the side of a cliff. Or for that matter, that a giant ape picked up his truck and ran it into the side of a cliff. He must’ve been holding it in all day, that’s all I can figure.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Brandkeys publishes this thing called the Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. According to this year’s index, Starbucks lost serious ground in ’07 for forgetting what made it a big name in the first place: the coffee experience. Who’s winning the…

Dave and Eddy claim they’ve found THE GREATEST AD EVER. (And it’s not that damn Volkswagen ad.) In an attic! Visual fetishists, prepare to be disappointed. It lacks color, imagery or music to boost its emotional cred — just…

LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland has moved its £15m retail advertising account from M&C Saatchi to CHI & Partners without a pitch.

LONDON – The AA has kicked off the expected review of its £33 million above- and below-the-line creative accounts with a view to consolidating them into one agency and placing greater emphasis on direct response.

LONDON – Below-the-line agency Claydon Heeley has poached Caroline Taylor, a planner at Craik Jones, as its new planning director.

LONDON – UK music fans will pay less for iTunes downloads within six months, after the European Commission ruled it was unlawful for Apple to charge more in Britain than it does in Europe.

LONDON – Mediaedge:cia is expected to lose the non-EU portion of Visa’s European media account to OMD, which was yesterday awarded the bulk of Visa’s $500m (£265m) global media business.