Advertising Industry Archive

October 2008

Publicis Groupe released its third quarter earnings results this week and most of the coverage focused on the company’s 1.5 percent decline in revenues, to $1.1 billion. Those reports, however, don’t give the full flavor of the baffling way in which the French report their numbers. A few noted that Publicis CEO Maurice Levy’s gloomy outlook for 2009, and the fact that Levy...

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Parents of new children will believe anything if you tell them it’s good for their kids. Beech-Nut seems to have relied on that in its print and web campaign for its Good Morning and Good Evening baby-food products. The company had been claiming that Good Morning Chiquita Banana Juice with Yogurt “supports attentiveness for learning” and Good Evening Veggie Delight Juice...

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ValueClick announced a decline in revenue for the third quarter today — a depressing sign that online advertising may not be as recession-proof as everyone says it is. A couple of weeks before the earnings call, BNET spoke to ValueClick’s vice president of corporate strategy, John Ardis, about his outlook for the online ad biz. Here’s our Q&A, which has been edited for...

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(See the end-of-post addendum for an obligatory disclaimer.) Let’s face it, Don Draper’s recent performance as creative chief at Sterling Cooper in New York has been terrible. He may be popular in the office, but that doesn’t sell advertising. It’s time for Draper to go. Draper’s actual contribution to the creative department in the last couple of years has been...

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John Kerry urges Obama supporters to help by buying Google ads — Senator John Kerry learned firsthand what happens when political opponents run successful smear campaigns, and he doesn’t want Obama to suffer the same fate he did. Kerry is using his PAC to ask Obama supporters to buy Google ads designed to counteract negative ads against the Democratic candidate. So far, the strategy...

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Interpublic Group’s third quarter earnings showed yet another period of revenue growth, up 11.5% to $1.7 billion. But once again IPG had negative cashflow. This time, $325 million disappeared. On IPG’s web site, the company always posts its income statement and balance sheet at earnings time. But never its cashflow statement. Dig around in the SEC filings, however, and a surprise...

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The new Pepsi logo, designed by the Arnell Group, looks suspiciously like an old, long-abandoned Diet Pepsi logo (see below). Both new and old logos have an almost identical, rounded, sans-serif typeface, with the red and blue Pepsi wave device sloping upward diagonally to the right. Only the spacing and evenness of the waves has changed. Pepsi paid Arnell $1 million for the “new”...

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A close look at Omnicom’s third quarter earnings and the agency holding company’s conference call offer some worrying data points of you’re an employee at one of CEO John Wren’s agencies: The boss says you’re a flexible expense who could be cut. Let’s examine what was said back on Oct. 21, when the numbers came out and Wren (pictured) and his CFO, Randall...

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Yahoo reports Q3 earnings, layoffs — Yahoo reported a 64 percent drop in income for Q3 and CEO Jerry Yang warned investors that the near future of the advertising market isn’t looking bright. The company will slash 10 percent of its workforce in Q4. [Source: CNET] FTC to crack down on ‘green washing’ — In 2009 the FTC plans to reexamine the federal guidelines...

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Apple’s new ads designed to get under Ballmer’s skin — Apple fired back a new round of commercials that make fun of Microsoft’s expensive attempts to turn around consumers’ impressions of its Vista operating system. CNET’s Tom Krazit admits that while the ads are clever, the negative tone could lose its appeal in an election year. [Source: CNET] Pepsi...

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