Advertising Industry Archive

The FTC has published proposed new rules that would bring commercial endorsements by bloggers under its jurisdiction — and therefore subject blogs and their authors to potential legal consequences for false or misleading advertising. The new proposed rules were published on the FTC’s website Nov. 21, in a Federal Register notice seeking comment on the use of endorsers in advertising. Ad...

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In a completely unsurprising set of reactions, design honchos who compete against the Arnell Group for business had little good to say about the new logo for Pepsi. BNET broke the news a few weeks ago that the new,  $1 million logo bears a strong resemblance to an old, long-forgotten Diet Pepsi logo. And others have pointed out that it looks like Barack Obama’s campaign logo. One thing...

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Just how much Apple spends on advertising has been a fun guessing game among bloggers and analysts recently, particularly given Apple’s whimisical but sharp-edged TV-spot sparring with Microsoft over the quality of its Vista operating system. Now BNET editor Lindsay Blakely, who authors the advertising roundups right here, has the answer, thanks to a sharp find in Apple’s latest 10-K...

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FRIDAY UPDATE: IPG is begging its employees to lobby their Congress-persons in favor of the bailout. “GM has asked that we weigh in with our representatives in Congress,” says a note to the IPG troops. “We hope you will consider sharing this information with your employees so that they can make themselves heard on this important issue should they choose to.” The...

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Hoffman/Lewis in San Francisco and St. Louis promises on its web site to “get beyond the fleeting trends, false goals, and dreadful jargon of contemporary advertising.” But a look at the blog of its CEO, Bob Hoffman (pictured), shows that ‘getting beyond the jargon’ seems to mean dropping the F-bomb as much as possible. The blog is titled “The Ad Contrarian; Cranky...

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Cliff Freeman & Partners CEO Jeff McLelland was asked to leave, marking another chapter of turmoil at the agency. He had only been the CEO since 2005. One imagines it must be quite difficult to work for Cliff Freeman, who remains the agency’s chairman. In his video for Adweek’s 30th anniversary, Freeman made it pretty clear that when clients test his work too much or otherwise...

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Fitch, the financial company that rates the ability of companies to pay back the debt they’ve taken on, has downgraded WPP from BBB+ to BBB. Here are the plain-English reasons why, and what it means for folks employed at WPP shops: The action reflects Fitch’s concerns over a protracted consumer-led economic recession and a substantial slowdown in advertising spending that is likely...

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Steve Stoute of Translation Consultation & Brand Imaging is to be inducted into the AAF’s Hall of Achievement. Stoute is best known for his work bringing together corporate America with pop and rap endorsers. But before he entered the ad business and formed the Arnell Group’s PASS shop, he was more famous for being the record company executive who took a famous beating from Sean...

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You young’ uns won’t remember Bates Advertising or AC&R, but for admen and women of a certain age, the story of former Bates svp Kathryn Jordan, a planner, will ring a bell. After 13 years of litigation, WPP has won a ruling that says it was OK to lay off Jordan even though she had multiple sclerosis and executives at the agency had allegedly referred to her as a...

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Good luck to the six shops who’ve reached the final of the Levi Strauss & Co. review. You’ll need it — because Levi’s is a company that has a track record of not knowing what it wants, trying a mish-mash of unrelated strategies, and then switching horses midstream. The company dumped Bartle Bogle Hegarty last month, the agency that had led its creative since 2001....

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