Advertising Industry Archive

As Ad Age points out, BBDO’s loss of Pepsi will be a major psychological blow to the agency. Omnicom did well to keep the business in its network (the account is off to TBWA/Chiat/Day). But none of the coverage says why the brand chose to give BBDO the pink slip. Here’s one theory: BBDO was too expensive. To read the press, you’d think that BBDO and Pepsi have been in a long,...

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Adweek is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a series of online video interviews with the great and good of the agency world. As you might expect, the interrogations are fairly reverential and the various CEOs who sat for the piece don’t break a lot of news. But here and there some noises of anxiety have leaked through — mostly, these guys are afraid of the future and the...

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Red Lobster has managed to maneuver rival seafood chain Captain D’s into an FTC review of its advertising for alleged misleading claims. This sort of thing can cost a company millions of dollars. Captain D’s had run a series of claims on TV and the web that mentioned Red Lobster specifically: Captain D’s offerings are ‘like the same thing we just ate’ at Red...

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Ex-BBDO boss Martin Lindstrom says India is a filthy place that makes everyone sick, and that the country should hold itself to the high standards of McDonald’s in order to fix its image problems. The former CEO of BBDO Interactive in Europe and Asia gave an interview to India’s Tejelka in which he was asked how India should change its image. His answer: stop poisoning tourists:...

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Saatchi & Saatchi has charged New York State $17 million for a clip art squirrel.* New York state is to spend $17 million on a Saatchi & Saatchi campaign featuring what appears to be a clip art squirrel. The move came after the agency was asked to redesign the New York famous “I Love NY” logo, which adorns millions of T-shirts and shopping bags. But the new logo is virtually...

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Gawker Media’s Nick Denton has made a horrible prediction regarding internet adspend for the next year: He thinks it will not be immune to the recession and companies like his should start cutting expenses now. You can tell Nick is truly nervous about the economy because of how sweaty he appears to be every time a photo is taken of him. (See gallery.) Specifically, Denton sees revenues...

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Paloma Picasso, a house jewelry designer at Tiffany & Co. and daughter of pioneering cubist Pablo Picasso, appears topless in Tiffany & Co.’s new catalogue of her work for the holiday season. (See picture.) The photograph is part of a montage of pictures of Paloma’s life, including one where she appears as a young girl drawing a picture with crayons as a tanned, bald man...

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Casey Jones has lost his job as vp marketing at Dell, and with it goes his role as “creator” of the Dell-only ad agency he demanded be formed to work solely on his account, Enfatico. The move proves two things that WPP chief Martin Sorrell knew going into this deal a year ago, but that he nonetheless ignored in order to win the Dell prize: That it is incredibly inefficient to build...

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The management at iCrossing are up to their eyeballs in trouble, if the $19.5 million lawsuit filed against them by Agency.com is to be believed. One should never trust legal complaints — there’s always another side to the story. But this one, in which Omnicom’s Agency.com accuses its old managers of leaving the shop and poaching all their best employees and clients, is so...

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Bob Isherwood is leaving Saatchi & Saatchi where he was the longtime worldwide creative director. Isherwood is best known for helming Saatchi’s win of the Toyota account, and his carefully constructed hair (see historic gallery). Strangely, the folks at Ad Age’s Creativity couldn’t bring themselves to name a campaign that Isherwood made famous. Neither could Adweek, which...

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