There’s been discussion recently about whether WPP can pay its debts. (BNET concluded that, for the time being, WPP is fine). But what about WPP boss Martin Sorrell’s personal debts? Turns out Sorrell is highly leveraged — with his own stock. The FT and the Independent report that Sorrell was one of many UK execs who was recently required by the Financial Standards Authority...
Advertising Industry Archive
January 2009
An federal appeals court has ruled that Taco Bell and not its former agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, is solely liable to pay a $42 million breach of contract judgment against it over the use of the “Yo quiero Taco Bell!” chihuahua. The ruling dates back to a dispute over a campaign from the 1990s, but has relevance for all agencies today: Taco Bell parent Yum! Brands had argued in court...
Saatchi & Saatchi is saying “not in my back yard” to a proposed garbage truck station near its corporate headquarters in downtown Manhattan. The New York sanitation department wants to put a garage for its garbage trucks on Spring Street, right around the corner from Saatchi HQ on Hudson Street. Local paper The Villager says that would bring 800 extra garbage trucks into the...
Carrefour taps Publicis Groupe — The holding company plans to form an ad-hoc agency that will be totally dedicated to the account, like Enfatico for Dell. Hired without a review to handle its corporate and commercial advertising. [Source: Adweek] Rumor: LePlae out at TBWA — Back in October 2005, Omnicom Group’s TBWA Worldwide promoted West Coast chief Robert LePlae to...
Layoffs at Starcom — Chicago’s Starcom MediaVest laid off 80 staffers yesterday, AgencySpy has learned. A Starcom representative confirmed the cuts today, stating that the current economic climate is to blame. [Source: AgencySpy] 26 laid off at Ogilvy Group UK — The role of Bo Hellberg, the creative director of OgilvyInteractive, was made redundant alongside 25 other jobs from...
Today’s news of layoffs at Dentsu and InterPublic’s McCann is depressing, but not helping matters is former IPG titan Phil Geier, who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times with his own money to tout a ludicrous economic stimulus idea. His notion, per Ad Age, is that President Obama should give every American: a book of checks [that] may be used for discounts against certain...
Interpublic seems determined to maximize the pain of its own downsizing. It laid off 83 staffers at two of its agencies this week. The toll included 3 percent of its McCann New York office, or 30 staffers; and 53 people from MacLaren McCann Canada, which works on the crumbling General Motors business. Note the difference between the way IPG and Omnicom are handling their cuts. Omnicom announced...
Fifteen staffers at DentsuNext have lost their jobs as the company reorganizes its American operations, according to Adweek. The layoffs come after DentsuNext lost the $100 million Suzuki business last year. The Brea, Calif., office of Dentsu had 50 employees at the time. But the cuts aren’t just about lost accounts. If the agency was anywhere near healthy it could absorb some of those...
A while ago BNET noted that the new Pepsi logo looks a lot like the old Diet Pepsi logo. In the intervening weeks a couple of other logos have popped up that also seem to look like the new Pepsi marque. Here’s a mini-gallery of four logos. See if you can guess which image belongs to which successful marketing organization. The answers are below. a. b. c. d. If you guessed a....
Ogilvy & Mather has promoted Tom Seifert to chairman of Ogilvy North America. The move is noteworthy because it raises the spectre of his wife, Shona Seifert, a former account manager at Ogilvy who did 18 months in prison in 2005 after she was convicted of defrauding the federal government on its billion-dollar anti-drug account. Shona Seifert has resurrected her career as a marketing...
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