Advertising Industry Archive

February 2009

WPP pays almost nothing in taxes to its headquarters country, Britain, due to an elaborate series of schemes that shelter its operations in places like Luxembourg, Ireland and Holland. Here’s a digest of this must-read piece in the Guardian (coupled with the usual commentary): … the surprising truth is, that far from forking out £200m a year to the UK in corporation tax, WPP has...

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Bad news for LL Cool James, Sarah Jessica Parker, Amanda Bynes, Venus Williams et al – Following the worst holiday shopping season in four decades, numerous retailers are going bankrupt or being liquidated and taking celebrity brands down along with them. [Source: Ad Age] Rita Sanders employee in credit card scam — A former employee of a Tempe advertising agency was arrested on...

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What’s on the minds of young agency trainees at GSD&M Idea City? Whether their nail polish choices might be considered too radical for the Austin, Tx., agency — at least according to this blog, kept by a current GSD&M intern. It’s a big issue for Megan Burkly (pictured), because her entire blog is titled, “What color do I feel like painting my nails today?”...

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The Russian Orthodox Church has backed a campaign to run on London buses proclaiming “There Is a God,” to counter ads run by atheists that had the headline, “There’s Probably No God.” News service Ria Novosti reported that CBS Outdoor has the contract to run the ads, which will be funded by Alexander Korobko, the head of the London-based Russian Hour satellite TV...

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A woman employed as an office manager at Lamar Advertising in Oklahmoma City pleaed guilty to stealing $200,000 from the company by diverting checks, according to the (wonderfully named) Norman Transcript. Angela Smith used Lamar letterhead to persuade a check cashing business to cash Lamar checks over to her. She then made bogus entries in Lamar’s computer system to hide her tracks. The...

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Super Bowl more expensive for advertisers, got fewer viewers — NBC said it sold out its entire available ad inventory on the Super Bowl last night, notching $206 million, up from $186.3 million sold by News Corp.’s Fox for the 2008 game. The game got 97 million viewers last year, 2009’s Super Bowl reached a more down-to-earth 94.5 million. [Source: Ad Age] Former Sex Pistol ad...

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WPP chief Martin Sorrell continued his entertaining spat with Publicis boss Maurice Levy at Davos this week. In an interview with the Independent, Sorrell said his French rival tends to “lose it” and is “hysterically funny” when he does so: Maurice Levy tends to lose it on many occasions. He lost it last year at Davos in the session we did on the American president...

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Publicis is to shutter Honeyshed, its online shopping experiment via agency Droga5, Adweek reports. Ten employees are to be laid off. The move was completely predictable, as everyone who watched Honeyshed — an online video site that hoped to make home-shopping trendy and ironic — hated it. The site was hosted by painfully trendy presenters with amateurish presentation skills,...

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Welcome to February. Here’s our usual roundup of weird news from the ad world that popped onto our radar in January. 40 years on from Mad Men, ad agencies still use female employees as eye candy A trio of agency promo videos recently collected on MediaBistro reveals that ad agencies like tits, bikinis and girls in flight attendant uniforms. Here’s Gyro’s. Here’s...

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