Advertising Industry Archive

InVentiv Health, a network of drug and medical ad agencies, made a loss of $128 million last year after writing down $268 million in goodwill impairments. Despite that, the company is awarding pay raises for 2009 to its CFO, David Bassin, and its president, Terrell Herring. The disclosure was made in an SEC filing. The filing says: On March 4, 2009, the Compensation Committee of the Board of...

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Will any of the $17.4 billion bailout of the Detroit auto industry show up in the coffers of advertising agencies? It depends on who you ask. Ad Age recently reported that some cable networks are seeing an uptick in car advertising, and IAG Research shows the same. Plus: General Motors Corp.’s Chevrolet division has several new spots from Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Campbell-Ewald,...

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What was AIG doing before it tanked the global economy with its leverage bets on credit default swaps, took an $182 billion bailout in taxpayer money and gave its top employees $165 million in bonuses? Thinking about butterflies, according to this old AIG commercial (video below). In the spot, a dad and his daughter are picnic-ing in a meadow by a river on a sunny day. Here’s the loopy...

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The recession may have arrived at Nielsen, the giant audience measurement and marketing research company that feeds the ad industry the numbers it needs to survive. The company sent a letter to all its global suppliers telling them they were adopting a new payment schedule. Suppliers can either wait 75 days for their money, or get it in 15 days at a 3 percent discount, according to a copy of...

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Cyrus Mehri and the NAACP have sent a strongly worded four-page letter to Procter & Gamble and a couple dozen other major marketers insisting that they force their advertising agencies to use non-white staffers in creative and account management positions. The letter is part of Mehri’s plan to find a way of suing Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic and Publicis in a class-action race...

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Lamar has taken on $350 million more in debt as it expects to see net income in Q1 and Q2 hurt by write-downs of goodwill. Lamar said the new debt will “reduce the amount of revolving commitments under our senior credit facility.” In addition, the company said its market cap had fallen below its book value: Because our market capitalization has been below our equity book value for a...

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Kyra Sedgwick is the new face of Tropicana in a campaign by Arnell Group that features a product that no longer exists — the redesigned Tropicana OJ carton. BNET speculated yesterday that big stars, like Sedgwick and Lindsay Lohan, are likely to become increasingly available for ads as their stocks and real estate holdings decline in the recession. Celebrities can be vulnerable to...

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Marc Ecko’s TV commercial for Red sneakers, starring singer Vanessa Hudgens, is misleading to children, according to the Children’s Advertising Review Unit. CARU is an industry body that monitors children’s marketing. The commercial (video below), in which Hudgens and her crew are shown dancing in a neighborhood street, will give kids the impression that the sneakers light up...

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Lindsay Lohan, strapped for cash, is starring in a campaign for trendy apparel chain Fornarina (see video below).  The commercial has been soundly panned by reviewers, including Adfreak (”ghastly“), the LA Times (”cheesy“), and this blog (”disturbingly bizarre“). The tie-up turns the spotlight on an interesting effect that the recession will have on...

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Advertising Age has laid off five more editorial staffers, according to the New York Observer: Since December, the magazine has let go a photo editor (Susan McCoy), editors of Special Reports (editors Dan Lippe and Mike Ryan Ad Age’s special sections, which are not advertorial), and a copy editor whose name we have yet to learn. Further, we heard that Ira Teinowitz, the DC bureau chief,...

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