Advertising Industry Archive

WPP chief Martin Sorrell said he may not be able to meet his margin guidance this year due in part to aggressive client procurement tactics in contract negotiation. The remarks, made to the FT at the Cannes Advertising Festival, touched a nerve at ProcurementBlog, whose commentary reveals much about the opaque, intangible nature of advertising “accountability,” agency billing...

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Publicis could be a likely buyer for Razorfish now that Microsoft – which acquired the digital shop in its aQuantive buy — wants to sell it, the FT reports: One analyst valued Razorfish at $600m-$700m, based on sales of about $400m last year and profit margins for similar businesses of 12-13 per cent. The other networks will likely take a look at the books, even if only out of...

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A direct marketing company and the Discovery Channel are already planning to resurrect the corpse of Billy Mays by continuing to run his ads and TV shows once his funeral is over, Ad Age reports. The president of Media Enterprise, marketer of Mighty Mendit and Mighty Putty, said he will ask the Mays family to put Billy’s ads back on the air. The Discovery Channel will run...

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The Valassis v. News America Marketing trial is on a break this week, with testimony resuming July 6. News America is using the breather from Michigan state court to do some repair work on its image, which has taken a hammering. In a message to BNET, News America vp/corporate communications Laura Richards asked for a more “balanced” view to be presented of CEO Paul Carlucci in our...

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Julie Roehm exposed herself to yet another profile piece — this time in Fast Company — in an attempt to rehab her image as a marketing consultant. The story illustrates the weird fascination that female business writers and their male editors have with Roehm (Forbes’ Allison Fass did a similar piece a year ago*). As everyone knows, the former Walmart advertising chief was...

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“Chav fighting,” Harrison Ford, and “Comfort Wipes.” It all happened in June, mostly via Saatchi & Saatchi for some reason. Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority Probes “Chav Fighting” Ads A small chain of London gyms advertised training for those who want to fight “chavs” — poor but brand-conscious white trash who are the...

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UPDATED: Billy Mays “Zombie” to Be Resurrected in Ads, TV Shows Billy Mays, the shoutingest infomercial pitchman to ever bellow “But wait, there’s more!,” died Sunday aged 50. Mays was a much-loved face of an industry that makes a lot of money but often does not afford its participants much dignity (check out the Body Snake, for instance). Mays, however, had a...

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The sun appears to be setting on MySpace as the company lays off 1,150 staffers ahead of the end of a $300 million-a-year advertising deal with Google, Reuters reports. The site has half the traffic of Facebook. More importantly, revenues and profits at MySpace are in decline, according to News Corp’s most recent earnings statement. MySpace’s numbers aren’t broken out...

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Former Pepsico executive Christine Hall testified that she believed News America Marketing’s policy of pricing its in-store supermarket ads as a bundle with its newspaper coupons was ethically problematic. She told a Michigan state court that News America’s bundled deal represented an $18 million price discount over taking supermarket ads alone. In the case, Valassis is alleging...

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Michael Jackson died today aged 50. The facts of his death will be better reported elsewhere. But for those of you interested in his contribution to advertising, here’s a gallery of his commercials. From his well-known ads for Pepsi to his more obscure Japanese commercials (Space Channel 5?), there was almost nothing this human brand could not promote. Among the forgotten gems are ads for...

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