Advertising Industry Archive

Crispin Porter + Bogusky will be furious over an Ad Age analysis that alleges the agency’s work for Burger King isn’t that effective. Here’s the nut: Between 2003 — the year before Burger King hired Crispin as agency of record — and 2008, Burger King’s share of the burger-chain market fell to 14.2% from 15.6%, according to Technomic, while McDonald’s...

More...

News America Marketing CEO Paul Carlucci talked about his interest in the mafia in a video deposition at a Michigan State court trial in which his company is accused of anticompetitive practices. The court also heard about a memo in which Carlucci discussed raising prices without telling clients to see how much money the company could collect before anyone noticed. The testimony was entered by...

More...

Is WPP chief Martin Sorrell softening up the market for more dismal news in his Q2 2009 results? He told an Italian media outlet that he saw no new investments by clients to mark an economic turnaround; a meeting of his finance execs with Bank of Montreal left the latter feeling negative about WPP’s Eurpoean business; and Sorrell himself met with the prime minister of Zimbabwe (of all...

More...

Globalhue’s overbilling of the Bermuda Tourism account is a “fact” that represents “possible criminal activity,” according to the island’s former auditor general, Larry Dennis. Dennis’ remarks came after he was accused of being used to politically discredit Bermuda’s premier, Ewart Brown, who also doubles as the nation’s tourism chief....

More...

Pizza Hut has created an unneccessary publicity backlash by tentatively changing its brand to the “The Hut.” Do a search for Pizza Hut in Google News and you’ll see that the move was met with gales of laughter from the media and scorn from the public. The company was forced to put out a press release saying that Pizza Hut was not changing its name, even though it, er, was...

More...

Blatherskite, a British web site, is speculating that lord Stephen Carter could be in line to succeed WPP chief Martin Sorrell. BNET noted that WPP was planning for his succession back in May. Carter (pictured) is a former JWT man who recently quit Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government, where he was communications minister. He formerly served as Brown’s strategist and adviser....

More...

Miami’s SCPF has launched an attempt to get all the women in the world to have their periods at the same time. It is not clear why. The social media campaign, titled The Global Period Project, purports to be an experiment to find out whether women connected via online networks will experience synchronous periods in the same way that women who live together in dorms do. Women are asked to...

More...

Folks at Chrysler and its agency, BBDO, will likely be fizzing with anger at the news, reported in Ad Age, that General Motors‘ ad budget was passed by the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry without any changes. When Chrysler’s bankruptcy went through that panel it was chopped in half. GM now has permission to spend up to $50 million a month on ads during its restructuring...

More...

Rupert Murdoch urged his CEO at News America Marketing to “really go after them” when they learned that Valassis‘ stock had declined after the company lost market share, a Michigan state court heard. In its anti-competition case against News America Marketing, Valassis has frequently tried to portray the News Corp. agency as being run by a ruthless “boss of all...

More...

The relationship between The Children’s Advertising Review Unit and the Motion Picture Association of America is non-functional, raising questions about what, exactly, each self-policing body is hoping to achieve with the other. CARU has sent out a stream of press releases indicating it believes that sexy, violent movies are being wrongly advertised to kids — and the MPAA, per its...

More...