Advertising Industry Archive

Robert Emmel, an account director turned whistleblower at News America Marketing, testified that the agency paid Eckerd $4.5 million to secure exclusive rights to place advertising in its stores. The deal prevented rival agency Insignia Systems from placing ads in the drugstore chain. News America also paid Ahold and Harris Teeter to prevent other agencies placing ads in their stores, Emmel...

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Vince Shlomi, the infomercial pitchman, Scientologist, and occasional prostitute enthusiast, has inspired a small army of amateur music producers to remix his Slap Chop promo into a variety of new music videos. The craze was started by DJ Steve Porter who posted an electro-themed “Slap Chop Rap” in April. It proved so popular he created a downloadable kit of his remix to allow...

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While Ad Age respectfully mourns the death from leukemia of former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Robert Louis-Dreyfus on July 4, cynics will be asking a less reverent question: Will the passing of this convicted criminal finally lift the curse that has dogged Olympique de Marseille, the French soccer team he owned? Marseille won the French Ligue 1 eight times, the Europe-wide Champions League once...

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A News America Marketing sales chief testified that Del Monte complained it was being “held hostage” in a proposed deal that only allowed the fruit marketer to get steep discounts in its bills if it bought both in-store supermarket ads and newspaper coupons from the agency. The testimony came in a Michigan state court trial in which rival agency Valassis claims that News America...

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WPP stock fell 7 percent Friday as Citigroup rated it a “sell,” on the basis that 2009 may not be the bottom of the recession in advertising. The news dovetails with BNET’s theory of June 20 that WPP’s Q2 results won’t be pretty. WPP chief Martin Sorrell reiterated as much in an interview wih the FT in which he repeated that Q2 so far has been rough: We’ve no...

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Sandwich chain Subway will feature swimmer Michael Phelps in TV advertising from MMB, Ad Age reported. The news is significant because it answers a question raised by BNET in February over whether Subway’s consumers (and management) were adult enough to handle the news that Phelps was photographed smoking a marijuana bong after he returned home from the Olympics. At the time, BNET argued...

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News America Marketing president Chris Mixson testified in a Michigan state court that Nestle director of promotional services Glenn Barry flew into a “tirade” over the agency’s alleged “punitive” pricing. The testimony came in a trial where rival agency Valassis is hoping to prove that News America raised prices on its virtual monopoly of in-store supermarket...

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A Michigan state court heard that News America Marketing, the in-store ad agency that dominates supermarket promotions, threatened to “crush” a rival that developed an innovative milk-jug advertising method. The testimony came in a trial in which Valassis is hoping to prove that News America used its dominance of supermarket advertising to illegally force competitors out of both...

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Give him credit for being entrepreneurial: Since departing Cliff Freeman & Partners in 2008, former creative director Lee Seidenberg has been “freelancing,” and now he’s started his own advertising school with DeVito/Verdi CD Brad Emmett. They’re offering 10 lessons for $350, and they’re calling it 101 The Ad School. Classes are limited to 10 people, which...

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Calvin Klein and ice-cream brand Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano have both engineered fake advertising controversies to generate sales. Klein repurposed one of its old “orgy” ads for a billboard in New York and the Federici created a newspaper ad that showed a nun about to kiss a priest. (Click to enlarge images.) Advertisers have long known that “sex sells,” but as we...

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