Advertising Industry Archive

MDC Partners (MDCA) paid $1.4 million to acquire Attention Partners, a social media PR agency, in an acquisition MDC made in September without disclosing financials, according to a 10-Q filing with the SEC. The buy made a lot of headlines in the blogosphere, but BNET argued that this deal was smaller than the hype surrounding it because the price was not significant enough to trigger a legal...

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Verizon (VZ) is kicking ass right now in the 3G coverage advertising war, having seen its ads prevail against legal contests with both Sprint (S) and AT&T (T). The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus just ruled that Sprint should stop advertising its service as “America’s most dependable 3G network,” after Verizon challenged its ads. NAD rules on...

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DraftFCB has created a Don Draper doll to promote Mad Men’s third season in New Zealand. The copy on the toy’s box is wonderful. It says: See him drink, pitch & philander! Collect all 4 mistresses! The doll itself is a generic male mannequin that looks nothing like the chiseled, mostly useless hero of Sterling Cooper. Here’s how the doll came about: We (DraftFCB) were...

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Euro RSCG is attempting to rig* influence an Adweek poll for “Agency of the Decade” by urging its employees to vote for their own agency, according to blogger George Tannenbaum. He writes: Apparently, management at Euro RSCG sent a memo out to their employees urging them to vote for themselves. I have nothing against Euro RSCG, though they’re hardly whom I would have chosen....

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Macy’s (M) has followed Ralph Lauren into PhotoShop disaster territory (image below). Adorning one of their mall-based sites in New Jersey is this image of a woman whose thigh is longer than her torso, and whose torso is thinner than said thigh. Of course, it could be the camera angle and a fish-eye lens. Ri-i-i-ight. But that still doesn’t explain the horrible injury to her right...

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Is it just me, or are the ad campaigns for Ketel One, Crown Royal and Chivas Regal all essentially identical? They all feature men in their 30s who live by some sort of unstated guys’ code. Sure, the ads are all “different,” but they all seem to have been shot from the same brief: Give us something to appeal to aspirant investment-banker types who think they live by a...

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It’s not news that financial disclosure standards for European companies are lax compared to their U.S. counterparts, but the Q3 2009 “results” announcement just issued by British ad agency holding company Aegis (AEGS.L) illustrates just how lousy those low standards are. It doesn’t give the company’s revenue numbers. Nor its profits. Nor expenses. It only gives...

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Bayern Munich has landed the biggest lead sponsorship deal on the planet: £25.5 million (€25 million, $37.3 million)a year from Deutsche Telekom, whose T-Home brand adorns the Bundesliga team’s shirts. The deal — which runs through 2013 — puts Bayern atop BNET’s Global Football Sponsorship Deal League (see below), vaulting Liverpool F.C., Manchester United and Real...

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Goldman Sachs (GS) apologized for its role in the financial crisis this week and announced it would invest $500 million in small businesses as a mea culpa. But corporate reputation expert Eric Dezenhall believes the move may be an expensive and pointless kabuki show for the unwashed masses who don’t understand how the firm really works. Goldman’s move is widely seen as a PR gesture...

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UPDATE: The judge ruled against AT&T’s bid to get a temporary injuction stopping Verizon’s ads. AT&T will get another chance to stop the ads at a hearing in December. In a legal fight over the advertising for Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T)’s rival 3G cellphone networks, AT&T has admitted that its 3G network is smaller and that Verizon’s ads are...

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