Editco.net - News, gossip and information about advertising, marketing and media.

Introducing More About Advertising

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:13:55 +0100

You may think you've read enough about advertising (although I hope you haven't) but there's even more to come on More About Advertising to which your correspondent is a contributor.

At some stage this site will flip over to it but you won't just be getting the same stuff (which a gratifying number of you seem to like) but contributions from others too including the excellent media commentator Richard Addis, former editor of the Daily Express among others (the Express was pretty good when Richard was editing it).

Why something new?

We think we can provide some insights into the world of advertising, marketing and media that aren't available anywhere else. And we'll be trying to take a global view too.

Last orders at one-time German giant Springer & Jacoby - how long can a hot shop stay hot?

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:19:15 +0100

Germany’s most famous agency Springer & Jacoby has gone bust after failing to recover from the loss of the giant Mercedes account in July 2006.

For a number of years the agency, credited with being the most creative in Germany, was majority-owned by Interpublic (IPG) but was then acquired by German communications group Avantaxx in October 2006, hardly great timing when you think about it.

Mercedes had left for rival Jung von Matt, set up by former Springer-ites as have been a number of other German agencies. Springer & Jacoby itself was formed by Reinhard Springer and Konstantin Jacoby in 1979 and at one time handled the likes of Coca-Cola, Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa as well as Mercedes. But, at its demise shortly after its 30th birthday, the biggest account was Osram light bulbs.

50 years since CDP was born - was this the world's best agency?

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:26:49 +0100

There are lots of other contenders of course, Boase Massimi Pollitt in the UK, DDB in New York, maybe there are supporters of Crispin Porter Bogusky in the US and even Campaign Palace in Sydney.

But Collett Dickenson Pearce, now no longer with us alas, created what we now think of as the ‘British’ style of advertising – humorous, self-deprecating, stylish and, to many Americans still, mad.

There was method in CDP’s madness, it reasoned that there was a better chance of selling the client’s product if people liked the ads and didn’t evacuate the room when they came on.

And, as this timely tribute from Campaign shows, it produced some brilliant work: Heineken, Parker Pens, Cockburn’s Port, Fiat and Benson & Hedges. It also toiled for some big unforgiving clients including Nestle and Ford, although inevitably it fell out with both.

Sporting world rocked - footballers are paid more than they're worth!

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:41:45 +0100

Chelsea FC in the UK has just revealed that its highly-paid assets - the players - have dropped in value by about 20 per cent or £40m or so even as the club closes in on a League and Cup double.

The good news is that its wage bill has dropped a bit (to a mere £140m) but that's just because it hasn't sacked a manager recently. Ditching Jose Mourinho (who did rather well), Avram Grant (who'll hook up with his old employers when Portsmouth play Chelsea in the Cup Final) and short-lived Luiz Felipe Scolari cost them £35m over two years.

Is your ad agency a 'results pretender' or an old-fashioned 'dreamer'?

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:57:42 +0100

Well 43 per cent are results pretenders (committed to measuring ad effectiveness but unable to do so) and 22 per cent make it up as they go along and are much more interested in winning awards. 35 per cent are OK.

Who says?

An outfit called the Fournaise Marketing Group that describes itself as the Customer Acquisition Maximiser. So confident is it of its own abilities that it has trademarked this deathless description.

In other words it's an ad effectiveness consultancy and one might well feel that it's in its interests to ask people (1,000 executives across the world) what they think about their agencies' performance in such a way that the results are critical.

Now Britain's Paterson gets Don Draper creative role at DDB Chicago

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:46:53 +0100

Talking of uber fictional creative director Don Draper, which we just were, such a role has been awarded to a rather more low profile Brit, Ewan Paterson, who moves from Clenmow Hornby Inge to be creative director of DDB Chicago.

Paterson has the classic British creative pedigree at BMP DDB (Lego and Volkswagen), Bartle Bogle Hegarty (British Airways and Boddington's) and then his current job executive creative director at WPP-backed CHI where he is credited with Drench's hamster jazz band.

But were creative directors ever like Don Draper?

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:43:36 +0100

Not in the UK they weren’t, even the big American-owned agencies like McCanns and JWT either had smoothly corporate intellectuals like McCanns’ Barry Day (who used to be paid for his musings by Campaign with vouchers at posh bookshop Hatchard’s) or Jacks the Lad out of the David Bailey songbook.

It didn’t work of course, the really good ones went to British-owned agencies like CDP and BMP.

So when you watch Mad Men you think, who are these guys?

There were plenty of people like account man Phil Geier, who went on to run Interpublic (some would say into the ground) who brought their brash habits as an American CEO to run McCanns in London, to great effect.

A bit of class from Florence Welch and Jools Holland

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:54:10 +0100

I was looking for a decent version of Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me but, while there are loads of brilliant smoochy jazzy ones around, I couldn't find anything with more oomph than Robbie Williams and Phil Collins.

Which, from my point of view, ain't much oomph. So here's Florence:

Now Apple becomes a media owner with iAd

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:35:00 +0100

iAd is a mobile advertising platform that allows ads in Apple apps, so you can click on an ad or watch a video within the app without flipping back to advertiser's website.

To date there are 185,000 Apple apps.

It seems to have been dreamt up by Quattro Wireless, which Apple bought for $300m in January, and Apple says 60 per cent of the revenues gained will go back to the app developer/publisher.

As such it's clearly going to attract numerous developers, publishers and advertisers. And be a direct challenge to Google which, at the moment, is hardly in the app market although it surely will be as it pushes its own Android phone and Chrome browser.

Earl Woods speaks to Tiger from beyond the grave - courtesy of Nike

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:11:28 +0100

Did you learn anything Tiger? The troubled golfer's late father Earl really wants to know in this bizarre Nike ad, marking Woods' golfing reappearance in the Masters.

Having carefully reviewed the spoofs flooding on to YouTube it seems that some things are beyond parody.

Chris Wilkins and Sian Vickers unveil a Jimmy Carr corker for Go Compare

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:43:54 +0100

Yes I know you can't bear to watch another of these but this one features comedian Jimmy Carr doing what you've always wanted to do to that noisy Welsh tenor.

The ads are created by copywriter Chris Wilkins and art director Sian Vickers (a team in real life too) without the benefit of an agency.

I'm sure that hasn't stopped Chris, who appreciates the finer things in life, charging an agency-style fee.

Marketing Week pinches columnist Mark Ritson from Marketing - maybe there's life in the old dog yet

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:49:41 +0100

Not the ever-youthful Mr Ritson of course but Marketing Week, the Centaur-owned weekly marketing magazine that looked on its uppers just a few months ago.

Ritson first came to prominence as a columnist on rival Haymarket's Marketing when he was a junior academic at the London Business School.

He has since gone on to far greater things, including apparently as an in-house 'professor' for luxury goods maker LVMH.

Does this mean he produces learned tomes about suitcases?

One doesn't imagine that Ritson comes cheap so maybe Marketing Week can detect a future for itself as a magazine, as opposed to online?

Even Aleksandr the meerkat forgets his script now and again - but is he in danger of outstaying his welcome?

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:38:36 +0100

Yet another comparethemarket.com ad featuring Aleksandr the meerkate has emerged (he must be the saviour of the UK commercials business) but rather than showing that, here's a collection of Aleksandr's alleged bloopers:

More big media deals going pear-shaped, AOL wants to ditch Bebo

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:17:22 +0100

Which the hapless ISP bought from its British owners for a chunky $850m just two years ago.

AOL itself was the agent of probably the biggest botched deal in media history when it 'bought' massive media conglomerate Time Warner in 2000 with $164bn of Warner money, allegedly to create the world's first all-media giant.

A short time later $99bn was written off by the merged AOL Time Warner as AOL's fortunes declined rapidly.

Now Bebo, once the coming social network, is almost out of the race against the all-conquering Facebook and Twitter and AOL says it will either sell the business or close it.

InBev and PepsiCo gang up on media owners and agencies

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:37:01 +0100

InBev, owner of Budweiser, Michelob and Stella, and PepsiCo are grouping their US media expenditure to extract savings from the US's biggest media owners.

The two spend a combined $1.15bn in US media and last year were the two biggest spenders on the top-rating Super Bowl.

The new deal, which follows a 'paper clip' joint procurement deal signed last October will also impact on media agencies. Both companies currently use Omnicom's OMD.

Marketers have succeeded in steadily eroding the margins of both creative and media agencies over the last two decades.