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Dear ${token1} ${token2}
New Profiles and Snapshots
In the news this fortnight: Advertisers
Coffee shop giant Starbucks announced plans to
accelerate its move into
entertainment. It is already a significant force in recorded music.
Several years ago the group established a dedicated division to manage
its in-store music programming, and subsequently began producing
compilation CDs of popular tracks for sale in cafes alongside coffee and
danish. More
recently the business moved from compilations to brand new material, and
scored a big hit with Ray Charles' multi-award-winning final
album. In 2006, Starbucks will move into a new field, having signed up
as major promotional partner for upcoming family movie Akeelah and the
Bee. It will promote the film nationally in US stores, and is also set to
start selling a selected range of DVDs and books.
Nestle claimed this week to have overtaken
Unilever as the world's
biggest ice cream manufacturer. As a result of recent purchases including
Delta ice cream of Greece and the outstanding minority shares in US-based Dreyer's, Nestle estimated its global market share
to have grown to 17.5%,
compared to around 16.5% for Unilever.
In deals announced this week, Pfizer agreed to buy worldwide rights to
innovative diabetes treatment Exubera from Sanofi-Aventis
for $1.3bn; Danone said it would sell its Amoy
Chinese sauces and frozen foods business
to Ajinomoto for around E190m; Federated Department Stores
announce plans to divest its newly acquired Lord & Taylor department stores in
New York to concentrate on the rollout of the Macy's and Bloomingdales brands.
Also, after months spent trying to renegotiate a distribution contract for
movies produced by hit animation studio Pixar, Disney
is now reported to have begun serious talks to acquire the smaller company
instead. Pixar and Apple boss
Steve Jobs would become Disney's biggest individual shareholder in
any such deal.
Top 10 advertiser rankings for 2005 were published in the trade press this
week for both Germany (by Nielsen
Media Research) and France (by TNS Media Intelligence).
In the news this week: Agencies
Still seething over the loss of the prestigious
Tesco account in the UK to Sir Frank Lowe's as-yet-unnamed start-up,
Interpublic has resorted to legal action against Lowe for "violation
of contractual and fiduciary duties arising from his tenure as the head of
its Lowe Worldwide agency network". IPG claims that Lowe has
"begun a campaign" to poach personnel and other clients from
Lowe London, and is determined to hold any departing staff members linked with the new agency to their full notice
periods. Lowe himself angrily denied the accusation and in return threatened
to sue Interpublic for defamation.
Clearly it was the decision by Lowe London
chairman Paul Weinberger, long-time steward of the Tesco account, to throw
in his lot with Sir Frank which proved the clincher in persuading the
supermarket giant to move its business. Interpublic does not intend to give up the
business without a fight, and is attempting to hold Weinberger to one
year's gardening leave to stop him taking up his new job. How wise is
this? A high profile law suit against Frank Lowe and other past or present
Lowe London employees is unlikely to enhance Interpublic's relationship
with any of its remaining clients or staff. As if Lowe London's problems
weren't already bad enough, Campaign reports this week that another major
Lowe client, InBev's Stella Artois,
is preparing for a global creative review later in the year.
Diamond Ad, a leading South Korean agency once owned by Hyundai, was
rebranded as Diamond Ogilvy this week. Acquired by Bates Worldwide in
1999, it joined WPP following the latter's takeover of
Cordiant, but lost the flagship Hyundai account last year. It will now operate as
a unit of O&M Worldwide, handling Korean
clients. The local
outpost of Ogilvy will keep control of international accounts.
WPP also announced a restructuring of several of its network offices in
Detroit serving the mammoth Ford Motors account. JWT,
Ogilvy and Y&R, along with direct marketing agency
Wunderman and media
services umbrella Group M, are all to move to new shared premises and
will pool resources in order to streamline inter-group cooperation. The
companies will continue to operate under their existing brands, but four new units are to be created under the umbrella
name WPP Team Ford to coordinate sales promotion and direct marketing, national media
planning and buying services, production services and administration. "A laser-like focus on our customers
and brands is at the heart of our plan to put Ford on offence and become
America's Car Company again," said Mark Fields, Ford's group EVP for
the Americas. "Having all of our agency
partners in one building will provide the collaboration we need to help
make it happen."
Other significant account changes this week: Goodby
Silverstein won an estimated $300m global project for HP,
at the expense of Publicis & Hal Riney US; Ikea
appointed Deutsch to its US creative; CBS
called a review of its huge US media account; Six Flags theme parks in the
US called a review of its creative account, held by Doner;
TBWA\London resigned UK broadcaster five.
Regards
Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands
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Recommended Reading
Great
Ikea! A Brand for all the People
by Elen Lewis
Wizard!
Harry Potter's Brand Magic
by Stephen Brown
Search
Me: the Surprising Success
of Google by Neil Taylor
Guinness is Guinness by Mark Griffiths
Brand It Like Beckham by Andy Milligan
Brand America by Simon Anholt
My Sister's A Barista by John Simmons
All Day I Dream About Sport
by Conrad Brunner
UK
& European users
Business
publisher Cyan first launched its Great Brand Stories series in 2004.
It's a
collection of attractively produced, low priced pocket paperbacks each
of which analyses the history and development of a major global brand.
Cyan has its sights set firmly on mainstream consumer buyers, and as a
result the choice of brands covered is pleasantly populist, sometimes
even a little eccentric. Many of the usual suspects are present here,
including Google, Adidas, Ikea, Guinness and Starbucks. But the series
also includes studies of wider cultural icons such as David Beckham,
"Brand America", and the Harry Potter phenomenon. New titles
for 2006 will include books about Dyson, Arsenal football club, Banyan
Tree holiday resorts and the Scotch whisky business. Supervised
by series editor John Simmons, each book provides a chatty but thorough
analysis of its target brand's past and present, offers thoughts on the
reasons for its success, and suggests some lessons that can be learned
and applied elsewhere. On the down side, some of the books occasionally
feel a little padded out with light-hearted banter. The Harry Potter
study, in particular, strays frequently into whimsy, to the extent that
one whole chapter is printed only in reverse mirror text. Expanding
analysis of a single brand over a whole 180 pages is obviously a bit of
a stretch, but at this price (£7.99/$12.95) it's hard to complain, and most of the
books make up for chatty digressions with some solid analysis.
More illustration would also be welcome. But this is an intriguing
series, nicely packaged and presented, and good for supplying a thorough
grounding on many of the key icons of the modern age.
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