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New Company Snapshot

Although the biggest part of Georgia-Pacific's revenues comes from building supplies and packaging, it is perhaps best-known for its consumer products, including a wide range of paper towels, bathroom tissues, disposable cups and cutlery. Its US brands include Quilted Northern toilet tissue, Brawny towels and Dixie disposable tableware. It also has an extensive presence in Europe, with brands including Lotus and Moltonel in France, Nouvelle in the UK, Coholgar in Spain among many others. Click here for the Adbrands Snapshot of Georgia-Pacific (subscribers only).

Advertising: Who handles advertising? Click here for agency account assignments from adbrands.net.

Competitors: see Personal Care Sector and Household Care Sector for other companies

Recently Revised Profiles and Snapshots

In the news this week: Advertisers

It was an uncharacteristically quiet week in the industry, largely the result of the extended Easter weekend.

In a quirky new twist to its ground-breaking viral marketing, Burger King has agreed a deal with Microsoft to feature its slightly unnerving and sinister brand mascot, The King, in a series of promotional shoot 'em up action games for the Xbox. The games will retail through Burger King's restaurants during a five-week December promotion. Meanwhile the revolving door in Burger King's C-suite continued to turn. CEO Greg Brenneman announced his departure, despite the company's upcoming IPO. He was replaced as CEO by CFO John Chidsey. The job of CEO at Burger King is undoubtedly the hottest seat in corporate America. In its 50-year history, the company has now flame-grilled its way through no less than 20 different CEOs, including 9 since 1990. There was also a shake-up over at rival Wendy's, where chairman-CEO Jack Schuessler also stepped down in the face of investor pressure, replaced on an interim basis by CFO Kerri Anderson.

In one of the first defections for several years from P&G's senior management team, group vice chairman Kerry Clark, head of the group's family, baby care, oral care, pharmaceutical and pet food businesses, announced his resignation this week. He is to join US group Cardinal Health as CEO. His responsibilities as head of the P&G Family Health group have been split between fellow vice chairmen Susan Arnold and Bruce Byrnes.

There were strong results for the first quarter of 2006 from several major packaged goods marketers, including Coca-Cola, Danone and Kraft, all of whom released better than expected results. Banks all performed very well indeed, with several of the US giants reporting another set of record results. However growth appeared to slow in the technology sector, with a sharp fall in profitability for Intel (but no accompanying decline in market share, as had been feared), and a dip for eBay. Apple continued to buck the trend. Sales of its iPod players once again soared, driving profits up more than 40% compared to a year earlier. Yahoo was down as a result of stock option costs, but its shares nevertheless jumped significantly on news that it had met forecasts. 

The Wall Street Journal carries an entertaining article today on the increasing friction between auto manufacturers over "an increasingly important but limited resource - the 26 letters of the alphabet". Whereas once carmakers were content to give their vehicles names, they now prefer letters and numbers, of which they are rather fewer to go around. The latest scuffle is between Honda's luxury subsidiary Acura, which has filed a lawsuit against Ford's rival division Lincoln over its launch of a new SUV, the Lincoln MKX. Too similar, says Acura, to its own SUV model, the MDX. Similar skirmishes have occurred in recent months between Nissan's Infiniti and VW's Audi over Q-branded cars, and between BMW and Infiniti over the M prefix. Both those letters are currently considered "hot" for cars, though not as hot as S, Z and above all X. At the other end of the scale are unloved B, F and N, hardly used because of negative connotations ("B-list", "No", "Failure"). But even they have some followers, while sad old O, P, U and Y are still waiting for a manufacturer to take them off the shelf and stick them on its bonnets...

Best Brand poll: last week we asked you to choose Coke or Pepsi? As of this morning, results showed a 70% win for Coke. Now vote again: Nokia or Motorola? The poll appears on several high-traffic pages throughout the site including the free-view pages for P&G and BBDO.

In the news this week: Agencies

Agencies poll: currently we're asking you to select your most admired specialist creative agency. At the end of the first week, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Crispin Porter & Bogusky lead the ranking in joint 1st place, followed by Deutsch. The poll will run for another three weeks. Vote now from our home page. 

Creston the UK marketing services group which last year acquired London creative agency Delaney Lund Knox Warren, has this morning announced the acquisition of two further businesses: leading independent direct marketing agency Tullo Marshall Warren and research agency ICM. The deal could be worth up to £75m depending on future performance. Meanwhile, Publicis Groupe confirmed that it had entered negotiations to acquire Duval Guillaume, the leading independent marketing group in Belgium.

There were a few major account changes this week in the US. Morgan Stanley's Discover financial services arm appointed The Martin Agency to its $80m creative account. Delta Airlines transferred creative from O&M to independent SS+K. O&M consoled itself with the capture of Johnson & Johnson's Olympics sponsorship account. DreamWorks, now a division of Paramount Pictures, shifted its media into Mediaedge: CIA.

Regards


Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands

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Recommended Reading

US users

A devilishly useful primer for anyone who ever needs to deliver a business pitch as part of their job. Even for its most experienced proponents, the pitch is (and should always remain) one of the most testing elements of business life. It can end either in elation and triumph or misery and self-recrimination. A former head of new business at what is now DDB London, David Kean aims to take some of the sting out of the process with an eminently sensible and well thought-out analysis of how to maximise the elation and minimize the misery. Although it is aimed primarily at the creative services sector, from marketing or design to architecture, the rules laid down by Kean apply to any sort of business presentation, even the humble job interview where the services you are selling are your own merits as a prospective employee. 

Kean's most convincing advice (apart from not accepting second place) concerns understanding what the pitch process is all about. "Pitch after pitch, we see the same fundamental mistake being made. Pitching companies think the target audience is the audience the client is trying to influence - the housewife, the shareholder, the investor.... In a logical world this would be quite proper and correct. [But] logic has nothing to do with pitching. Successful pitching companies know that they are really trying to win the votes of the clients on the judging panel. These people are the audience to influence. Ninety percent of the ideas presented in pitches never come to fruition." The true art of pitching, Kean argues, is not just to tick the boxes on appropriate pricing and powerful presentation, but to understand the client as well as is humanly possible. "Victory will go to the side that gets to know the client best". Not just an intimate understanding of the threats and opportunities facing the company, but also its style and culture, likes and dislikes. Then tailor the presentation appropriately. However good the substance of the pitch, few clients want to spend time with people who don't speak the same language and whose people they won't get on with. None of this is rocket science, but it's refreshingly honest as well as accurate about the underlying truths of the process. 

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