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Our favourite ads this week: 

Two ads again this week. Regular readers of the Update may be surprised to find that neither is for a beer or a male grooming product. And this week's selections both offer style and elegance rather than the usual blokey humour. Mother have delivered another handsome and dreamlike ad for Orange, to support the mobile operator's new Magic Numbers service. TBWA\Chiat\Day's latest for iPod is typically vibrant, gorgeous and colourful. Enjoy! Infantile humour and thinly clad girls will no doubt return in next week's selection.

New Snapshots & Capsules

Recently Revised Profiles and Snapshots

In the news this week: Advertisers

The status of brand Beckham was eroded further this week by the news that the former England football captain is to be dropped as brand ambassador for Gillette, in favour of a team of younger but as yet unchosen sportsmen. Beckham's current contract with Gillette expires next year.

News Corporation was said to be in talks with Liberty Media, its second biggest shareholder after the Murdoch clan, to reacquire those shares in a swap for News' controlling stake in US satellite broadcaster DirecTV. That would constitute a dramatic change-of-heart for Rupert Murdoch who fought a long and difficult battle to acquire DirecTV between 2000 and 2003. However he is keen to remove the potential threat to his family's control posed by Liberty's John Malone, who has steadily accumulated a stake of just over 19% in News, not too far behind the Murdoch family's 30%. Previous attempts to persuade Liberty to give up its shares have been unsuccessful, but Malone is known to be eager to move into satellite broadcasting. By contrast, Murdoch's own interest may have waned. DirecTV and rival Echostar have seen subscriber growth stall in the face of growing competition from cable companies and wireless operators offering their own broadcast services.

In other deal news, Premier Foods withdrew from the auction of United Biscuits (McVitie's, Jacob's, KP), leaving private equity giant Blackstone as the only remaining bidder. Telecom Italia, still weathering the political storm caused last week by its decision to prepare mobile unit TIM for possible sale, announced the acquisition of AOL's broadband ISP business in Germany, adding another 2.5m subscribers to its existing Alice service. AOL is expected to announce similar deals in the UK and France in the next few weeks, although it will continue to operate its local portals and online tools such as mail and messaging. Danone took a 49% stake in Denmark's leading bottled water business Aqua d'Or. Motorola strengthened its enterprise mobility division with the $3.9bn acquisition of Symbol Technologies, which makes hand-held barcode scanners and other product-tracking devices. And British building societies Nationwide and Portman agreed to merge, in a deal which will create the UK's second-largest mortgage lender.

The popularity of web-based social networking continues to soar. Nielsen/Net Ratings named the fastest-growing online brands in the UK over the first six months of 2006. The list was topped by YouTube, traffic to which has soared by 478%. Photo-sharing sites Flickr and Photobucket ranked 2nd and 5th, with growth of 131% and 91%, while teen-oriented social networks MySpace and Bebo scored rises of 98% and 85% respectively. However there was also room on the list for more traditional brands. American Express was a surprise entry in 4th place, with traffic almost doubling (possibly a reflection of local interest in its Red credit card offering). There were also places in the Top 10 for Vodafone, Odeon, B&Q and Mozilla, supplier of the Google-endorsed web and email browser Firefox.

Meanwhile Microsoft launched a beta version of its own YouTube rival, named Soapbox, under the MSN umbrella. And Yahoo's shares plunged, taking other other online advertising-related stocks with it, after its CFO acknowledged an apparent slowdown in advertising growth,

Back in the more traditional business environment, Ford delivered a bleak picture of the problems it faces in North America in the form of a revised restructuring plan, its third in five years. The group is hoping to achieve cuts of around 44,000 jobs and said it did not expect to report a profit in North America until at least 2009, much later than had been anticipated. It also conceded that it was likely to be overtaken this year as the US #2 car manufacturer by Toyota. The group acknowledged that it had held talks with GM during the summer regarding some form of partnership, but that those discussions had ended and were not likely to be pursued. Ford also moved to protect its Land Rover unit by exercising a pre-agreed option to acquire the Rover brandname from BMW, trumping a recently agreed offer from Chinese manufacturer SAIC. The latter still hopes to be able to license the Rover name for its own use.

In the news this week: Agencies

Michael Maedel, formerly JWT's worldwide president for both Asia and Europe, will hand over responsibility for the latter region to Toby Hoare from January 2007. Hoare is currently executive chairman of JWT London. Both report to global CEO Bob Jeffrey.

OMD scooped Media Agency of the Year at the UK's M&M Awards, and also collected Best Launch Campaign and Best Consumer Goods Campaign for Sony Bravia, Best Out of Home Campaign for Apple’s iPod Nano, Best Travel & Leisure Campaign for VisitLondon and Best Use of Branded Content for Jaegermeister. ZenithOptimedia was handed Campaign of the Year for the "Africa Velocity" campaign for Puma. Fallon was named creative Agency of the Year for Sony Bravia's "Balls" ad.

It was a quiet week for assignments. However US auto insurer Progressive handed creative duties, worth an estimated $150m, to Arnold Worldwide; Premier Foods called a review of its UK media, currently split between ZenithOptimedia and Walker. 

As always, please confirm your subscription to the free Adbrands Weekly Update if you haven't already done so by clicking here or on the link at the foot of this email. Thank you for your assistance! 

Regards


Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands

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