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Our favourite ad this week: 

"Paper is Evil" from DDB Canada's campaign for Canada's IRS, to persuade taxpayers to fill out their returns online rather than on paper. (See other examples from this campaign as well as an entertaining view of the industry from one of its newer recruits at David Wen's ad-blog at http://txadv.blogspot.com/ )

Recently Revised Profiles and Snapshots

In the news this week: Advertisers

Online advertising expenditure soared in 2005. Official US figures from the IAB and PwC showed a 30% increase for the year to a record $12.5bn, accounting for around 5% of total spend. (That sum, incidentally, is higher than the entire advertising expenditure across all media for France for the same period).

Nokia's share of the global handsets market surged by 3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2006 to 35%, and outgoing chairman Jorma Ollila said that the group now has the chance of reaching 40% share. The combined share of the five biggest manufacturers (Motorola, Samsung, LG and SonyEricsson are the other four) has steadily increased in recent years, now accounting for 78% of the global market, up from 68% two years ago. 

DaimlerChrysler began moves to launch its Dodge marque, the biggest brand within its US-based Chrysler Group, in Europe. The first car to launch in the region will be the Dodge Caliber compact, competing with Ford's Focus, VW's Golf and the Opel/Vauxhall Astra.

The sixth lawsuit to-date over the faulty painkiller Vioxx reached a verdict this week, culminating in a loss for manufacturer Merck, and damages of $32m. So far the drugmaker has won three and lost three, but it's early days yet. So far, 11,500 lawsuits are pending against the company in connection with Vioxx.

US tobacco marketer Reynolds American announced a major push into the smokeless tobacco products sector, with a $3.5bn all-cash deal to acquire Conwood, one of the country's biggest manufacturers of snuff and chewing tobacco. In other deals this week, Viacom bolstered its internet portfolio with the acquisition of online gaming community Xfire for $102m. Microsoft announced plans to acquire Massive, a New York agency which is among the pioneers in placing ads within videogames. Games are expected to become an important advertising medium by 2010.

Adweek compiled a ranking of the best-paid celebrity endorsements. Catherine Zeta-Jones ranks #1 as a result of a $20m contract to promote T-Mobile. Second place goes to Angelina Jolie, who earned $12m for lending her presence to US fashion label St John, while Nicole Kidman gets the same from Chanel. The rest of the top ten earners are Jessica Simpson for Guthy-Ranker ($7.5m), Gwyneth Paltrow for Estee Lauder ($6m), Charlize Theron for Dior ($6m), Julia Roberts for Gianfranco Ferre ($5m), Brad Pitt - also the only man in the ranking - for Heineken ($4m), Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz for L'Oreal ($4m each). Nice work if you can get it!

Best Brands Poll: we asked you - Motorola or Nokia? Just like Coke/Pepsi last week, this was a 70/30 win, this time for Nokia. How about this one: Olay, Nivea or Dove. Vote here or on-site on several high-traffic pages throughout the site including the free-view pages for P&G and BBDO.

In the news this week: Agencies

Overnight news from Interpublic is that the group is considering a merger of its Draft and FCB networks. Several scenarios are under consideration. The two most likely are either a full merger of both networks under a single banner, or a combination similar to that of stablemate McCann Worldgroup (or indeed Grey and Y&R over at WPP), in which the brands retain separate identity but share a single reporting structure. The decision over which route to take is thought to depend on current negotiations with Draft's Howard Draft and FCB's newly appointed Steve Blamer over who will lead the combined business. One of IPG's better-performing networks, Draft was previously paired with Lowe. However the latter is in the process of downsizing from a global brand into something resembling a micro-network in the style of Bartle Bogle Hegarty or M&C Saatchi.

La Chose, the independent French "super-agency" founded earlier this year by Eric Tong Cong (ex-BETC & Y&R) and Pascal Gregoire (ex-CLM/BBDO) won its first major account this week: Ikea, previously handled by Gregoire at BBDO. The agency also bolstered its resources with two deals, acquiring a 50% stake in online search business NetBooster and all of marketing services shop Pekin.

In other account news, Monster moved European media to Mediaedge: CIA and Revlon transferred to Starcom. DDB New York joined the Procter & Gamble roster, with the creative assignment for pharmaceutical product Actonel.

Agencies Poll: currently we're asking you to select your most admired specialist creative agency. At the end of the second week, Bartle Bogle Hegarty continues with a clear lead and 25% of all votes. Some way behind is Crispin Porter & Bogusky (17%), followed by Deutsch (9%). The poll will run for another two weeks. Vote now from our home page or by following this link.

Regards


Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands

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Recommended Reading

UK users

Jeremy Bullmore's latest book is a typically perceptive collection of essays and musings on the nature of brands, advertising and marketing in general. Bullmore is something of a household name in the UK (providing of course that the occupants of the household in question happen to work in the advertising industry). A former chairman of JWT during the 1980s, Bullmore has for many years been a weekly columnist for trade bible Campaign, as well as a prolific contributor to the likes of Management Today and The Guardian newspaper. He is also a former director of WPP, and a serving member of that group's Advisory Council. For the last eight years he has contributed an essay to WPP's annual report, and it is six of those pieces which form the core of this collection, along with Posh Spice & Persil, which began life as an address to the British Brands Group, and other writings.

Bullmore's work is always distinguished by its elegant and witty insight into the curious paradoxes of modern marketing, setting out above all to strip away the business-speak to uncover a more meaningful truth. He is especially fond of Ted Levitt's epigrammatical warning to Harvard Business School students: "People don't want quarter-inch drills; they want quarter-inch holes". It reappears no less that three times in this volume, serving each time as the springboard for a different set of musings. The opening piece, for example, sets out to decode the real function of marketing when seen from the client's point of view. Taking Levitt's illustration as his inspiration, Bullmore provides a more instructive definition of various marketing disciplines. ("The product that is sold is called Direct Marketing. The product that is bought is more like a prospector's sieve, screening out the mud and waste and exposing a few bright glints of gold"). Other pieces explore the need for marketers to back up their brands with solid customer service, the impossibility of quantifying creativity, and the evils of "sizzle marketing" (style without substance). 

Highlight of the volume is Posh Spice & Persil, a lengthy piece which makes up almost a third of the book. A meditation on branding, it explores 13 "deeply disturbing" but undeniably true brand facts, such as, "products are made and owners by companies. Brands, on the other hand, are made and owned by people... by the public... by consumers". Or "much of what influences the value of a brand lies in the hands of its competitors". Bullmore effortlessly gets to the heart of the marketing conundrum, exposing its real meaning with wisdom, wit and often startling insight. The resulting collection should be required reading for anyone engaged in the business of selling brands.

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