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Our favourite ads this week: 

Beer is back! After last week's temporary suspension of the usual run of blokey or beery ads, yes, it's another great ad which manages to be both blokey and beery at the same time. Technical wizardry is the star of Mother's latest for Miller Genuine Draft, as our hero peels away various problems he encounters on his way out to a party. And for more sophisticated readers, Black is back, too! A superb new ad for The Gap by Laird & Partners, in which Audrey Hepburn's dance routine from the movie Funny Face is brought up-to-date with a new backing track by AC/DC. It may borrow its concept from DDB's recent remix of Gene Kelly's Singin' In The Rain for VW, but that detracts little from its wit and elegance.

New Snapshot

Supervalu traded up to the position of America's #3 grocer in 2006 with the acquisition of most of the supermarket operations of struggling retail giant Albertson's. That deal marked the latest high point in the gradual transformation of Supervalu from a grocery wholesale network into a major retail group in its own right.

Recently Revised Profiles and Snapshots

In the news this week: Advertisers

Procter & Gamble has quietly entered a completely new market sector - home decor. In partnership with Home Depot, the group has begun test-marketing Bella & Birch, a range of textured wall-hangings rather like wallpaper, but pre-glued so they can be applied easily without paste. At the same time, the group has sold off its US deodorant brand Sure for a price estimated around $100m. The buyer was Innovative Brands, a new company backed by private equity firm Najafi Companies, which earlier this year, also bought P&G's Pert Plus shampoo. 

New research seems to indicate that Coke Zero, launched in the UK this summer with a substantial marketing push, derived the majority of its sales only by cannibalising other Coke formats. According to figures from AC Nielsen reported in Marketing magazine, Coke Zero stole 32% of its sales volumes from Diet Coke and 30% from regular Coke. Those claims were denied by Coca-Cola, which said that sales of all three variants were up over the course of the year.

Yahoo was in detailed talks to acquire Facebook, the US #2 behind MySpace in the hotter-than-hot social networking segment. MySpace's acquisition by News Corp last year (for $650m) and its subsequent soaring growth has introduced considerable blood into the water, with the result that predators are coming thick and fast. Microsoft and Viacom are also said to be talking to Facebook, although Yahoo is considered current frontrunner. The frenzy is such that some reports suggest that Facebook's deal price that could go as high as $1bn. The site's 22 year-old founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, might not get out of bed for anything less. In fact, his team of legal advisors were recently reported to have rescheduled a planned 8am breakfast meeting at Microsoft because he "wouldn't be awake" then. Meanwhile Microsoft has begun testing its own more graphically sophisticated networking concept under the brand name Wallop (see http://www.wallop.com).

The process of consolidation within the pharmaceutical sector speeded up considerably with no less than four deals announced in a week. Merck of Germany (no relation to the US group of the same name) got back on the acquisition trail, having been beaten by Bayer earlier this year to the takeover of local rival Schering. Instead, Merck agreed a merger with Swiss biotechnology company Serono for around E10.6bn. The resulting business, with a turnover of around E3.6bn, will adopt the name Merck-Serono Biopharmaceuticals. Its two biggest products are bowel cancer drug Erbitux and multiple sclerosis treatment Rebif. In the same week, Altana, a group controlled by BMW's Quandt family, sold its pharmaceutical division to Danish manufacturer Nycomed for E4.5bn; US medical device manufacturer Hospira agreed to pay $2bn for Australian generics manufacturer Mayne Pharma; and UCB of Belgium said it would acquire Schwarz Pharma of Germany for E4.4bn.

Dutch supermarket group Ahold, still struggling with the after-effects of multiple accounting errors and a fraud at its North American foodservice business, was said to be involved in talks with smaller Belgian rival Delhaize, which also owns a substantial supermarket business in the eastern United States. Among the possibilities reported to be under consideration is the creation of two separate groups: one which merges both companies' US subsidiaries, while the other would be concentrated around their respective operations in the Benelux markets.

In the continuing sell-off of its European ISP divisions, AOL agreed the sale of its French unit to Neuf Cegetel for E288m. And Pernod-Ricard was quick to throw its name into the hat for any future sell-off by the Swedish government for its state-controlled Vin & Sprit alcoholic beverages business. V&S's biggest brand is Absolut vodka.

In the news this week: Agencies

There were numerous job changes in the ad industry this week. Among the most prominent: Nick Hurrell and Neil Dawson, chairmen of M&C Saatchi Europe and TBWA\London respectively, quit their posts to set up an agency of their own, to be named Hurrell & Dawson. Nick Manning, CEO of OMD UK and former founder of Manning Gottlieb OMD, said he would step down in January 2007, and is expected to leave the industry. Nigel Long, former chief executive of Euro RSCG UK, was appointed as group CEO of media planning agency Naked. Former colleague Simon Toaldo joined Ingram as its first managing director. Aegis suspended Alexander Ruzicka, the CEO of its Central Europe division, in the wake of an investigation by the German district attorney into allegations of embezzlement. Newly merged Draft FCB announced further members of its senior management team. Among other appointments, Laurence Boschetto (ex-Draft) is president & COO under Howard Draft's leadership. Bob Oates (ex-FCB) is CFO. The full merger of the two companies will become official on Jan 1st 2007, at which point the companies will adopt a single P&L.

WPP announced the creation of BrandAmp, a joint venture with Universal Music which will act as a matchmaker between brandowners and music artists. It will work in numerous areas, including the negotiation of endorsement or sponsorship partnerships, and arranging the licensing of music tracks for use in ads.

It was a quiet week for major account assignments. The biggest of note was Supervalu's appointment of Dailey & Associates to handle advertising for several of its newly acquired supermarket brands. In the UK, Alliance & Leicester consolidated media into Carat, and department store John Lewis appointed Manning Gottlieb OMD.

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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