It's not often, if ever, that directors of Martin Scorsese's calibre can be persuaded to make an ad, but it's usually something special when they do. JWT Spain managed to twist Scorsese's arm on behalf of Freixenet sparkling wine. It's an odd choice for such a star director, surely, but perhaps he was attracted by the considerable freedom the client seems to have allowed him to book-end this 10-minute film, "Key To Reserva", with a plug for his work in celluloid preservation (in Spanish only unfortunately). Stick with it through the first three minutes of chat, because the central ad for Freixenet is a stunningly realised six-minute homage to Hitchcock, which borrows numerous musical and visual motifs from classics such as North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much and others. Shame about the abrupt cut back to Scorsese again in the edit suite, which rather spoils the flow, even if it does allow for a final witty reference to Hitchcock's The Birds. 

Leo Burnett's Hong Kong office doesn't often get too much international attention. That's an undeserved oversight if this lovely ad for Vodafone, "Poetic", is representative of the rest of their output. An elegant idea, executed with style and wit. That's Dame Judi Dench on voiceover, is it not? She obviously has a global contract to do all Vodafone's ads.

UK agency BMB's first ad for Carling was underwhelming to say the least, consisting of a home movie of starlings flocking in the evening sky. This sci-fi extravaganza, "Space", is very much better and probably a lot more expensive (£14m according to some reports). Not exactly up to the old "I bet he drinks Carling..." standard, but getting close.

Finally, "You Are My Sunshine", an extraordinary ad from Greenpeace brought to you by production company Escape Partners. The tagline says it all: "If you think the sun shines out of your arse, try using an energy saving light-bulb instead." Prepare yourself for a literal demonstration of that idea...

In the news this past week: Advertisers & Media

The video games industry could get a new global champion, pushing current market leader EA into second place. French group Vivendi announced plans to merge its own substantial software division with Nasdaq-quoted rival Activision. Vivendi's subsidiary would be injected into Activision in return for a 52% holding in the enlarged business, which would adopt the name Activision Blizzard. The French group will then seek to build its stake to around 68%. The remaining shares will remain in public ownership, and the merged company will be run by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. Combined sales for the two companies in 2007 will be around $3.8bn, compared to EA's $3.7bn. Vivendi is riding high on the success of its World Of Warcraft franchise. Activision is best-known for the Call Of Duty, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk Skateboarding series.

Struggling US mobile operator Sprint Nextel came under renewed pressure from investors after it was revealed that Korean company SK Telecom made an approach to the board during November, proposing a $5bn investment in partnership with private equity fund Providence and former Nextel chairman Tim Donahue. According to the Financial Times, the offer was rejected out of hand by several Sprint directors and was not considered by the full board. Sprint Nextel is currently struggling to hold on to subscribers in the face of intense pressure from rival operators, while also attempting to resolve continuing internal friction between factions from the respective Sprint and Nextel camps. At the same time, the group is still trying to find a full-time replacement for CEO Gary Forsee, who resigned in October. SK Telecom, a leader in its domestic market, is keen to establish a stronger presence in the US. It already operates there through Helio, a mobile joint venture with Earthlink which rents calltime from Sprint. 

As had been widely rumoured, Google confirmed plans to bid for wireless spectrum in the US early next year. If successful it will be able to offer local internet access and cellular phone services. Pay TV giants Time Warner Cable, Comcast and DirecTV said they would not participate in the upcoming auction; nor will Sprint Nextel. However Google's rivals for bandwidth will include AT&T and Verizon, as well as DirecTV's rival Echostar.

General Motors is said to be considering a bid for a minority shareholding in Russia's leading auto manufacturer, AvtoVaz. GM already has a joint venture with AvtoVaz to make SUVs in Russia, sold under the Chevrolet badge, and is keen to protect that partnership from other possible buyers. Renault and Fiat are also reported to be in talks with AvtoVaz.

A German court threw out claims from Vodafone that T-Mobile's exclusive partnership with Apple to market the iPhone handset contravened national competition laws. As reported here last week, the UK company, which is also T-Mobile's main competitor in Germany, had forced T-Mobile to start selling unlocked iPhones for use on other networks, such as Vodafone itself. That move sidetracked the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary's launch campaign, and it says it will sue Vodafone for damages if there is evidence that sales have been significantly affected. It has now stopped sales of unlocked handsets. Meanwhile, Orange, which is selling both locked and unlocked iPhones in France because of local competition laws, claimed to have sold 30,000 units in the first five days on-sale. Despite the option to sign up for another call provider, around 80% of buyers chose to stick with Orange.

They who live by hype often die by hype as well. As if to prove how quickly heroes can turn into pariahs in the modern age, several media pundits began this week to turn against flavour-of-the-year Facebook. The social media network's advertising strategy was thrown into disarray last week when it was forced to make changes to its newly launched Beacon "social advertising" system. This tracks the general web-browsing activities of users outside the social network as well as any online purchases and automatically circulates that information to all their Facebook friends. More than 50,000 users signed an online petition attacking the system for its blatant infringement of personal privacy. As a result, Facebook has now given users the option to opt out of the system on a site-by-site basis. However the company's initially diffident response to the uproar, and the initial lack of an apology, enraged several influential bloggers, who as a result turned the full force of their anger against the site. 

Fortune magazine's technology blogger Josh Quittner, for example, jumped on the company with hob-nailed boots, castigating the site for its arrogance and highlighting the immaturity of an executive team all aged in their early 20s. "For a social media company, these folks don’t understand the first thing about communication," said Quittner. "They have alienated the press by being arrogant, aloof and dishonest... And it is killing them.... No one who writes about Facebook likes it anymore. It could have all been avoided with a smart adult running things. Facebook has no old hands in its corner, no advisers to tell the kids how to behave. This company has no one babysitting it. And watching it now is like watching an unattended child play with a pack of matches in a wooden house." Ouch. (See the full piece here). This and other flames finally elicited a humble apology from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who posted a mea culpa response yesterday (Wednesday). "We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature," he said, "but we've made even more with how we've handled them," he said.

In the news this past week: Agencies

WPP was named the victor in the review of Dell's global ad account. The British-based marketing group secured a three-year contract to handle all marketing services for the US computer manufacturer, worth an estimated $4.5bn in billings. It will now set about establishing a completely new agency to run the business. Dell's VP, global marketing, Casey Jones, said "This will be a non-traditional relationship and the purpose of it is to achieve marketing objectives of Dell's that are simply not achievable either with our current roster of agencies or with a patchwork quilt of shops stitched together." The two companies will, he said, work together to create "what we hope [will be] the greatest agency in the world". Media will be channelled through WPP's existing agencies. According to press reports, Dell has not demanded exclusivity from the new agency, which will also be able to take on other accounts. External agencies, such as Mother, may also remain on the roster. A name for the new shop has yet to be decided, but the project's working title is DaVinci.

Interpublic's resident media guru Robert Coen issued a down-beat forecast for the US advertising industry this year and next. As director of forecasting for the Universal McCann network, Coen's predictions are widely respected within the industry. He said he expected growth in US advertising for 2007 to end up at around 0.7%, and that 2008's figure would increase to 3.8% because of the presidential elections and Olympics, although that figure was much lower than the growth expected from other global markets. ZenithOptimedia disagreed, saying the US figure for 2007 would be 2.5% for 2007, rising to 4.1% next year, while all other markets would hit 6.7%, with Russia and China the fastest growing territories. WPP's Group M was more cheerful about 2007, predicting a final figure of 2.8% for the US in 2007 but 3.7% in 2008. 

Research group Forrester published the latest update of its Forrester Wave survey of leading interactive agencies. The new report covers fewer agencies than ever before - the Q2 2007 survey published earlier this year looked at 15 agencies, while the Q4 edition covers only seven. It identified Avenue A | Razorfish and Ogilvy Interactive as the two leaders in the sector, supported by Sapient. Below them were positioned Digitas, VML, Critical Mass and imc2. Among the many omissions from the last report were R\GA and Organic, both labelled as leaders in Q2 2007, but overlooked this time around. The report makes a number of interesting points about the sector as a whole. The most significant is the inexperience of all the agencies surveyed outside their chosen discipline. "The interactive agencies are in a position where all their staff is focused on executing on digital," says report author Brian Haven. "They need people who understand that broader relationship between online and offline media." Until they fix this problem, he suggested, they will have to play second fiddle in relationships with client advertisers, while the lead role goes to a traditional above-the-line lead agency.

As expected, LG confirmed Bartle Bogle Hegarty as its main global creative agency. According to Ad Age, LG is firming up Y&R to handle local executions based on BBH's concept and creative, and MindShare will take on media. However there has been no official announcement yet on those two assignments. In other assignments, Deutsch's LA office had a great week, picking up the $150m Sony PlayStation account, media as well as creative, and also an expanded role on GM's Saturn brand, handling online as well as traditional creative. WCRS was appointed to launch GlaxoSmithKline's slimming drug Alli in the UK, while WWAV Rapp Collins will manage the pan-Euro launch of an over-the-counter formulation of Viagra for Pfizer next year. For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. 

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Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands