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Our favourite ads this week: 

US insurance companies are discovering the need to spice up their marketing if they want to pull in new customers. GEICO has long set the pace in this category, most recently with its Cavemen series. Here, however, the company has moved in a new direction, with a different series of ads by The Martin Agency which masquerade as trailers for scandal exposés of well known fictional TV characters. This ad digs the dirt on some even more familiar cavemen, The Flintstones; others feature The Beverly Hillbillies and the Cabbage Patch Kids. 

Also in the insurance sector, Farmers have been experimenting with an interesting campaign executed by Campbell-Ewald. How would you cope in the event of an accident if you didn't have cover? This new ad, Morning Ritual offers one possible scenario. Have a look at Commute, from the same campaign, for some great stunt work.

Arnold Worldwide has unveiled its first ad for Volvo Cars, dubbed The Meeting. It's a melange of different ad stereotypes including Bacardi-style beautiful people at play and a James Bondalike spy subtext. Despite an oddly old-fashioned air, it's arguably more effective and certainly more commercial than the excessively quirky (albeit award-winning) ads produced by previous agency Euro RSCG.

Following up last week's brilliantly pointed pastiche of an ad for a notional Microsoft ZunePhone, here's a genuine new ad for the Zune music player, produced by independent shop 72andSunny. Which is the better ad, though? I'll let you decide for yourselves. 

In the news this past fortnight: Advertisers & Media

It has been a busy week for Apple, who spooked investors and annoyed early buyers by cutting $200 off the price of the iPhone at the end of last week. The higher-spec model, with 8Gb of memory, was marked down from $599 to $399, and the lower spec 4Gb model is to be discontinued when stocks run out. After receiving numerous complaints from buyers who had purchased the device at the launch price, Apple issued a public apology as well as a $100 store credit to existing customers. Although the company had claimed sales of 270,000 units for the iPhone's first 30 hours on-sale, no more up-to-date figures had been released, raising speculation that the price cut was prompted by a slowdown in sales. Apple shares fell by around 5% as a result. A few days later, however, the company put an end to these worries when it announced that it had already hit its target of 1 million units sold, no less than three weeks ahead of schedule. 

Newly independent Chrysler continued to assemble its dream team of top level managers by poaching from Japanese rivals. In the wake of Deborah Meyers, recruited from Lexus to become chief marketing officer, Toyota North American president Jim Press is to join Chrysler as co-president and vice chairman alongside Tom LaSorda. 

British media group EMAP announced another stage in its gradual break-up, agreeing a deal to sell its Australian consumer magazine division to local company ACP. 

Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop cosmetics chain, died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage at the age of just 64. The business, which she founded with her husband Gordon in 1976, was acquired by L'Oreal last year for £652m.

In the news this past fortnight: Agencies

The relationship between investor Vincent Bolloré and media buying group Aegis took a new turn after the Frenchman was said to have expressed his disappointment with the British company's financial results for the first half of 2007. Bolloré has steadily built up a stake of just under 30% in Aegis but has so far been denied board representation because he happens to also be the chairman and biggest shareholder in rival group Havas. Aegis CEO Robert Lerwill called Bolloré's reported dissatisfaction "strange and uninformed". Although Aegis reported a decline of 18% in net profit for the period, this result was skewed by what Lerwill called "accounting technicalities". Aegis's organic revenue growth of 9.6% was, he pointed out, more than twice that reported by Havas for the same period.  

The interactive land-grab continued, with marketing services groups Publicis and WPP each announcing purchases. WPP acquired US digital agency Schematic; Publicis snapped up European mobile marketer Phonevalley, which was absorbed into Digitas France, and highly regarded Parisian creative agency Wcube, which is to rebrand as Publicis Modem France.

Monster.com appointed BBDO to its global creative account. Hyatt Hotels handed their business to Euro RSCG, although Cramer-Krasselt will retain a position on the roster in the US. Motorola was said to have appointed Mother to a new global project, and in the UK, the Labour Party appointed Saatchi & Saatchi to steer its marketing in the run-up to the next general election, expected next year. Saatchi's were of course closely associated with the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. 

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Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands