Our last four ads of 2007. Fittingly, we're featuring work from two of the world's hottest agencies this week. Long Time Coming is the first ad for Nike from Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The Miami agency successfully loosened Wieden & Kennedy's iron grip on the sneaker giant's account earlier in this year, winning a brief for the Nike Plus running system. It's a great ad, exciting too (although its 'evolution' concept reminded me a little of this British ad for Motorola from AMV BBDO from mid year).

Don't you just hate Fallon London? Can they do nothing wrong? Not only are they unquestionably the UK's star agency this year (see more below) but their creative output seems to go from strength to strength. Here's another fabulous piece of work for Sony, easily on a par with the other work we've featured here before for the Bravia or Walkman. This one is for the Cybershot camera/camcorder range. Wonderful! (Great music too, from JUSTICE).

Manufacturers of hair styling tools don't often tend to commission the most creative advertising, but UK company GHD have well and truly broken the mould with a great series of virals and TV ads. TBWA\Manchester is responsible. All the spots centre around that particularly female war between girls with straight hair and girls with curly. Curl envy, I think it's called. (I'm racking my brain to think what the male equivalent would be. Oh, yeah. Well you couldn't make an ad about that.)

And finally, a bizarre and haunting ad for US insurer Farmers, from Campbell-Ewald. Like GHD, Farmers has truly set itself apart from the rest of its sector with ads which are challenging and unexpected. This one, from earlier this year, is no exception. I'm not sure what, if anything, it says about the product - let's face it, having insurance is not going to make this particular "strange feeling" any less strange - but it certainly sticks in the mind.

In the news this past week: Advertisers & Media

Renault triumphed over General Motors to acquire a strategic shareholding in Russia's biggest car company AvtoVaz. That group accounts for around 70% of all auto manufacturing in Russia, and sold around 700,000 cars in 2006, equivalent to local market share of 30%. AvtoVaz has a joint venture with GM to manufacture small cars and SUVs in Russia under the Chevrolet name, but it is best-known for the Lada passenger car brand. Under the terms of the new deal, Renault will acquire a 25% stake in its Russian counterpart, and will invest around $900m to modernise production systems, while also taking over effective management control of Lada. Renault and Nissan will also use AvtoVaz's vast plant outside Moscow for production of their own vehicles. At a stroke, Russia will overtake France to become Renault's biggest global market, and the Renault-Nissan-Lada alliance will overtake Ford to become the world's third largest auto manufacturer.

The scene was set this week for what is expected to be one of the most keenly contested corporate sell-offs of 2008. After two years of speculation, the Swedish government has opened the bidding process for Vin & Sprit, the state-owned drinks company whose best known brand is international premium vodka Absolut. Morgan Stanley is handling the sale, and is expected to issue information packs to interested bidders over the next few weeks. All four of the world's leading drinks companies - Diageo, Pernod-Ricard, Bacardi and Fortune Brands - have put their names into the hat, as have private equity groups including EQT, the investment fund controlled by Sweden's Wallenberg family. V&S could be sold in one piece, or may even be split up, depending on the offers received.

British media group EMAP agreed the sale of its entire consumer magazine and radio business to German publisher H Bauer for a better-than-expected £1.14bn. However, the business-to-business division, which had been considered the most sought-after part of the group, failed to find a buyer at the asking price of £1.3bn. As a result it has been withdrawn from sale, and EMAP will now restructure itself as a focused B2B publisher. That deal adds considerable bulk to Bauer's presence in the UK. Although a giant in Germany and several Eastern European markets, Bauer's presence in the UK was limited to a few large circulation but low profile weekly titles, such as Take A Break and Bella. 

Several important senior executive appointments this week. Vikram Pandit was appointed as the new CEO of Citigroup. Highly admired in financial circles, Pandit was head of institutional securities at Morgan Stanley until 2005, when he became one of the first victims of that bank's internecine management battle. He subsequently established his own hedge fund specialising in alternative investments, which was acquired by Citi earlier this year. Pandit has vowed to conduct "an objective and dispassionate" examination of Citigroup's sprawling corporate structure, which could lead to disposals of some parts of the business. A split into two separate retail and investment banking businesses is a distinct possibility. Over at Coca-Cola, as had been expected, Muhtar Kent was named as CEO-designate. He will step up to the role in July next year. Incumbent Neville Isdell will remain chairman until 2009. 

Meanwhile, James Murdoch's role as heir apparent at News Corporation was further cemented by a promotion to lead all the group's operations spanning Europe and Asia. He was replaced as CEO of BSkyB by Jeremy Darroch. At the same time, the group has transplanted two senior managers from London to New York to run newly acquired Dow Jones & Co, parent company of the Wall Street Journal. News International chairman Les Hinton was named as CEO of Dow Jones, with Times editor Robert Thomson becoming group publisher of WSJ and other titles.

How are the mighty fallen. Former newspaper tycoon Conrad Black, once the toast of international media circles, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for fraud. He will go to jail in Spring next year, after being found guilty of siphoning millions from his Hollinger International group to fund the lavish jetsetting lifestyle he enjoyed with his wife, journalist Barbara Amiel.

McDonald's took a fair amount of heat at the end of last week for a promotion aimed directly at elementary school children in Florida. The fast food group has sponsored the printing costs of folders for school report cards in Seminole Country, Fla, in return for a voucher on the cover. Any student who receives all A and B grades or top marks for citizenship or attendance is entitled to a free Happy Meal. This promotion managed to make headlines around the world as a result of a vociferous media campaign launched against it by the US pressure group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and one local parent, Susan Pagan. (Their names and comments feature in virtually all of the hundreds of press reports referring to the incident). However, local school officials have pointed out that the report covers have featured commercial messages for almost a decade, and until this year, were sponsored by Pizza Hut without any significant criticism. Pizza Hut already runs an extensive school campaign in the US whereby school children are rewarded for reaching monthly reading goals with a free one-topping pizza each month. 

You can export to hear more about Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer in the future. Now the global #3 behind HP and Dell as a result of its purchase of Gateway and Packard Bell, Acer has also secured a position as one of the lead sponsors of the Olympics from 2009 to 2012, replacing arch-rival Lenovo, which is to drop out as a sponsor after next year's Beijing event.

Consumer products group Reckitt Benckiser strengthened its over-the-counter healthcare portfolio with the acquisition of US company Adams Respiratory for $2.3bn. The deal will add a collection of cough and congestion remedies including Mucinex and Delsym to Reckitt's portfolio.

Microsoft has agreed to acquire UK-based online mapping service Multimap for an undisclosed sum, thought to be around £50m. The purchase is designed to boost Microsoft's presence in a sector increasingly dominated by Google and Nokia's Navteq. Multimap is to be merged into Microsoft's existing 3D and 2D mapping system Virtual Earth, which it licenses for corporate use.

In the news this past week: Agencies

General Motors has adopted a new strategy which could shake up regional marketing for its cars in the US. Since 2000, all local marketing and media buying for GM's dealership groups has been handled by its main brand agencies. From April next year, however, all 750 local dealer organisations will have the option to appoint their own agencies, allowing for much greater flexibility in their marketing. GM's national agencies will still supply a "tool box" of creative assets, but dealers will be able to hire their own shop to adapt material to their local needs. 

UK trade bible Campaign named Fallon London as its Agency of the Year, for the second consecutive year. The shop is estimated to have doubled its billings during the course of 2007 to around £120m, enough to push it into the UK's Top 20. Its gorilla viral for Cadbury was Campaign of the Year. Dare was named Digital Agency of the Year for the fourth time in five years. Among other winners, BBDO was Network of the Year, Mediaedge:CIA London took the prize for Media Agency, and Carat was honoured as Media Network. OgilvyOne was Direct Agency of the Year. Heinz was selected as Advertiser of the Year, while Google took gold in the Medium of the Year category.

Independent London creative agencies RPM3 and Beechwood are to merge under the new name of RPM3 Beechwood. How creative is that?

It was another comparatively quiet week for account assignments. Royal Caribbean Cruises appointed JWT and MindShare for US creative and media respectively. Orangina Schweppes in France transferred media for all its brands from Carat to KR Media. Unilever consolidated global creative for its Signal toothpaste portfolio with Lowe, dropping BBH in Europe. For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. 

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See you next year!


Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands