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Our favourite ads this week: 

The American Association of Independent Commercial Producers named director Wes Anderson's "My Life. My Card" ad for American Express as the best commercial of 2006. Although the American Express campaign is managed by Ogilvy & Mather, this particular ad carries the unmistakable imprint of Anderson himself. The filmmaker, best-known for Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, pulled off a spot which somehow manages to be both a celebration and a satire of all the other ads in the series, of film-making in general and even of American Express itself. (The soundtrack music may sound familiar - it's the theme from Francois Truffaut's Day For Night, probably the best film ever made about making films). The Martin Agency's "Caveman" series for Geico took the award for best campaign of 2006. Meanwhile, at the Effie Awards in New York, the excellent Mac vs PC campaign from TBWA, featured here in previous issues, won the Grand Effie. The Awards season is well underway, and reaches its apogee this weekend with the opening of the Cannes Lions festival. We'll bring you some of the best of the awarded ads next week.

Three other new ads caught our eye this week. The Financial Times newspaper unveiled an impressive and lavish new ad by DDB London and director Blac Ionica. Goodby Silverstein is behind the great new "Lab Rats" ad promoting  highspeed internet from US cable giant Comcast. Excellent script, casting and visual effects. And finally, we liked this this entertaining film for Perrier flavoured variant Fluo by Ogilvy France.

In the news this week: Advertisers & Media

Hot on the heels of the figures for US interactive advertising, released a fortnight ago, IAB Europe published its tally of European spend for 2006. The total figure was just over E8bn. The UK was the biggest market, accounting for around E3.1bn, followed by Germany (E1.8bn), France (E1.2bn), the Netherlands (E560m) and Italy (E480m). Search advertising accounted for 45% of total spend, while display advertising accounted for 31%. Classifieds and directories accounted for most of the rest, with less than 2% spent on email marketing.

This year's "Upfront" TV buying season kicked off. The first big deal of the week went to NBC which was said to have agreed a $1bn package with WPP's media agencies covering all of its broadcast, cable and digital channels. The deal is apparently structured around new Live Plus Three commercials ratings from Nielsen, making it the first mega-bucks endorsement of that system. The ratings track minute-by-minute audience measurement for ad breaks, not just on live broadcast but also over the following three days of DVR playback.

Apple announced plans to introduce a Windows version of its Safari web browser for the first time in a direct attack on Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer. Separately, Google, which has its own strategic partnership with the Firefox web browser, made a formal complaint to US regulators that the new Windows Vista operating system contravenes previous legal anti-trust rulings against Microsoft because it creates barriers to the use of rival web browsers. 

Meanwhile, the search giant's strategic marketing alliance with auction site eBay hit a rocky patch. EBay pulled all its search advertisements from Google in the US on Monday, apparently as a result of increasing friction between its own Paypal online payment service and Google's rival Checkout service. Apparently, Checkout had deliberately arranged a promotional event to clash with a similar evening being hosted by Paypal as part of the eBay Live conference for its US sellers. EBay's pique persuaded Google to cancel the rival event. Currently, the search giant has a lucrative exclusive deal to supply all display and search ads on eBay sites outside the US. Yahoo is eBay's ad supplier within the US. 

Reversing a previous decision to maintain its premium cars division, Ford Motors is now said to have instructed Goldman Sachs to seek a buyer for its Jaguar and Land Rover businesses. It will retain Volvo, for the time being at least.

British supermarket giant Tesco surprised the market with a move into the gardening and outdoor furniture market. It agreed to acquire Scottish retailer Dobbies, which has 21 stores in England and Scotland, for £156m. It also announced a partnership with Random House (a unit of News Corp) to launch a book club, which will publish special Tesco-branded editions of selected leading titles each month.

Meanwhile Cadbury added another piece to its jigsaw of regional chewing gum brands with the agreed purchase of leading Turkish manufacturer Intergum for $450m. Intergum claims a 46% share of its local market with brands including Falim and First, and also exports to the Middle East, Russia and CIS states. Cadbury also snapped up Romanian confectioner and biscuit company Kandia-Excelent. Cadbury is also expected to announce plans next week for a reduced sugar version of its Maynards and Bassett's candy brands, and even of its flagship Dairy Milk chocolate bar.

In the news this week: Agencies

Havas confirmed the merger of its French creative agencies Devarrieux Villaret and Scher Lafarge, as well as Euro RSCG 27 and direct marketer Communider, to form a new integrated powerhouse which will adopt the name H. Its key client is PSA's Citroen brand. This was previously handled by Euro RSCG 27, but transferred to Scher Lafarge, then an independent, in 2006. Havas acquired Scher in order to maintain its hold on the business. The new agency's debut website offers an odd little film in which the agency's principals, who include Gilbert Scher, Benoit Devarrieux and Christophe Lafarge, baptise their new offices. Worth seeing for the beard alone!

In the US, Interpublic said it would merge two of the standalone shops aligned with its McCann Worldgroup.  Sedgwick Rd in Seattle was original the local office of McCann Erickson, but took on separate branding in 2000. It is to merge with TM Advertising of Texas, and Sedgwick's president Jim Walker becomes chief creative officer of the enlarged agency.

According to Campaign today, highly regarded UK digital agency Dare is in the final stages of a deal to be acquired by Canadian group Cossette, which also owns London creative agency Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy. Bartle Bogle Hegarty currently holds a minority stake in Dare, which was set up by Mark Collier, a former managing director of BBH. However that relationship cooled a little after BBH set up its own inhouse digital unit earlier this year to take over European interactive for key client Lynx/Axe. The work was previously split between Dare and AKQA.

Buzz is beginning to circulate around Mad Men, a new 13-part drama series set in the Madison Avenue advertising industry of the early 1960s. "Sex. Lies. Storyboards" promises the advance publicity. Conceived and written by one of the executive producers of The Sopranos, the show premieres on July 19th on cable channel AMC. See here for more information, clips and trailers.

Iconic UK frozen foods brand Birds Eye appointed AMV BBDO and Carat to its creative and media accounts. Ikea appointed Beattie McGuinness Bungay. Euro RSCG New York continued its winning streak, capturing three accounts from Kraft including Ritz crackers and Triscuits. German electronics store Saturn, the country's biggest advertiser (and a unit of Metro), appointed Scholz & Friends. French electronics retailer FNAC (a unit of PPR) named TBWA\Paris. Subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. 

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Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands