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Our favourite ads this week: 

Our selection of ads this week includes: an entertaining spot from Crispin Porter & Bogusky for Geek Squad, the high-tech home repair service from Best Buy; an elegant film from BBH for Vodafone to promote its mobile internet service (and featuring the inimitable tones of Dame Judi Dench); a clever film by Y&R North America for MTV to promote power-saving; and finally a funny Italian ad from last year by Armando Testa for no-alcohol beer Moretti Zero.

In the news this week: Advertisers & Media

The Cannes Lions advertising festival is in full swing in the South of France, with prizes already awarded for several categories. So far there has been a refreshing concentration on less high profile campaigns among the winners. For example, the Grand Prix for direct marketing went not to a multi-national computer manufacturer or car company, but a small Spanish bank, Banco Gallego, for a campaign built around the real-life incident in which former Barcelona FC goalkeeper Julen Lopetegui fainted on live TV while presenting coverage of last year's World Cup. According to Shackleton it was because he'd just seen an ad reporting the bank's high savings rates. Shackleton also took home the top prize as Direct Agency of the Year. 

Australasia is having a splendid season. Grand Prix for sales promotion went to a promotional concept from TBWA New Zealand to sell Adidas apparel on behalf of the country's All Blacks rugby team. OMD New Zealand was Grand Prix winner in media for ASB Bank, and Clemenger BBDO of Australia took the radio Grand Prix for an ad for Snickers. BBDO's South African outpost won the Grand Prix for outdoor with posters for Nedbank. Another first - after years of support of the Lions festival, but little recognition in the awards, Procter & Gamble finally collected a Grand Prix, for the striking press campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi for its Ultra Tide stain remover.

Three Grand Prix Cyber Lions were awarded for interactive, to FarFar of Sweden for their "Heidies" viral campaign for Diesel clothing; to R\GA for the Nike+ site, and to Unilever Canada for the widely admired Dove Evolution video, featured here in the past. OMD was named overall media agency of the year, and Crispin Porter & Bogusky was interactive agency of the year. Full coverage, including all the winners in the Grand Prix, Gold, Silver and Bronze categories, is available at the Cannes Lions website.

General Electric and Pearson were reported to be in talks over assembling a rival bid for Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, currently the subject of a $5bn offer from News Corporation. Under a GE-Pearson plan, Dow Jones' controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family, could retain a stake in an enlarged group which would also absorb Pearson's Financial Times newspaper and GE's cable channel CNBC. It could prove a tempting carrot to the Bancrofts, who are soft-pedalling with News Corp because of concerns over the editorial independence of the WSJ if it was owned by Rupert Murdoch. Meanwhile, Pearson was considering the sale of the FT's French counterpart, Les Echos. LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault is a likely buyer - he already owns rival French business title La Tribune. However staff at Les Echos expressed horror over such a plan, and threatened to strike if the business is sold to him.

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel resigned abruptly following months of grumbling from shareholders over the company's failure to match the stellar performance of arch-rival Google, and his own lavish remuneration package (he earned almost $72m in 2006). Semel will remain non-executive chairman, but the role of CEO passed to founder Jerry Yang, despite the fact that he has little experience at this level in the role. Former CFO Susan Decker, tipped as a future chief of the company, was promoted to group president. The news prompted an unsolicited expression of interest from multi-tasking News Corporation, which made an informal proposal to transfer its MySpace social network business to Yahoo in exchange for a 25% holding in the combined business. 

Cadbury Schweppes ruled out the likelihood of a bid for a rival confectioner (Hershey was the pundits' favourite) by saying that it would pay out to shareholders most of the money it gets from the proposed sale of its US drinks business. It also launched a mammoth £450m cost-cutting drive that will slash staff numbers by 15% or 7,800 jobs, and said it would drop the Schweppes brand from its name at the end of the year, to become Cadbury PLC.

Colgate has been targeted in the US by counterfeiters. Tubes of fake Colgate have been discovered in discount dollar stores in New York state, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The counterfeit toothpaste doesn't appear to be deliberately poisoned (in the way that, for example, Tylenol was laced with life-threatening toxins in two incidents in the 1980s). However it may contain diethylene glycol, a moderately harmful chemical used in antifreeze. That substance was recently found in some other apparently legitimate toothpaste products imported from China. The fake Colgate tubes may be recognised because they are marked as being "Manufactured in South Africa" and also have several misspellings on their labelling.

Private equity fund Cerberus, which recently agreed the buyout of US car giant Chrysler has expressed its interest in one or both of Jaguar and Land Rover, which were recently put up for sale by Ford.

H&M announced that its limited edition collection this year will be produced as a one-off collaboration with designer Roberto Cavalli. Previous partners have included Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Viktor & Rolf.

In the news this week: Agencies

RKCR/Y&R in London has been dealt a serious blow by the resignation of CEO James Murphy, creative director Ben Priest and planning director David Golding to launch their own agency. According to trade magazine Campaign, the trio are determined to launch their start-up as an independent, despite the best efforts of WPP to maintain some form of a financial connection with them. Campaign also speculated that two of RKCR/Y&R's flagship clients, Virgin and Marks & Spencer, may be sorely tempted to follow the trio to the new agency.

Publicis Groupe has wasted little time in expanding the global profile of the Digitas interactive network it acquired at the end of last year. Following last week's appointment of a new global CEO based in London, Publicis this week announced the acquisition of independent French interactive agency Business Interactif, which is to become the French office of the expanding network. Publicis is buying the 49% shareholding ion BI controlled by founders Emmanuel Henrion and François de la Villardière, and has launched an offer for the remaining shares which are publicly held. The combined cost is expected to be around E137m.

Arise, Sir John! With all the fuss made over the knighthood awarded to Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie, you may have missed news of the other recipients. John Hegarty, founding partner of the BBH advertising agency, was also awarded a knighthood in the Queen's birthday honours this week. Planning guru Leslie Butterfield, currently a partner at Ingram, was also honoured, receiving a CBE. At quite the other end of the scale, Jonathan Durden, one of the three founders of media agency PHD, was a surprise addition to Big Brother household. The advertising executive was said to be intent on adding to his wealth by winning the latest series of the barrel-scraping reality TV show. However that goal may prove beyond him, since he is already one of three housemates nominated for likely eviction at the end of this week. His appearance in the series led to a flood of tabloid newspaper revelations regarding his colourful personal life.

It was a quiet week for account changes, largely because of the Cannes festival. Best Buy transferred its $200m creative account to BBDO New York; Citigroup-owned stock brokerage Smith Barney placed its creative business with McCann New York; Toshiba appointed Grey to handle its account across Europe; and business consultancy Capgemini appointed Publicis Conseil to manage its worldwide advertising. Subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. 

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Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands