By Stephen Foster on February 22, 2012
One-time front-running Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was the guy who was finally going to prove to all the sceptics that advertising works – by winning the Republican nomination just because he had a much bigger ad budget than any of his rivals. But main rival Rick Santorum, who beat Romney in Colorado, Minnesota and [...]
Posted in Clients, Creative, News, PR | Tagged ad budgets, Barack Obama, colorado, knocking ads, massachusetts, minnesota, missouri, Mitt Romney, obamacare, republican nomination race, Rick Santorum
By Stuart Smith on February 17, 2012
StrawberryFrog – the maverick advertising micro network – up for sale? Come again? When, late last year, I had the temerity to suggest that was indeed the case, SF founder, chairman, chief executive and great panjandrum Scott Goodson (pictured) took venomous issue with my impudent suggestion. Yet, less than three months later he has done [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Finance, News, PR | Tagged apco pr company, Brian Elliott, emirates, international network, jim beam, pampers, procter & gamble, redundancies, sale, Scott Goodson, strawberry frog, Stuart Smith
By Stephen Foster on February 9, 2012
This is becoming a bit of a trend, News International has awarded its £28m ad account (does it really spend that much on external media?) to holding company WPP. WPP is to set up ‘Team News’ to handle News international’s three remaining papers in the UK, the Sun,The Times and the Sunday Times (the News [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Media, News, Politics, PR | Tagged CHI, closed pitch, grey, Johnny Hornby, news corporation, News International, news of the world, phone hacking, rkcr/y&r, Rupert Murdoch, Sir Martin Sorrell, team news, the sun, the sunday times, the times, Vodafone, WPP, £28m ad account
By Stephen Foster on February 8, 2012
Let’s try to look at this logically. Football is a big business in the UK (BSkyB’s humungous profits depend on it, almost entirely). We have a very expensive Premier League of high-performing clubs, some of whose players are English. The finances of the England team depend on the willingness of supporters and commercial backers, sponsors, [...]
Posted in Clients, Finance, Media, News, PR | Tagged 1966, Anton Ferdinand, bskyb, David Bernstein, england manager, Euro finals, fa chairman, Fabio Capello, football association, James Lawton, John Terry, manchester city, Patrick Barclay, Peter Scudamore, Rio Ferdinand, sponsors, Wayne Rooney, wembley stadium, world cup
By Stephen Foster on February 8, 2012
Well the bloke hasn’t had much to cheer him up recently, having lost a million quid bonus and been vilified by politicians of all hues, mostly for their own hypocritical purposes. Why hypocritical? Labour fuelled the City’s bonus culture and the more than rash expansion of the financial sector that made the consequences of the [...]
Posted in Clients, Finance, Media, News, Politics, PR | Tagged banker bonuses, coalition government, credit crunch, financial sector, Labour, Peter Mandelson, RBS, Stephen Hester, today programme, £38bn lost
By Stephen Foster on February 6, 2012
$500m in bonuses may not be much by the standards of Goldman Sachs or Barclays Capital (whose bonus pools run into billions) but WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell has moved to get his retaliation in first as the marcoms giant prepares to reward its staff for a ‘record-breaking’ year. The bonus pool presumably includes the company’s [...]
Posted in Agencies, Finance, Media, News, Politics, PR | Tagged $500m bonuses, banker bashing, city of london, graduates, inequality, lehman brothers, occupy movement, Sir Martin Sorrell, sunday telegraph, wall street, WPP
By Stuart Smith on February 6, 2012
If only it were possible to blame the whole disaster on Captain Schettino’s recklessness on Friday 13th last, Carnival – ultimate owner of the Costa Concordia – would surely have succeeded in cauterizing a brand crisis of epic proportions quite brilliantly. No one could have moved faster to pin it all on human error. The [...]
Posted in Clients, News, PR | Tagged bookings, Captain Schettino, carnival, costa concodia, costa cruises, cunard, disaster, Micky Arison, p&o, royal caribbean lines, Stuart Smith, titanic, wave season
By Stephen Foster on February 1, 2012
Lord Bell (Tim Bell as was) and Piers Pottinger are reported to be organising a management buy-out of Bell Pottinger, the PR company they founded in 1989 when Bell left ad agency Lowe Howard-Spink (& Bell). Bell Pottinger, currently owned by Chime Communications, the marcoms company Bell heads, is one of the UK’s biggest PR [...]
Posted in Agencies, Finance, News, PR | Tagged Bell Pottinger, Burson-Marsteller, chime, fast track vccp, Hill & Knowlton, Lord Bell, lowe howard-spink & bell, management buyout, Piers Pottinger, PR, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP
By Stephen Foster on January 30, 2012
Well maybe not Labour leader Ed Miliband although it’s surprising that no-one has reminded him yet that RBS boss Stephen Hester’s generous deal at the nearly-nationalised bank was struck by former Labour PM Gordon Brown and chancellor Alistair Darling. And that it was Labour that decided that some public sector ‘workers’, like GPs and hospital [...]
Posted in Media, News, Politics, PR | Tagged Alistair Darling, bankers, bonus, coalition government, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, George Osborne, Gordon Brown, hunting pinks, Labour, pr disaster, RBS, Stephen Hester, Vince Cable
By Stuart Smith on January 30, 2012
Arrested: four senior Sun hacks, plus an allegedly bent copper. Is this the moment that damage to the Sun newspaper brand becomes systemic and unstoppable? Not if News Corp, which ultimately owns the title, has calculated correctly. After all, the information that led to the arrests – carried out as part of the Operation Elveden [...]
Posted in Media, News, PR | Tagged arrests, house of murdoch, Jamie Pyatt, leveson inquiry, news corporation, operation elevedon, Piers Morgan, police, Richard Wallace, Rupert Murdoch, Sly Bailey, trinity mirror, Will Lewis
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