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By George Parker on June 4, 2013
I arrived back in England in 1972 after ten years in New York. In those days, anyone with that amount of American advertising experience could write their own ticket in London. However, being a schmuck, I allowed myself to be wooed by Geers Gross. At the time I was led to believe it was the [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative | Tagged agency fireman, confessions of a mad man, dorlands, geers gross, George Parker, homepride, John Maltman, madison avenue
By George Parker on May 7, 2013
There’s always been a perception in the business world that advertising agencies have an unlimited license to print money. Back in the glory days of the sixties and seventies, this was accepted, because most agencies, in collusion with the avaricious marketing directors of their respective clients, were all playing the same game. Let’s do lunch, [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative, Finance | Tagged american express, big dumb holding companies, confessions of a mad man, general electric, George Parker, Jack Welch, madison avenue, WPP
By George Parker on April 29, 2013
After arriving in New York in the booze and drug fuelled Mad Men sixties, my first task was to get a job. For two weeks I trudged the concrete canyons of Manhattan lugging my oversized portfolio of samples. I soon realized the best way to achieve temporary relief from the suffocating heat and humidity of [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative | Tagged cbs studios, confessions of a mad man, David Ogilvy, George Parker, gotham city, Lou Dorfsman, madison avenue, New York
By Stephen Foster on April 24, 2013
With a new series of Mad Men on our screens and the death of Margaret Thatcher (indelibly attached to the UK adland of the 1980s), advertising has made one of its periodic trips over the wire; entering mainstream debate as opposed to a minor role on the business pages. So do ads change the world? [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative, Finance, News, Politics, Research | Tagged 1950s, 1960s, 1979, charles saatchi, conservative party, Don Draper, doyle dane bernbach, general election, mad men, madison avenue, Margaret Thatcher, research, Tim Bell, vw ad
By George Parker on April 22, 2013
When, in 1963, as a snot nosed 23 year old, I disembarked at pier 96 from the Queen Mary (the one that’s now a conference center in Long Beach), my sole objective was to get a job on Madison Avenue, drink, smoke and screw my brains out, and so become what would be known many [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative | Tagged adscam, compaq, confessions of a mad man, David Ogilvy, George Parker, madison avenue, ogilvy & mather, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP
By Staff on November 22, 2012
Well we have it from the horse’s mouth: “I am an evil supervillain and my power is… advertising!” And here he is on the Wieden+Kennedy London blog: I was delighted to discover, while reading Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, that there was a minor Marvel supervillain in the ’70s called Viper, who came [...]
Posted in Agencies, News | Tagged ad executive, blog, madison avenue, marvel comics, Neil Christie, viperman, wieden+kennedy london
By Stephen Foster on May 8, 2012
OK darlings, here we go. Forbes magazine has persuaded (bet it didn’t require much) some of Madison Avenue’s finest to parade in their best kit for an article The Real-Life Mad Men (And Women) of 2012. There’s a slide show in the link. It’s quite hard not to look or sound a prat in these [...]
Posted in Agencies, News | Tagged Ajaz Ahmed, akqa, apple, bally, caroline herrera, fashion, Forbes, kirshenbaum bond senecal, Lori Senecal, madison avenue, nobu, prada, real-life mad men and women
By Stephen Foster on April 17, 2012
That’s the implication of a dispute going on in New York where the city’s $118bn public pension funds have asked the investment banks and ad agency groups they invest in to disclose information about the racial and social gender of their employees. So far financial giants Goldman Sachs and Met Life have acceded but Omnicom, [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Finance, News, Politics | Tagged amb/bbdo, bbdo, bmp, CDP, Cilla Snowball, creatives, ddb, Farah Ramzan Golant, Goldman Sachs, investments, John Wren, mad men, madison avenue, may 22 agm, met life, new york public pension funds, omnicom, planners, race and gender equality, tbwa, white boys' club, wieden+kennedy, WPP
By Stephen Foster on April 6, 2012
According to the Daily Mail it is anyway: BSkyB is paying £250,000 per episode for series five of Mad Men but audiences have slumped to 47,000 for the third episode (in stark contrast to the 355,000 it garnered on BBC digital channel BBC4 for the last series), costing Sky over £5 per viewer. Why the [...]
Posted in Agencies, Media, News | Tagged 000 viewers, 47, bbc4, bskyb, daily mail, Dustin Hoffman, game of thrones, luck, mad men series five, madison avenue, Murdoch, Nick Nolte, ratings disaster, sky atlantic, £5 per viewer
By Stephen Foster on March 29, 2012
Some agency brands cut it on the worldwide stage, others don’t. Arguably Interpublic’s DraftFCB doesn’t (it still sounds like a horse designed by a committee), Dentsu (also the name of its Japanese holding company parent) certainly doesn’t. But back in 2008 Dentsu had the good sense to buy McGarrybowen, the agency set up in 2002 [...]
Posted in Agencies, News | Tagged dentsu, draftfcb, Gordon Bowen, Interpublic, John McGarry, John McGarry lll, madison avenue, mcgarrybowen, new role, New York, special executive adviser, Stewart Owen, Tim Andree, tokubetsu komon, WPP, y&r
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