What’s the biggest, most successful, company you’ve never heard of? Impossible to say, of course. But a good candidate would be Aberdeen Asset Management. It’s in the FTSE100; it’s genuinely global. And it’s very profitable indeed, judging from its latest ...
Read More »WPP’s Sorrell places his bets on new media – and it’s Google’s YouTube not Facebook or Twitter
The most interesting thing about WPP Group’s first quarter financial results were not the numbers, but its chief executive’s obiter dicta. The numbers themselves were a curate’s egg. They beat the revenue forecast, bizarrely enough they delighted in Britain, but ...
Read More »Will new Brit at McCann NY (Chris Macdonald) be more successful than the last one (Nick Brien)?
Having, a while back, complimented Chris Macdonald on the improved quality of his tailoring, it would be churlish not to congratulate London’s sharpest suit on landing the hot seat at McCann New York, where he will soon become president. Macdonald ...
Read More »Why the future looks good for old admen – if you don’t get turned out to grass aged 50
Whoever said advertising was a young person’s business? The conventional wisdom is that at 40, most ad executives would be advised to investigate a second career. And at 50, they’ll be positively clapped out and have “post-economic” freedom foisted upon ...
Read More »Out of the COI frying pan into the fire of a fashion launch for brand marketer Chris Wood
For years, you’ve run your own brand consultancy. After successfully selling it, you step into the limelight as chairman of the Central Office of Information, only to find that mad axeman and part-time cabinet minister Francis Maude is cutting off ...
Read More »Can former Publicis boss Richard Pinder’s new company be a new model for global advertisers?
After years of being a jet-setting senior suit in someone else’s service, Richard Pinder has decided to go global on his own account with the ambitious launch of his own international network, The House Worldwide. Pinder (left), it will be ...
Read More »Team WPP’s Ford blunder reveals the perils of living in a creative bubble
What could be more timely than demonstrating the little car’s exceptional cargo-carrying capacity than three nubile women, one scantily clad, all three bound and gagged, occupying the boot space? Closer inspection of the ad reveals that the caricatures are supposed ...
Read More »UK newspapers set to spoil politicians’ Leveson deal
Oh Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay! they chortled in their joy! The political class seems intoxicated with having finally, excruciatingly, achieved cross-party consensus on regulating the press. Everyone, it seems, is a winner. Dave has gambled – with losing a vote ...
Read More »Top Pepsi Nascar viral isn’t ace driver Jeff Gordon and may not be Pepsi either
There’s a rather thrilling viral doing the rounds that features top NASCAR (US stock car) racer Jeff Gordon giving a car salesman the ride of his life in a used Chevrolet Camaro. A heavily disguised Jeff (left) is posing as ...
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