By Wayne Guthrie, co-founder and director at Fearlessly Frank “Amateurs!” Ian Brown could be heard complaining, when the lights — and sound — went out on The Stone Roses’ first ever national TV performance. At a crucial moment, they’d placed ...
Read More »Heinz is 150 again – from Canada’s Rethink
Last week we had BBH in London hymning Heinz’s 150th birthday, this time it’s Rethink in Canada. Not bad but too de trop. BBH’s ‘Clean Plates’ was a better idea. MAA creative scale: 5.
Read More »Sadoun faces ‘cynical’ questioning on $4.4bn Epsilon deal
Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun has rebutted an analyst’s suggestion that Epsolon – the data company for which he just paid $4.4 billion – was not a particularly coveted prize. During a presentation to analysts, Sadoun was asked why — ...
Read More »Mirum on top as WPP merges it with Possible in the UK
More tidying up at Mark Read’s WPP, Possible UK and Mirum UK are being merged into Mirum UK, headed by former Possible group CEO and Wunderman MD Chris Daplyn. Mirum UK MD Antti Lauronen is leaving. Mirum UK will be ...
Read More »Publicis mulls bid for $5bn data giant Epsilon
Publicis has confirmed that it is mulling a bid for Alliance Data Systems’ Epsilon marketing unit, valued at around $5bn. Goldman Sachs with private equity outfit Advent is also in the frame. US-based Epsilon uses data to help its clients ...
Read More »Blue State Digital’s Samir Patel: why the whole world needs proper regulation for Facebook and its rivals
It’s been a hellish few weeks for Facebook. Earlier this month, just 24 hours after announcing its pivot to a more privacy-focused platform in an attempt to reassure an increasingly concerned user base, it was revealed that Facebook’s single biggest ...
Read More »Mark Read: a glimpse of the ‘shoes off’ version of WPP’s CEO
Apparently the original plan was to interview WPP CEO Mark Read on a psychiatrist’s couch, but his team, quite understandably, nuked the idea. The Advertising Week audience was promised it would find out what the “shoes off” Mark Read is ...
Read More »Google says it’s stemming tide of “bad ads” – now there are only 2.3 billion
Google says it removed 2.3 billion bad ads in 2018, nearly one billion fewer than it did in 2017 – which may suggest that its ad policies are working, although it still, um, seems a lot. More pertinently perhaps it ...
Read More »Talon Outdoor’s Jonathan Conway: it’s time to get real about programmatic Out of Home
It’s not new news that marketers are shifting adspend from classic billboards to digital Out of Home inventory, but the market will hit an important point of inflection in 2019. This year, global adspend on classic Out of Home is ...
Read More »