Before Steve Sharp (left) joined Marks & Spencer as marketing director in 2004 – as part of Stuart Rose’s management team hired to fend off a takeover bid from Philip Green – M&S barely used to advertise. It had hired, ...
Read More »Andy Law: how your great British brand can become a Beckham-style icon
Andy Law, author, Huffington Post blogger and chairman of innovation consultancy Fearlessly Frank, explains how other brands can become icons like footballer David Beckham if they use the various forms of capital at their disposal. How did David Beckham become ...
Read More »Brandz makes Apple the world’s top brand – but the tax-dodging company’s reputation is in tatters
WPP has just produced its latest BrandZ survey of the world’s top brands and, as usual with these things, it’s cobblers. Top is Apple at £185bn (American figures) and then the usual suspects. But Apple is facing arguably the biggest ...
Read More »WPP chuffed with Omnicom travails, BBH puts its hopes in Lafferty and BBC’s Today goes girl hunting
***A happy man tonight will be Sir Martin Sorrell, boss of WPP. He’s seen Omnicom slashing jobs at BBDO, after Interpublic’s McCann the world’s biggest agency network, following the loss of $300m Gillette to WPP’s Grey. More than that, he’ll ...
Read More »Omnicom slashes jobs at BBDO and Goodby in the wake of big account losses
Omnicom agencies BBDO and Goodby Silverstein have been wielding the axe according to Ad Age, with around ten per cent of BBDO’s staff – hundreds of people – being laid off in the wake of the loss of $300m Gillette ...
Read More »Centaur Media’s £50m bold bet on digital business Econsultancy backfires disastrously
It’s a dry, spare document. But beneath the dense, printed undergrowth of Centaur Media’s Interim Management Statement 7464E – out on City desks first thing this morning – lies a rich speculative mulch. Take this, for example: Geoff Wilmot is ...
Read More »Marketing Week publisher Centaur faces exit from print as revenue plummets
When I was at Marketing Week – decades ago – it made a fortune: display advertising flourished on the free circulation title and classified was a positive goldmine delivering an annual profit of at least £2m. Times have changed alas; ...
Read More »Scholl picks LBi for major website revamp
Digital agency LBi has won the assignment to revamp number one footcare company Scholl’s website. LBi, which won the business after a pitch, will start its website work in Italy. This will be supported by by social media activity and ...
Read More »Why are advertising’s fat cats all blokes?
Actually there is one exception, Havas’s Mercedes Erra (left), a founder of BETC, in Business Insider’s list at 17 of the top-paid people in adverts. But what does that tell you about the nature of the advertising business? If you ...
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