News

More Rugby World Cup, this time from tournament broadcaster ITV’s ITV Creative ‘Rise to the World Cup’ – featuring some Japanese-style animation. Take it the games are on quite early, which presumably means pubs will be open for breakfast. OK ...

Publicis Groupe has retained the Novartis global media account, reckoned to be worth $600m. The Swiss pharma giant was previously handled by Starcom and now Starcom is combining with Publicis’ new data firm Epsilon in an entity called NovartisONE2. WPP, ...

Listening to the radio this morning and reading people’s reactions to the ASA’s decision to ban new TV ads for Philadelphia and VW has genuinely surprised me. Piers Morgan suggested that these decisions have been made by ‘woke morons,’ and ...

It’s the Rugby World Cup (for men) in Japan in September so Guinness is quick out of the blocks with its ‘Made of More’ campaign featuring – women rugby players. Maybe Guinness thought an ad with blokes would be banned ...

WPP CEO Mark Read may have won good notices for the ad giant’s first half numbers – a bit better than expected, the wheels haven’t fallen off – although they’re still looking rather wonky in the US, still WPP’s most ...

Debate rumbles on about the state of British ad creativity and here’s a short Campaign film from Cannes with some of its advocates. It’s a promoted film so no-one’s going to say it’s in a rut – that’s putting it ...

Ed Sheeran mania shows no sign of abating at Heinz, as elsewhere. The gloomy warbler must be the UK’s richest pop singer – he’s been buying up what seems like most of the county of Suffolk – and the duo’s ...

The UK’s ASA has banned its first ads under its new fatwa against “harmful gender stereotypes,” ads from Mondelez’s Philadelphia and VW which ASA investigations manager Jess Tye says could cause “real world harms.” In the case of Philadelphia, which ...

Lucozade has split with ten-year agency Grey London it seems following a review by owner Suntory and a new marketing director moving from Suntory’s Ribena. Suntory bought Lucozade and Ribena from GSK in 2013. Grey had more than its fair ...