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 W+K’s La Vita E Bella woo the Chinese for Fiat?
Missed this one first time round; it’s a campaign for Fiat (aka Chrysler) from Wieden+Kennedy Portland explaining the quirky, if somewhat unreliable, Italian motor manufacturer’s appeal to and synergy with the Chinese. W+K Portland certainly can’t be accused of ducking ...
Read More »Facebook’s new Home TV campaign is a blooper
I really don’t get this ad for Facebook Home; from Wieden+Kennedy presumably. A guy gets on a plane, accesses FB Home and the characters on his Facebook page (who look like Ronald McDonald’s creepier cousins) take over the plane. Well, ...
Read More »From now on ads should be no longer than five seconds says former enfant terrible Trevor Beattie
Trevor Beattie, the founder of Beattie McGuinness Bungay, did a turn at the Advertising Week Europe conference today at which he announced that 30, 60 and any other second ad above five was a waste of time and space – ...
Read More »Julie Langley: why the Facebook deal to buy adserving company Atlas is important
Facebook is buying adserving business Atlas from Microsoft. Atlas enables advertisers to place ads on websites and track their effectiveness, competing with Google’s DoubleClick. Microsoft picked up Atlas when it acquired aQuantive in 2007. Julie Langley, managing director, technology and ...
Read More »George Parker: Why Suicide Girls is what social networking sites should be all about – nudes and all
George Parker describes a social networking site he approves of – the rather memorable SuicideGirls. Seven years ago, when Facebook was barely three years old and Twitter was not yet launched, I interviewed ‘Missy Suicide,’ the co-founder with Sean Suhl, ...
Read More »Why hackers are winning the battle against brands
Two of the unintended consequences of the digital age are the fact that social media companies know everything about you (something we increasingly accept as the way of the world, gloomily) and the other is that such tech companies’ systems ...
Read More »New Google Adwords system will make mobile advertising easier – and more expensive
Google is upgrading its online advertising service Adwords to make it easier for marketers to reach users on different devices. This is said to be the biggest change in Adwords since its inception. The revamped AdWords service, called ‘Enhanced Campaigns ...
Read More »Two fingers to social media from defiant Ryanair
I was amused to read that the incoming head of comms at Ryanair (forgive the oxymoron) has “deliberately” ruled out a social media strategy. New boy Robin Kiely (left) tells us – apparently without irony – that such an initiative ...
Read More »