The Diary of Putney Swope.

Cannes kicks off, but ignored by Ad Blogs

Cannes kicked off today in the south of France and the first major winner has been announced.  Crispin Porter won the first ever sales promotion Grand Prix Lion for its "Fast Work" done for client VW (German bastards....didn't we beat them twice already in wars to end all wars?...anyway).
Check out the work here.

Here's the interesting thing.  The trade rags are covering full force, all devoting significant amounts of home page space to the festival.  Many are showing completely senseless and unimportant interviews with unimportant and senseless people (there's a symmetry to it at least).  Most are showing ads that are being considered.  On the other hand, the Ad Blogs....almost nothing.  With the exception of AdLand, which has a couple of posts, not one Ad Blog seems to be mentioning anything about the festival.  We wondered why and have come up with some possible answers.

1.  Blogs are about the present and the future and the Festivals are so damn yesterday.

2.  No blogger could afford the airfare to fly over to the armpit of Europe, also know as the French Riviera.

3.  The real job of trade press reporters is to cover the most relevant stories of the industry, while bloggers have real jobs that prevent them from posting effectively during the day.

4.  Bloggers are too busy covering the really important industry story, how much is Nike going to pay Angelina and Brand to have a Nike tattooed on the ass of their new born.

5.  All of the above.

OK, we're not over there either as you can tell.  Reason being?  We are covering a very important top secret hush hush story that is sure to blow the doors off of the advertising industry. 

Is it the lack of minorities being welcomed into the industry?
Nah, old news.

Does it have something to do with the new AC Nielson technology being used to count podcasts and other new technology media devices?
Nah, who gives a shit about that.

Is it about CMO's tenure being quoted in days rather than years or months?
Nah, no one cares.

The story of all stories is ...............................................
Don't tell anyone, ok.

Rumor | Advertisers Demand Money back from Matt Lauer's Britney Spears' Train Wreck.

If you haven't seen it yet, companies that chose to advertise their products during the NBC/Matt Lauer interview of Britney Spears, warn you might want to do so with a garbage can close buy.  Supposedly, the train wreck of an interview caused so much reflex vomiting on behalf of the viewers that there were little to no asses in the seats during commercial breaks.  Nielson's new top secret gps enhanced log books show that the majority of those watching the show required themselves to run to their abodes and toss their lunch, dinner, cocktails and whatever else they had in their stomachs, at what was the most disturbing displays of white trash, classlessness and just down home southern wrongness.

It was further reported that the AWTF (American White Trash Federation) is considering suing Britney and her production company for giving White Trash the world over a bad name.  Who would have thunk it.

At one point she told Matt that "She knows she's a good mother..."  I wonder if the white python snake was slithering out from between her legs like in her music video when she made that comment.  While not included in the broadcast it's believed that halfway through the interview, an unreliable source said that Britney dropped her baby onto the floor of the wet bar and when Matt look on aghast she responded... Oops I did it again.

Clips of interview on Gawker.com

An Advertising Blog Apologizes (changing name to AdRants-NotSoMuch.com)

The one rule of blogging is that you don't discuss blogging...  Sorry wrong movie.  The one unstated rule of blogging is that you're irreverent to a fault, you don't take yourself too seriously, you never check sources, rumor is better than fact and, most importantly, you never ever say you're sorry.  OK, actually that would be five rules.  Regardless, on June 12th, AdRants.com reported an amusing piece about Bob Garfield's comments on word of mouth advertising.  The last sentence of the post was "By the way, Bob was in on the joke just so you all don't think we're trashin' here."

Yesterday they posted an apology.  Specifically,

Excerpt from AdRants.com
We'd like to offer an apology to Bob Garfield. In a piece we wrote yesterday about a CoBrandiT video that featured footage of Bob doing an interview with CoBrandiT that included outtakes shot prior to the actual interview, we mis-stated Bob knew he was in on the joke when, in fact, he was not. He had made some comments, in jest, while defining word of mouth prior to the beginning of the actual interview. Bob says CoBrandiT used those comments without his knowledge and he thought those shooting the video worked for WOMMA and not for CoBrandiT. We respectfully apologize.
_________________________
End of wimpishness

That's not one, but two apologies.  What's that about?  Did someone come down hard on the AdRant boys?  Does AdRants see itself as "real media" now and feels it needs to hold to true journalistic standards?  Did Bob Garfield threathen to bitch slap someone at AdRants if they didn't retract?  Does AdRants now make too much money in advertising that it doesn't want to shake up the apple cart anymore?  We're not sure, but what we are damn sure about is that we don't like it.

Now let me just state that we apologize to AdRants in advance if we've offended anyone over there.  We really do think they are the Goldman Sachs of the ad blogging world and the last thing in the world we would want to do is disrespect them in anyway.  They are the best and deserve our respect and admiration and apologies if we've offended them.  Really, we're sorry.

AdRant's first post    [The ballsy one.]

AdRant's second post   [The pussy one.]

Gang Bangs Sir Martin over JV Dis.

It was reported in Saturday's NY Post and again in today's NY Times that the head of Beijing Guoan, a division of China International Trust and Investment Corp (one of China's largest state-owned companies) abruptly ended a 14 year partnership with WPP's Grey Agency in China.  The company's chief, Yan Gang, lashed out to reporters saying that the Knight of WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell, "had absolutely no manners, no upbringing and no culture,"  The cat fight evidently started over what Mr. Yan viewed as a snub by his holiness at a sit down in April to discuss issues with the partnership.  None of WPP's spokespeople could be found (no, as usual we didn't try), but it was believed that Sorrell didn't intentionally snub Yan but rather didn't see him given his severe height advantage over the Asian business leader.  And Sorrell is no Yao Ming himself if you get our drift.

This isn't the first time Sorrell's found himself on the the receiving end of personal insult.  The ad industry's gentleman of gentlemen, David Ogilvy once quipped that Sorrell was an "odious little jerk".  At the reporting deadline for this article, we still hadn't had time to look up "odious" but we're pretty sure it wasn't a compliment.

From an investor's perspective, the partnership doesn't seem that critical for the world's second largest advertising company.  In all, WPP has 13 partnerships in China contributing $500 Million in revenue and this one accounted for only 1% of that total.  That said, the Chinese are not known to take insults from whitie sitting down.  Don't be surprised if other partnerships start showing signs of fraying.

NY Post Article

NY Times Article

Top 10 Reasons IPG merged Draft and FCB

...from our home office in Spokane Kansas, top 10 reasons why IPG merged Draft and FCB.

10.  Realized it was already Thursday and they hadn't had any press releases for the week.

9.  Now that they only have 109 different brands to manage, it will be easier to stay focused.

8.  Yesterday 2 ceos - - - - Today 1 ceo - - - - equals $1 Million more to split between the IPG top 4 guys.

7.  FCB had just run out of stationary, so they figured, what the hell.

6.  Mike Roth kept accidentally referring to FCB as Fuc-ing Creative Bastards and needed to put a stop to it.

5.  Bigger overhead number to slash and burn.

4.  More client conflicts means they can lose more business but have a better reason than crappy creative work.

3.  Howard needed to get more people to stomp on.

2.  IPG management team needed to show that they were actually making more decisions than just how stinking big their bonuses were going to be.

1.  Howard came into Mike Roth's office, held his breath and said he wouldn't take another breath until he got it all.....

Anne Fudge Watches Cautiously as Y&R Goes "Down Under" for New CEO.

Both AdAge and AdWeek reported today that Hamish McLennan was named the new CEO of Y&R Advertising.  Mssr. McLennan was previously the head of the Australian and New Zealand operations.  No word on whether Sony and Jaguar will come back, but clearly the Crocodile-Man should give Y&R a leg up on the Foster's account.  G'Day mate.  Anne Fudge retains her role as Chairwomen and CEO of Y&R Brands.  Not a complete bitch slap, but not a love tap either.  Yeah, she's psyched about this.  This occurring just 3 days after AdAge didn't bother to mention her as an advertising industry woman to watch (yeah, wonder why.).

Most importantly, AdAge broke the story at 10:28am EST and AdWeek followed up at 11:14.  C'mon AdWeek, you're slipping.

Story on AdAge.com

Story on AdWeek.com

AdAge's Women to Watch 2006 | Blacks and Hispanics Need Not Apply

We were reviewing AdAge's Women to Watch 2006 and we were struck by the fact that there's apparently no Black or Hispanic female ad execs worth watching this year.  Out of a list of 26 women that AdAge's editors deemed worthy, there's not one darker than a pale shade of maple on the entire list.  Are you kidding me?  Considering the explosion that has taken place in multi-cultural advertising, there's not one sister or hispister (Hispanic-sister) worth listing and watching?  We're not claiming that AdAge is racists, but rather lazy.  If there wasn't an obvious candidate for the list, they should have worked harder, researched deeper and found a not so obvious one. 

There was one person on the list that we thought might have had some soul power in her blood, but it ends up she is just an Italian woman back from the beaches of Miami roughing it at the Clios.

AdAge's Women to Watch 2006

psst....There weren't any sister's in last year's list either.  And we wonder why we can't attract more minority talent to our industry.  Who the hell are they supposed to identify with?

Today's Most Important Advertising Industry Story.

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Agency Compensation - "Lets Get Serious"

We know this is a hot topic and we know that as procurement people get more and more involved it will only get hotter.  What's a guy who's experience is squeezing the price on the three widget makers going to do when they throw ad agencies at him as a contract he needs to negotiate?  One guess.  He's going to squeeze.  You guys ever hear the story of the scorpion and the frog.  Well lets not expect scorpions to change lets try to work with the way they are...  Just our opinion.

Last month, Ron Berger, outgoing chairman of the 4As gave an inspiring speech on what would make the advertising industry better.  It was really terrific.  He did make one comment about compensation that we challenge.  Ron said that he thinks the ad industry would be better if the agencies that made great campaigns got paid a piece of the action (poorly quoted, but you get the point).  That would be great Ron, but let us ask you....would you be willing to pull a few million out of the coffers to help offset the losses on all the bad advertising that is done?  If you think it's fair to get a piece of the good stuff it's only fair that you're willing to underwrite the bad.  Just one blogs opinion. 

In the end, the only logical way to address this is...cost plus pricing with a bonus for really "effective work".  The days of 10% or 15% off the top are gone.  Good, it incentivized bad behavior and decisions.  Lets get over this debate and move on.  Lets not forget one other incentive for an agency doing great work.  They get to keep the account another year.

Are the Clio Awards DOA?

DOA as in Dead on Arrival.  There is virtually no coverage of them anywhere.  Nothing in the NYTimes advertising section, nothing in WSJ's advertising section, nothing in USA Todays, etc.  Even AdWeek's coverage (having the same parent as Clios you would thing they promote the crap out of it) is a mere button on the homepage and a few stories and 6 photos.  "6 Photos", damn they had more art work of Mr. Clean and The M&M twins during their Advertising Week of NY coverage.  It begs the question.....

Are the Clio Awards dead?
Are all of the industry ego-stroke awards dead?
Has Al Gore killed the award by inventing the Internet?

If you are interested...here's Adweek's Clio coverage.

And here's the rest....