The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) looks at Nissan's ability to reach young Japanese women with a "cute" minicar, a class of vehicle that features engines of under 660 cubic centimeters -- about half the size of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Nissan Motor Co. had a tough challenge in launching its Pino minicar: Make it appeal to young female consumers who couldn't care less about cars.

While these deep-pocketed shoppers spend lavishly on clothes and accessories, cars are optional for many. Instead, they rely on bicycles, motorbikes or public transport. So Nissan Motor purposely avoided focusing too much attention on the car itself. Instead, television and print ads portray the Pino as just one item in a collage of accessories, such as plushy animals, furry seat cushions and heart-shaped decals.

Nissan has no plans to take its minicars to the U.S. Even the most minute new models in the U.S. have much larger engines than Japanese minicars. "This is a Japan-only phenomenon," says Miwa Ishii, marketing manager for Nissan's minicar division.

The minicar is named after Pinocchio. The model is selling at double the rate Nissan projected. One reason for this (aside from the cute marketing strategy) might be the fact it gets 50 m.p.g. CNN/Money indicates that gasoline is $4.24 per gallon in Japan today.

Paid Content's Rafat Ali is profiled in Media Bistro. The piece looks at his background, exploring his moves from journalist to blogger to a business owner backed by venture capital. Here are a few of the highlights:

Q. Obviously you've always wanted to be an entrepreneur…

A. No, I did not. In 2000 and 2001, I came out of school (Ali has a Masters in Journalism from Indiana University), and like everybody, I wanted to be a magazine feature writer. But the world doesn't work that way.

You come to realize that being a magazine feature writer, like writing for The New Yorker or Esquire, just doesn't happen. When you go to a journalism school, they don't try to teach you that you will, but that's the image you get: feature writing is glamorous. That's what I had in mind. I never thought I would go out and break news. I never thought of myself as a reporter. But it turned out that way.

Q. As one of the first blogger-entrepreneurs, you're also the closest to the end game at this point. What's your exit strategy? And what will be the likely fates of your contemporaries?

A. We don't have an exit strategy. I'll tell you that right up front. If two years down the line someone says, "We want to buy your company," we'll be in a position to have that discussion. Our company should be in good enough shape that we're ready to flip the switch if we need to.

Q. Do you think what you are doing now is fundamentally any different than classic newsletter publishing or trade publishing?

A. Not really... Well, yes, in the sense that the economics have gotten much leaner. And yes, because you can come to market much faster, you can run on a leaner budget, and you can break stories as they happen because of the tools. But, at the end of the day, it's all about sales. You have an audience; so how do you sell that audience to an advertiser?

Today's Adweek takes a look at all the fallout from the DraftFCB merger:

Draft's top managers are grappling with the challenges any new entity faces when combining corporate cultures. One former FCB employee described the mood at FCB's New York flagship as "grim." "Everyone knew from the beginning that Draft would take the lead, but still, it's as if 100 years of FCB heritage is being shredded by Howard Draft."

Another source noted that top Draft execs face their own learning curve as they try to establish bonds with FCB's marketers: Draft staffers are more used to dealing with direct-marketing execs. Hence Draft managers are not used to dealing with CEOs. They are "not really good at going up the food chain," said one exec.

Combining the two companies' very different creative approaches is going as well as can be expected, given their different orientations to the business. But Chris Becker, DraftFCB N.Y. CCO who hails from the FCB camp, is having each side of the combined entity spend time presenting creative ideas outside their normal disciplines so they can become comfortable with the agency's new integrated focus.

This sounds ridiculous. I've worked in some small agencies and large agencies, and I've had the opportunity to do a bit of all types of work-including TV and direct. It's not *that* hard to understand the differences in concepting for different types of media, or talking to different types of clients who themselves have different priorities. It just takes a little understanding, a little flexibility--and willingness to learn. Why the hell is it so hard for these people to change gears? Are they that stuck in their ways?

Paid Content reports that Topix--a news aggregator owned jointly by Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy--launched a site makeover last night.

Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix, offers insight on his blog regarding the company's soul searching.

This was a painful process. We crammed the entire company into a room, but no rah-rah speech this time. Instead we treated ourselves to a brainstorming session about why the site was lame. It was not fun.

We did the full marketing playbook. Focus groups with the mirrored glass and video cameras. On-site surveys. Telephone surveys. Accosting people on Caltrain and doing A/B surveys with paper mock-ups (no kidding). Therapy sessions with brandologists.

Finally we started to get somewhere.

Two key insights had emerged. The first was that users arriving at our site had no idea who we were or what the site was about. "Who the fuck are you guys?" was the question our site needed to answer for vistors, according to the brandologists. In person, and even on our corporate blog, we apparently came across as passionate about what we were doing. But none of this showed through on the site itself.

Greenhorns take note. Philadelphia-based XLNTads will pay you $20 Large if you make a spot an actual advertiser wants to run on TV.

Ad Age compares the startup to Revver.

Like Revver, which pays a share of ad revenue to the video producers that use the site, XLNTads is part of a cottage industry that has popped up to help independent video producers tap into at least a piece of the fortune normally reserved for big-budget agencies and Hollywood dealmakers.

According to XLNTads' press release, production of the average 30-second spot costs upwards of $300,000. "Brands can slash costs by rewarding the creator of a brilliant advertisement submitted through the platform with as little as $20,000."

This TV spot is a giant killer.

Over at Slate, ad critic Seth Stevenson takes a look at Crispin's ads, and their effect as a whole:

It's not personal. Every Crispin employee I've ever spoken with has been friendly and likable. And it has nothing to do with how effective or ineffective Cripin's ads are as sales tools. The jury's still out on that.

No, my distaste is purely aesthetic. Crispin ads annoy me. And I'm not alone. Every time some new Crispin spot airs on TV, my inbox fills with mail from readers who are disgusted, offended, or just generally skeeved out. For example, consider the zombie Orville Redenbacher popcorn spot (reader comment: "It is one of the most horrible, stomach-turning ads I have ever seen"), or the paleo-masculine "I Am Man" Burger King spot (reader comment: "Can it get any stupider? 'Chick food'? Throwing a minivan off an overpass? Why not just show footage of Haditha with some CG product placement?"), or the ongoing BK campaign featuring the mute, plastic-headed "King" character (reader comment: "I like BK but the king is the creepiest thing ever to appear on TV and I know many people who suffer from nightmares thanks to him and these ads").

Then he goes on to talk about the predominance of "frat guy" ads Crispin does:

Crispin also appears to have a strange obsession with dictating the bounds of male identity. In the "Un-pimp Your Ride" spots for VW, a somewhat cruel protagonist ridicules young men who dare to seek self-expression through the art of modifying their cars. In the "Making Things Right" campaign for Haggar, two middle-aged guys gruffly rule their suburban neighborhood—advocating physical force against any young men who dare to wear earrings, or listen to rap music, or date your daughter. And then there's that Man Law campaign for Miller, where the concept achieves its most literal form.

I hate this kind of subjugating, behavior-circumscribing, frat-guy approach to humor. I realize it appeals to a certain target demographic (i.e., fratty guys of all ages). But it repels almost everyone else. And there's a danger in that.

What's interesting here is that when sites like Slate, or like USA Today every Monday, do a review of recent ad campaign, they rarely focus in on the canon of one agency.

I know it's old news for us, because we dissect Crispin's every move, but it's rare to read in the general media about an agency's particular style and its impact on the culture.

Should more agencies strive to create their own "style" and then find clients that'll fit in? 'Cause most ad agencies are all over the board stylistically and tonally, depending on who the client is.

What's it like to win an account that spends $1.2 billion a year on advertising? Mere mortals in the ad biz are ecstatic with a $10 million dollar win. Goodby's latest account score comes in at 120 times that, which is pretty amazing.

Ad Age looks at some of the reasons for Goodby's success.

"Goodby's sterling reputation and creative talents are second to none and together we will deliver a more integrated and strategic brand execution," Mark Schweitzer, Sprint's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. Sprint also liked Goodby's "combination of strategic strength, breakthrough creative execution and outstanding new media integration."

The U.S. cellphone market is reaching a saturation point, according to several studies. Ergo, this new account will not be easy to serve. They rarely are at any price, but imagine the pressure to keep the client happy on a piece of business this large. It's scary.

French holding company Publicis will handle all marketing for P&G's Oral-B line of dental care products--everything from advertising to package design and public relations. All said, it's a $65 million win over incumbent Omnicom. P&G calls this consolidation a "new way to work with agencies."

According toBrandweek:

"Implementing an agency model that moves us from many separate agencies to one team, one leader and one purpose for a franchise will strengthen accountability, simplify decision-making and generate bigger, better, more holistic ideas," said the company's global marketing officer, Jim Stengel, in a statement. "This is a new way to work with agencies for Oral-B and an important move for P&G."

The Jeep account, previously held at an Omnicom agency, is now moving to a new Omnicom agency, after a pitch that involved other Omnicom agencies.

Adweek clears it all up:

Omnicom Group's Cutwater has won creative duties on Jeep, the client confirmed.

Cutwater, the newly launched San Francisco agency led by former TBWA\Chiat\Day creative executive Chuck McBride, beat out other Omnicom shops such as Element 79 in Chicago, Martin/Williams in Minneapolis, BBDO and Downtown Partners in Toronto.

I'm an Omnicom shareholder. Not a big one, of course, but I think I'm entitled to an answer as to how much money was wasted on this nonsensical review. I happen to think Omnicom is the one of the better managed holding companies, and it's perfectly fine to move things around the network, but to call a review where everyone pulls out their dog and pony show is a waste and wholly unnecessary. I thought IPG had the market cornered on this type of idiocy.

Me, I always preferred David Lee Roth as my Van Halen singer of choice, but Sammy Hagar's doing just fine. BusinessWeek reports (yes, freakin' BusinessWeek) reports on Sammy's not so small business.

As the founder and front man of the 200-employee, Novato (Calif.)-based Cabo Wabo Enterprises, with about $60 million in revenue, Hagar is behind a top-selling line of premium tequilas, as well as a growing chain of tequila bars, aptly named the Cabo Wabo Cantina.

What began as a hobby is now a serious business. According to Stephen Kauffman, Cabo Wabo's president and an industry veteran, for the past several years the company has seen sales growth of 25% annually. And he says Cabo Wabo is tied for the No. 2 superpremium tequila spot with Don Julio, behind Patrón in the U.S.

I'll give Sammy credit, but when it comes to being a singing one-man escapist-lifestyle marketing machine, he's got nothing on Jimmy Buffett.

At the Chicago Sun-Times, Lewis Lazare doesn't usually have breaking news, but today he's got an exclusive story:

United Airlines will stun the ad world today when it shifts its advertising account from Fallon/Minneapolis -- its home for a decade -- to a startup boutique agency, Barrie D'Rozario Murphy/Minneapolis.

United now will become the new shop's flagship account. Per United Senior Vice President of Marketing Dennis Cary, the shift to BDM was designed to ensure the airline's forceful and wonderfully sophisticated "It's Time to Fly" ad campaign is sustained at the high level it has been at since being launched three years ago.

Cary is convinced the airline made the right move to go with BDM for its creative. Two of the principals in the new agency, Stuart D'Rozario and Bob Barrie, were instrumental in the original creation of the United campaign when they were top creatives at Fallon. Both Barrie and D'Rozario left Fallon some six months ago. David Murphy, former president of Saatchi & Saatchi/Los Angeles, recently announced he would join Barrie and D'Rozario.

Wow. From what I've always heard, Bob Barrie is a class act, so I think this is great news. Account people seem like they're always the ones who lure accounts away with established client relationships, so it's interesting to see an account move along with the creatives who've worked on it. Although it might be extra chilly in the Minneapolis ad scene today, as sometimes happens when accounts move with people.

UPDATE: Read the Press Release here.

Our fearless leader, David Burn, was born on this day in...well, sometime in the last century. Happy Birthday, big man.

Steven Heyer first came to my attention when he delivered his call for advertainment at Ad Age's Madison & Vine conference on Feb. 5, 2003.

He's in the news again. After being passed over for the CEO job at Coca-Cola, he joined Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. as CEO. Now the board has forced him out. According to The Journal News, board members lost confidence in him due to his management style.

"He had a bit of a gruff personality," said Robert LaFleur, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group in Stamford, Conn. "He had a reputation of being somewhat difficult to work with. That was fairly well known. I guess the surprise was that it had gotten so bad that it had become an untenable situation for the board."

The article also states that Heyer did not get any severance, which is unusual.

Random Culture points to an interesting "Digg for shoppers" site with a Valleyspeak name, iliketotallyloveit.com.

To me, this this is the type of consumer generated content that has a future. It's web-enabled word-of-mouth. Who better than consumers to share this type of information?

This same standard can't be applied to consumers making TV spots. In that case, there is someone better equipped to do the brand's bidding.

In the wake of Circuit City dumping its most experienced and highest paid workers, other, better-managed companies are looking to hire. Most notably Aaron Rents, as BusinessWeek reports:

Just one day after the electronics chain Circuit City Stores announced that it would lay off 3,400 workers and replace them with lower-paid employees, Charles Loudermilk, chief executive of the rental retail company Aaron Rents began posting advertisements on recruiting Web sites: "Attention Circuit City employees: So they say you make too much and are laying you off to hire lower paid employees? Aaron's doesn't lay off our highly paid employees…. We put them on a pedestal, and show others how they can make more."

It's more than altruism. Loudermilk says that treating workers well in an industry as cutthroat as retail is good business, too. At a company like Aaron Rents, which sells electronics and furniture on a rent-to-own basis, happier workers mean lower turnover and more sales. Plus, it's easier to attract new recruits—a key point for a company with plans to open 250 new stores this year. "Why [Circuit City] would let them go is beyond me," says Loudermilk. "They spent many millions of dollars training these people, and we're after them."

It's refreshing to read about companies like that, it makes me want those companies to succeed. (Although I have to admit, rent-to-own furniture always sounded like a fishy idea to me.)

Meanwhile, after announcing massive firings, you'd think Circuit City's stock would have a gotten a bounce, at least temporarily. You'd be wrong; the stock's gone nowhere.

And check out this bit, which I really hope was taken out of context:

While many human resource professionals were stunned by Circuit City’s bold announcement, on expert believes the company deserves praise for its candor.

"Circuit City has been very up front about the fact that this is a cost-cutting move in order align its costs more closely with industry averages," said David Urban, professor of marketing at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where Circuit City is based. "Electronics retailing is a tough business, with a lot of pressure on profit margins. Therefore, the major players in that business have to seek efficiencies wherever they can.”

This guy's a Professor of Marketing??? Surely he'd understand how much this layoff will screw up Circuit City. Doesn't sound like "praise for candor" to me, or if it is, I sure as hell hope he's not teaching any of my future clients about marketing.

"Unintentionally Hilarious Local Commercial"

Thanks to The Consumerist (one of my favorite blogs), we get "Great Moments In Commercial History." I give you one of many gems, Don's Guns:

Who gives a crap about Singaporean two-page spread ads for Legos when this spot is just begging for a pencil?

Carla Hendra, co-chief executive of Ogilvy North America spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the elevated importance of digital in her organization.

The Wall Street Journal: Why is it crucial for Ogilvy to have a chief digital officer?

Ms. Hendra: Every single part of the Ogilvy business … has to be infused with digital, because it affects how consumers and customers behave now. We are really trying to move beyond what has been Web 1.0, the online branding and online direct-marketing and e-commerce advertising, to move into content and community plays … . To do that, we want someone whose full-time job is understanding everything about the digital landscape, and how to apply new technology to ideas and what kind of partnerships and alignments we need.

Hendra is joined in the discussion by Jean-Philippe Maheu, Ogilvy's new Chief Digital Officer. He believes TV is beginning to mirror online content and he predicts that we will soon see more five-minute webisodes on TV proper. "TV culture is changing more than the ads," he says.

Dave Sifry at Technorati posted The State of the Live Web, April 2007 today. Here's one fact that jumps out...Japanese is the #1 blogging language at 37%, folowed by English at 36%.

Chinese is the third most prevalent language at 8%; Italian is fourth at 3%; and Farsi, a newcomer in the top 10, comes in at 1%.

On March 28th, we published a post called Look A New Fiefdom about Omnicom's foray into sports and entertainment marketing. I podered how Fuse Marketing of Burlington, VT--a top 20 sports marketing agency according to Sports Business Journal--would take the news, given Omnicom's new name for the unit is Fuse Sports & Entertainment Group.

Here's the answer: they're preparing for a fierce battle.

Bill Carter, a partner at the Vermont shop says, "We find it terribly disappointing that Omnicom, one of the largest corporate media services conglomerate with $11 billion in sales, would compound their original problem of using our name by now attempting to outspend us in legal fees until we give up our ownership of our name.”

“Agencies across the country – especially other small independents – can understand that our position is that we will never allow Omnicom to use our name, no matter what the cost, and no matter how long this takes; we will defend ourselves from them as if our professional lives are at stake, because in fact they are."

Ad Age points out that Fuse has thus far not sought similar litigation against a full-service agency called Fuse in St. Louis, Mo., or Fuse Interactive in Laguna Beach, Calif. But those shops are not sports marketing outfits.

[UPDATE] According to Bill Carter, Fuse has a licensing agreement with Fuse Advertising in St. Louis, allowing that entity to use the name. With regards to Fuse Interactive, Carter says there has been no marketplace confusion, therefore no such arrangement has been needed.

"Color on Madison Avenue" by Scott Schuman

New York Post is running a feature on Scott Schuman, the man behind the lens at The Sartorialist.

For the past year-and-a-half, Schuman has been snapping photos of stylish folk and posting them with pithy commentary at thesartorialist.blogspot.com, which recently hit a million monthly page views.

While fashion blogs are popping up like cockroaches in a tenement these days, Schuman's sticks out for its lack of snark.

Schuman's passion has translated into notoriety among editors and fashion insiders. Conde Nast's Style.com, the online home of Vogue and W magazine, tapped him to supplement its coverage of European fashion weeks by chronicling street chic. GQ hired him to spice up its street-fashion page. And he regularly works events for Saks.

The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) looks at a truth in advertising dispute between marketers that is anything but sweet.

A battle between makers of artificial sweeteners stands to turn bitter next week, as a trial begins over what a judge has termed a veritable "sugargate."

The fight pits Merisant Co., the maker of Equal and NutraSweet, against health-care giant Johnson & Johnson, which sells market-leader Splenda. Merisant alleges that a J&J consumer-products unit, McNeil Nutritionals LLC, deliberately confused consumers over whether Splenda is a natural product.

Splenda entered the market in 2000, touted as a breakthrough because the process used to make it includes sugar. Ads for Splenda carried the line "Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar" followed by "But it's not sugar."

Merisant alleges that Splenda sales shot up in 2003 after McNeil shifted marketing tactics to more aggressively -- and inappropriately -- tie Splenda to sugar.

For example, Splenda ads dropped the final "But it's not sugar" statement from their tagline, and, around 2003, a new campaign took off that was packed with sugar imagery.

By the way, the term "Sugargate" really cheapens the whole "gate" meme.

According to The New York Times, Discovery Communications, the cable channel operator, plans to start a 24-hour channel focused on eco-friendly living, as part of a push into the rising environmental movement.

The company, based in Silver Spring, Md., will next year rebrand its Discovery Home Channel with a name that has not been selected but will reflect its position as the centerpiece of an initiative called PlanetGreen.

PlanetGreen is one of the biggest efforts that a media company has made to tap into the growing movement that has spawned everything from green cars, food and architecture to green weddings and talk of a green Olympics.

As part of PlanetGreen, the company’s headquarters is expected to become carbon neutral.

All of which leads me to speculate on the rise of a green agency movement to provide ads and content for this enterprise, and others like it that are but business plans in bankers hands at the moment.

Suzanne Powers, Executive Director, Strategy and Business Development, TBWA\Chiat\Day, New York was quoted by USA Today for a story on Easter-time brand promotions.

Trend watcher Suzanne Powers says marketers are trying to associate brands with feel-good family time and occasions.

"These times are few and far between, and marketers are trying to insert their brands," says Powers, executive director, strategy and new business, for ad agency TBWA Chiat Day. But she cautions: "Easter is pretty religious. You have to be careful."

Easter is actually, TOTALLY religious. But I know what she means.

According to Wired, a federal judge today will decide whether to give Vonage an extra 120 days to appeal his ruling that the internet phone provider be barred from operating after a jury decided it had infringed on several Verizon patents. The ban would prevent Vonage from using technology to connect its online customers to the internet and would effectively put the company out of business.

The Washington Post says Vonage has never made a profit. Despite that and the legal migraine they're suffering through, Vongae executives claim that predictions of their company's demise are "greatly exaggerated." They said they were developing a "work-around" technique if the company could no longer use the disputed technology.

The costs of Vonage's court battle, including the $58 million in damages already awarded by the jury, the bond and interest payments demanded by Verizon as well as attorneys fees, are also taking a toll on the financially troubled company.

Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi and author of Lovemarks, quietly entered the bloatosphere last month with a Blogger site called KR Connect.

Earlier this week he regaled us with tales of visiting actual record stores. Yes, this hep cat is old school.

Whilst the music business goes through incredible turmoil, I’ve recently visited two of my favorite independent music outlets, Real Groovy in Auckland and Aquarius Records in San Francisco. My younger son Dan writes record reviews for Real Groovy’s magazine and keeps me in the loop. They have a tremendous collection of CDs, vinyl, DVDs, and keep a great collection of the latest New Zealand bands, although it is hard to get sixties stuff and the more currently offbeat. Still, they have a great attitude and are totally customer-centric. If you live in or are visiting any of New Zealand's main cities, it’s a great place to while away a winter evening or a Sunday afternoon.

And then there’s Aquarius, a real blast from the past. It’s situated right at the end of the Haight-Ashbury, and if they don’t have what you’re after, then it’s not worth listening to. This is the best store I’ve been in for discovery and exploration. Aquarius brings you everything that is hip, offbeat, crazy and fun, and have been doing so for almost four decades. They have a great range of US material but also amazing sounds from kids who produce their own music in their homes in Africa, Scandinavia, Asia. The staff-written reviews remind me of New Musical Express in their sixties heyday. Informative, stimulating and designed to introduce you to cool stuff you’ve never even heard of. Both these stores throb with authenticity and a genuine love for new and old music - and both are must go-sees.

Roberts also tells us about meeting musical hero, Robert Earl Keen, in Austin last month. He writes about Shopping for Music on Bleecker Street in NYC. And about football, restaurants worth the wait, and other assorted matters. An ad blog it's not. In Roberts' case that's a good thing. He already has three books about the business on the shelves.

His blog is properly personal. It's a place for some of the 7000 Saatchites around the globe and other ad groupies to chill with the big man.

Los Angeles Times looks at the record industry's foray into consumer generated media (and what it can do for their star generated media).

Last year, Epic Records held a contest offering fans a chance to help create a video for Colombian pop diva Shakira. The contest yielded some 500 submissions of fans lip-syncing and booty-shaking in extremis that were spliced together by a professional editor to create a single video. Posted at Yahoo.com's music portal in March 2006, it quickly became the site's most popular clip.

At this MySpace-obsessed moment in culture, the contest gambit provides a cost-effective, buzz-generating alternative to big-budget music videos or costly print-ad runs. Moreover, the contests virally generate publicity and result in virtual "communities" by getting music aficionados to communicate with one another in ways that yesteryear's fan clubs could never dream of.

It's an equation that the labels can't help but love — fans pump in labor, attention and enthusiasm, and artists reap sales. And at least at this point in the cycle, when we've yet to see any significant contest backlash, scandal or cynicism, many fans seem energized by the proliferating attempts to pull them into the marketing loop.

Sometime last fall, the crew at RPA switched the Honday Odyssey's theme song from Foghat's "Slow Ride" to P-Funk's "Give Up The Funk." I can't find the spot online, although you can see the earlier Foghat version at RPA.com. Given that the spot is not online, I present George Clinton on David Letterman circa 1986, care of YouTube. It's hard to imagine Dr. Funkenstein is endorsing a minivan. The very idea would have been more fantastic 21 years ago than his repeated, but innocent, claims that the Mothership has landed are today.

Here's an article (with accompanying ad) from Reebok's new ad campaign.

It looked familiar to me. Oh yeah, Nike, 10 years ago...

OK, so the message is a little different. But can't they make their point without regurgitating this visual idea?

Stuart Elliott of The New York Times spoke to MDC Partners CEO Miles Nadal, a man he calls "The Monty Hall of Madison Avenue." He also spoke to some of the agency heads in bed with MDC.

“The really talented, creative people don’t like being told what to do,” said Jonathan Bond, co-chairman of Kirshenbaum Bond in New York, who with Richard Kirshenbaum sold 60 percent of the agency to Mr. Nadal in 2004.

“I don’t know if we’d be good in a corporate structure,” he added. “We’d probably get fired in a week, with good reason.”

In contrast, “MDC has been a good fit for us,” Mr. Bond said. “We just go do it till someone tells us not to — and no one ever has.”

Bond nicely brings this around, making his decision to sell part oh his agency to the Toronto-based conglomerate seem reasonable. But it's that preceeding sentence that I linger on, for there lies the difference between an entrepreneur and a company man, a.k.a. worker bee.

Ad Age spoke to Hearst Magazines Editorial Director Ellen Levine about the publisher's new partnership with Fox Television Studios. The development deal includes two initial webisode projects inspired by CosmoGirl and Popular Mechanics.

"We're not going out there and saying, 'We're going to have a one-hour magazine show,'" Ms. Levine said. "We're going to create material for new platforms, not take previously existing material and dust it off for television."

Ms. Levine said Hearst Magazines' revenue is healthy but needs to adjust to how consumers want their media.

"If you don't follow your audience, you'll perish," she said. "A lot of these give you the opportunity to bring something to life that you can't on the page and give the product a credibility that you wouldn't otherwise have."

Even though a ton of progress is being made on the Web 2.0 front and brands are working hard to figure out where they can play in this milieu, very few brands have accepted that a pull strategy may not work. Ellen Levine understands that, which will help her and Hearst succeed.

Maybe it's a joke, maybe it's not, but millions of American Idol viewers are voting for this fool:

Seems that bad advertising--just like bad singing--is still out there. It wouldn't be if it didn't work. And the masses still put up with it. Why?

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to produce better work. Quite the opposite; I believe in the power of differentiation. Never mind trying to sell a One Show-worthy idea: It takes courage to simply try to convince a client that tried-and-true formulas aren’t the best solution, because much of the evidence suggests they work. It takes guts to tell a millionaire car dealer that he can actually be selling without yelling.

The truth is America still embraces bad advertising—much like America votes for Sanjaya. Mediocrity triumphs, even if many of us wish it wouldn’t. However, Sanjaya could sell a million records, and make a lot of money for himself and Simon Cowell. Is that bad? If the critics, the pundits, and the self-proclaimed experts were in charge, American Idol wouldn’t have Tony Bennett week. It’d have Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen week, and do you think anyone would watch?

It's the subject of my new column on Talent Zoo. I hope you enjoy it.

Today, Tom Asacker digs deep in his sandbox for fundamental truths.

What's your understanding of marketing? How do you define it? Here's the latest definition from the American Marketing Association:

"Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders."

Thankfully, Asakcer offers us simpler definition: "Marketing is any attempt to influence a current, and/or future, exchange." He then goes on to explain what to do with this finely honed definition.

If your goal is to be successful at influencing others in the marketplace for products, services, entertainment, ideas, etc., know this and it will be a very good time indeed: It doesn't matter what people think about you or your organization. What matters is how you make them feel about themselves - and their decisions - in your presence.

It's utterly simple and elegant on the page. In real life clients and agency types have a hard time focusing on the needs of the customer, or end user. It's not only counterintuitive, it often conflicts with clients' wishes and the marketing plan on the table.

Apple ran a full page ad in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today on Monday celebrating its 100 millionth iPod sale.

WSJ (paid sub. req.) has the details and some perspective on this achievment:

Consumers have embraced the iPod, which went on sale in November 2001, far more quickly than they did Sony Corp.'s Walkman, the pioneering cassette player and headphones introduced in 1979 that changed how people listened to music. It took Sony about 14 years to sell 100 million Walkman devices. Apple of Cupertino, Calif., reached the same milestone in just over a third of the same time.

Apple executives said they had little inkling of how well the iPod would do when the company released the product. "There's no way anybody could have ever guessed," said Greg Joswiak, vice president of iPod product marketing at Apple.

The company also said its iTunes Store, designed as a close companion to the iPod, has sold over 2.5 billion songs, 50 million television shows and 1.3 million movies.

Rare Method, an Alberta-based interactive agency has its eyes (and hands) on the West. In the first move of a larger regional strategy, the firm acquired Blain Olsen White Gurr, Salt Lake City's 12-year-old high tech B2B shop (and the agency where I got my start).

“This deal is an important step in our plan to increase our presence in the western United States through strategic acquisitions,” explains Rare Method president Roger Jewett. “Our plan is to develop a network of offices that will include rapidly growing cities such as Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Denver.”

“Joining Rare Method provides BOWG with a tremendous growth opportunity,” says BOWG Vice President Eric White. “BOWG clients will benefit immediately from this merger by accessing the added interactive marketing strategic skills that Rare Method brings to the table.”

BOWG's 2006 annual revenue is estimated at $2.9 million. Rare Method's year-end revenues are estimated to be $9.5 million in Canadian dollars.

BOWG was born from Dahlin Smith White's rib, the tech agency that once reigned supreme in Salt Lake thanks to the lucrative Intel account. Eric White (of BOWG) is Jon White's (of DSW) younger brother. Euro RSCG acquired DSW in 1996.

Wieden + Kennedy launched a new agency website last Monday. Interestingly, the new site comes on the heels of Nike's claim that the agency is not web savvy enough to get the job done for them.

Son Volt at W+K, Portland, 3/29/07

I haven't spent much time with the site, as I just found out about it this morning thanks to Adfreak. But one thing that hit me right away is the site's bloggregator, which imports blog entries from around the W+K network.

I've been reading the London office's blog, Welcome to Optimism for some time, but until today I didn't realize W+K Lunchbox, Wieden + Kennedy Studio or Think Global, Act Stupid existed. Now, I'm anxious to find time to look through all the content W+K is creating.

For instance, the agency just celebrated its 26th anniversary in style. The Beastie Boys played their Founders Day XXV party, to give you an idea of how these Portlanders roll. Via the Portland office's Lunchbox Music Series, bands like The Rapture, Cut Chemist, Peter Yorn, Cold War Kids, Ladytron and Son Volt have also recently performed at W+K.

Briana Bononcini told The Portland Mercury, "the concept of Lunchbox is to bring emerging national acts to Wieden+Kennedy to play a four to six song set followed by a short Q&A. This gives bands an opportunity to showcase their songs for a crowd that not only is very receptive to new music, but also opens the opportunity that their songs could potentially be used in an advertising campaign."

View Sarah L's eight-panel cartoon in its entirety.

[via Micropersuasion]