Agencies

from Adweek: After winning Subaru early this month, DDB’s Lee Garfinkel sat in his Madison Avenue office-bare white walls, an acoustic guitar sitting nearby-and contemplated the significance of the victory. The big picture was obvious: It meant a return to the automobile category for the agency that changed the ad business with its Volkswagen work […]

Lewis Lazare in today’s Sun Times: What’s most depressing about this new Hyatt campaign, called “Spliced,” is that its creators have completely forgotten — or else totally ignored — the cardinal rule of truly great and memorable advertising: Tell a good and relevant story, and tell it extraordinarily well. That is certainly NOT what the […]

Ames Scullin O’Haire in Atlanta wants a new copywriter. But not an angry, misunderstood genius. According to their Talent Zoo classified ad, “We don’t tolerate prima donnas or asses. In fact, we despise them and toss them overboard–we’re on the 24th floor.” Tough crowd. But here’s my question. Do you think angry, misunderstood geniuses, prima […]

Spirits distributor, Diageo, is rumored to be moving its marketing services account away from Chicago agency, Upshot. Arc Worldwide, the agency formerly known as Frankel, also works on the Diageo business. It is not known at this time if the move will benefit Arc in any way. Captain Morgan

The NY Times reports today that Karen C. Francis, with Harvard MBA and 20 years of client-side service, will be named Publicis & Hal Riney’s chief executive. from the article: The migration of brand marketers to agency executive suites, once rare, is becoming less so as agencies seek to remake their business models to meet […]

Last week, Sun Microsystems put their ad account in review as a creative consolidation move. The current agency of record is Arnell Group (Omnicom) of New York. Interestingly, only shops with offices in the Bay Area are being invited to the table, likely dropping the incumbent from the pitch altogether. See Ad Age (reg. req.) […]

Adweek’s Joan Voight published an article today about the importance setting has on an agency. Naturally, she leads with Mike Shine, since Butler Shine and Stern occupy offices in Sausalito

It should come as no surprise that a lifestyle magazine would fall in love with advertising, and those who make it and place it. In their annual run down of the best places to work (available on news stands now), Chicago Magazine, gives first place to DDB; FCB comes in at #11; Draft is #17 […]

Euro RSCG has been in the news this week. The New York office is struggling to hold the Intel account, reportedly worth a cool 300 mil. Out west, creative hot shop, Black Rocket which sold an 80 percent interest to the Parisians a few years ago say they now want their shop back. But Havas […]

Digitas just completed the first acquisition in its 24-year history, the $160 million stock-for-stock purchase of Modem Media. Starting with the open of the market on Monday, the combined company will be listed on the Nasdaq under the symbol DTAS, and Modem shares (MMPT) will cease to be traded.