Sally Bercow and Alan Davies – who you may recall were a little too keen to blacken the name of Lord McAlpine – are not the only prominent twitterati caught abusing social media recently. Wonga, the so-called payday loans company (that’s “usurer” to you and me, readers), has found itself at the wrong end of …
There’s a grave danger that the witch-hunt against global brands who fail to pay their “fair share” of UK corporation tax will boomerang on the political class that has instigated it. Google, Amazon and Starbucks have been chief whipping boys in an excoriating grilling by the powerful parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, headed by former Labour …
There’s a lot going on under the radar in OOH – or posters, as we anciently called it. And I’m not simply talking of Omnicom’s Eric Newnham-fronted effort to crash the charmed circle of UK specialist buyers – namely WPP-owned Kinetic and Aegis-owned Posterscope. No, what caught my eye recently was something entirely different. It …
StrawberryFrog – the maverick advertising micro network – up for sale? Come again? When, late last year, I had the temerity to claim that was indeed the case, SF founder, chairman, chief executive and great panjandrum Scott Goodson took venomous issue with my impudent suggestion. Yet, less than 3 months later he has done just …
Readers of this blog will recall that Publicis Groupe supremo Maurice Lévy’s €900,000 “salary sacrifice” isn’t quite as altruistic as it appears (although, all credit for some skilful self-publicity on his part). Among the emoluments he won’t be foregoing is a one-off “deferred compensation payment”, which crystallises when he (supposedly) retires at the end of …
It seems Gillette advertising is the best a man can get not after all. Not at least when that man is Procter & Gamble Brand-Building Officer Marc Pritchard. Pritchard has just put the North American shaving, deodorant and body wash business up for review, which at a spend of $150m last year (according to Kantar) …
It’s a dry, spare document. But beneath the dense, printed undergrowth of Centaur Media plc’s Interim Management Statement 7464E – out on City desks first thing this morning – lies a rich speculative mulch. Take this, for example: Geoff Wilmot is stepping down as CEO but has agreed to remain with the business …
WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell has rightly been basking in the reflected glory of the Cannes sunshine. Three successive years, three successive triumphs as holding company of the year at the International Festival of Creativity. It’s the pinnacle moment for a strategy – his own as it happens, but one for which …
As merger rumours go, they didn’t come much better. Omnipub. Or more probably Publicom. But let’s come back to that later. The idea that the world’s number two marketing services group, Omnicom, is about to combine with the number three, Publicis Groupe, and topple WPP from its premier spot (by market …
Word reaches me that Nick Brien, chief executive officer of Interpublic Group’s troubled leviathan McCann Worldgroup, will be stepping down very shortly. Possibly within a few weeks. The size of Brien’s no doubt handsome severance package is likely to remain a mystery, the reason for his departure less so. McCann has, in recent years, been …
