• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, April 27, 2014

Did you think everything was going swimmingly with the Publicis Omnicom merger? Well, it isn't. Legal and tax issues in Europe plague the deal's progression as well as fights over who is actually acquiring who is stalling the process. Oh, and let's not leave out the battle over who will be the merged holding company's CFO. Omnicom wants its guy, Randall Weisenburger, and Publicis wants its guy, Jean-Michel Etienne.  And this is just the big stuff. If the deal does progress, the amount of inter-agency and inter-department strife and reorganization is truly unimaginable. It's all good, however. At least for Publicis, whose CEO Maurice Levy recently said: "I would like to stress that Publicis has a very clear strategy with strong objectives and a strong position and I do believe we are the best holding company in our sector for the future, bar none. There is no issue if we go back to a standalone company. Life is good for Publicis whatever happens."

Maybe it was those nondescript babbling brook ads Hill Holliday created 25 years ago. Maybe it's that Lexus continues to eat its lunch. Whatever the reason, Infiniti is struggling and has been for some time. Currently, it's number 7 in luxury car sales behind Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Cadillac, Acura and Audi. The brand hasn't seen a good year since 2005. Enter Allyson Witherspoon, the brand's new director of marketing. Witherspoon, of course, is holding an agency review. TBWA Worldwide is the brand's current agency. While the brand is in early stages and has not named contenders, Witherspoon says by the end of this summer she will pick one agency to handle the brand's global marketing needs. What does Witherspoon want for the brand? "Our aspirations are to be a tier one luxury brand. That's to be with the likes of BMW, Audi and Mercedes." And it looks like she's looking for another Jonathon Pryce-like solution. "There's an element of pop culture. We want to be sure we introduce ourselves and establish ourselves in a very relevant way. Who are the right people to do that? That's what we're evaluating."

For a minute when we heard Birmingham-based Luckie & Company had just landed the Historic Triangle account, we wondered if we'd be seeing a crazy awesome campaign for the Bermuda Triangle. Alas, it's only a tourism campaign for Williamsburg area's Historic Triangle, a triangular area in Virginia which consists of Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg and Yorktown. The campaign, which will be funded by a special $2 per room tax, will target neighboring metro areas including Raleigh/Durham, Baltimore, Washington D.C., New York and Philadelphia.

Have you agency folks run out of ideas to promote yourselves? Are you just too busy with client work to bother? Well, you should. And it doesn't have to be all that hard. Take a look at these 8 interesting ways that agencies have promoted themselves. No, don't do a lame spot on "Mad Men," but do consider creating an app that helps clients fire their agency or an insanely epic explainer video or a mailing of fake guns or even severed hands! Check out this list and see if it gets your creative juices flowing .