• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, October 29, 2014

Haven't we been through this this whole kissing famous people kissing people thing before? Wasn't it Benetton with Obama and others embraced in a kiss a while back? Now Havas Worldwide Kazakhstan is in hot water for a poster it created showing Russian poet Alexander Pushkin kissing another man. The ad, for a gay club in Almaty, has resulted in the agency getting handed a $188,000 fine by a Kazakhstan court. The agency says the ad was created as an award entry -- ahem, scam ad -- and never intended to appear anywhere. Havas' Darya Khamitzhanova says the agency doesn't have that kind of money and will appeal the decision. But maybe they should get fined. Maybe it will stop them from creating more scam ads.

Hmm. If we're not careful, Israeli digital ad agency Matomy Media Group may end up owning all of Madison Avenue. Or at least the programmatic backbone to it. Not that that's a bad thing. Just saying. Recently, the agency raised $70 million in an IPO. It took $66 million by hooking up with Publicis Groupe. And now it has acquired mobile programmatic advertising platform MobFox for $17.6 million. Of the acquisition, Matomy CEO Ofer Drucker said: “The impressive growth of programmatic and mobile advertising has made it clear that both will form an important part of the future of digital advertising. MobFox has built an excellent mobile programmatic advertising solution, and its business fits perfectly into our vision, complementing our performance-based advertising capabilities. We make it a priority to invest in companies that have developed proven innovative technologies and solutions that will give our advertising clients and media partners unrivaled access to these services. With MobFox, we will continue to expand our capabilities in mobile and programmatic advertising, which are key growth engines for our business.”

So what's the latest new gig-du-jour at agencies now? Now that every agency has its own Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Investment Officer, Chief People Officer and every other form of CxO you can dream up, why not a Chief Privacy Office? Not that every agency has named this position thusly, but basically, it's this person's job to ensure that all the data that is now floating around the marketing cloud isn't raising the ire of consumers and privacy wonks. And more and more agencies are adding this position. While these privacy officers will make sure agencies don't overstep their bounds, it's also going to be this person's job to wordsmith the crap out of the explanations agencies and data brokers offer in defense of their data usage to these very same consumers and privacy wonks so they don't ruin marketer's love affair with data.

After having been with Dallas-based TracyLocke, it appears 7-Eleven may be on the hunt for a new agency. AgencySpy is reporting that it's received tips that 7-Eleven will not be renewing its contract with TracyLocke for 2015. We've heard a few rumors as well. But, of course, no one is talking. Likely, we'll all know for sure soon enough.

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