• by March 3, 2005

THE AAAA MEDIA CONFERENCE EDITION - Was it just us or was that a not-so-subtle swipe Carat CEO David Verklin took at soon-to-depart President Charlie Rutman during his opening keynote at the American Association of Advertising Agencies media conference in New Orleans on Thursday? It sure seemed that way.

After reciting the litany of major holding company agencies to spin off their media departments into separate holding company-owned media services units, Verklin implied there would be a further restructuring, noting that Grey was being acquired by WPP Group, and alluding to something being afoot at Havas.

"I say respectfully, to my friends here who work for Havas, it's probable that your company will be in some different configuration in the next 12 months," he hinted. What exactly does Verklin know? We don't know, but he followed that thought by noting how some once great agencies like DMB&B, NW Ayer and Ammirati & Puris are "gone forever."

"All these changes have taken place in the past few years," he said. Okay, but what's up with Havas, which has been the source of speculation about a hostile takeover, or possible merger, and does any of it have anything to do with the fact that Charlie Rutman will leave Carat April 4 to join Havas' MPG unit as CEO? Rutman wasn't around on Thursday to respond, but he will be representing Carat on a multicultural panel discussion Friday morning.

Meanwhile, Verklin's speech about the "crackle of change" didn't sit so well with some members of the audience, particularly the kind of full-service agency media department executives who winced at Verklin's suggestion that they were outmoded and outdated.

"Oh my God," uttered the media director of a fairly sizeable integrated media department within our earshot. "That's so& oh!" Verklin also got some laughs, but didn't win many points when he referred to agency media people as a bunch of "dorks and dweebs," and he even raised a few eyebrows during his recitation of "seven things to watch for in the next 36 months."

"They were so last year," said one attendee. "Make that three years ago," quipped another. Specifically, they took exception to the notion that things like the integration of digital media and direct marketing was something new, or that video gaming was something to "watch."

Another attendee was taken aback by Verklin's promotion of "companies like Marketing Management Analytics" and the fact that he failed to disclose that it is owned by Carat. That said, Verklin did reveal some significant changes taking place at MMA in the field of marketing analytics and in a number of other key areas. Among other things, he said MMA had developed a new system giving brand managers the ability to track "real time" ROI, on the fly and from their desktops. "In this vision, brand managers will have a system on their desktops enabling them to listen to and monitor all of their customers' sales and marketing activity in real time," he said, adding, "Think of it as the Bloomberg of marketing. It will be measuring return on investment constantly."

NICE BOD! JUST SAW IT ON VOD - It's nice to know that the same killer app that has made online interactive media so successful also appears to be working in televised interactive media: sex. Well, a PG-rated version of it, anyway. During his keynote Thursday at the AAAA Media Conference in New Orleans, Comcast Corp. Chairman-CEO Brian Roberts revealed that the cable TV giant has begun offering a new "dating-on-demand" service, which allows cable subscribers to view short "PG-rated" videos of prospective dates on demand, and in the comfort of their homes. "Does it sort of sound like the Internet going to television? Sort of," said Roberts.