• Martin Sorrell Is Paranoid About The Future Of WPP
    Martin Sorrell has a healthy outlook regarding marketing's continuous shifts toward digital. In fact, his outlook is so healthy that he's paranoid about his future and the future of WPP and the future of the ad agency business in general. That's what he told Suthichai Yoon, chairman of Thailand publication Nation Multimedia Group. Sorrell's travels to Thailand -- part of an Asia-Pacific tour that included stops in Jakarta and Singapore -- are an effort to further familiarize himself with global trends. Of the ever-changing digital landscape, Sorrell said, "I stay paranoid and insecure every night about digital disruption in new …
  • RPA Is Doing Movember 80's Style
    So GSD&M got in on the whole Movember thing by...launching a Spanish telenovela. Yeah, I know. Read about that here. Not to be left out, RPA was inspired by some 80s-themed nostalgia and decided to go that route for their own agency's participation in the Movember agency challenge. Yeah, it's a little weird. Then again, most ad agencies are a little weird. No wait, they are a lot weird. But what's not to love about a collection of cheesy shots of a bunch of guys sporting mustaches and 80s-themed oddities?
  • TDA_Boulder Agency Is Putting Applicants to the Truest of Tests: Two Days in Vegas at the Agency's Holiday Party
    Ad agencies like to make a big deal out of things. And they like to go to Vegas. Looking to hire an art director, the agency created a police-themed application, complete with fingerprinting document, which read, "There's only so much you can learn from an applicant over the course of an hour-long interview. Which is why TDA_Boulder is taking a new approach to hiring an art director - bringing you on our two-day holiday party in Las Vegas." Oh yes. If there's anything that tears down any squeamishness and gets right to the heart of a person, it's two days …
  • Sid Lee Opens LA Office In Cient Movember Foundation's Office Space
    Well, here's a feelgood story. Sid Lee is opening a Los Angeles office in the headquarters of men's health charity Movember Foundation. The agency, which already does pro bono work for the charity, will further help the cause by moving in and paying rent. The move follows the opening of the agency' first U.S. office in New York two years ago. Of the move, Sid Lee USA CEO Will Travis said, "We will be joining the Movember Foundation in the Culver City location as a partner, fully integrated in the space, We will be located there until further growth demands …
  • McKinney CCO Oversimplifies, Publicis CEO Over-Complicates And Saatchi & Saatchi China Thinks Its Employees Are Wasteful
    Hmm. McKinney Chief Creative Officer Jonathon Cude said: "Only two things matter: The work and the people who do it. It's that simple and it's that hard." But Publicis Worldwide CEO Arthur Sadoun says: "The only thing that really matters today for us is to understand how technology is impacting the business model of our clients and most of all, how it is impacting the consumer journey." While Cude's outlook is a bit simplistic, Sadoun's is filled with the kind of pointless fluff that is indicative of the ad industry's inability to accomplish the basics of marketing: create excitement and …
  • This Guy Argues Doing Crowdsource Work Could Land You Your Dream Agency Job
    Asad Khan, Founder and CEO of creative crowdsourcing platform CopyShoppy, thinks crowdsourcing is awesome. And why wouldn't he? After all, that's what his company does. Well, he's out with a five-point argument entitled 5 Myths About Crowdsourcing Creative Work that explains why there's nothing wrong with the advertising community embracing a crowdsourcing approach to developing creative. He actually thinks it could get you a job, writing: "Crowdsourcing platforms provide an avenue for people aspiring to earn a living in creative industries to dive head first into a career, sharpen their creative skills, and build a portfolio as they work with …
  • Michael Roth: If It Were Up to Martin Sorrell, There Would be One Holding Company
    So Dentsu would like to make it known that it's not looking to make acquisitions in the digital space. Hmm. Of the mindset, Dentsu Aegis Network Chairman Tim Andree, speaking at the annual Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecoms Conference in Barcelona, said: "Acquisitions are not a strategy in and of themselves. They need to back up our goal and complement where we are already present." Well, duh. Although that doesn't mean we won't see big acquisition plays in the next year or so, according to Martin Sorrell -- who at the same conference said he expected to see further …
  • Are Ad Agency Employees the Biggest "Empty Labor" Slackers?
    Well, well, well. Is an ad agency one of the places where workers waste the most amount of time engaging in "empty labor"? In a new book, Lund University Sociologist Roland Paulsen examines the notion of empty labor interviewing people from various industries. Paulsen found, on average, that employees across all industries typically spend two hours a day slacking off. In a "Wall Street Journal" article, Paulsen was asked, "Where did you find the most empty labor?" Paulsen responded: "You can't generalize from the sample. Most of them were office workers with academic degrees and a fair amount of autonomy …
  • President Obama Surprises Australian Ad Man By Using His 29-Year-Old Tagline In Speech
    Australian ad man Tim Bond is happy. Really, really happy. In 1985 Bond was working for D'Arcy MacManus and Masius and was asked to come up with a tagline for Queensland. He thought about the task for ten weeks. And out came "Beautiful one day, perfect the next." It became Queensland's most iconic tagline. Fast-forward 29 years to a speech given by President Barack Obama at the University of Queensland. During his speech, Obama said: "This city, this part of Australia, is just stunning. Beautiful one day, and then perfect the next. That's what I understand." Following Obama's utterance, Bond's …
  • This Creative Brief Was Delivered With Oculus Rift and A Treadmill
    Talk about an all-inclusive, complete brief! As part of its annual Creative Press Challenge, Dutch newspaper Persgroep briefed 110 creatives on the Iranian refugee situation for the charity group UAF by immersing them in the very issue they would be assigned to tackle. How? By using the virtual reality technology Oculus Rift and treadmill. The moment creatives step onto the installation, they step into the "true and traumatizing journey of a young refugee who was forced to flee from Iran to the Netherlands." The virtual reality experience is based on the memories and stories of a real refugee. Each step …
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