Twitter today seemed to help writer Salman Rushdie restore his Facebook identity, two days after his page was taken down by the company in an overzealous attempt at enforcing the real-name policy

GroupM's Saint-Jacques Vallee MEC in Montreal, Canada, is changing its name to MEC Montreal. The agency will be led by Sylvie La Salle, Vice-President, General Manager, whom will work closely with Michele Pauchuk, president of MEC Canada.

Mobile phone giant Sony Ericsson has awarded Omnicom Group's PHD its global planning and buying assignment after a review, per sources. The company spends an estimated $200 million on ads worldwide. The incumbent was WPP's MEC, which had the account for a decade. Just last month, Sony and Ericsson decided to end the phone venture with Sony agreeing to buy out its Swedish telecom partner. That didn't bode well for MEC, as Omnicom has a number of pieces of Sony business around the globe.

Global ad research aggregator and publisher WARC this morning said it cut its advertising growth forecast for nine of the 12 advertising markets it tracks in its "International Ad Forecast" report. "Only Russia, Canada and Japan have escaped downward revisions for 2011 and 2012," the research organization said.

After eight Years as one of the leading economic thinkers on Madison Avenue, Brian Wieser is jumping back to another block, Wall Street. Wieser, who joined targeted TV advertising network Simulmedia as CMO in February after eight years as a top Madison Avenue economic forecaster at Interpublic, is returning to his roots as a Wall Street equity analyst.

Ex-Apple executive Tim Jenkins has been named CEO of mobile ad company 4INFO, replacing founder Zaw Thet in that role. Thet has taken the title of “Chief Evangelist” at the company. Prior to joining 4INFO as COO in September, Jenkins was CFO at Solera Networks, a network security firm. He has also served in various C-level positions at companies including ONStor Inc. E2open, Simpata (where he was CEO from 2000 to 2003) and Creative Wonders. Jenkins was at Apple from 1989 to 1995, where he was European finance manager, education division controller, according to his LinkedIn profile. The new CEO …

Asserting that "digital waste" from misguided marketers is "polluting" the online world, WPP's TNS unit just released what it calls a "Digital Life" study that appears to be an indictment against modern digital marketing practices.

Online ad safety and verification firm AdSafe Media today unveiled what it described as a "suite of real-time data feeds" which will dynamically deliver its "quality," "safety" and "relevance" ratings "diectly into the auction process" of real-time bidding based ad buys.

DDB just announced that Worldwide Chairman Bob Scarpelli will retire at the end of 2011. He spent nearly 35 years at DDB, beginning as a copywriter at Needham Harper & Steers in Chicago, which merged with DDB in 1986.

Clear Channel Radio just announced it has re-branded its Tribeca, New York-based theater to the "iHeartRadio Theater Presented by P.C. Richard & Son."