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Oh, the nostalgia. Just as we all step carefully into the cold dawn of 2009, RKCR/Y&R are turning back the clock by 25 years to celebrate the quarter-century of Virgin Atlantic. Someone had a lot of fun designing this spot-on recreation of a time before many of you reading this were even born. How drab the 1980s were! Needless to say, the Virgin Atlantic cabin crew of the time were in reality just as big-haired and padded-shouldered as the rest. In fact, the only stewardess on the debut flight was actually Richard Branson dressed up in women's clothing...

Another kick up the 1980s comes from Cadbury's Wispa bar. This chocolate snack was a big hit during that decade but was later discontinued, until brought back to life late last year in response to a consumer protest campaign orchestrated via Facebook. Fallon London delivered this one-off ad spectacular over the festive season to celebrate the joy of Wispa. All the extras featured in the ad apparently performed for free - or rather for a handful of Wispa bars.

DDB London's new ad for Volkswagen, currently running in the UK, has caused a stir at the Advertising Standards Authority because of more than 100 complaints over the level of violence depicted. Let's hope it doesn't get pulled. It's a nice idea, well executed.

And finally, an amusing little spot from Fallon Minneapolis for The Ladders, a job search service for $100k-plus executives. Yeah, yeah, the ad's great, but where can I buy one of those little guys to take home for the kids. 

In the news this past week: Advertisers

Detroit got its bailout after all. As had looked increasingly likely at the date of our last update, George Bush agreed to provide up to $17bn of emergency funding to General Motors and Chrysler to allow the two groups more time to prove the merits of their turnaround strategies. The money came from the fund already created to prop up the country's struggling banking industry. Bush had previously signalled his reluctance to extend the banking fund to the auto industry. The change of strategy was prompted by the likelihood that the two companies would otherwise have filed for bankruptcy before year's end, leaving an(other) inglorious shadow over the outgoing President's last days in office. Instead Detroit will become one of the key headaches of President Obama's first months in office. GM and Chrysler must prove by March 2009 that they can achieve financial viability. Otherwise, the loans will fall due for immediate repayment. In fact, many observers still believe that a carefully managed bankruptcy will ultimately be the only real solution to Detroit's intractable woes. The government also made $6bn of cash available to finance company GMAC, now part-public, but still effectively controlled by its two biggest shareholders, GM and Chrysler's private equity parent Cerberus. That loan was accompanied by conditions that the GM and Cerberus reduce their holdings to under 10% and 33% of GMAC's equity respectively. See also General Motors and Chrysler profiles on Adbrands.

The agony in the global car market affects all the other manufacturers as well. December proved to be yet another abysmal month of sales, with all of the leading players reporting falls of 30% or more in sales, compared to December 2007. Chrysler had by far the worst month, with sales down by a staggering 53%. Otherwise, some of the worst performances came not from Detroit but from foreign manufacturers. Although Ford and GM each admitted percentage slides in the low 30s, they were topped by BMW, whose sales plunged by 36%, while Japanese companies Honda and Toyota reported drops of 35% and 37% respectively. As a result of these troubles, exacerbated by the soaring value of the yen, Toyota warned that it is on course to report its first ever annual operating loss for the fiscal year ending March 2009. Katsuaki Watanabe is expected to step down as group CEO early in the year. For all its troubles, GM remained the leading automaker in the US in 2008, with sales of 2.98m vehicles, compared to 2.22 vehicles for Toyota. See also Toyota, Honda, Ford and BMW profiles on Adbrands.

Under continuing pressure from investors to explain his decision not to appear at the Macworld conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs finally issued a statement regarding his health. Brushing off speculation that he was experiencing a reoccurrence of the pancreatic cancer with which he was diagnosed in 2003, he said he was suffering from a mysterious but non-life-threatening "hormone imbalance", which has caused him to lose a large amount of weight. His place at Macworld was taken by marketing chief Larry Schiller, who gave a low-key presentation which offered no big new product launches. The main item of interest was the news that Apple will drop copy-protection restrictions on all music sold through its iTunes store, and will also begin to offer variable pricing for individual tracks, long sought-after by the music groups. See also Apple profile on Adbrands.

Sales of music CDs fell nearly 20% in the US in 2008 according to year-end figures from Nielsen Soundscan. Physical volumes fell from 449.2m discs in 2007 to 360.6m units in 2008, having more than halved since the peak year of 2000, when sales came close to 800m units. However overall sales of all products, including combined sales of albums, singles, music videos and digital tracks, were up almost 11% to 1.5bn units. Best-selling album of the year was Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, which sold almost 2.9m units, but that figure represents the lowest sale to-date for any chart-topping album. It was followed by Coldplay's Viva La Vida and Taylor Swift's Fearless, both of which sold around 2.1m copies. Universal Music Group remained the industry leader with 31.5% share of the US market. Sony Music was #2 with 25.3%, just ahead of Warner Music with 21.4%, up a full percentage point on the previous year. The performance of struggling #4 EMI continued to slip. Its share of the US market hit a new low of under 9%. See also Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music and EMI profiles on Adbrands.

In the movie business, Warner Bros was the #1 Hollywood studio by US box office as a result of the huge success of The Dark Knight, which alone took more than $530m, making it the all-time #2 movie behind Titanic. Warner's total gross was almost $1.8bn, ahead of #2 Paramount with almost $1.6bn. Sony, Universal and Fox took the next three places, with Disney's Buena Vista ranking a disappointing 6th. The most impressive showing was by indie distributor Summit Entertainment, who achieved a #8 ranking from the success of teen hit Twilight, one of the year's top ten movies. Worryingly for all the studios, ticket sales by volume were at their lowest level since 1995, at 1,337m units. Average ticket price, however, jumped almost 5% to $7.20, to generate a total gross of $6.6bn, just below the previous year. US movie ticket sales gradually increased between the late 1980s and early 2000s, reaching a high of 1,576m units in 2002. Since then, however, they have steadily declined, largely because of the competition from DVD and internet entertainment. See also Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Fox and Disney profiles on Adbrands.

Pepsi-Cola ended its ten-year sponsorship deal with fading football superstar David Beckham. Several US media commentators suggested that cost-cutting had played a part in Pepsi's decision. Another of Beckham's steadily shrinking collection of endorsement deals, with Motorola, is up for renewal in June 2009. See also Pepsi-Cola and Motorola profiles on Adbrands.

Panasonic's takeover of rival electronics company Sanyo is back on track after Goldman Sachs agreed late last month to sell its holding in the smaller company. Goldman had earlier quit negotiations but was tempted back by a hike in Panasonic's offer price. See also Panasonic profile on Adbrands.

Two key executives quit struggling PC manufacturer Dell, fuelling fears that the company's much-vaunted turnaround has stalled. Chief marketing officer Mark Jarvis and Mike Cannon, president of global operations, spent little more than a year at the company. They, along with VP, marketing Casey Jones, who left earlier in 2008, were also closely associated with the creation of custom-built global marketing network Enfatico, a unit of WPP. That project has long been vilified within the blogosphere and has yet to make any noticeable contribution to Dell's marketing program. See also Dell profile on Adbrands.

Marilyn O'Connell, chief marketing officer for Verizon Communications' fixed line division, retired at the end of 2008. She had worked for the company and its predecessor GTE since the early 1980s. She was replaced by Mike Ritter. See also Verizon profile on Adbrands.

France's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, was in the headlines over the festive period because of an embarrassing family row. Her daughter, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, also a L'Oreal board member, filed a public complaint against a society photographer who, she claims, tricked the elderly Bettencourt into giving away more than E1bn in gifts and life insurance. Bettencourt Meyers also wants her mother to submit to a medical examination to ascertain her competence. See also L'Oreal profile on Adbrands.

Cadbury agreed to sell its last remaining drinks subsidiary, Cottee's of Australia, to Asahi Breweries for £550m. In addition to the Cottee's, Spring Valley and Solo brands, the company is the exclusive Pepsi bottler for Australia. The deal is expected to complete by April 2009. See also Cadbury and Asahi profiles on Adbrands.

The Wall Street Journal carried an interesting feature on a new marketing strategy launched by Unilever in China. That country is one of the few global markets where Dove's "real beauty" marketing campaign didn't catch on with local consumers. Instead, the group has acquired local rights to US comedy series Ugly Betty and commissioned a remake for Chinese TV (as "Ugly Wudi") which features high profile product placements for Dove and other group brands. The creation of a new ad campaign for Dove actually features as a key plot point in several episodes. See the full article here.

Also worth checking out was a story in The Economist late last year about another Unilever brand, the male deodorant Axe, or rather its UK version Lynx. According to a new research study developed by the University of Liverpool in partnership with Unilever, Axe/Lynx really does make men more attractive to women - and it has nothing at all to do with the smell. In the study, two groups of men were given aerosol sprays. One set of men got a normal fragranced deodorant spray; the others got a scent-free "placebo" spray with no active ingredients. The researchers noticed that the men with the scented spray showed a noticeable increase in self-confidence compared to the other group. The effect was so marked that another group containing women, shown silent video clips of all the men in the test, selected the scented group as being more attractive, even without being able to smell them. Their more confident body language alone made them seem more desirable. See full story here.

In the news this past week: Agencies

Publicis Groupe chief Maurice Levy gave an interview this week to the Financial Times in which he said he was looking forward to the challenges of an advertising recession. "It’s the type of situation that excites my neurons," he said. "Crisis situations are those that allow one to do better things afterwards, to break with routine. Nothing is more boring than business as usual." He also took the opportunity to issue a typically stinging rebuff to long-time enemy Martin Sorrell of WPP, who suggested late last year that Publicis should mount a bid for Interpublic. It was, he said, the "fantasy of a little Englishman trying to stir things up. This man is more interested in the affairs of other businesses than in managing his own." (Whatever you may think of their respective merits as businessmen, we note that Martin Sorrell rarely resorts to undignified personal attacks of this sort, whereas Levy seems incapable of missing any opportunity to have a go at his rival). See also Publicis Groupe and WPP profiles on Adbrands.

The Sunday Times newspaper reported that Aegis is considering plans to spin off its market research division Synovate. Any such move is likely to prompt a renewed approach from Havas chairman Vincent Bolloré for the rest of the business, comprising the Carat, Vizeum and Isobar media networks. See also Aegis and Havas profiles on Adbrands.

Leo Burnett agreed to pay $15.5m to settle allegations that it overbilled the US Army for digital and advertising work it provided on the former client's Army Of One campaign between 2000 and 2005. The agency denied any wrongdoing. The Army account transferred to McCann in 2005. See also Leo Burnett profile on Adbrands.

We were saddened to hear of the death of Kevin Steeds, founder and chairman of British marketing services group Cello, at the end of last month after a short battle with cancer. He was just 50. Steeds was one of the original founders of financial services communications agency Citigate, and later became a director of two other British-based marketing services groups, Incepta and then Media Square. He set up Cello in 2004, acquiring a string of advertising and marketing agencies including Leith, Farm and Tangible Data. 

In a shock development which broke just after we issued our last Update of 2008, Lowe London declined the opportunity to repitch for the John Lewis creative account. That loss removes one of the agency's last local accounts, although Lowe London still serves as the European creative hub for several network clients. The agency said "We are incredibly proud of the work the team here at Lowe has produced for John Lewis. However, we are running a business, and as such we need to make decisions about how best to deploy our resources and we do not believe the pitch environment favours our participation." Despite recurrent fears over the longterm future of the Lowe brand, Interpublic stressed towards the end of last year that the network remains profitable. See also Lowe and John Lewis profiles on Adbrands.

There were a few final end-of-the-year account assignments. Carat landed two significant victories on a single day. It was reappointed to the UK media business of Santander of Spain, including the Abbey, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester brands. Later the same day it was confirmed as the winner of the consolidated pan-European Kellogg's media account, previously held in most larger markets by Mindshare. Fiat is said to be planning to transfer European media for all its car brands into WPP agencies. Currently responsibility is split between WPP and Publicis-owned Starcom. WPP also has a 49% shareholding in Fiat's inhouse media division. See also Carat, Abbey, Kelloggs and Fiat profiles on Adbrands.

A few quick-off-the-blocks assignments from this week: DIY retailer B&Q has called a review of its UK creative account, out of JWT London; Beverage Partners Worldwide called a review of global advertising for its Nestea brand; Pernod-Ricard is looking for a new creative shop for Wyborowa vodka, and shifted UK media for Absolut to Vizeum; InBev placed worldwide creative for its Hoegaarden beer with Amsterdam Worldwide, the European office of what was previously StrawberryFrog; Muller yoghurt split its UK creative account, managed by Publicis London, by shifting Muller Corners into VCCP; The Body Shop dropped Leagas Delaney as its global creative agency and will handle all creative inhouse. For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. See also Nestea, Pernod-Ricard, Absolut, Vizeum, InBev, Amsterdam Worldwide, Muller and VCCP profiles on Adbrands.net.

In the news this past week: Media

In a bitter row which could have ruined the New Year viewing habits of millions of Americans, Viacom came close to pulling all of its cable channels from Time Warner Cable, the country's second-largest network, in the early hours of January 1st. The two sides had been arguing for some time over the increase demanded by Viacom in carriage fees for MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and other strands. With the existing contract close to expiry on New Year's Eve, Viacom unleashed a TV and print marketing campaign warning viewers that service might soon be suspended. The resulting blackout would have had a serious impact on Viacom's ad revenues, but could have been even more damaging if its persuaded Time Warner customers to jump ship to another supplier. As a result, the two sides returned to the table in the early hours of New Year's Day and were able to thrash out a new agreement. Soon afterwards, Time Warner also agreed a new carriage contract with Viacom's former partner CBS. See also Viacom and Time Warner Cable profiles on Adbrands.

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Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands

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