Oh, the joy of slow motion! We have noted before in this column how virtually any movement looks fabulous when it is slowed right down. And it works even better when lit artistically and accompanied by a haunting piece of music. Australia's George Patterson Y&R has unveiled a new ad for Schweppes mixers which makes you want to jump into a swimming pool filled to the brim with chilled tonic (or maybe that's just me). 

OK, I swear that we're not being paid to do this by either BBDO New York or Monster.com, but here's another ad in the "Your calling is calling" campaign. Yes, I know we've had two of these spots already this year, but the new one is so unlike either of its predecessors that we simply have to show it to you. Watch it and then tell me, am I right or am I right?

Martin Scorsese is the director and star of a new "gold spot" public service announcement for AT&T, which runs just before the feature movie in cinemas, advising the audience to turn off mobile phones. (Orange has the same gig here in the UK). Interesting to see how Scorsese is turning into a celebrity performer in his own right, one of the very few directors who has been able to trade up his behind-the-scenes presence for an on-camera persona. BBDO New York again, dammit. (Also in the cinematic milieu, Deutsch has a great little ad for DirecTV - see here - which riffs on the old Stephen King-penned thriller Misery. Nice cameo by Kathy Bates. Did they reshoot the whole thing, or has she simply not changed at all in almost 20 years?)

Finally, a bizarre new campaign breaking in Europe and other countries for Coke Zero by Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam. There are several spots in the series. See also this one, this one and, every little kid's favourite, this one. Great execution, but I think the scripts could have done with some extra polish.

In the news this past week: Advertisers

It has been an extraordinary week for Porsche, or more specifically the Porsche family which owns the business. As a result of two developments, a German sports car manufacturer with sales of less than E8bn a year will soon be the controlling force in a mammoth automotive empire worth more than E150bn. The first was a deal by Volkswagen to take control of Scandinavian truck manufacturer Scania. It already has a controlling stake in rival MAN. The second was formal approval by the Volkswagen board to allow Porsche to build its existing shareholding in VW to more than 50%. When these transactions are completed, Porsche will sit at the heart of a group which controls not only the Porsche and Volkswagen brands, but also Seat, Skoda, Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini cars, as well as Scania and MAN trucks. The key figures in this transformation are Ferdinand Piech, the grandson of Porsche's founder as well as chairman of both VW and MAN, and Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking, a skilled dealmaker who makes up for not being a member of the Porsche family with a salary package thought to be the richest in Europe, worth an estimated E100m last year. Ironically, although they are working side by side to build this extraordinary empire, the two men are said not to get on with one another. (According to reports, Piech refuses to be photographed with Wiedeking). Nor do they appear to agree on what to do with this huge group once it has been assembled. Piech's goal appears to be scale for scale's sake, as well as a shared excellence of engineering across the entire range of brands. Wiedeking is thought to be keen to prune several weaker brands in the VW group in pursuit of greater profitability, and he is backed in this by Porsche chairman Ferdinand Porsche, also Piech's cousin. A family row could ensue.

These corporate manoeuvres are not without their opponents. The chief voice of the opposition at present is Bernd Osterloh, chairman of VW's workers council, and also a member of VW's supervisory board. In recent weeks, he has mounted a vigorous public campaign against Porsche's increasing control. In a public statement released last week, Osterloh complained, "What started out as a growing together of two of the most important German industrial firms is slowly but surely becoming a hostile takeover." In particular, he is demanding the introduction of new measures which would give VW's labour unions a veto on any plans to close or transfer existing factories, and has also called on VW to reward its workers with a greater share of group profits, most of which will otherwise be added to the Porsche family coffers. Osterloh is supported in this by the regional government of the state of Lower Saxony where VW is headquartered. Until Porsche's intervention, Lower Saxony was VW's largest shareholder. Its representatives also sit on the company's board and have repeatedly attempted to block the smaller company's machinations. As a summary of the current situation, we still think an analogy voiced in 2006 by an unidentified board member at VW covers all the bases. He told the Financial Times that managing VW is "like trying to ride a chariot with four or five horses, each of which pulls in a different direction". 

Also on the automotive front, Nissan launched its luxury brand Infiniti for the first time in Western Europe at the Geneva motor show. Like Toyota's equivalent Lexus, Infiniti is a separate marque, encompassing a range of more expensive models. Also like Lexus, it originated in the US at the end of the 1980s as a way of separating the company's premium sedans from existing consumer perceptions of Japanese cars as mass-market runabouts. During the 1990s, Toyota began to introduce Lexus into other markets, starting with Europe. Now, Nissan is belatedly following suit. The debut range for Europe includes two crossover SUVs designed to compete with BMW's X5 and X3 models. 

Amazon announced plans to enter the wine business. The group already sells a wide range of non-perishable groceries through its main site in the US, and has been testing a fresh grocery service in its home city of Seattle. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has long harboured an interest in the wine sector. In 1999, he invested $30m in start-up site Wineshopper.com, only to see the business fail after just a year. The company also has an association with the current leader in online wines sales in the US, Wine.com, which sells gift baskets through Amazon, but not wine. The new Amazon service will have to tread carefully through a minefield of regulations dating back to the end of Prohibition, which prevent shipping between certain states and rule that all purchasing must be made through specified licensed wholesalers.

Blocked in its efforts to acquire ABN Amro last year, UK bank Barclays has instead agreed a much smaller deal to buy Russian lender Expobank for around $745m. Meanwhile insurance giant Aviva is said to be preparing to phase out its heritage UK brand Norwich Union in favour of the main corporate name. 

H&M is to develop a secondary brand business as a result of the purchase of Swedish fashion group Fabric Scandinavien, which owns the Weekday and Monki retail chains in Sweden as well as fashion label Cheap Monday, sold in around 1,000 third party outlets around the world.

DIY giant Home Depot revealed the scale of the knock-on effect from the US housing and credit crisis by reporting the first fall in annual sales in its 30-year history. Comparable sales dipped 2% to $77.3bn, and net income fell by almost a quarter. Its main rival Lowe's also experienced tough trading, although its results showed less damage. Revenues rose 3% to $48.3bn as a result of new store openings. (Same store sales were down 5%). Net earnings fell almost 10%. Other US retailers also experienced a very difficult year, with almost all reporting declines in profits for 4Q 2007. 

There was also dismal news, as expected, from struggling US mobile operator Sprint, which pushed through a mammoth impairment charge to essentially write off the value of Nextel, the rival service it acquired in 2005. This resulted in a net loss for the year of $29.6bn, compared to a profit of almost $1bn the year before. Sprint said it doesn't expect the erosion of customers to stop during 2008 as contract users transfer from Nextel in favour of other suppliers or pay-as-you-go. As a result, the company has been forced to draw on its credit lines and suspended its dividend. This sort of situation would ordinarily make Sprint an ideal purchase for another company keen to enter the US market or build its presence there. Trouble is, on top of its operating troubles, Sprint is also carrying substantial net debts of around $20bn, making it one heck of an expensive gamble. 

Depressed about your company's financial performance? Have a beer and feel better. It wasn't all bad news. InBev, the world's biggest brewer by volumes, reported results for 2007 that were little short of spectacular. Group revenues rose by 7% to E14.4bn, but net profit jumped 56% for the second consecutive year to E2.2bn. Significantly perhaps, InBev has only minimal exposure to the troubled US market, and the UK was virtually the only country in which it experienced a downturn, as a result of slowing sales for flagship brand Stella Artois. 

In the news this past week: Agencies

WPP reassured shareholders with generally sound results for 2007, although growth was below the percentage reported in 2006. A key factor which had worried shareholders was the possible effect of the US credit crisis. WPP said this had had little or no impact on results. The group attracted a record $9.8bn in net new billings, contributing to a total of $63.5bn. The best growth by far was by the group's media networks, who between them generated almost three-quarters of the new billings - close to $7.2bn. Group revenues and pretax profits were both up by 5% to almost £6.2bn and £719m respectively. WPP reiterated its prediction that 2008 is likely to be a good year for the marketing industry, but that there will be a decline in 2009 before another upturn in 2010. 

Meanwhile Interpublic, the last of the big marketing groups to report, delivered its first full-year profit since 2002, with net income of $168m, compared to a $79m loss the year before. Revenues were up 6% to $6.55bn. Significantly, the group also said that it had finally "successfully remediated all material weaknesses in its internal controls". In other words, it has taken until now for the group to fix flaws in its accounting systems resulting from several mammoth acquisitions between 1997 and 2001. These led to a series of profit restatements between 2002 and 2005, which seriously undermined client and investor confidence in the group.

Yet another quiet week for account assignments. (Come on, guys, let's have a few juicy new pitches). US car parts supplier AC Delco is consolidating its advertising at Leo Burnett Detroit, out of Campbell-Ewald; Pizza Hut UK put its creative account up for review, after it was resigned by Wieden & Kennedy London; Beattie McGuinness Bungay had a good week, collecting the ING Direct and Virgin Money accounts (doesn't that count as a conflict?). For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here.

In the news this past week: Media

On Monday morning, disgraced former newspaper tycoon Sir Conrad Black reported to Florida's low security prison Coleman Federal Correctional Complex to begin his 6 1/2 year prison sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice. Aided by two senior executives, Black swindled millions of dollars out of his Hollinger International company to pay for a lavish jetsetter lifestyle. At its peak, Hollinger was one of the world's most influential newspaper groups controlling the UK's best-selling serious paper, the Daily Telegraph, as well as the Chicago Sun-Times, Jerusalem Post, and hundreds of local community newspapers across North America.

According to the WSJ, Time Warner and Yahoo stepped up talks to protect the latter from the hostile takeover currently proposed by Microsoft. According to the newspaper, the two are discussing a scenario whereby TW's AOL subsidiary would be folded into Yahoo, giving Time Warner a sizable minority stake in the combined business. A separate discussion with News Corporation involves a similar scenario, substituting MySpace for AOL. Despite Yahoo's hopes of clinching an alternative arrangement, most commentators still believe that Yahoo's shareholders will ultimately prefer Microsoft's offer. It's ironic, given the latest rumours, that AOL's CEO Randy Falco went on the record last week about a Microsoft-Yahoo combination, telling delegates at an IAB conference: “I hope they beat each other’s brains out over search and leave the display market to us. I think it’s a mistake. But I think Napoleon said never interrupt your enemy when they’re in the middle of making a mistake.” Apparently he wasn't involved in Time Warner's current discussions with Yahoo.

Google, meanwhile, is expected to receive clearance from the European Union's competition regulators for its acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick. The deal has already been approved in the US.