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Here are the four ads which most caught our eye this week. Grey Copenhagen has the account for Coke Zero in Scandinavia and, in keeping with the "bloke Coke" positioning of the product, is responsible for this entertaining spot promoting Break Up As It Should Be. Needless to say, the guys in the Adbrands office all loved it and the girls walked out of the room in a huff...

In a very different vein, try this extraordinary viral produced for Sony's Vaio computer range, orchestrated by Dare Digital. It's hardly an ad as such, with no direct connection to the brand, but it is gripping and hypnotic. In case you missed the story behind the making of the film, the first scene was written by actor/producer John Malkovich who then - via the Vaio website - invited ordinary users to carry it on. The results of this interactive scriptwriting were animated by production house Sherbet. It's not for all tastes, perhaps, but we loved it.

VCCP is the agency commissioned by the UK's Department of Health to produce two films to warn against the evils of binge drinking. Here is the female ad, which makes the point quite effectively (by using this genuine footage of Amy Winehouse getting ready for an evening out - nah, just kidding. But only just). In the same vein, see also this public service message on behalf of Drug & Alcohol Services of South Australia.  

And finally, a silly but endearing ad by AMV BBDO for new Heinz Deli Mayo. It's not great art, but it made us laugh. Straight home from work, sweet cheeks!

In the news this week: Advertisers

Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch has yet to deliver a formal response to the takeover offer mounted by rival InBev. Behind the scenes however, the American company is understood to be in discussions with Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo, in whom it already has a 50% investment stake. By acquiring full control of Modelo, Anheuser could effectively make itself too big for InBev to swallow. In the mean time the US company has also gained the support of the governor of Missouri, where it is headquartered, and of its biggest labour union, which advised its members that a deal with InBev could result in the erosion of working conditions at A-B and even job losses. 

Keenly aware of this developing opposition, InBev issued a warning to Anheuser against any ill-conceived defensive strategies, such as a Modelo takeover, and began attempts to rally the support of the US group's shareholders to its own cause. In a public letter to the Anheuser board, InBev CEO Carlos Brito advised Anheuser to consider "the potential adverse consequences any such transaction [with Modelo] could have on the ability of your shareholders to receive our premium offer" and said that "it is our strong belief that no alternative transaction that you could effectuate would create more value for your shareholders than the $65 per share in cash that we are offering. We are convinced that your shareholders would reach the same conclusion." Anheuser's second biggest shareholder, billionaire Warren Buffett, was rumoured to be in support of the takeover. He would generate a profit of around $600m on the sale of his 5% holding to InBev. Carlos Brito also travelled to Washington to try to reassure Missouri's governor of his good intentions. While there he told a press conference, that rumours of a higher bid were unfounded: "$65 is a great price, full price, that's it." Anheuser-Busch's board plans to meet face-to-face on Friday for the first time since it received InBev's offer to frame an official response.

What is arguably the world's most expensive burger went on sale today at the local branch of Burger King in London's Gloucester Road. THE Burger, as it is known, retails for £95, equivalent to around $190. It's a whopper of a price to be sure, but the burger is made from Wagyu beef, accompanied by white truffles, champagne onion straws and Pata Negra ham from pure-bred acorn-fed pigs. So now you know where we just had lunch today. And let me tell you, you can sure taste those acorns. Mmm-hm! All proceeds from the event are being donated to the charity Help A London Child.

Russian company SPI, which controls Stolichnaya vodka, appointed investment bank Lehmann Brothers to advise on future strategy for the brand. Options could include a complete sale of global distribution rights, including those within Russia, a potential goldmine for any international group. Until now, SPI has only licensed international rights for Stoli, while it handled Russian distribution itself through an affiliated company. Pernod-Ricard inherited international distribution from previous licensee Allied Domecq, which it acquired in 2005. However the French group's purchase this year of Absolut has forced it to relinquish Stoli. Analysts estimate a value of $3bn for Stoli. However a sale could be complicated by the row, not yet resolved, between SPI and the Russian government about who ultimately owns the brand.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), trade body for the global music business, unveiled a grim portrait of the current state of the industry. According to its latest figures, global sales of physical music such as CDs fell by 13% year-on-year to $15.9bn, while sales of all music, including downloads and ringtones hit a new low of $19.4bn. In 2000, the figure was $37bn. Legal sales of digital music jumped by 34% in 2007 to almost $2.9bn, but that figure was still far too small to offset the slump in physical sales. Illegal copying is still thought to account for well over 90% of all digital downloads. High School Musical 2 was the biggest-selling album of the year globally, with sales of more than 6m units. Number two was Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, with more than 5m sold.

Senior executives of the DreamWorks movie studio, including founder Steven Spielberg and president Stacey Snider, were reported to be in advanced talks to jump ship from Viacom/Paramount, and set up as an independent once again, with substantial backing from India's Reliance group, a massive conglomerate with interests in numerous industrial and manufacturing sectors. Perhaps the most high profile of these is Reliance's mobile telecoms division, currently finalising a deal with African counterpart MTN which would create the world's biggest emerging markets telco. Reliance chairman Anil Ambani has announced a huge commitment to the worldwide movie business since the beginning of this year, investing heavily in India's domestic Bollywood industry, and inking development deals with a string of Hollywood luminaries including Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt. The relationship between the Spielberg team and management at Paramount has been grown increasingly strained since Viacom acquired DreamWorks in 2005. 

In the news this week: Agencies

It's a quiet week at the office in all of the world's leading advertising agencies. That's because the head honchos - around 9,000 of them - are in Cannes for the Lions Advertising Festival which kicked off last weekend. This year's event is bigger than ever before, with the number of entries up by more than 10% to a staggering 28,000. A key factor in the size of the event is the growing presence of leading advertisers at the Festival, a comparatively new development. Around 350 client companies are attending this year, up from fewer than 100 four years ago, and they attract a substantial tail of agency folk keen to win their business or protect existing accounts. 

As usual, the winning entries this year reflect the broad diaspora of the industry as a whole, with prizes awarded to all corners of the globe rather than just the usual suspects from the US and UK. The Direct Grand Prix, for example, was awarded to JWT India for a campaign for the Times of India newspaper designed to identify future political and social leaders for India. See the promotional film about the campaign here. Direct Agency of the Year was won by Shackleton, Madrid for the second consecutive year. In the Media category, Swedish creative agency Forsman & Bodenfors took the Grand Prix for a campaign for local pensions provider AMF, produced in conjunction with MindShare. The campaign invited 25 year-olds to upload pictures of themselves to an dedicated website, where the images were digitally adjusted to show respondents what would look like at retirement age. An impressive 15% of users followed up their involvement in the campaign to ask for further information on pension products. Dentsu of Tokyo won the Radio Grand Prix for an ad for Canon cameras.

There were some prizes for the usual suspects, however. BBDO New York collected two separate Grand Prix, in both the Promo and Outdoor categories, for its integrated Voyeur campaign for HBO. See the Cannes entry here. Voyeur also took a Gold in the Cyber category. So far only one UK agency has tasted Grand Prix success: Lean Mean Fighting Machine was named as Interactive Agency of the Year, and also won a clutch of gold, silver and bronze prizes in the cyber category. However three Cyber Grand Prix went to other companies: to Japanese agency Projector for a campaign for retailer Uniqlo; to Mediafront Oslo for work for Scandinavia Online; and to America's 42 Entertainment for rock band Nine Inch Nails.

There was a shock for British agencies in the Press category in that not a single UK shop picked up an award, even a bronze, despite almost 300 entries. The Grand Prix went to DDB Johannesburg for a campaign for Energizer which depicted the results of using cheaper batteries in your kids' toys. When the batteries run out, suggested the ads, your kids are likely to indulge in less acceptable activities - like painting the dog red, pulling down their pants or tying each other to the playground roundabout. The festival's first ever Design Grand Prix went to Anglo-American firm Turner Duckworth for its overhaul of Coca-Cola's visual identity and packaging.

The takeover battle for research group TNS gained some extra heat after one of that company's founders, Liz Nelson, criticised its plans to merge with Gfk, and instead endorsed the rival proposal from WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell. Nelson told trade magazine Research that a deal with WPP would be "more innovative, more imaginative, more client-oriented than a merger of TNS and GfK". Although Nelson left the company in the early 1990s, her opinions still carry considerable weight within TNS. "This is the accountants at work," she said. "It isn't the best thing for a market research company... What Sorrell has, unlike anyone else I know, is the ability to bring companies together, and in particular ad hoc research companies. It's an art - there's an awful lot of skill in putting companies together, and Sorrell has that ability." In fact, Martin Sorrell has yet to make a formal offer for TNS. The two overtures already declined by TNS were both only indicative, and conditional upon disclosure of further financial information. However both offered a considerable improvement for shareholders on the nil-premium merger envisaged with Gfk. In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Sorrell gave his predictions for what might happen next in terms calculated to strike a chord with all market researchers: "There's a 30% probability we walk; a 30% probability we stay; a 30% probability we might go up and a 10% chance we go hostile."

Visa is said to have begun a pitch for its global creative business outside Europe, with the aim of consolidating the account into a single network. Currently it is split between a number of different agencies including TBWA in the US, BBDO and BBH in the Asia Pacific, and Leo Burnett and others in Latin America. European assignments are not included in the review - Visa Europe is a separate entity from the main Visa Inc entity. In other assignments, reviews were announced in the UK for Hyundai creative (out of VCCP) and Vodafone media (out of OMD). Broadcaster Five placed its creative with Grey London. Grey also picked up global creative for P&G's Escada fragrance portfolio, to be handled out of French office Callegari Berville Grey. For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here.

In the news this week: Media

Yahoo effectively put an end to any likelihood that it might be acquired in part or whole by Microsoft by signing off on a ten-year commercial alliance with Google. Under the terms of this arrangement, which has been under discussion for some months, Yahoo will display a selection of paid Google ads, as well as its own and other third-party ads, when delivering search results to customers in the US and Canada. CEO Jerry Yang said the deal could deliver an additional $800m in revenues for Yahoo. Most analysts, however, predicted this will be at a significant cost to Yahoo's own paid-search sales, since many current clients would now be tempted to switch over to Google's network instead. Yahoo promised to guard against erosion of its own service by limiting the ads it draws from Google to less popular search terms. 

Both companies claimed that no regulatory investigation would be necessary, since this is a commercial arrangement similar to that by which Toyota provides hybrid engines to General Motors or Canon sells OEM laser-printers to HP. Nevertheless they volunteered to postpone start of the service for three months to allow anti-trust bodies to consider it. Google also protected itself against the results of a forced takeover of Yahoo either by a new management team or a third party buyer. The deal includes provisions for a $250m termination fee to be paid to Google if Yahoo pulls out of the arrangement within the first two years. Yahoo’s share price slumped by 10% following the announcement, hitting the lowest point since Microsoft first announced its unsolicited bid this year. That fact will further stoke the anger of activist investor Carl Icahn, who is to call for CEO Yang and the rest of the board to be sacked at next month's annual meeting because of their failure to act in the best interests of shareholders. Yahoo's current share price is around a third lower than the one offered by Microsoft a month ago. 

Meanwhile Microsoft showed signs of moving on, agreeing to acquire Navic Networks, a technology solutions provider. The company develops software for set-top boxes which allow advertisers to plan and manage interactive TV advertising targeted at a specific TV audience along similar lines to internet advertising. The new purchase will slot into Microsoft's Advertising & Publisher Solutions division alongside Avenue A | Razorfish and Atlas.

In the UK, the planned merger of business publishers UBM and Informa, mentioned here last week, collapsed after Informa said it had received an approach from a third party, thought to be investment fund Providence Equity Partners.

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Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands

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