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Sorry, no singing lips this week. Instead, first up, we are pleased to bring you the new spot for Orange TV, the broadcast service from the mobile arm of France Telecom. It's odd, moody and intriguing, even if ultimately it doesn't really say anything at all. I mean, just how "entertained" do you think you would be if you were suddenly surrounded in a deserted parking lot at midnight by seventy sword-wielding ninjas? Publicis Conseil in Paris is the agency.

Argentinean creative boutique Santo has an amusing new spot for Coca-Cola, now being rolled out globally, which riffs on the mystery surrounding the drink's famously secret formula. Nicely done.

Full marks to JCPenney and Saatchi & Saatchi New York for this witty and oh-so-very-true viral tale about the ills that befall any man who buys his wife or girlfriend the wrong sort of gift. Been there, done that, believe me. An impressively off-the-wall approach from a retailer not otherwise known for this sort of oblique approach in its marketing.

And finally, a cool spot for Adidas by Canadian creative boutique Sid Lee which brings together virtually all of the sportswear company's endorsement partners for one hell of a house party. David Beckham, Katy Perry, Missy Elliott, Russell and Kimora Simmons, Kevin Garnett, DMC, Mark Gonzales, blahdy blahdy blah. They're all there, even tennis bad boy Ilie Nastase and artist Sam Taylor-Wood. Just imagine the combined net worth of this house-full. Oh and that's me over there in the corner by the way...

In the news this past week: Advertisers

Lower profits, job cuts, government interventions. Economic doom and gloom continued to dominate the business headlines over the week: Citigroup has been one major focus of attention. Once America's mightiest financial institution, it has been brought to its knees by more than $65bn (so far) in losses and write-downs, mostly associated with mortgage-related securities. Even more serious has been the crisis of confidence in the bank's management team which kicked off two months ago after Citi's failure to close the deal to acquire smaller rival Wachovia. Despite last week's dramatic cut of another 52,000 jobs, the company's stock price continued to plunge, more than halving during the course of last week alone. A pledge of moral and financial support from Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal - who effectively rescued the group from a similar crisis in the early 1990s - did little to stop the rot. There were rumours by the end of the week that Citi would have to appoint a new CEO to replace one-year incumbent Vikram Pandit, or even put itself up for sale. 

After a weekend of emergency negotiations with the US government, a rescue package was announced late on Sunday night. The Treasury Department agreed to inject a further $20bn of fresh capital into the company and promised to guarantee around $306bn of Citi's most toxic property and loan assets. Currently, the group holds around $2 trillion of assets in its balance sheet, but the main cause for concern is another $1.2 trillion of assets held "off-balance-sheet". More than half of these are high-risk mortgage-backed securities. In return for this assistance, Citi will halt dividend payouts for three years and will curb excessive executive payouts. This rescue package served to stem immediate investor panic, causing a strong rebound in global stock markets, but there is no certainty that it will be enough to stabilise the bank's position in the short-to-medium term. Next week or next month could see another turnaround. See also Citigroup profile on Adbrands. 

Two large British retail groups were forced to call in financial administrators yesterday evening. Woolworths had already spent weeks seeking a saviour for its ailing retail division. Although several potential buyers made offers for the business, no agreement could be reached, at least in part because of unfavourable terms attached to the leases for many of the group's stores. Woolworths' shares were suspended on Wednesday morning as it attempted to finalise the sale of its 40% holding in video publishing business 2entertain to joint venture partner BBC Worldwide for around £100m in cash. However, those negotiations too stalled over the question of distribution terms. As a result, Woolworths' board was obliged to appoint Deloitte to take over administration of the group. It is understood that the restructuring specialist Hilco, which had previously been in discussions to buy Woolworths' retail division for a nominal sum, has been hired on a contract basis to run the stores pending their sale or closure. According to Deloitte, however, Woolworths stores will remain open, and its 30,000 staff will be paid at least until the end of the holiday season. In the mean time, buyers will be sought for part or all of the retail chain, and negotiations will continue to finalise the sale of 2entertain. See also Woolworths profile on Adbrands. 

Kitchen and bathroom seller MFI also gave up the ghost last night. It has already come close to collapse several times. It narrowly avoided falling into administration in September this year, when it was acquired by its management team for a nominal sum. However, performance has continued to decline since then. Unlike the Woolworths brand, which may manage to survive in a much reduced form, it seems unlikely that the MFI brand will re-emerge from this latest reverse. See also MFI profile on Adbrands. 

In other news, struggling auto giant General Motors is to end its endorsement arrangement with superstar golfer Tiger Woods next month, a year ahead of schedule. Woods has served as brand ambassador for GM's Buick brand for nine years. Both parties said the split was amicable. GM cited "the search for budget efficiencies during a difficult economy", along with Woods' desire to spend more time with his family - his wife is expecting their second child. For his part, Woods will hardly miss GM's buck - as one of the sporting world's most prolific endorsers, he is thought to earn as much as $100m  a year from tie-ups with Tag Heuer, Nike, Gillette, Gatorade and others. Also this week, multi gold medal winning swimmer Michael Phelps, one of the heroes of this year's Olympics, has signed up to promote Subway sandwiches, a switch from his summer sponsor McDonalds. LG Electronics signed off on a multi million dollar sponsorship deal with Formula 1 motor racing. See also Buick, Subway, LG Electronics profiles on Adbrands. 

There were a number of significant management changes announced this week. Retail behemoth Wal-Mart announced that group CEO Lee Scott will step down at the end of January 2009, to be succeeded by Mike Duke, currently head of the group's international division. Eduardo Castro-Wright, now CEO of Wal-Mart USA, will become vice-chairman, with responsibility for US and international business. Chris Kempczinski, previously VP, marketing for non-carbonated beverages at Pepsi-Cola North America, is to join Kraft as SVP, meals & enhancers. Polly Cochrane, the outgoing marketing chief for UK broadcaster Channel 4, is to join Warner Bros UK as group marketing director with responsibility for video, games and consumer products as well as film. Colin Clarke joined Visa Europe as SVP, brand management. See also Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, Warner Bros, Kraft, Visa profiles on Adbrands. 

Panasonic's proposed takeover of consumer electronics competitor Sanyo is in doubt following the withdrawal from negotiations of Goldman Sachs, one of the smaller company's biggest shareholders. Goldman sources suggested that the two sides differed widely on their respective valuations of Sanyo. See also Panasonic profile on Adbrands. 

In the beer market, independently owned Anglo-Indian brew Cobra put itself up for sale. The business was founded and is still owned by entrepreneur Karan Bilimoria, who was knighted in 2006 and is now The Lord Bilimoria of Chelsea. Diageo is said to be among the possible buyers. See also Diageo profile on Adbrands. 

In an intriguing development, Procter & Gamble has acquired a small shareholding in Ocado, the British online grocery retailer which operates a strategic partnership with the supermarket group Waitrose, owned by John Lewis. The US packaged goods giant acquired a 1% investment stake for around £5m. See also Procter & Gamble, John Lewis profiles on Adbrands. 

In the news this past week: Agencies

Ogilvy & Mather appointed Khai Meng Tham as worldwide creative director and chairman of its global creative council. He was previously Ogilvy's regional creative director for Asia. Tham takes up his new job in January at the same time that Miles Young ascends to the role of Ogilvy's global CEO. Also, the future of Lowe London (and indeed the Lowe network in general) looks rather more uncertain as a result of the announcement that executive creative director and managing partner Ed Morris will step down from day-to-day management of the company early next year. He is expected to switch to some sort of consultative role. Aegis Media appointed Martyn Rattle to a new role as chief client officer, with overall responsibility for all international and global client teams in both Carat and Vizeum. See also Ogilvy & Mather, Lowe, Aegis Media profiles on Adbrands. 

The London-based independent agency formed in 2007 from the merger of RPM3 and Beechwood has finally got around to changing its name. For the last year or so it has laboured under the unimaginative banner of RPM3Beechwood. As of this week, however, it has adopted the new title of Libertine, an homage to the renowned 18th century randy dandy, the Earl of Rochester (immortalised on film in recent years by Johnny Depp). We bet their Christmas party this year will be a blast. See also Libertine profile on Adbrands. 

Interpublic's media division triumphed over Starcom in the consolidation of US media for the Miller and Coors beer portfolios. IPG will create a dedicated unit in Chicago to handle the business, worth around $400m in annual billings. MC Media will combine talent from IPG's Initiative and Draftfcb units, as well as from the outdoor company Kinetic, owned by WPP. Tim Spengler, president of Initiative USA, will take on an additional role as chairman of MC Media. Bob Bernstein, previously Draftfcb's chief media officer, will be managing director. The following day, MillerCoors also announced it has asked Coors agency Draftfcb to handle a one-off creative brief for Miller Lite, whose agency of record is BBH. See also MillerCoors, Initiative, Draftfcb profiles on Adbrands. 

In other assignments, Panasonic called a pan-Euro review of creative, out of Amsterdam Worldwide (the former StrawberryFrog in Europe). Starbucks confirmed BBDO New York as its new creative shop. Australian supermarket giant Coles appointed DDB to its advertising account. News International switched creative for The Sun and News of the World tabloid newspapers to WCRS, from Euro RSCG. For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. See also Starbucks, BBDO, Coles, DDB, WCRS profiles on Adbrands.

In the news this past week: Media

Rupert Murdoch had harsh words for those publishers and editors who predict that newspapers will soon become obsolete. On the contrary, he said in a radio lecture delivered last week in his native Australia, many newspapers will in fact achieve greater success than ever before in the 21st century, but only if they broaden their scope beyond their traditional format onto a digital platform. "If you discuss the future with newspapermen," he said, "you will find that too many think that our business is only physical newspapers. I like the look and feel of newsprint as much as anyone. But our real business isn't printing on dead trees. It's giving our readers great journalism and great judgment. It's true that in the coming decades, the printed versions of some newspapers will lose circulation. But if papers provide readers with news they can trust, we'll see gains in circulation – on our web pages, through our RSS feeds, in emails delivering customised news and advertising to mobile phones." See also News Corp profile on Adbrands. 

Facebook has been involved in talks to acquire the micro-blogging site Twitter. According to reports, it has offered around 3.3% of its own stock to buy the business. Based on the valuation placed on the privately owned Facebook's worth when it sold a small shareholding to Microsoft last year, that would give Twitter a valuation of as much as $500m. That price tag staggered market observers, considering that Twitter has yet to make any money at all. Even more surprising perhaps was the fact that Twitter's owner Biz Stone appears to have declined the takeover, saying he prefers to remain independent.

As always, if you haven't already done so, please confirm your subscription to the free Adbrands Weekly Update by clicking here or on the link at the foot of this email. Thank you for your assistance! 

Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands

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