Please note: If you are attempting to view these ads shortly after receiving this mailout on a Thursday, you may find that the video streams run slowly because of heavy simultaneous demand from other Adbrands subscribers who have also just received the same email. Please wait for the ads to load before pressing play, or try again later. Apologies for any inconvenience.

The new Coca-Cola "Open Happiness" campaign broke at the beginning of this week, with a collection of new spots from Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam. Of the ones we've seen so far we like this film, "Library", best for its cool animation and sexy idea. You can see another mainstream spot, "Crave", on the Adbrands Coke brand profile page here. A third ad, "Avatar", also very cool, can be seen here.

Fallon London have a new "Glass And A Half Full Production" out for Cadbury. As with the seminal "Gorilla" and its follow-up "Trucks", this has nothing whatsoever to do with the Cadbury Dairy Milk brand, but is designed to capture your attention through pure oddball appeal. Those two kids are great, although we suspect that their eyebrows owe more to post-production animation than to their own muscular dexterity.

We've only just caught up with this terrific ad for Cisco Systems, by Ogilvy & Mather Los Angeles. It's a really nice way of communicating the virtues of a rather dry business-oriented product to a wider audience. 

It's Super Bowl Sunday this coming weekend. In anticipation, Grey New York has issued a compilation of so-called outtakes from its enormously popular Trading Baby campaign for E*Trade, which made its debut in last year's game. A new spot will run on Sunday. I guess you either love this idea or hate it. Have to say we rather like it. We hope to bring you our choice of the other best ads from the game next week, although sadly we are unlikely to be able to offer the two spots for SoBe and DreamWorks Animation which will be aired during the game in the miracle of 3-D. Reason enough just there for you to tune in. If you live in the US and you don't already have your free pair of 3-D glasses, better get a move on. There are around 125m pairs out there in circulation, available from most SoBe stockists. Hang onto them after the game, and check out NBC's Chuck sitcom on Monday evening. It too will air in 3-D.

One last point on the subject of videos. You may have noticed already that we've started adding embedded ads to selected profile pages on Adbrands.net. To access some of the more recent additions, visit our home page and follow the links to profiles carrying the red asterisk in the table of Recently Revised Brand Profiles & Snapshots. We also plan to host embedded showreels for agencies already featured on the site. Please email me if you're interested.

In the news this past week: Advertisers

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer unveiled a mammoth plan to get even bigger through a $68bn takeover of competitor Wyeth. If the deal goes through, it will be the largest in the sector for almost a decade, although it doesn't come close to eclipsing the effective $116bn price tag on Pfizer's 2000 takeover of Warner-Lambert. The acquisition is intended to boost Pfizer's performance over the next few years as it faces steep declines in sales of its leading product, the cholesterol-reducer Lipitor, which will lose patent protection in 2011. The brand is already under pressure from generic versions of other cholesterol-lowering drugs, and reported its second-consecutive decline in sales in 2008, albeit by only 2%. Wyeth's portfolio includes the pediatric vaccine Prevnar, arthritis treatment Enbrel and antidepressant Effexor. Its biggest attraction is that it is seen as one of the most successful of the traditional pharmaceutical companies which are turning themselves into biotechnology businesses. Prevnar and Enbrel are both biological drugs, based not on small-molecule chemicals but on living cells. These are much harder for generic manufacturers to copy, and therefore significantly reduce the long-term threat from patent expiry. The deal will also return Pfizer to the OTC sector for the first time since it sold its consumer healthcare division to Johnson & Johnson. That strategic decision is now considered by many observers to have been a mistake, making Pfizer entirely reliant on high-margin but also high-cost and high-risk prescription products. Wyeth manages a broad collection of OTC products including the painkiller Advil and vitamin supplements Centrum and Caltrate. Separately, Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3bn to settle a federal investigation into its alleged off-label marketing of the painkiller Bextra, now withdrawn. Also this week Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma launched a $1.1bn to acquire US biotech developer CV Therapeutics. See also Pfizer, Wyeth and Lipitor profiles on Adbrands.net.

Bank of America and Merrill Lynch remained in the headlines as concerns over the latter's 4Q losses and rushed-through bonuses became increasingly serious. Former Merrill CEO John Thain, who had been expected to run the merged group's investment banking and wealth management division, was ousted. He subsequently went on the record to defend his conduct over the year he spent at Merrill, in which the losses he was brought in to contain merely spiralled, reaching an astronomical $27bn for 2008, including $15bn in the last quarter. He claimed in an interview with CNBC that there was nothing he could do to prevent that deficit. "The vast majority of losses," he said, "were from the position that had been there since I started." Yet in December, a month earlier than usual, Thain rushed through staff bonuses totalling almost $4bn, including a lavish payout to himself, apparently in order to clear the payments before the company was taken over by Bank of America. Thain says that BofA CEO Ken Lewsis knew about the bonuses before they were paid. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday issued subpoenas to Thain and to BofA chief administrative officer Steele Alphin in an attempt to get to the bottom of the story. In particular, he wants to know just how much the BofA board knew about Merrill's spiralling losses, and also why they didn't block the bonus payout. "If [Bank of America] did a bad deal and didn't tell anyone," he said, "it not only hurt shareholders, it hurt taxpayers because of the government funding that has been extended to the bank." See also Bank of America and Merrill Lynch profiles on Adbrands.net.

One of the biggest jaw-droppers in the media coverage has been the revelation that Thain spent the extraordinary sum of $1.2m simply redecorating his office when he arrived at Merrill at the end of 2007. He acknowledged that this spending spree was, in retrospect, a "mistake" and offered to repay the sum. Meanwhile, Citigroup was forced to cancel its plans to buy a $50m executive jet after the new US administration expressed its opposition to any such profligate expenditure. According to a White House spokesman, President Obama "does not believe that is the best use of money at this point. That money should be used to lend to consumers". See also Citigroup profile on Adbrands.net.

Sony reported a 95% plunge in net profit for its 3Q, and said it expects to report its first annual loss in more than 14 years for the current financial year, which ends in March. Reversing a forecast made only three months ago, it now expects to report a net loss of as much as Y150bn, rather than the Y150bn profit it had anticipated. That change represents a swing from profit to loss equivalent to almost $4bn at current exchange rates. Several commentators drew unflattering parallels with Apple whose latest quarterly results showed strong continuing growth. However, while Apple contracts out most of its manufacturing to suppliers, Sony labours under the weight of 57 electronics factories around the globe, more than half them in Japan, where labour costs are not only high but hard to cut, because of the considerable stigma attached to companies which shed jobs. Sony's only previous loss was in 1995 when it was forced to write off its disastrous investment in movie studio Columbia Pictures. Sony was far from alone in the red. Korean electronics rivals Samsung and LG also reported losses for the last quarter of 2008. It was Samsung's first ever quarterly loss, and LG's first in almost two years. Nokia also reported plunging performance, with profits for last year down by 44% on the year before. See also Sony, Apple, Samsung and LG profiles on Adbrands.net.

Most other companies reporting this week painted a similarly grim picture of the general market environment. One of the comparatively few bright spots was Google, which reported figures that were actually much better than expected. Sales rose by a whopping 31% in 2008 to $21.8bn, almost all of it generated by advertising. Net income was more or less flat at $4.2bn, but only because this year's figure included a $1.1bn charge against the value of Google's shareholdings in AOL and ultra-high-speed ISP Clearwire. Stripping out that charge, net income would have jumped by around 26%. Another strong performer was IBM, whose revenues broke through the $100bn barrier for the first time, hitting $103.6bn. Despite a slowdown in the contribution from its hardware division, group net income jumped by 18% to $12.3bn. See also Google and IBM profiles on Adbrands.net.

Unilever is making a push into the professional haircare market with the acquisition of TIGI, the care and styling brand associated with hair salon group Toni & Guy. Unilever is paying around $412m for the TIGI product range, as well as its training division Advanced Education Academies. The founding Mascolo family are holding on to their Toni & Guy chain, but will continue to serve as consultants to the TIGI business. See also Unilever profile on Adbrands.net.

Anheuser-Busch InBev agreed to sell most of its 27% shareholding in leading Chinese brewer Tsingtao to Asahi Breweries of Japan for around $667m. Asahi will purchase a stake of around 20%; Anheuser-Busch InBev will retain the remaining 7%. Asahi already has a joint venture with Tsingtao to market its products in China. As previously reported, Diageo is in advanced talks to acquire a stake of around 15% in United Spirits, the dominant spirits marketer in India, which also owns Scottish whisky firm Whyte & Mackay. See also Anheuser-Busch InBev, Asahi Breweries and Diageo profiles on Adbrands.net.

Elena Ford, the great-great-granddaughter of the Ford Motor Company's founder, was named as its new director of global marketing sales & service. The role is a new one, but Ford will inherit most of the duties of Anne Belec, director of global marketing, who resigned last week. See also Ford profile on Adbrands.net.

In the news this past week: Agencies

Publicis Groupe has recaptured the global advertising account for French retail giant Carrefour, estimated at around E1bn globally. Currently, the business is managed in most markets including France by Havas, which itself won the account off Publicis in 2004. Publicis intends to create a new dedicated agency to take on the account in France to avoid a conflict with Carrefour's rival Intermarché, whose advertising is at Publicis Conseil. See also Publicis, Havas and Carrefour profiles on Adbrands.net.

In other account assignments, SABMiller called a review of advertising for its Pilsner Urquell beer, handled in the UK and most other markets by Ogilvy. Vodafone is reviewing creative in Germany. Incumbent JWT is pitching to keep the business, worth around E100m in billings locally. UK wireless retailer Phones4U appointed Adam & Eve for creative. Sony consolidated Latin American media into Mediaedge:cia. HP consolidated US advertising for its imaging and printing division with BBDO and Goodby Silverstein. For all other appointments, subscribers can access the full Adbrands Account Assignments database here. See also SABMiller, Vodafone, Sony, Mediaedge:cia, HP, BBDO and Goodby Silverstein profiles on Adbrands.net.

In the news this past week: Media

New Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz cheered the company's shareholders with an upbeat and punchy performance, as she discussed the company's disappointing results for 2008 in a conference call. Bartz clearly has a knack for soundbites. She quashed speculation that the company could be put up for sale, but said that she would consider strategic partnerships. "Everything's on the table," she said, "but this is a fantastic internet property, and it really doesn't deserve everybody trying to pick it apart. This is not a company that needs to be pulled apart and left for the chickens." See also Yahoo profile on Adbrands.net.

Following his purchase of London's Evening Standard newspaper last week, Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev is also reported to be in talks to acquire ailing broadsheet daily paper The Independent. Its owner, Sir Anthony O'Reilly, needs to raise funds to meet the May deadline for a E200m bond repayment. Several other assets held within his Independent News & Media group are also up for sale.

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

Forwarding this email to colleagues? No problem at all. The more the merrier as far as we're concerned. But we're also very happy to take that responsibility off your hands if you'd prefer it. Just drop us a line by return email with the addresses of your colleagues and we'll add them to our list. There's no charge, and don't worry, we won't send them anything else.