Some advice for advertising agency WPP group plc
March 27, 2009
Here’s some real advice, and the problem is actually structural Sir Martin. Stop duplication of your advertising agency assets.. call yourself WPP group plc and not Ogilvy, Enfatico and 20 other agencies within walking distances of each other in the New York alone with the hopes that Dell will jump ship from WPP Enfatico and move to WPP Ogilvy because the names are different.
Right now your paying rent to hundreds of thousands of square feet that you are not using. Nor will you ever use. So to pay the rent you fired the people that were supposed to occupy that rented space. Get your one big office per city… and be done with it.. not 20 offices 2 feet from each other… all of them 3/4th empty. You have 10 year leases on 3 year contracts… this has to stop.
Seriously think about what you are doing… you have multiple brand names… each of them tarnished with layoffs that show signs of gross management incompetence. All in the same city…. paying multiple phone bills.. multiple internet bills.. multiple heating and cooling bills.. multiple everything… for what… so you can have a different sign over the door in the hopes that Dell will leave Enfatico and move to Oglivy?
For an Advertising Agency you seem not to know when you need to re-brand yourself.
What you didn’t think we had a camera in your office when you were planning on firing everyone?
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Blockbuster is dead
March 26, 2009
Blockbuster has unveiled a plan to demand on-demand movies to TiVo users. Putting the uninnovative company with a long list of competitors, such as Netflix, Hulu, CBS.com and other online sites.. basically every site in the searchelection index (a site that uses Google to index content providers for TV shows and Movies).
This is bad overall, the problem is that Blockbuster as a company has very little options. Their retail video business is dying… they have very little in terms of revenue stream from other sources. In essence the company has little in terms of options. In our opinion they have a horrific online presence.
Years ago the joke used to be “the only people making money are the guys at blockbuster and u-haul… U-Haul because everyone was moving out… and blockbuster because the movie theater shut down”… now people can’t sell their house to move… and Blockbuster is in trouble.. not because the movie theater is open.. but rather because there are about 2000 other ways to get your movies and videos.
They tarnished their names in the 80′s and 90′s with a million surcharges… late fees.. and everything else under the sun… now they are trying to repair their name .. change their business model… and change their image… at the same time trying to get out of retail… all during the mother of all recessions..
I predict they won’t see 2010 …
Many people just hit the “on demand button” on their remote control to see a movie… or they turn their browser to Hulu.com… perhaps a good question to ask yourself… when was the last time you were in Blockbuster? This parking lot is on a Saturday afternoon…. notice something… we don’t.
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AIG to spend 1 billion taxpayer dollars on rebrand
March 26, 2009
AIG just can’t stop spending taxpayer money. The failed company is now rebranding themselves at a staggering cost estimate of at least 1 billion tax payer dollars to AIU Holdings Ltd.
That’s right, you as a taxpayer no longer own AIG you own AIU Holdings Ltd.
Our sources have stated that the re-branding costs alone for AIG / AIU (George Parker said it should be called IOU not AIU)
The your looking at massive costs, not only in signs, but stationary, business cards, sports team promotions, paying the million dollar voice overs for the phone systems… etc etc….. this is going to be a massive cost… from what we understand you’re looking at roughly 1 billion dollars when all is said and done.
Rebranding is one thing, but at a time when the company is supported by my tax payer dollars going to some random ad agency … this is outrageous…
Do they need a rebrand… yes their name is ruined.. do they need a rebrand when they are on my tax dollars? The answer is no.
This is what I think about rebranding on my dollars.
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New Google Maps Ad
March 26, 2009
Classic . An 18-year-old has secretly painted a 60ft drawing of a penis on the roof of his parents’ £1million mansion in Berkshire. It was there for a year before his parents found out. They say he’ll have to scrub it off when he gets back from travelling.
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Schwarzenegger shuts down Sacramento Hooverville
March 25, 2009
Evidently Schwarzenegger feels that the fairgrounds is a better place for Hooverville than Sacramento. Earlier we reported on Hooverville’s appearing throughout the country at an alarming pace, however this is starting to get out of hand when state governments are starting programs to simply shift the problem out of site rather than fixing the root of the problem.. unemployment.
We know we are in the mother of all recessions, but there is no excuse for the still wealthiest nation on the planet to have homeless children living in squalor. It’s reckless and breeds a lack of hope for our young.
March 25 (Bloomberg) — California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said a make-shift tent city for the homeless that sprang up in the capital city of Sacramento will be shut down and its residents allowed to stay at the state fairgrounds. Full Story
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WPP GROUP PLC - downgraded to negative
March 25, 2009
It appears that WPP group plc is now downgraded to negative. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services took the first step toward a possible downgrade of U.K.-based advertising agency WPP PLC (WPPGY), saying earnings weakness will hinder efforts to pare debt. This is French for more firings, more downsizing and more bad times ahead for employees.
It also cut WPP’s short-term ratings one notch to A-3.
Lowering its rating outlook on WPP group plc to negative “reflects our view that the significant deterioration of economic and advertising conditions worldwide may lead to significantly slower-than-expected deleveraging at WPP, and even to increased leverage in the short term,” said S&P credit analyst Melvyn Cooke.
The ad giant’s balance sheet is burdened by its mainly debt-financed acquisitions in pretty much the wrong industries. It allocated huge sums to purchase firms that have limited experience online or the wrong experience online.
It’s what happens when your “future ad agency” misses the future.
The impending downgrade will limit their ability to raise funds on decent terms. Story is developing…
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Tribble to challenge the newspaper bailout
March 24, 2009
Newspapers to get bailout - blogs want same deal. It appears that a bill in the Senate is aimed at bailing out Newspapers, online bloggers want the same deal for their sponsorship deals. Honestly at this rate we’ll be bailing out Sir Martin and Wpp Group plc.
Under the arrangement that is floating around the Senate, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.
So why the bailout for newspapers? Because bloggers and online news outlets such as Tribble, Media Bistro, Gawker, Politico, Sqlspace and others are attracting the lions share of news… respective of each industry.
So the question to be asked is, where is our bailout since they are handing it to the competitors and why is WPP group plc mentioned as the title? It’s because that advertising agency holding company places a substantial number of their clients budget with newspaper inserts and ads…. meaning that the reason the newspapers are failing is because of a mis-allocation of resources… see the newspapers should not be failing… they should have already failed years ago…
Stop propping up failed industries Washington…. the problem isn’t the lack of news.. the problem is the source of the news.. it’s coming online… Media Bistro for example has several dedicated reporters… so does Gawker… so does politico… so does Huffington Post…
This is what’s called a technological revolution that took place over a decade ago with Matt Drudge breaking the Monica / Clinton affair… So here’s our response… if you are going to bail out newspapers.. bloggers want a bailout as well… we want all our advertising revenue to be tax free… and we want to be treated as a newspaper…. complete with press pass.
In fact, if this bill goes forward… we’ll challenge it…. by claiming for all 50 cents this site earns via adsense that we are an online newspaper.
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The next big bubble
March 23, 2009
Sorry about the bad spelling on this article.. it’s another post via a cellphone. Layoffs will continue for all of 2009 and part of 2010…. and though many are facing hardships and will continue to face hardships.. but the fact is that the worst of the recession is over. The root of the problem is that banks were not lending money… but slowly that is changing.. some businesses are seeing a small number of approvals… refinancing is experiencing a mega boom… TARP is working …slowly.. but working.
Now the tricky part… two things happened… bad things… during this mess… no one spent money.. leaving piles of cash in peoples pillow cases…. and the feds printed alot of money…. meaning that there is going to be a mass influx of cash into the economy that will make the 1970′s look like a walk in the park.
But it’s going to coupled with some .com like booms…. like in the 1990′s.. remember… they printed a massive amount of cash… and the savings rate hit the roof… So expect inflation with some bubble… so whats the bubble? us advertisers want to know so we can target the boom and ride it until it crashes…. cynical..yea.. but truthful.
everyone is screaming its going to be ‘green’ or ‘energy’… well maybe… but chances are it won”t.. because they screamed that in the 70′s as well.
It”s going to come at you sideways.. just like all bubbles.. some mix of tech, cash and business plan will spark it.
my guess is that it will be offline.. but because of the internet the barrier to entry is greatly reduced… lets face it .. we all Have access to buid anything you want.. information on how to build it is easy to find.. or the people to do it..
so whatever the bubble.. it”s gonna be wicked…
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ACTIVE DATA CALENDAR 3.7 IMPROVES DATA SHARING, FIGHTS INFORMATION OVERLOAD
March 23, 2009
Bethlehem, PA – March 18, 2009 - Active Data Exchange, a leading provider of event calendaring solutions, announces the release of Active Data Calendar 3.7, designed to further integrate and share data with SharePoint 2007, Microsoft Project Server, other portal software, content management systems, and applications.
Active Data Calendar is a web calendar that aggregates events, deadlines, and milestones into an easy-to-use master calendar and central event database that gives enterprises, departments or individuals the power to view filtered event dashboards based on their criteria. Advanced filtering and configuration features makes Active Data Calendar a powerful tool for planning and promoting dates, events, schedules, campaigns and initiatives that are important at the enterprise, regional, or unit level.
The new release of the Active Data Calendar product suite provides the ability to configure internal attributes for calendar events and event registration tracking. These configurable attributes can be used in Active Data Calendar’s out-of-the-box event publishing tools or in its extensible import and export tools. Features added to various modules of the Active Data Calendar product suite include:
- Zip Code Proximity searching for easy search by distance options
- Configurable internal event management fields for tracking internal event information
- Ability to add ‘County’ to the Domestic Location Address
- Interval scheduling to easily add appointment slots
- Capture administration information about registrants
- New comma separated list fields allowing for more specific internal registration filtering
- Ability to add registrants from within the administration area
- Ability to allow mandatory, single or optional registration for grouped events.
“We see a tremendous need to consolidate the silos of calendar information across an organization’s information systems. This version provides the ability to better aggregate information from various sources and present them in a way that is meaningful for planning, communications and alignment of key initiatives for our customers. We expect a tremendous growth opportunity for our vision of enterprise calendaring to improve workforce productivity.” said Active Data Exchange CEO, Susan Yee.
About Active Data Exchange
Active Data Exchange has been providing enterprise web-based event marketing and facilities scheduling software, email and text message broadcasting solutions and information broadcasting solutions for education, healthcare, government and corporate organizations since 1999. Products and services include Active Data Calendar, Active Data Communicator, and Active Data Syndicator. Clients include Anheuser-Busch, Excela Health, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Minnesota Department of Veteran’s Affairs, Baylor College of Medicine, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, National Government Services, North Carolina State University, Temple University and others.
For more information, please visit www.activedatax.com.
CONTACT: SUSAN YEE
Phone: (610) 997-8100
Email: [email protected]
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advertising agencies ‘going broke’
March 22, 2009
Excuse me for any horrific spelling in this article as it’s being posted via a cell phone. Watching CNBC this morning one of the talking heads said ‘advertising agencies are going broke’ .. I could’t agree more.
What actually triggered the agreence isn’t what you would expect. It was because of all the self promtional ads on the network. not ads for clients..but rather ads for themselves.. meaning that they had massive amounts of unbought ad space… so they were running ads for themselves..
this means that no ad agencies were buying spots.. and none of their clients were.
enjoy the recession..
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