Media Bistro’s new site

http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy

PLEASE VISIT: http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy

Love us or hate us, Down Low and myself are moving over to the Mamabistro site as of right now. FIND US HERE. No wukkas. There are full RSS feeds and a comments system ready to roll. The comments require you to register, but you know, most of you are making up the contact info anyway, so just do it again, yeah?

We will both miss this lovely WordPress site. I, especially, as this is where I launched this Agency Spy madness. Back then I thought it would be just a side gig. Now, it’s a lifestyle. Thank heavens for Down Low. Two is better than one for sure.

Thank you readers for making this blog fantastic! We hope that we’ve managed to entertain you; inform you (at least once in awhile), make you chuckle, get you commenting or thinking about all the advertising stuff that gets swept under the carpet (rigged awards, overlooked genius’, agency machinations). We hope we’ve been fair, too. Layoffs we try to tackle sanely. We skip all those tips about adulterous CDs. Don’t send us that stuff. We’re not going to post it. We also apologize when necessary. You can find a few of those within our just under 1650 postings. Whew. That many? You can also find some great ideas, shout-outs, applause or observations and not just from us, but from you, the readers. Often, you guys know better or more than we do, which is awesome. This two way street rocks.

We’re gonna keep this shit going as long as you’ll have us. So, before I get all weepy let’s shut this soliloquy down with a quote from The Game and 50 : “And I ain’t going no where/ So you can get to know me.” Amen.

x. Super Spy

David Hasselhoff’s Death Or Disgrace Clause

In case you missed it… Christ. The Hoff. Love it.

Back end to this spot is that normally, celebs sign a “death and disgrace” clause or separate contract. In the event of either of these things, the agency/brand gets their money back from the celebrity for tarnishing the brand. However, Hoff (being Hoff) was expected to fuck up and so, was not forced to sign. The spot went forward with agency Karmarama behind the wheel.. Don’t you know that David, just a day before the shoot, broke his arm by falling off a bike? Look closely at the spot and you can catch a glimpse of his black cast.

Love this kind of stuff. A reader suggested we ask you creatives for the details behind some of your favorite celeb commercials. Come on… did you watch Beyonce’s wig come off? Did you see Brit Brit puke while shooting a soft drink spot? Do tell… Email yeah? agencyspy at gmail dot com

It’s Super Spy Bitches

I took a week off, which left Down Low in charge of keeping it real on Agency Spy. As of this post, I’m back in full effect. I’ve missed you guys. No for realsises.

Just a note to you dear readers: we will be moving to the Mamabistro home site by EOD. Don’t panic! There are full RSS feeds and comment capabilities over there, too. Yes, yes… there’s advertising, as well, but come on, right? We’re in the biz. You know someone has got to pay these bills.

So, hopefully, you’ve had a good week? I hope so.

Super Spy

The Carnival culling continues…

alliteration is fun for a Friday…

Following up a previous story, seems Carnival is now down to three shops as contenders for the $70+ million account.

Slated to travel to Miami late next month for the final round are Interpublic Group units Deutsch and McCann Erickson, both in New York, and Havas’ Arnold in Boston.

Shitcanned from contention were the New York offices of Omnicom Group’s BBDO,  MDC’s Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, Havas’ Euro RSCG and IPG’s DraftFCB.

Will Ferrell is killin’ that shit…

Funny or Die, a LA & Palo Alto-based comedy video website (think “Funny  Ha-ha Youtube“) founded by Will Ferrell, celebrated its first birthday yesterday — and in typical LA “How good am I?” fashion told everyone how well they were doing by releasing new numbers on its traffic.

According to Funny or Die, it has had over 200 million video views, over 30 thousand videos uploaded, and averages 3.2 million unique visitors per month.

The firm, which is venture backed by Sequoia Capital, said that it is planning on making changes to the site’s design and content over the next few months to add new content, and provide more reasons for users to return to the site daily.

Funny or Die was founded by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Chris Henchy, and also recently added director and producer Judd Apatow (director of “Superbad” & “The 40 Year-old Virgin”) as a Principal Partner at the firm.

Mitsubishi Rumblings…

What have you heard..?

Because we heard that Dallas-based agency Temerlin-McClain may be scooping up Mitsubishi from BBDO West.

Last year, TM merged with Seattle’s Sedgwick Road and scored the American Airlines account.

So… any truth to the rumor? Go ahead and chime in.

Mars Direct (the candy bar…not the planet) chooses imc2

Mars today named a digital shop — imc2 based in Dallas — as the lead agency for all strategic planning, creative and media work on its customized candy unit Mars Direct, as well as for My M&M’s and My Dove brands.

Queue up Adweek for the details:

“The win marks the first time the division of the candy maker has selected an online shop to handle all media and planning duties, according to imc2, Dallas. It reflects a shift among marketers, where digital is emerging as the focus of marketing campaigns, the agency said.

“Our goal in conducting this review was to identify a single firm that could be a partner to Mars Direct regardless of medium,” said Jim Cass, gm of Mars Direct, in a statement.

Mars, Hackettstown, N.J., launched its customized candy business in 2006 with the help of DraftFCB, Chicago. Consumers could visit Mymms.com, then choose M&M’s by color and order personalized message printed on the candy shell. The concept was novel enough to persuade candy lovers to pay about $9 for a pound of M&M’s. Soon Mars expanded its capacity to meet personalized orders as demand grew.

Mymms.com initially handled seasonal messages for birthdays, holidays and special events. Today that business prints logos of Major League Baseball teams on M&M’s and has a business-to-business outreach for printing corporate logos on the candy pieces. Mars spent nearly $15 million on Mymms.com last year, up from about $5 million in 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.”

I guess it could be significant in regard to it being a digital shop that is leading it — but realistically, I’d assume most of the orders for this kind of stuff would come from the internet anyway, right?  Looks like Mars just decided to cut a step out by naming a digital shop as the lead agency (this is assuming that in no way does DraftFCB ever get considered a digital agency of course — which by their track record, pretty much fits the bill.)

Like the comments for the Dell account — $15 million may seem a lot — but it is including the media spend — so it is not all that big an account…unless they use it as a stepping stone to get their foot in the door and then start driving the direction of the main brands — not just the smaller subsidiaries.

Pump you up…

Three agencies are pumped up to compete as finalists in a review of creative advertising duties on Gold’s Gym.

The shops: Publicis Groupe’s Publicis & Hal Riney in San Francisco, Omnicom Group’s Zimmerman in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Havas’ McKinney in Durham, N.C. are juiced up for the account worth about $15 million a year. Final presentations are to take place sometime in May.

The winning creative agency will succeed independent Riester in Phoenix, which has handled the ad account for about three years.

Gold’s, a division of TRT Holdings, operates more than 620 gyms in 30 countries, including 520 in the U.S alone. The company is based in Dallas.

I <3 Google Mail

So since I have my own Gmail account tied to this little blogging adventure I’m on — well you can say a fair amount of the mail that comes through is somewhat (hopefully) ad-related.

So the geeks amongst us know that Google makes money from the Gmail service by inserting advertisements into messages based in part on their content, effectively extending its AdWords program for presenting contextual ads in Web pages to e-mail.

So where does this lead me? To the greatest/funniest thing EVER!

“Advertising Agency - www.AdvertisingAgencySecrets.co.uk - Essential Information that your Ad Agency does not want you to know”

Now it is an irritating site for the plain fact that the dude, Chris Cardell, has a voice pop-up thing come on and start talking to you — and it froze my computer for the first 30 seconds so I couldn’t get the bastard to shut the fuck up.

More from his site:

“Chris Cardell is regarded by many as Britain’s leading Business Success expert. His claims that many small businesses are being conned into paying a fortune for Advertising that does not work have caused controversy. He has been featured on BBC, ITV, ‘News at Ten’ and The Sunday Times. In response to the huge demand for his skills, Chris is offering you FREE access to his special report ‘Why Most Advertising Does Not Work - 10 Essential Tips to Save a Fortune on Wasted Advertising’”

Now, I have never heard of the dude but if nothing else, he knows his SEO skills — cause he is about every fucking link down the page when you put his name into Google.

I have yet to get the report that you have to register for — but I can just imagine the “secrets” you’ll “learn” — hell I use them daily myself when taking on ad agencies (and usually win too.) — but the fact that he has pimped himself out using Gmail to undercut the BDAs is fucking AWESOME!