Mike Parsons from Tribal DDB

Omnicom Group Inc. Agencies Converge on Cannes and Emerge on Top

2009-07-01T09:24:00.001+01:00

Omnicom Group Inc. agencies led the top rankings at the Cannes International Advertising Festival this year across multiple categories.

For the first time ever, both the Titanium and Integrated Grand Prix went to one campaign, Obama for America, a collaboration between OMC's GMMB, campaign strategist David's Plouffe's AKPD Message and Media, and campaign staff. Commenting on the win, Advertising Age noted, "The Obama/Biden campaign, which won the Titanium and Integrated Grand Prix, was a decentralized, digital-savvy, open-source, grassroots effort through and through" with massive TV advertising used to generate brand awareness.

In addition, for the third consecutive year and in a very close race, BBDO Worldwide finished first and DDB Worldwide finished second in the Network of the Year competition. The award honors the top networks with the highest combined scores for entries in the Film, Press, Outdoor, Radio, Media, Cyber, Direct, Promo, Titanium and Integrated competitions.

DDB Brazil and DDB&Co. Istanbul also captured first and third place for Agency of the Year, while the Film Grand Prix, Outdoor Grand Prix and Radio Grand Prix were awarded, respectively, to DDB, TBWA and BBDO.

At the festival Goodby, Silverstein & Partners was named Interactive Agency of the Year, while Ketchum and DDB each picked up PR Lions in the newly created PR category. OMC agencies, including OMD, PHD, Proximity also distinguished themselves in media and LatinWorks was the only U.S. Hispanic agency to win a Lion in any category.

DDB scoops Golden Circle business

2009-06-25T09:18:00.000+01:00

DDB Melbourne has won creative duties on all of Golden Circle’s brands, which include an array of cordial, juice and tinned fruit products, B&T Today can reveal. Read more.

DDB leads UK entries on Outdoor Lions shortlist with Harvey Nichols work

2009-06-22T13:55:00.000+01:00

DDB London leads the UK pack with six shortlisted ads – two for Harvey Nichols' winter sale, three for its Bristol store and one ('global downturn') for the Financial Times. Read more.

H&R Block Moves $120 Million Account to DDB

2009-06-19T10:04:00.000+01:00

Tax preparer H&R Block has shifted its $120 million marketing account to Omnicom Group's DDB without a review, dealing a blow to the marketer's creative agency of nine years, Interpublic Group of Cos.' Campbell-Mithun. Read more.

IAB Showcase award for Tribal DDB London

2009-06-09T11:07:00.001+01:00

The IAB Creative Showcase Awards celebrate cutting-edge creativity and innovation within the online advertising sector. On this page we present to you this month's worthy winner, showcase information and other creative allsorts. For the month of May Tribal has taken the runners' up position for the GTI Golf site.

The site takes you inside a restricted access workroom in the Volkswagen factory, where the GTI engineers are racing their new car in miniature on a giant Scalextric track measuring 30x25ft, while recording your lap. Users have the opportunity to relive their boyhoods - taking control, crashing round corners, setting their own fast lap then challenging their friends to do better. This virtual track engages people with the real emotional reward of a GTI, not that it’s flashy, but that its fun.

Read more

DDB Dominates Effies: Agency Wins Twice Those of Closest Competitors and is Finalist for Grand Effie

2009-06-05T09:17:00.001+01:00

DDB took home 12 trophies at the Effies Awards gala last night at Cipriani's 42nd Street in New York City, a whopping six more trophies than any other agency won. Additionally, DDB's 'Unsnobby Coffee' campaign for McDonald's was one of the six finalists for the Grand Effie, the culminating honor of the evening. Impressively, every one of DDB's six U.S. offices was an award winner - the first time for DDB that an all-location sweep has occurred. The final DDB tally for the night was three golds, six silvers and three bronzes.

'Effies are incredibly important to DDB because they represent the essence of our business - marrying strategy with creative to generate results for our clients,' said Dick Rogers, President of DDB North America. 'And in particular, I'm gratified that all of our U.S. offices are award winners. This truly demonstrates our consistent excellence from coast to coast.'

The following DDB campaigns were winners:

Gold

Activision − "Call of Duty 4; World Leaders" - Influencers
Cars.com − "Plan B Not Required" − Internet Products & Services
McDonald's − "Unsnobby Coffee" − Beverages, Non-Alcohol

Silver

Clorox Green Works − "Just What the World Needs: Another Green Cleaner" −Household Supplies & Services
Clorox Green Works - "The Reverse Graffiti Project" −Influencers
Electrolux − "Be Even More Amazing" −Household Furnishings & Appliances
The Field Museum− "They Exist" - Culture & The Arts
McDonald's - "Unsnobby Coffee" − Restaurants
McDonald's - "Unsnobby Coffee" − David vs Goliath

Bronze

New York Lottery - "Everybody Wants a Little Bit of Luck" − Government/Institutional/Recruitment
New York Lottery - "Everybody Wants a Little Bit of Luck" − Renaissance
State Farm - "Intersections" - Hispanic

Ning: The future of online social networking?

2009-05-26T09:24:00.001+01:00

Whether you're into baseball or backgammon, Harry Potter or heavy metal, Ning has an online network for you. A fast-growing, free Web site launched two years ago, Ning lets members custom build their own social-networking platforms based around their passions and pastimes.

read more | digg story

Digg: Moving to Real-Time, Shouts Out, Twitter In

2009-05-26T09:22:00.003+01:00

During Digg's Townhall (embedded below) this evening, founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson announced that the shout feature on Digg will be removed later this week to be replaced with a new share option that will "streamline your ability to share on Facebook and Twitter."

read more | digg story

Deny This, Last.fm

2009-05-26T09:22:00.001+01:00

Last.fm didn’t hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it. Here’s what we believe happened: CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for “internal use only.”

read more | digg story

Microsoft To Launch $80M Ad Campagin To Attack Google

2009-05-26T09:21:00.003+01:00

The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market.

read more | digg story

How much is your identity worth?

2009-05-26T09:21:00.001+01:00

This cybercrime underworld is surprisingly easy to access. It consists of a network of online chatrooms and web forums where stolen information is openly traded, along with off-the-shelf software tools needed to pull off just about every kind of online scam going. "This is an economy that is worth billions of dollars."

read more | digg story

Google chief Eric Schmidt hints at partnership with Twitter

2009-05-21T09:35:00.001+01:00

Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, hinted that a partnership with Twitter could be close, although he dampened speculation that he is planning to buy the microblogging phenomenon.

read more | digg story

Media & News: The Impact of Digg on The Main Stream Media.

2009-05-21T09:34:00.005+01:00

Almost everyone in the media read Digg ( at least the top pages). This is yet another example of it. Keith Olbermann picked up a story from our very own Jason Leopold.From the transcript:" A document from the ACLU trove of records on this subject spotlighted today by Jason Leopold of Public Record.org."A reminder that bloggers do have an impact.

read more | digg story

Google Calculating Who's About to Quit

2009-05-21T09:34:00.003+01:00

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

read more | digg story

We must ensure a open network

2009-05-21T09:34:00.001+01:00

Net Neutrality.

read more | digg story

Larry Page on Real Time Google: We Have To Do It

2009-05-21T09:30:00.001+01:00

Is Google interested in searching the Real Time Web? Are they at all threatened by Twitter? Are Google spiders already so fast that this emergence of Real Time is old news to them? Further fodder for pondering these types of questions was offered by Google co-founder Larry Page today at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire, UK.

read more | digg story

Twitter Nixes Ads, Looks To Top Users For Revenue

2009-05-21T09:29:00.001+01:00

Twitter is looking at the top 5% to 10% of its users to pay for additional services and tools, while the majority continue to get the service for free.

read more | digg story

Was Google Hacked?

2009-05-18T17:12:00.001+01:00

Perhaps you may have noticed the seas boiling red with blood, the whore of Babylon rising, and the Antichrist roaming the Earth, strewing carnage in his wake. That's because Google (GOOG) crashed this morning. Yes, you read that right: Google went down.

read more | digg story

Why Social Media Revolts Take Place

2009-05-18T17:11:00.003+01:00

Actual Title: Why Social Media Revolts Take Place (and How We Might Prevent Them) This week, we were witnesses to Twitter (Twitter reviews)’s largest user revolt: #fixreplies. When options for @replies were taken away, we were reminded of the power of the users to group together using social media tools.

read more | digg story

Facebook Raises $150 Million to Buy Employee Shares

2009-05-18T17:11:00.001+01:00

Facebook has almost finished raising $150 million in capital, in an extraordinary move by the company to buy out shares of hundreds of regular employees.

read more | digg story

The New York Times And The Forces Of Creat

2009-05-15T15:14:00.001+01:00

As prospective buyers circle, and as the brutal commentary of financial analysts intensifies, the end of the Sulzberger-Ochs family's 113 year control of the New York Times -- through forced sale or bankruptcy -- has become an acknowledged possibility, with some well-informed observers suggesting that insolvency may be roughly a year or two away.

read more | digg story

Reasons Behind Google and IBM Being Ahead of the Competition

2009-05-15T12:49:00.001+01:00

The difference between IBM and Google and the rest of the tech world tells why they are successful

read more | digg story

Report: Apple Has Made $20 Million to $45 Million From Apps

2009-05-15T12:48:00.001+01:00

launched its iPhone application store in mid-2008, it pointed out that the company wasn't looking to make a ton of dough. It was more interested in creating a community that would help drive iPhone sales, a strategy that worked with the company's launch of iTunes and the iPod player. So far the strategy appears to be paying off - $20-45 mill!

read more | digg story

Google suffers major failure

2009-05-15T12:47:00.001+01:00

Google Search and Google News performance slowed to a crawl, while an outage seemed to spread from Gmail to Google Maps and Google Reader. Comments about the failure were flying on Twitter, with "googlefail" quickly became one of the most searched terms on the popular micro-blogging site.

read more | digg story

Google has just launched a new “search options”

2009-05-14T11:13:00.001+01:00

Google Launches Search Options, Declares Real-Time Search Biggest Challenge

read more | digg story