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Underdog TNT Sports hits back - More About Advertising
TNT Sports is definitely the challenger brand in the UK TV sports market, more so than ever this season as the mighty Sky hoovers up even more matches. But Sky has rather lost its mojo as it promotes its (almost) monopoly in-house, treating football and footballers as god-like representatives of themselves, rather than the flesh
Former WPP commerce chief joins indie rival - More About Advertising
Where will they all end up? As the ad holding companies retrench - WPP's GroupM into WPP Media and Omnicom/IPG especially - there are going to be lots of capable people on the market. One such, Michelle Whelan, formerly chief client officer for VML in the UK and Geometry CEO at WPP - has surfaced
Too sexy for her jeans? Sydney Sweeney smashes woke ads - More About Advertising
Emmy-nominated actress Sydney Sweeney has shown a talent for courting and then brushing off controversy. She's a serious Hollywood player but she's also an old-fashioned "bombshell" who doesn't seem to mind too much when attention is focused on her body. As a result, she's been celebrated by the right wing for her anti-woke attitudes as
Gwyneth Paltrow answers Coldplay kiss cam questions for Astonomer - More About Advertising
Astronomer, the tech company that employed the CEO and head of HR caught in a clandestine clinch at a Coldplay concert recently, is capitalising on its unlikely sudden fame by bringing in Gwyneth Paltrow as a temporary spokesperson. Paltrow is the ex-wife of Coldplay singer Chris Martin (as well as being an Oscar-winning actress and
VCCP to the rescue in ‘Nothing beats near’ for Green Flag - More About Advertising
Green Flag’s USP is that its vehicles are manned by local technicians and supported by a network of local garages, so it can get to you quickly. VCCP illustrates this with the story of a driver who doesn’t believe Green Flag’s speedy promise, and goes on his own calamitous and ultimately futile journey to get
IPG-Omnicom: is leaked video a sign of things to come? - More About Advertising
This video has leaked out rather than come from official sources, so it might not be legitimate. But if it's real, it's a gloomy insight into the new IPG-Omnicom vision. What happens in this new world? At least someone admits that change is scary, but the tone and vocabulary are stuck in the old world.
Ark Agency wins premium Italian lager, Menabrea - More About Advertising
Menabrea, the premium Italian lager owned by C&C Group, has appointed Ark Agency to lead creative and strategic positioning for the brand. It follows the agency's appointment to another C&C brand, Magners, earlier this year. The lager has 170 years of history to build on, and has ambitions to carve out a distinctive presence in
Zenith wins Morrisons from WPP’s Wavemaker - More About Advertising
Mixed news for WPP's embattled media agencies this week: Morrisons has quit Wavemaker (formerly MEC) after 30 years but Weetabix has renewed with Mindshare after a closed pitch. Morrisons is moving to Publicis Groupe's Zenith, media moves between the two ad holding groups have been pretty much one-way recently. Publicis-owned Leo handles Morrisons creative. WPP
Pep Guardiola works his magic for TNT and Aldar in new season spots - More About Advertising
Manchester City had something of a fall from grace last season, but all seems to be forgiven as the team's charismatic manager, Pep Guardiola, features in two new ads this week. The first is for Aldar, which is the "official real estate partner" of Manchester City Football Club, so the Pep adulation is a given.
Apple’s creepy cat changes the picture - More About Advertising
Apple has mostly managed to stay on the right side of the privacy/fake news controversy but this new iPhone feature - where you can add/subtract/restore an element via your camera - may be seen by some as creepy. In this case a creepy cat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6RX9kJ01Kw Would have been catnip for dictators wishing to rewrite history
MAA Ad of the Week: Nike Jordan from W+K - More About Advertising
Nike and Wieden + Kennedy continue to be a powerful combination, and this ad is a joyful surprise that doesn't take itself too seriously. Instead, it wholeheartedly embraces the idea of sport as entertainment in celebration of 40 years of Air Jordan. "It's a hard knock life" from Annie provides a sharp soundtrack and the
Mat Goff, Ark Agency founder: ‘What a time to be alive’ - More About Advertising
What a time to be alive. Change, disruption, upheaval everywhere you look. Tectonic plates crashing about and smashing up the foundations that underpin the industry as we knew it. Century-old brands swept away, the citadels of the agency landscape crumbling before our eyes. Fertile conditions for the entrepreneurially minded, perhaps. Lots of chatter about this
KFC in the US fights back with crazy ‘obsessed’ Colonel Sanders - More About Advertising
Is nothing sacred? After not quite knowing what to do with him for years,KFC has given good ol' Colonel Sanders another innings in a new American campaign from Highdive, showing him and his monstrous 'obsession.' "The colonel lived so we could chicken," it says. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv8NRl-C3WA&t=4s KFC's Anna Faktorovich says: “Knowing the Colonel’s personality and how
Why looming LHF restrictions will be an inflection point for in-store retail media - More About Advertising
By Helen Johnson. From January 2026, any creative that features products classified as Less Healthy Food and Drink (LHF) - essentially HFSS products - will be banned from advertising on TV (including streaming services) before 9pm, and across all paid online advertising regardless of time. After months of uncertainty, it’s now confirmed that brand-led campaigns
Clarkson’s pub choir sets out to save the great British pub – and sell his beer - More About Advertising
Catch it now before it's banned - that seems to be the idea anyway as farmer Jeremy Clarkson debuts a farmer's choir, fuelled by his Hawkstone beer. The man's everywhere it seems, having it all ways as the harder it is for his businesses the more ratings his excursions on Amazon Prime attract. This time
Is Accenture interested in all or some of WPP? - More About Advertising
Campaign reports that meetings have taken place between Accenture, owner of Accenture Song, and WPP (subscription required). WPP (above) and Accenture Song are in the process of bedding in new leaders: Cindy Rose who's taking over from CEO Mark Read and Ndidi Oteh at Song succeeding David Droga. Accenture big boss Julie Sweet is reported
What’s in a name? Leo Burnett UK rebrands to Leo - More About Advertising
Creative agency names have diverted us over the years: when they really were names over the door London at one point London boasted Beavis Shrimpling and Softly (which sounded like lots of things, not necessarily an ad agency) and Beverly Fowler Maslin Oxlade & Starkey, a contender for longest. There was also, of course, the
Quebec trumps Trump - More About Advertising
Quebec in Canada - which they're calling Eastern Townships for some reason here, less French? - depends to a degree on American tourists and, as we all know, that cosmic-sized bully Donald Trump is giving Canada a hard time, vowing (amongst other notions) to make it the 51st state of the union. But not all
LADbible co-founder Arian Kalantari launches Plus1 Assembly - More About Advertising
LADbible co-founder Arian Kalantari is launching Plus1 Assembly, a global innovation agency designed for brands that want to lead culture, not follow it. United by a shared sense of deep frustration with the legacy agency model, the new agency’s co-founders have designed Plus1 to be the agency they all wished existed: agile, adaptive and engineered
The train ad now waiting at platform one may not reflect reality - More About Advertising
There's often a dislocation twixt what you see in the ads and humdrum reality: never more so than in the current spate of train ads, all over the UK airwaves. So you have office-bound drones escaping to the seaside from Greater Anglia and Atomic. http://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GreaterAngliaTrains_40sec_Online.mp4 Famous five lookalikes off to the West Country from
Michael Farmer: how agency pay needs to change in the AI era – AI takes out 24% of current fees - More About Advertising
Credit: Jack Ziegler, The New Yorker, The Cartoon Bank A major holding company creative agency asked us to evaluate the Scopes of Work in one of its big-city offices. Here are the results — before we modeled the likely future effect of AI on their staffing and fees: Traditional Modeling Current income: $61.7 milllion from
WPP Open X turns the heat up for Sprite - More About Advertising
Handy to get a reminder that WPP still makes ads, with all the tech-this-and-that following the appointment of Cindy Rose from Microsoft as its new CEO. This is for Coca-Cola's Sprite from bespoke agency Open X (not so clever to give this a name so similar to WPP Open, its AI offering.) The pitch is
US store Bob’s Discount confronts the truth about DIY battles - More About Advertising
Forget interior design as the route to dream homes and aspirational lifestyles. Doing up your house is all about compromise, especially for couples, and Bob's Discount Furniture bravely confronts this reality head-on. Agency Gale has come up with an entertainment format that transforms a run-of-the-mill retail campaign into a six-part reality TV series that challenges
MAA Ad of the Week: Canal+AI from BETC Paris - More About Advertising
Clients have always been able to make their own ads, they didn't have to wait for AI. Placing them in the media without an agency (later a media agency) used to be the problem: broadcasters wanted to know you had the dosh. There were no such restrictions on content or where it emanated. So is
VCCP retains embattled Transport for London - More About Advertising
Transport for London has reappointed VCCP to its creative account, initially in a pitch against Accenture Song but then all on its own as Song's Accenture parent abandoned its DEI policies in a shameless piece of toadying to Trump. TfL is big on DEI it seems, just as it is on bombarding passengers with annoying
Unilever goes for AI over ‘Real Beauty’ in new Brandtech Group deal - More About Advertising
Tech and advertiser partnerships are everywhere, but a new tie-up between Unilever and marketing agency Brandtech Group is notable for its focus on the Beauty AI Studio, a move which seems to fly in the face of everything that Dove’s “Real beauty” has built over the last 20 years. Beauty marketing is all about high-volume
Cannes Lions puts the onus back on humans to stop cheating in awards - More About Advertising
Cannes Lions is wasting no time in attempting to salvage its reputation after the scandal around AI fakery in awards entries. CEO Simon Cook has already produced a new set of “integrity standards” which he promised only a week ago, soon after stripping three cheating campaigns of their awards. Cook has very sensibly taken the
What’s on Cindy Rose’s plate as she takes over at WPP? - More About Advertising
Don't think Cindy Rose featured on Paddy Power's list of runner and riders for the WPP CEO job (but the Irish odds-meister can hardly be an expert on ad holding company bosses.) Rose, currently a senior Microsoft exec, certainly ticks all the boxes for the job (required everywhere these days.) For a start she knows
Grey’s Chris Lapham and Aaron McGurk pick their Desert Island Ads - More About Advertising
HMM… WHAT TO TALK ABOUT? AHA!... INSPIRATION. The spark. The muse. The sudden touch of enlightenment. Whatever you call it, creatives are always on the hunt for it. Especially when staring at a blank screen for days with nothing but the thought of dinner rattling around inside their head. Yep, coming up with ideas has
Media is still a people business – as WPP is finding out to its cost - More About Advertising
When did the rot set in at WPP's giant GroupM media operation? Some may date it back to 2016 when the US Association of National Advertisers set out its thoughts on principal media buying (media broking on the sly), which it didn't like. In the same year WPP's MEC lost the giant AT&T account to
Cindy Rose from Microsoft takes over as new WPP CEO - More About Advertising
It's all happening at WPP this week: yesterday an unexpected profit warning, today a new CEO - Cindy Rose from Microsoft. Rose (below), currently chief operating officer, global enterprise at the tech giant, takes over in September. Rose is a former MD of UK consumer business at Vodafone and executive director of digital entertainment and
Frohlich moves into WPP PR hot seat - More About Advertising
There must have been times over the past few years when Chris Wade (below), WPP's top PR, felt he should don a tin hat as he entered WPP's gleaming South Bank HQ. The fall-out from Sir Martin Sorrell's acrimonious departure; successor Mark Read's travails as he tried to simplify WPP, poor results, Read's unpopular back-to-the
Specsavers boosts hearing pitch at home with the Whitehalls - More About Advertising
Specsavers is big into hearing these days and agency Golin London has signed up Hilary and Jack Whitehall (Jack's parents) to front a video and social campaign riffing on some research that appears to show the over-55s say 'what?' more often than they do 'I love you,' leading to arguments. But they would wouldn't they?
WPP hammered as disastrous trading update sets scene for incoming boss - More About Advertising
The wheels are well and truly coming off at WPP - CEO Mark Read is stepping down at the end of the year, likely sooner - with a new half year trading update showing the one-time market leader's problems are mounting. WPP says there's been a "deterioration in performance" over the first six months of
Cole Palmer haircuts join Nike’s scary football - More About Advertising
Nike's 'Scary Football' from Wieden+Kennedy presses on and here's Cole 'Cold' Palmer of Chelsea and England who, as we suspected, is one of the more notable examples. Palmer 'skins' opponents (it says here, well sometimes) and certainly looks the part beneath his Henry V haircut. Is he the first footballer to have another persona just
Lucky Generals gives Asda’s price bid a new/old spin - More About Advertising
Remember when supermarket advertising used to entertain us in the commercial breaks? Tesco led the way with, first, Dudley Moore and then its 'Dotty' campaign with Prunella Scales, via Lowe Howard-Spink. Sainsbury's inched upmarket as Tesco invaded its middle class territory with David Abbott at AMV steering it deftly through a diminishing gap, mainly with
Graham Fink: why I’m bringing back TheArtSchool - More About Advertising
Twenty years ago, I started TheArtSchool. Usually a half-day, in random locations, helping students trying to break into the creative fields. Kinda like a creative boot camp. We had guest speakers from advertising, design, film, acting, and comedy. There was tough talk. Great advice. And the energy levels were through the roof. Now, after a
KFC Canada goes traditional for finger lickin’ return - More About Advertising
Mother's outstanding work for KFC in the UK did only moderately at Cannes - maybe they should have backed it with reams of AI-written fake case history stuff. KFC in Canada is also pushing the boat out production-wise with this from with another indie agency Courage Inc., bravely bringing back 'finger lickin' good,' a slogan
From streets to strategy: how large format digital OOH outshines online video to redefine media planning - More About Advertising
By Steve Bernard, head of insight Ocean Outdoor. The media landscape has long been shaped by impressions and reach - but impressions aren’t attention, and reach doesn’t guarantee impact. Our recent study, The Attention Dividend, offers a data-driven prompt for media planners and advertisers to reconsider how premium large-format DOOH is valued in the context
What you get from MAA – and how you can contribute - More About Advertising
MAA has more than 40,000 visits a month - from the obvious centres London, NYC and the West Coast to everywhere in Europe; India , China, Australia and as far as the Sudan and Iran. It's reasonable to suppose that we provide something useful. Even diverting. One of our key sources of revenue, along with