Back in February, we conveyed former Deutsch President Steve Dworin was suing Donnie Deutsch because he felt Deutsch had broken a "non-disparagement" agreement the two signed when Dwarin left Deutsch on 1994 becasue of things Deutsch wrote in he recent book, Often Wrong, Never in Doubt. Now AdWeek reports a formal document was filed yesterday in Superior Court in Union County, New Jersey suing Donnie Deutsch, Deutsch CEO Linda Sawyer and the agency for $56 million.
The suit proves to be juicy with Dworin calling Deutsch "emotionally unstable" and ego-manial," claiming Deutsch used drugs, claiming Deutsch was given the agency by his father "on a silver platter with a silver spoon," implying Deutsch was jealous of Dworin for making the agency successful, angry that Deutsch said hiring Dworin was "his biggest professional mistake" and claiming Deutsch overslept, missed meetings and shirked his responsibilities.
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Commenting on GM's $10 billion loss and its subsequent employee layoffs and buyouts, Beyond Madison Avenue, while feeling GM worker's pain, tells them they have it pretty good compared to the rest of us, certainly those of us in the ad industry where a layoff consists of a couple weeks severance and an empty promise of a referral. Beyond Madison Avenue says GM workers should take the money and move on, go back to school, switch industries and be happy they have it better than us. Michael Moore would, no doubt, see it very differently.
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You know, on one hand you have to respect the likes of Lee Clow and Alex Bogusky for the successes they've had and the successes they've built in the form of their agencies but, on the other hand, for some reason when these two sit in the same room with each other to discuss the definition of advertising, advertising agency and then end up trying to define the future of film while coming to no conclusions, it leaves one, well, disappointed. Granted, a three minute video segment isn't a lot of time but if these are the best nuggets the editors were able to find, it leaves one, well, disappointed. We do, however, love how the water glasses suddenly turn into wine glasses and Lee wastes no time imbibing. But, whatever. You know, you and I would give anything to be in the positions these two hold so any complaints we may have just come off as the jealous rantings of an underachieving wannabe. So we're going to pretend we didn't say anything at all about this and simply bow down at the feet of our masters.
Thirty years ago, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales founded The Prince's Trust to help change the lives of underprivileged or troubled 14-30 year olds in the UK through financial and practical support. Twenty years ago, ATTIK Co-Founder James Sommerville and his partner Simon Needham were among those granted assistance by The Prince's Trust. Last Thursday evening, at a Buckingham Palace fundraising dinner reception held for supporters of The Prince's Trust from the UK and USA, James was given the Honor of thanking Prince Charles for his support, on behalf of the 60,000+ businesses impacted by The Prince's Trust since 1976. See, now isn't that a happy advertising story?
This made the rounds last week but it just fell off our radar because, well, it doesn't really have to do with advertising except that the director of this music video for Junkie XL, Glenn Cole, is partner and creative director at LA agency agency 72andSunny and the very very persistent PR person had some influence as well.
Oh, to connect the dots even more, the PR person tells us it's a "cool ad story because the video's director Glenn Cole and Junkie XL first hooked up together in 2002, when Glenn was a CD with Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam and hired Junkie XL to remix the Elvis track 'A Little Less Conversation' for a Nike World Cup 2002 commercial. The two have remained friends and frequent collaborators ever since." It's all about who you know.
AdCritic has launched a new free feature called Face2Face, a video series that will feature ad luminaries speaking with one another. For the launch, AdCritic has placed the old and the new up against one another. Lee Clow and Alex Bogusky, two people who might have a few tidbits of insight to offer, discuss the earth shatteringly important topic of what agency people wear to work. Let's hope future episodes get to meatier topics.
To prove there's life outside the walls of advertising, Amy Yvonne Yu, ATTIK San Francisco art buyer and traffic co-ordinator, has been named San Francisco's Best DJ in a contest hosted by SF Weekly and East Bay Express.The competition is part of the Ultra Music Festival which brings together music editors from metropolitan area news weeklies. Yu will now join the rest of the regional winners and travel to Miami's Bicentennial Park to mix with The Killers, The Prodigy, Paul van Dyk, Hot Hot Heat, Hard-Fi, Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox and Perry Farrell. There is life outside the cube.
Boston agency Hill Holliday has tossed its traditional site and launched a weblog. No, they didn't just add a blog to their already existing site, they ditched it entirely. Well, almost. They've done a wonderful job incorporating some of the usual capabilities and portfolio items into the header of the blog using Flash. The beauty of this approach, what many agencies still need to discover, will catapult Hill Holliday into the "conversation" about advertising. The site will get natural Google love, Technorati love and proliferation throughout the blogoshere's link-fest, something a static agency site can never achieve. And, most importantly, potential clients will get to know how HH thinks rather than how well they write website copy.
Other agencies such as W+K have great weblogs but we're not aware of any other major (yes, smaller ones have) agencies that have gone the all-blog format. We think this is great and we welcome HH to the conversation.
Just listened to the latest American Copywriter podcast from Sullivan Higdon & Sink's John January and Tug McTighe during which they have some fun with Crispin Porter + Bogusky's latest bit of news. Riffing on the announcement that CP+B is opening an office in Boulder, CO, John and Tug get to the heart of the matter: Alex is sick of South Beach and wants to raise his kids in the family-friendly mountains. As always, John and Tug are hilarious. Give it a listen here.
Oh, and guys, CP+B does do a podcast. Check this out.
Advertising For Peanuts highlights and ongoing self-promotional campaign, Bang the Streets, for Modernista, the Boston agency that just won a big chunk of Cadillac business. The campaign encourages people to place the agency's trademark red exclamation point, which the agency will send to anyone that requests it, anywhere they like, take a picture of it, send it in and Modernista will highlight it on the Bang the Streets site. Potential Photoshop trickery and defacing public property issues aside, We kinda like this campaign.
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