Hasta La Creative!

In news we missed yesterday, IPG Mediabrands appointed Mat Baxter as global CEO, Initiative.

Jim Elms, who previously served in the position, was named chairman of Initiative while taking on additional responsibilities as managing director, Interpublic. In the role, Elms will be tasked with driving increased collaboration between IPG Mediabrands and the broader Interpublic network. He will continue reporting to IPG Medibrands global CEO Henry Tajer, while also reporting to Philippe Krakowsky, chief strategy and talent officer of IPG and chairman of IPG Mediabrands. 

“Today marks an exciting new chapter for Initiative,” Tajer said in a statement. “Anyone who knows Mat will tell you that his energy, exceptional strategic skills and commitment to the business will instantly be felt around the Initiative network. Mat will enhance Jim’s long-term vision and client focus, and together, they will propel the network to new heights and reaffirm Initiative’s position as unexpected and daring. The best is yet to come.”

“Jim will be an important asset as we continue to increase the level of collaboration across the IPG network with our media offerings,” Krakowsky added. “Media increasingly serves as the connective tissue for the full range of marketing activities we deliver on clients’ behalf. In his new role at IPG, Jim will further enhance our ability to access resources from across the group so as to deliver on the promise of integration.”

Baxter was appointed as global chief strategy and creative officer IPG Mediabrands last August. Before that he spent over four and a half years serving as CEO for UM Worldwide, beginning in December of 2010. That followed a year and a half as chief strategy officer for MediaCom, following nearly five years as CEO, Asia Pacific for Naked Communications, where he was a founding partner.

“The opportunity to take an agency like Initiative and reshape it to best serve our clients and our people is a dream come true for me,” Baxter said. “Initiative is ideally positioned for growth and innovation – it has the all the capabilities and resources of a large full-service agency, but is nimble enough to allow for flexibility in how we service our clients.”

If someone asked you what sort of business would spark the next social media trend, odds are that the word pharmaceuticals would not come to mind.

Pfizer hopes to defy convention by capitalizing on its “Get Old” campaign–launched back in 2012–and introducing “FOGO“: fear of getting old.

The company thought that the initiative, intended to stimulate conversations on subjects like the challenges of aging, needed a boost. As reported in The New York Times, they traded original AOR SS&K in an effort to go HUGE.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

When the recession hit America with a huge thud, big business began to reconsider its residual income and closed up the budgets. Of course this hurt advertising agencies in a big way and many experts thought they would never recover, but this article from AdAge seems to contradict the naysayers once and for all.

Total spending among the 100 Leading National Advertisers (LNA) reached a record $108.6 billion in 2013, passing the previous spending peak set in pre-recession 2007.

Quick, call your clients…

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

American Honda Motor Company works hard to keep up with the competition but hasn’t been quite so successful in the hybrid space. Honda’s Prius equivalent may have been called The Insight, but the company recently pitted all three major holding companies against one another in the search for a bit more of that key noun.
Other campaigns have gone viral (shout out to Michael Bolton) and, according to AdWeek, Honda spends approximately $50 million on digital advertising each year.
Now who’s competing for that money?
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Anyone notice that the recent Taco Bell “Ronald McDonald” spot bears a very slight resemblance to this 2002 Secret Weapon ad for Jack in the Box?

Secret Weapon founder/creative director Richard Sittig did–and he told Felix Gilette of Bloomberg Businessweek all about it today.

You know you want some key quotes after the jump.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Well, our sources were correct in informing us that Emily Verkruyse, who spent a year-plus as engagement director at IPG Media Lab, has joined up with recently formed shop, Anvil + Gear. A+G, if you didn’t know was formed a year ago by Brian Lio and James Genero, who left positions at DDB (where they served as technical Director and UX director, respectively) to start a new agency solely dedicated to UX and experience design.

Verkuyse, who served as account manager at BBDO prior to joining Anvil + Gear, marks one of a few notable departures from IPG Media Lab along with Lesley Melincoff, formerly a project manager at said shop before joining up with Big Spaceship as a producer in June. During her career, Verkruyse has also worked at the likes of Night Agency.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

And so it continues with the industry reaction to Publicom Omnicis Prime or whatever the new entity is called nowadays. We’ve just obtained separate memos to staff sent this morning from IPG chairman/CEO Michael Roth and IPG Mediabrands CEO Matt Seiler regarding their competitors’ merger. The former prefaces his lengthy note with the headline “Too Big to Fail?” while the latter offers a few reasons why IPG is dandy along with a little hint of some good news to come very soon on the UM front. We’ll just leave you with this Seiler tidbit below and let you read Roth’s perspective after the jump.

Says the Mediabrands chief exec, “Later today, we will announce another new business win, this time for UM.  In the words of the newest IPG Mediabrands client, ‘scale matters, up to a point’…IPGMB is ‘big enough’  & then it’s about tailored service, which is where you rise above the rest.…”I think that says it all.” Read on what Roth has to say including IPG’s thoughts on major M&A efforts. We say it’s an interesting read.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.