The Ladders only wants monsters capable of really tearing things up.

Creative

“Buy any new Hyundai and if in the next year, you lose your income, we’ll let you return it,” says the Goodby Silverstein & Partners produced ad above. The ad supposedly illustrates Hyundai’s confidence in the consumer, and you know what, I kind of buy into it. Provided this isn’t some sort of runaround, I say Bravo!

Creative, Economic Meltdown

Recent FEC filings reveal that Google collected $7.5 million of the over $16 million Barack Obama’s campaign spent on online advertising in 2008. John McCain’s campaign spent only a total of $3.6 million in digital advertising.

Yahoo was the second biggest recipient of the Obama campaign’s online advertising budget at $1.5 million. Advertising.com (owned by AOL) received about $1 million. Social network Facebook took in over $600,000.

Industry News

Can anyone tell me why a reincarnated John Lennon is hawking laptops in the emerging world? I love the cause but the ad is creepy and disrespectful.

Creative

Engadget says that 15,000 Microsoft employees, primarly MSN, are scheduled to be laid off on January 15. This would represent about 17% of its worldwide staff.

Economic Meltdown, Industry News

It might be hard to believe but there are other car manufacturers out there, and they’re trying to cope with the recession too. Honda’s strategy: Hockey Moms! RPA rolls out a new campaign for 2009 to support Honda’s NHL sponsorship.

BMW’s strategy to declining sale: Raise Prices! This is a gamble on the price-insensitivity of BMW buyers. Maybe BMW knows something we don’t about the financial situation of their wealthy clientele in North America… or perhaps they’re trying to sell Acuras.

Industry News

Peep the stats in this research brief from Nielsen Online.

65% of people surveyed visit YouTube Mon-Fri 9am – 5pm
51% surveyed visit YouTube on the weekends 6am – 8pm

Everyone knows that people surf non-work related websites at work but even this Millennial was surprised by the survey results.

Trends

Since the first ad agency had its first client, agency employees have thought – “I could do this much better without these meddling idiots.”

And some of them actually did, but most just kvetched and continued on with the client work. Recently more and more agencies are building new brands from scratch that are 100% owned by the agency. These larks often act as proving grounds for new ideas that the agencies then use as case studies for their clients.

The New York Times published an article recently profiling a few of these agency projects including the blog, Fat Pig Chocolate.

These types of efforts are a natural fit for agencies facing ad spending cuts, and we can expect many more examples in 2009.

Read the article at NYTimes.com

Trends

Dell has announced that they will be starting 2008 with a new president. Jeff Clarke will be replacing Mike Cannon who was handpicked by Michael Dell in 2007. Canon will stay on as a consultant. Chief Marketing Officer Mark Jarvis, another a Michael Dell pick, is also getting the boot.

Sources told the Wall Street Journal that further cuts are coming soon.

This news means that WPP’s Enfatico, created to bring Dell’s global ad spending under one roof, is losing key supporters within the company. Dell’s $4.5 billion contract with Enfatico is set to expire in about 700 days. Many are speculating that Enfatico won’t make it that long. Either way the advertising agency has little time to improve their widely-criticized performance for the computer manufacturer or risk being forced into another round of heavy layoffs.

Economic Meltdown, Industry News