The 3-year-old Modernista office in Amsterdam will be closing, a move likely spurred by its loss of General Motors’ business doing creative for their Cadillac and Hummer brands.
Presented with the lose-lose choice of mass layoffs or a 2 week furlough BBDO Detroit is going with the lesser evil. Hopefully the payroll reduction can keep the office afloat long enough to fix the real problem, lack of work.
File under obvious but saddening: John Mangelaars, Vice President of Microsoft’s Consumer & Online International (COI) division for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that his employer isn’t counting on an online ad growth for a few years. Mr. Mangelaars attributed part of the slow to increased efficiency,
“A lot of laziness has gone away. If marketers are reaching their goals with [their current budgets], why would they spend more?”
One of the more subtle consequences of GM’s plan to shutter 1,100 dealers is the huge amount of ad dollars that will be disappearing from the local markets they serve. Many small to midsize agencies specialize in and depend on work from car dealers. Admittedly, these commercials are universally obnoxious but the fallout in the media industry will be much worse.
Marketers typically expect teens to keep spending in spite of economic turn-downs. Their parents often provide the essentials making all their spending discretionary. Ad Age breaks it down for you.
Yahoo announced that it will lay off 5% of its workforce as part of a drastic cost cutting effort. Yahoo’s 2009 Q1 net income declined 78% from last year. The latest round of layoff’s will be the company’s third round in about a year.
Burger King is taking advantage of declining media costs by increasing its ad spending by more than 10 percent. It estimates that the extra dollars together with the declining price of media will raise its impressions by 20% – 25%.
Burger King is not only betting on a lot of consumers trading down to fast food during hard economic times but they are also placing a big bet on leveraging cheap impressions during a down market to position themselves as serious competition when the market recovers.