Shakeup in the ad industry - 5 Dec 2011

Once again, with it being both month- and year-end, it's people shifting jobs which has been generating some of the hottest news in the ad industry, eg: TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris's Damon Stapleton is heading off to Australia, not London; the VWV Group's Abey Mokgwatsane is joining Ogilvy South Africa; DDB SA's Matt Ross and Michael Udell are off to King James, and Brand Activation's Jason Knight is leaving for 180LA in Los Angeles.

In terms of account news, the big shock has been the announcement that Woolworths is moving its account in-house, so it's goodbye to The Jupiter Drawing Room (Cape Town) after five years of service at the end of January 2012. Meanwhile, Edcon has put its business out to pitch and this may mean that The Jupiter Drawing Room (Johannesburg), which has held parts of the Edcon business for as long as 14 years, might lose some or even all of the business and may also have to retrench staff if that is the case.

Nando's controversial TV ad, "Last Dictator Standing", continues to hog headlines and online discussion as well, after it announced last Thursday afternoon that it would no longer air the spot as part of its festive season campaign on TV. This is because of "perceived threats against Nando's Zimbabwe's management, staff and customers" and the belief that "that no TV commercial is worth risking the safety of Nando's staff and customers". The ad, however, is still up on YouTube. In fact, even more people have uploaded it to YouTube and the views keep on climbing and climbing.

On the media side, Business Day editor Peter Bruce this morning threw the cat among the pigeons with his editorial about fellow editors and their newspapers. His newspaper also published a story on the "ANC turn[ing] tables on media with news analysis", which resulted in this tweet from @gussilber: "Well done New Age, 1 year old this week, for succeeding in irritating Gwede Mantashe by reporting objectively on the ANC."

Eish!
Simone Puterman (@SimoneBiz)
Managing editor

PS Happy birthday, The New Age!

PPS Next week Monday 12 December, will be our last day of newsletters for 2011. We will resume on Monday, 9 January 2012.

PPPS The latest Ornico Ad Showcase features TV ads for Musica, Baker's Biscuits, Clover, Aquelle and Toyota FJ Cruiser, and radio ads for Bidvest, Mainstay, Salvation Army, FNB and MTN.