Agency

A day after Universal McCann guru Robert Coen lowered his projections for 2006 U.S. ad spending, Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch joined him in a reduction–becoming the third influential forecaster to do so at mid-year.

Merrill Lynch decreased its projections to 5.1 percent growth after forecasting that U.S. ad spending would increase at a 5.3 percent rate. Coen downgraded his estimates from an initial 5.8 percent to 5.6 percent ($286.4 billion), partly due to softness in cable television–also a factor in Merrill Lynch’s revised forecast.

A few weeks ago, at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference–produced by Corante and Columbia Business School–I attended a panel discussion on the “changing face of advertising,” led by consultant Joseph Jaffe. Considering the conference theme was innovation, I had to ask a question of the illustrious panel reflecting my own experience working in the cutting edge of marketing and media: Why the heck are advertising and marketing agencies so often so late to invest in or experiment with new technologies and emerging media, while the marketers and clients demonstrate increasing interest and tendency to pursue them directly?

A leading forecaster revised his growth projections slightly downward Wednesday for U.S. ad spending in 2006, due to factors such as weakness in the cable television market and spending in the auto category.

A substantial proportion of food-borne related illness is attributable to improper food handling practices inside the home. In order to raise awareness about these risks among Hispanic consumers, P&G and its brand Dawn with Odor Eraser announced that they are teaming up with Dr. Elsa Murano, former USDA Under Secretary and top food safety official, to educate consumers on how to handle and store food safely.

For many media planning professionals, a media plan isn’t a plan until every dollar is allocated to a media vehicle. If the client wants to spend $500,000 this quarter, you had best have all $500,000 planned for one vehicle or another–it must go someplace.

For others, there’s a distinct advantage to having a certain percentage of the media budget set aside for media opportunities that may come up during the course of the quarter. On many of the plans I’ve put together over my career, I’ve placed a small percentage of the plan’s dollars into an “Opportunistic Media Fund” to cover such scenarios.

The global entertainment and media (E&M) industry has entered a solid growth phase and will increase at a 6.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $1.8 trillion in 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006–2010. New revenue streams are growing rapidly, the growth of physical formats has slowed, and availability of licensed digital distribution now provides consumers alternatives to piracy, the report says.

The past year has been anything but boring for the retail industry. Defining events such as the Federated/May Department Stores and Sears/Kmart unions have added new power players to the scene and the competition to be the best has definitely heated up, according to the SAP Top 100 Retailers ranking reported in STORES Magazine’s July issue.

Conflict happens. It happens in all areas of business. Disputes can arise between employees, between business partners, between a company and a client. And if such issues are not settled, bad things can happen. Good people quit. Profitable relationships dissolve. Great companies go under. This has always been true, of course. But according to renowned mediator Jeffrey Krivis, in a global economy the implications of conflict are more profound than ever before.

Hispanic consumers are heavy users of radio, spending significant time, in particular with Spanish-language radio, according to a new study from Arbitron, Inc.

Executives express widespread dissatisfaction with the ability of their organizations to assimilate and respond to business change, according to a new study issued today by the Business Performance Management Forum (BPM Forum) and webMethods, Inc. While recognizing the strategic role that IT can play in addressing these requirements, these executives also indicate that IT often fails to keep pace with the demands of their business. Due to these limitations, they face significant constraints in confronting emerging risks and opportunities, as well as additional challenges in their ability to create long-lasting competitive differentiation.