Kaline Out at Ford

Global Media Manager Had Been With Automaker for Over a Decade

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — Mark Kaline, the high-profile global media manager of Ford Motor Co., left the automaker this week. Mr. Kaline is a casualty of Ford’s latest move, announced in June, to cut its white-collar staff by 15% by Aug. 1.

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Ford’s Cost-Cutting Spurs Shakeup Major Staff Changes Come Amid New Financial Losses

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — Ford Motor Co. will consolidate sales and marketing for its Ford Division with its Lincoln Mercury arm Aug. 1, according to two executives close to the automaker. In a cost-cutting move, the marketing and sales staff will be aligned by product type and have responsibility for models in that category from all three brands, they said.

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Verizon Succumbs to Pressure to Pull Pit-Bull Ad

Joins Snickers, Nike in Yielding to Advocacy Groups

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Verizon Wireless is the latest marketer to yank an ad deemed offensive, in what has become a minor trend of marketers caving to pressure from advocacy groups.

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Mother Says to Eat Your Soup (and Hum a Tune too) Fresh off Movie Success, London Agency Creates Branded Musical for Pot Noodle

LONDON (AdAge.com) — When the minds at Mother, London, were noodling around with a TV campaign for client Unilever, it occurred to them: Why not take the premise and adapt it into a musical comedy for its brand, Pot Noodle?

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Target the Audience or Ride Along With the Content?

OPA Adds Fuel to ‘Content Is King’ Side of the Debate

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Like nature vs. nurture, the debate between targeting content or audiences is something of a philosophic argument in the marketing world. Some people believe targeting audiences is what matters most — regardless of where they are browsing online; others believe that the quality and context of the website on which a consumer is targeted matters.

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Offer Consumers a Meaningful Service Understand What Your Target Needs, Deliver It and Stick With It

CMO Strategy

It’s just common sense that if you give a little, you’ll usually get a little in return. Marketing is nothing more or less than an exchange of value. The better the value the marketer provides, the more time and attention they’ll usually get back from their target.

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Back to the Future: Laermer Revisits ‘Trendspotting’ Territory in ‘2011′

Polarizing PR Vet Shows You How to Put Your Best Futurist Forward

Bookstore

We took a trip through Richard Laermer’s “2011″ earlier this spring, following its March release, and can attest the content is 100% classic Laermer — that is, a mix of dry humor, self-aggrandizement and social commentary diced into bite-sized chapters that don’t rely on academic research as much as his own partisan feelings and personal dislikes. But it does make for some great debate. Here, Laermer laments the dull fate of the 2000s, which he sees as the first decade in history to have been “about nothing.”

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Dealing With Stage Fright Not All of Us Were Born Into Public Speaking

Small Agency Diary

To all of you who find public speaking easy and natural, I’m totally envious. In my case, I knew if I couldn’t learn to speak in front of a crowd, I wasn’t going to have much of an agency. That became a powerful incentive to get some experience and get over my stage fright.

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