More Features articles

Given the price of Superbowl ads this year, you can hardly blame an advertiser for trying to maximise the bang/buck ratio by generating as much pre-game chatter as they can, says Dominic Mills. But is this making advertising strategies cynical as they compete to be talked about before kick off?

Do you have any idea of the difference between something ‘overtly’ sexy and something ‘mildly’ sexy? It’s not easy, is it? My ‘mild’ might be your ‘overt’. So it’s both interesting and amusing that the ASA has knocked down complaints that M&S’s new lingerie ads were ‘overtly sexual, degrading to women and reinforced sexual stereotypes’.

Dominic Mills argues that while tablets may accelerate the death of print, they may actually be the saviour of publishing – and there is a clear chain of links to follow if we want to predict the ways things are going to go this year…

Channel 4, Group M and, most importantly, its clients, will be mighty relieved the trading dispute between the broadcaster and the media agency was resolved last week – but such high-profile stand-offs make a nonsense of media agency claims about the importance of strategic and channel planning.

So here we are, in that listless post-Christmas netherworld…and the ads are the usual flotsam and jetsam. I’ve often wondered why more advertisers don’t go for something special during this time…

It’s December and instead of yet another finger-in-the-air forecast or more wishful thinking for the year ahead, Dominic Mills would like to point out some things in Adland that won’t change next year.

Dominic Mills says it’s not difficult to count up the UK’s influence on the global advertising industry, but with a new IPA study into the business effects of a thousand advertising campaigns from over thirty years, how can clients be persuaded to invest longer term?

You don’t have to be an accountancy wonk to find pleasure, surprise and a touch of salaciousness hidden among the pages of the latest annual survey of agencies’ financial performance. For there, laid out in all their glory – and some gore – are the financial secrets of a host of agencies…

Christmas: a festival based on a myth where social norms are lubricated by dishonesty – and, of course, Christmas advertising has traditionally reflected this. So how have advertisers judged the national mood this year?

Our new Newsline columnist, Dominic Mills, interviews Jim Hytner, worldwide CEO of Initiative.