Advertising news

From adage:
MERCURY SHIFTS MORE HEAVILY TOWARD DIGITAL MARKETING:

In a major marketing communications shift, Ford Motor Co.'s Mercury unit will dedicate 25% of its new model promotion budget to online advertising and customer events, the company announced today.

Although Mercury would not provide a breakdown of the campaign's specifics, the overall digital effort will clearly go far beyond the 3% that is now the average budget slice allocated for online advertising by American marketers.

Mercury has recently been integrating increasingly sophisticated Web promotions with its event sponsorships. For instance, a current sponsor of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, it has created a digital tennis game on its MercuryVehicles.com site. There, online consumers can match wits -- and finger skills -- with agile, tennis-playing Mercury models.

The new plans for expanded digital and events promotions were made public by Mercury's general marketing manager, John Fitzpatrick, as part of a new-model introduction ceremony at the Time Warner Center in New York this morning.

Mercury has already spent $93 million in measured media through May, compared with $76 million in calendar 2003, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.

As reported earlier this year by AdAge.com, the new advertising campaign from WPP Group's Y&R Brands, Dearborn, Mich., introduced a new tagline, "New Doors Opened." Teaser ads break Sept. 13 on TV and in print publications.

also: in re: Gruner + Jahr

Dan Rubin, executive vice president of Gruner & Jahr Publishing USA, is leaving the company, according to an internal e-mail from new CEO Russell Denson. Mr. Rubin, a former Time Inc. circulation executive, was brought into G&J by Mr. Denson's predecessor, Dan Brewster. Mr. Brewster was ousted in early 2004 after several instances of overstated circulation numbers and the public relations black eye the company took during a trial with a former business partner, entertainer Rosie O'Donnell.