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Watch out marketing communications community, management consulting firm Accenture has officially joined the A-team.
Accenture Interactive rocked adland Nov. 11 by scooping up lead creative duties for Kimberly-Clark’s baby and childcare (Huggies, Pull-Ups) products from Ogilvy, dealing a sharp blow to Mark Read’s restructuring WPP.
It was the first major win for Accenture Interactive since its April acquisition of creative advertising powerhouse Droga5 and its 500 staffers.
Brian Whipple, CEO of AI and former COO of ad agency Hill Holiday, said the K-C win would not have happened without the Droga5 team. But he added that Droga5 couldn’t have pulled it off without Accenture. Talk about a beautiful marriage.
The Accenture defeat was WPP’s second big loss of K-C business, as Interpublic’s FCB picked up the family-care business (Kleenex, Cottonelle) last year.
WPP put on a brave face as a spokesperson said K-C remains a significant client for feminine and adult care (U by Kotex, Poise, Depend). We'll see how that works out.
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| Jared Kushner |
Presidential advisor Jared Kushner may not have yet figured out how to iron out the Israeli-Palestinian situation, or revive the US manufacturing base, but he thinks he struck PR gold with an idea to use webcams for a live feed of border wall construction.
The Washington Post reported Nov. 12 that Kushner floated the webcam idea in July as part of a messaging campaign to counter the notion that Trump’s border war campaign promise is a flop.
The president has been pestering his son-in-law about the wall. Kushner is so aggressive about the webcams “because the president has been asking him about it all the time,” reported the Post.
The reality show commander-in-chief wants real-time streaming of the wall construction because the barrier is far behind schedule.
Only 81 miles have been built, but nearly all of that is replacement barrier. A little more than 150 miles of fencing are under construction and 273 miles are in pre-construction phase.
The Army Corps of Engineers and US Customs and Border Protection officials are against webcams.
Another consideration: what's going to happen when the webcams capture images of smugglers cutting through the wall with ordinary power tools.
That's not exactly good PR, but more importantly, those images would show the utter folly of building the wall in the first place.
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| Xi Jinping |
As Congress holds hearings on the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, jumped the gun and “impeached” Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Or at least the bipartisan panel, wants people to stop referring to the Chinese leader as “president.”
In its annual report released Nov. 14, the commission said the president's title implies that Xi was elected by a popular democratic vote.
“China is not a democracy, and its citizens have no right to vote, assemble or speak freely,” the commission said. “Giving general secretary Xi the unearned title of 'president' lends a veneer of democratic legitimacy to the Chinese Communist Party and Xi’s authoritarian rule.”
The commission has not taken a position on whether a US politico if elected to the White House with the help of a meddling foreign power, is worthy of holding the “president” title.
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