LOCAL MEMBERS OF AICE are being asked for $1,000 each to be used to fund an advertising and PR campaign to combat competition from agency in-house editorial departments.
The campaign started last month with a full page ad in Brandweek, as an open letter to advertisers laying out the dangers of the increasing growth of these in-house departments and the value of independent editors.
In the Brandweek ad, Burke Moody, New York-based AICE executive director, said: “The consolidation of multiple agencies into large, publicly traded holding companies which are focused on share value and profitability, combined with advances in technology [and the recession] has spawned an unprecedented expansion of agency in-house editorial, new profit centers for agencies.
“The long-standing relationship between agencies and their creative partners in the editorial business is challenged, even compromised, when an editor’s client is forced to become a competitor.”
TWO “JOES” ARE SHOOTING HERE are both low-budget indies with similar titles and themes. “The Last Rites of Joe May” stars Dennis Farina, Chelcie Ross and Gary Cole, gets underway this Saturday, Nov. 28, at a downtown location and will shoot for three weeks.
Farina plays a long-time con artist trying to make good on one last chance to set his life right. Production manager is Carrie Holt de Lama.
Currently shooting in the suburbs is “The Return of Joe Rich,” written and directed by L.A.-based Sam Auster, a former Chicagoan, and produced by John Yaworsky. The story is about Joe Rich, broke and divorced, who comes home to Chicago and tries to revive his life by joining the mob and then schemes how to take over his uncle’s role as boss.
NEXT WEEK’S SPOT ACTION includes L.A.’s Dark Light Pictures returns for the fourth time to shoot a Rush Hospital spot package, with many of the hospital’s top physicians, at Essanay ? Anonymous Content shoots for Walmart.
WHO’S NEW. DDB hired Ashley Sferro, from Goodby Silverstein, San Francisco, as senior producer to work on AT&T and Anheuser-Busch. At Goodby, Sferro worked on Hewlett-Packard’s “Hands” campaign, Comcast’s “Town” and the California Milk Processor Board’s 22-minute online rock opera, “Battle for Milkquarious.”
*After nine years of freelancing with Pixel Brothers, producer/editor Daniel Rucci was made a permanent staff member. And Steven Steinberg is Pixel’s new chief financial officer.
MARK TUTSSEL, Leo Burnett Worldwide’s chief creative officer, was named president of the Film and Press juries at the 57th 2010 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
Under Tutssel’s creative leadership, Leo Burnett Worldwide was the third most awarded agency network at the 2009 Cannes Lions Festival, and according to the recently released Gunn Report, the agency was the fourth most awarded agency network in the world.
CLAIRE SIMON CASTING’S 4th annual Meals for Monologues food drive was its most successful ever, Simon reports. “We had almost 200 actors and agents donate food. This year there will be quite a few people who will have something on their table for Thanksgiving thanks to all the generous hearts in our community,” she says.
