We’ve received confirmation that Havas Discovery, a network with a handful of offices ranging from Baltimore to Toronto, has parted ways with managing director Chris Oliver, who had served head of the agency’s CRM practice for three years. Oliver was based out of the Baltimore office of Discovery, which serves as the data, analytics, digital and CRM arm of the holding company that has worked with past and present clients including Chase, Sonic and Liberty Mutual.

Prior to his most recent gig, Oliver spent several years as a client partner at what was EHS 4D and worked as account director at TBWA\Tequila for nearly five years before that. No word yet on a replacement for Oliver at Havas Discovery, which recently promoted current president Paul Marobella to a larger role as group president, a title that now calls for him to also oversee ops at experiential agency Havas Impact and brand agency, Palm + Havas.

With a fresh site and video spot, an Italian agency is now offering mind-to-mind advertising. As io9 reports, via the agency’s release: “Telepathy Advertising is a full service agency which works on telepathic scripts and its emission converting concepts into visual, verbal, tactile and sensorial stimulus with a location-aware target segmentation.”

They employ a team of five “telepathies,” each gifted in a different realm of communication. Together, they can translate an advertising campaign on all sensory levels, delivering the ultimate multimedia message.

Though the project is basically a publicity stunt, it’s interesting because it’s not a fully far-fetched idea. Though the existence of telepathic people or technology is dubious at best, advertisement via Google Glass, for example, might be so attuned with our daily lives that it feels subconscious.

In any case, hopefully the agency behind the stunt will publish a report of calls and emails from people who thought this was the ultimate revelation for the future of advertising. If you’re not telepathic, you can get in touch via their “conventional” contact form.

Well, after some cuts here and a shuttering there, we finally have some positive news to report in 2013 about iCrossing, mainly that the Hearst-owned digital agency has promoted six-year vet Brian Powley to global president. Powley, who initially joined iCrossing in 2007 to manage the agency’s San Francisco office before taking on the role of chief client officer and subsequently president of its North American operations. Powley takes over for president/CEO Don Scales, who’s leaving iCrossing after seven years at the helm.

Prior to his joining iCrossing, which currently counts 18 global offices and clients including Beam, Coca-Cola, Pep Boys and FedEx (but no DirecTV?), Powley held managing director positions on the West Coast at both MRM and what was then Modem Media.

This parody reality show trend is tiresome, especially because reality shows are already a parody of life. Earlier this month, PBS invented fake reality shows like “Knitting Wars” and advertised them coupled with their own message: “The fact that you thought this was real says a lot about the state of TV. Support Quality Programming.”

Now, Brooklyn-based agency/organic farming advocate Carrot Creative has come up with a series of new shows on the “Unpakt Network,” all centered on moving house. On “America’s Next Top Mover,” contestants struggle with boxes as European-accented judges critique their form. In “Mover Wars,” three movers grit their teeth as they consider the lowest prices they’ll accept. Additional trailers offer previews of “The Moving Truck Whisperer” and “Movebusters.”

Fans can suggest the name of the next show by tweeting to @unpakt with the hashtag #unpaktreality. If the reality theme is here to stay, I hope at least for a parody of Dance Moms, with moving men and women grooming their children to move boxes in tutus.

See the other videos after the jump

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Almost a year to the day that we last reported on cuts at Momentum St. Louis, we’ve received confirmation from the IPG-owned global agency that is has once again made some reductions–though not quite as severe as last time from what we hear. Word on the Spy line this week was that both STL and NYC were affected and the cuts were significant, though that doesn’t appear to be the case at this point.  The Momentum camp tells us, “We made recent staffing adjustments across various departments of our St Louis office – affecting a small percentage of our workforce – in line with changing business needs and a proactive restructuring to evolve our creative model.”

Sources add that the “small percentage” of cuts equates to essentially a handful of staffers in St. Louis, though we haven’t been able to confirm what current headcount is at Momentum’s Midwestern branch as a result. The St. Louis office currently works with clients including JM Smucker, William Grant & Sons, Pacific Gas & Electric and SSM Healthcare.

Usually, city rivalries related to sporting match-ups involve wacky wagers from politicians. The mayor of City X wants 100 pounds of cheese from the governor of City Y if City X wins the Super Bowl. But for the 2013 Stanley Cup between the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks, the wacky wagers are getting social and, well, smack-talky. The folks over at Arnold Boston and Leo Burnett in Chicago are using the Stanley Cup to launch their own trash-talking competition for charity: The Smackley Cup. Agency employees and random fans from all over are encouraged to tweet using #smacktalkboston or #smacktalkchicago. Once the series concludes, the agency supporting the loser of the Stanley Cup will have to donate 10 cents per tweet and retweet to a charity AND wear the opposing team’s sweater in the office the following day. That sort of masochism always makes for fun water cooler talk.

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About an hour or so ago, John Winsor, CEO of Havas-owned, Boulder-based Victors & Spoils, tweeted this: “Welcome to HavasCrowd.com. Brands can now harness the power of the Havas global community in one place.” Well, from what we gather upon first glance at the description is that “Havas Crowd” is basically taking a page from V&S’ playbook (the agency of course just happens to be powering the site). Should we call this Havassourcing? We’re not sure, but we checked in with Winsor to get some more explanation and here’s what he told us:

“Essentially. It’s a way for us to capture the brilliant creative and strategic thinking across the global network and apply it to a client’s brief in a modern, digital way. We believe that the Havas Crowd will allow us to change faster to apply the best thinking and creativity, from anywhere in the world, to solve a client’s problem.

What do you know, less than a week after we chatted with Steve Bernstein, president of Kansas City-based Bernstein Rein, and were told that his agency’s relationship with longtime client Commerce Bank was basically intact, the Kansas City Business Journal reports that the financial institution has indeed cut the cord. Well, Bernstein did tell us at the time, through somewhat cryptically, that Commerce was undergoing a “strategic change” and thus, a “relationship change” was in order.

We’re trying to get some additional comment on the matter from Bernstein himself, as we’ve been deluged with tips not only pertaining to Commerce, which worked with B-R for 14 years, but the actual staff count at the agency, which we were told at the time was 220. A horde of tipsters, though, say that it’s basically half that. We’re hoping to get some clarification on the matter today, and we’ll keep you posted.

Update: Well, we asked and we’ve been told by Bernstein himself that the “strategic change that Commerce informed us of was that given that there would not be any creative needs for the account in the near future, they would not be requiring our creative services. They would only be needing our media services through at least the end of third quarter.” We’ve been told that this has not changed in spite of the review. Bernstein adds, “They are a good client with good people. We do wish them luck in their future and we will be involved with them as long as they need.”

As far as staffing goes, despite what several of you have been telling us, Bernstein says that payroll sits at 220 associates and there will be no reductions in B-R staff as a result of the Commerce decision.

Yes, we saw the news when it first broke. Sorry if we were lagging on this, folks, but we were looking into another facet of the big Cadillac news today that wasn’t mentioned. Anyhow, what more can we say that hasn’t been reported already regarding the automaker’s decision. Well, save for the fact that despite what tipsters have been saying ad nauseum regarding the status of certain higher-ups at Campbell Ewald, sources familiar with the matter us tell us that the executive team at said agency “remains in place.”

Anyhow, if you were MIA this morning, the Crain committee including AdAge has reported that GM has finally made its decision and has expanded its relationship with IPG (McCann took over on Chevy-focused Commonwealth in March, if you recall), tapping a handful of its agencies (dubbed collectively as, ugh, Rogue) to assume ad duties on the Cadillac business. Among those in the mix are Hill Holliday, which saw its longtime Liberty Mutual go into review but will now handle creative/strategy (even steven, we say), while CE will handle account management and Lowe will take on digital/creative export for the brand. You know the rest of the story for now, but we’ll keep checking on the rest of what we hear.

As mentioned above, we’ve received confirmation that JPMorgan Chase is rethinking its digital partnerships. A spokesperson for the global financial services firm tells us, “We’re currently undergoing a review of our digital agencies, which we routinely do to ensure their capabilities best fit the needs of our evolving business.” On the digital front, Chase currently works with Austin-based agency T3, which proclaims itself to be the brand’s “go-to digital agency since 2006.”

From what we’re hearing on the Spy line, though we’ve yet to substantiate this, T3 held a meeting last week announcing that Chase would not be renewing its contract come year’s end. We’ve inquired about this and will update if and when we hear more. In addition, we’re following up with the Chase camp to see if T3 has been invited to participate in the review, and should hear back on this some time this afternoon. Stay tuned.