Wendy’s is reviewing it’s national advertising work, the company announced to day in a press release.

“This review is the latest step in a comprehensive turnaround plan for the brand, which was put in place following the merger that created Wendy’s/Arby’s Group in September 2008.

“The first phase of the agency review will focus on selecting a lead agency to integrate the brand’s advertising, media planning, digital and restaurant activation, and the second phase will focus on multi-cultural marketing, media buying and public relations.”

Kirshenbaum Bond + Parters, the burgermaker’s current agency, will be in on the review. I obtained an e-mail from Saatchi and Saatchi X’s Chris Andreson, the agency’s global client engagement officer, which states that Wendy’s CMO Ken Calwell personally asked Saatchi X to be part of the review.

Interestingly, Calwell’s predecessor Ian Rowden bailed on Wendy’s to take Jim O’Mahony‘s spot as chairman and CEO of Saatchi’s Asia-Pacific region (read more about that, here).

According to Anderson’s e-mail, the review process begins this June and a winner should be announced by July.

More: “Hardee’s, Burger King, Wendy’s And KP+B”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In early April, JWT CEO Rosemarie Ryan informed the staff of the Chicago office that the location would be closing. There was one remaining shred of hope that could keep the shop open: the Illinois Board of Tourism &#151 an account that was up for review at the time of the reported closing. Sources close to the matter tell us JWT has retained the account, meaning the Chicago location will remain open as a field office.

I was able to dig up a document from the state of Illinois services bidding Web site, which states,

“The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) is giving notice of intent to award a contract resulting from the Illinois Bureau of Tourism/Marketing Commmunications Agency RFP 22016279 to JWT Chicago.

“JWT Chicago will provide advertising services to assist DCEO in the planning and execution of marketing and advertising programs to promote Illinois as a tourism destination. The marketing and advertising programs will encompass, but not be limited to, domestic and international tourism. The responsibilities will include (but are not limited to) the following: (click here for the details).”

We hear about 15 to 20 staff will remain in the office to service the account.

In a blog post published earlier this week about the apparent lack of leadership at the Chicago office of Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago Sun Times columnist Lewis Lazare wrote, “It has been apparent for some time that (O&M’s) game plan was pretty much like that of the sorry management team of the about-to-die JWT/Chicago. In other words, let the whole thing sink into the muck and mire due to inertia and neglect.”

Lazare may have gotten ahead of himself in saying, “about to die,” as it seems the shop has turned fear of death into some much needed inspiration. Kudos to you, JWT’s ibot team &#151 you know who you are.

More: “Update: JWT Chicago Closed”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Got this one from a spy of mine a few weeks ago.

Q: What is Sir Martin Sorrell‘s nickname?

A: June 21

Click continued if you don’t get it. I didn’t, at first.

Image

More: “An Interview with Sir Martin Sorrell”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’re working on a big piece at the moment. Sorry for the delayed reporting &#151 stay tuned. Meantime, check out this ad from HSBC and our friends at Illegal Advertising.

More: “Illegal Ads”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Why are four day weeks always the longest? Maybe it’s the crappy mcpoop weather in freakin May or that case of gout you just can’t seem to shake, but something about this week sucks large. So, read some other semi-media related stuff, mmk?

&#151 The stupidest convergence deal has ended. Thank goodness. link

&#151 Newscorp and Google are trying to make a better deal for themselves. link

&#151 Viacom’s CEO says ad sales for the upfronts are evening out. link

&#151 And don’t forget to cup the bawls. link

&#151 Lowe won Zicam. link

&#151 BusinessWeek says that facebook thing is the future of advertising bla bla word of mouth. Yawnerrific. link

&#151 Mullen’s staff is Twitterizing about their move. link

&#151 The NY Times is taking on that pesky retouching issue. I mean, just look at how many Reese Witherspoons there are. But seriously, sometimes photogs, you know, change up the f-stop. link

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

&#151 TM let 35 go today. Most recently, they lost the Nationwide creative and media planning business to McKinney.

&#151 The Richards Group has slowly laid off about 100 employees, we’re told. All this despite retaining the $50 million Home Depot account and putting together Hyundai’s Assurance Program, which has been parroted by pretty much every big automaker.

In other bad Texas news, GSD&M didn’t win the BMW media account.

More: “Doner, the Neverending (Layoff) Story”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Mitsubishi Motors New Zealand want to help the economy by giving away goats to anyone who buys a Triton pickup. There’s a lot of good things about goats: they’re pretty chill as far as animals go, they give milk and sometimes like to nuzzle. Baby goats are among the cuter petting zoo attractions and if I had one, well I’d peace out of this gig just to frolic in the park with mine. It’d be sweet.

“We firmly believe that New Zealand’s recovery is in the hands of the rural sector and they’re the people who are buying our utes,” said MMNZ general manager of sales and marketing Peter Wilkins. “Goats, like our Tritons, are hardy, versatile units, which will integrate directly into existing farm operations.”

Read the rest of the release, here.

More: “Mitsubishi Picks New Shop: Traffic”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today is Gout Awareness Day, so this agency Gut Punch created the above spot. Gout is known as the rich man’s disease and is basically a shitty version of arthritis.

More: “Bacardi Thru the Ages”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Please Feed the Animals founder Erik Proulx is making a movie about you, the adorati, and what you’ve been doing since you lost your job(s). Learn about it here, and maybe you could be in it.

EProulx is a pretty cool dude, a former ACD who wanted to give you “let go” people a place to just vent, chill, share stories etc. This film is the next step in the project &#151 though we also hear a job site could soon be in the works. Erik, we’ll watch that flick!

More: “Lowe New York Lets Them Go”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Also on BBDO news, the Atlanta office just got around to letting 30 folks go home. This isn’t a new round, part of the last one, which is linked below.

More: “BBDO Atl Cuts 10%, Including CCO Marcus Kemp”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In the aftermath of the Gawker poopiness it now seems pertinent to look at what can be learned. When BloodCopy became a “part” of the editorial body (despite being an advertisement for HBO’s True Blood), it sort of prevented the edit staff from disemboweling the campaign as they might normally &#151 don’t bite the hand that feeds etc etc and so on. But the real questions are, why not let the edit staff run rampant and what would happen if they did?

The coverage of this story has been breathless and except for whatever Gawker Media was paid, free. Much of what we’ve seen, short of Nieman Lab’s fellatio piece, Adweek’s focus on the “campaign” aspect and ClickZ calling it a case study for PR (which kind of misses the point)it’s all been negative-ish &#151 or what we’ll call bad press. Generally, bad press is always free and stems from an attempt at good press. So, why don’t we all just stop trying to do this thing right and go for bad? I think there’s a case to be made.

Especially these days when a) banners are overly abundant b) no one gives a shit about good ads anyway and c) bad press is mostly free &#151 all you have to do is plant the seed.

Maybe that was Gawker’s genius plan all along &#151 but I doubt it, unless they intended the coverage to be mostly about them. And c’mon, Chris Batty isn’t that smart. It doesn’t take a genius to say, “let’s sell the one thing we have that no one else will sell, our editorial space.” That’s the golden goose, but the problem is that once it’s sold, it’s gone. It’s like having sex with your drop dead gorgeous cousin &#151 wrong.

And there’s nothing funny about fucking your uncle’s daughter. Cue Batty: “If we’re around in three or four years,” he told Nieman Labs, “the majority of our advertising revenue will be in sponsored posts like this we’ll still be pumping Pam.” We made that pumping part up, obviously &#151 but for the purposes of our simile, it was a necessary modification. Don’t sue me.

That’s not the future of advertising, at least as it pertains to publications that want to matter. And though I might eat my words on this, I’d rather be wrong today than admit it’s OK.

So what can be done? How about we start offering bad press as a sales space. The agreement would be something like this: Brand X pays for and designs a really crappy banner and Gawker posts it. Then one of the eds goes to town on it, merely for being crappy or whatever. It’s not guaranteed to get attention from Gawker’s writers &#151 and by that I mean there’s no obligation that it be written about &#151 but someone somewhere is bound to say something about it. Blood Copy is a decent case study.

I’m not sure bad press can be harnessed but it just seems logical that if a company wants to advertise with a publication dedicated to revealing BS, they should be open to the same kind of ridicule that publication is known for. It happens every day, anyway, without their control so why not light the match intentionally. Hell, it’s worth a shot.

Update: Fair is fair &#151 Gawker’s edit staff did make some remarks about the campaign. And though we’ve linked to each of these stories already, I’ll list them once more.

More: “Gawker’s Blood Copy Campaign is a Messy McPieface”

&#151 iO9
&#151 Gawker
&#151 Lifehacker

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

GSD&M wins Ace Hardware &#151 not a bad month for the Austin based advertiser, which has been mired by internal struggles, many of which we’ve published here.

Tribble Via Statesman

More: “Ace Hardware to GSD&M?”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

1.Razorfish Offices Going Remote, Austin Squeaks By

2. Playboy + Quizno’s = 2 Girls 1 Sub

3. Chiat LA’s Becoming a Tight Knit Group

4. JWT Changes Things Up

5. Ogilvy’s Moving, Wanna Fight About it?

6. Gawker Media and the Blood Copy Campaign

7. First on AgencySpy: Tom Christmann Lands at JWT NY, First of Many High Level CDs

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After we posted yesterday about the hullabaloo with this HBO’s True Blood + Gawker Media + Campfire campaign, things just started getting wonkier. Here’s how:

Gawker Media called us to say they didn’t have control over a post on BloodCopy dot com that was, until earlier today, claiming the site had been purchased by Gawker Media. When you boil it all down, that one sentence(“Gawker Media realized that they simply could not live (so to speak) without having BloodCopy dot com on their roster of websites…As of next week, we will officially be under the Gawker umbrella…”) pretty much broke the “this crosses some sort of line” rule. There was nothing to clarify that this was a ruse, and though Gawker Media claims they had no control over that post, they are capable of reading and should have known better.

Today things got messier when a post was added to Gawker’s homepage. It popped up in the standard below-the-fold ad spot Gawker has used for other, more normal ads, under the “introductions” category. In the past we’ve noticed that when an ad is in that box, the category is instead listed as “advertisement.” No such notation here. No-no number 2.

Not that it’s really important but there are three links in that box and until this afternoon none of them worked &#151 probably because bloodcopy dot com was being transitioned to the Gawker execution you can now see. TPI, things were disorganized.

Anyway, since the box was improperly categorized, a follow-up post was added noting, “That post down there labeled ‘From Bloodcopy’ should have been labeled something like ‘Paid Advertising.’” Agreed. Moving on.

Adam Pash of Gawker-family blog Lifehacker did what we hoped someone would &#151 called the campaign what it is.

“BloodCopy is not a Gawker Media blog, and unlike other real Gawker blogs, the editorial staff at Lifehacker has no control over what ads masquerading as crossposts appear on our site. You can read more about it if you’re interested in the details, but the short story is this: Our advertising department made a bad decision, and now the editors and&#151more importantly&#151readers are paying for it. Apologies for the interruption. Who knew the recession would get this bad?”

Though he was sort of alone in making public comments, we’ve heard that generally the editorial department at Gawker is pretty miffed about the whole thing. Oh, that is except for i09′s Meredith Woerner, who posted a trailer for the show. Interesting &#151 we thought maybe they’d want to stay from anything even remotely close to promoting the show, given they’re already knee deep in oopsies on this one.

Dear Gawker editorial and ad sales, please have a meeting where you’re all in one room talking. Yes, meetings take time away from parking in front of crazy people’s homes, but they do help avoid problems. Like this one.

More: “Gawker Media and the Blood Copy Campaign”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.