-Director Dean Freeman has joined the roster of L.A.-based prodco Hello! for his first U.S. commercial representation.

-YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar has been selected as 2013 Cannes Lions Media Person of the Year.

-As you have may have heard, Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion and CEO Marissa Mayer is promising “not to screw it up.” link

-Actress Claire Forlani continues to enthrall in the latest Dewar’s spot promoting the Scotch whiskey brand’s Highlander Honey line (above).

-Moxie Pictures has signed award-winning director Kathi Prosser for U.S. representation.

Today in agency self-promos, we bring this 90-second clip from New York-based shop Rooster, which pretty much makes it clear in the brief amount of time what its first love is (its co-founder/creative director, Gavin McInness, is the co-founder of Vice and the “godfather of hipsterdom” after all).

We’re seen some pretty self-indulgent agencies patting themselves on the back clips in the past, but at least this one makes us want to revisit the ’80s flick, Gleaming the Cube, or that modern doc, Dogtown and Z-Boys. It appeases our short attention span and takes us back to the days when we scraped elbows, knees and more. So, good on ya Rooster. The shop currently works with clients including Red Bull, Qualcomm and Nissan (you might remember its recent work for the last brand starring Ryan Lochte).

It’s not a surprise that older people like classical music more than younger people. For the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra (OSB), that trend needed to be fixed. Since most of their audience is older than 65 years, the OSB started playing orchestral themes from blockbuster movies like Jaws, E.T., and Star Wars to show younger people that they had an unknown appreciation for classical music.

Rio de Janeiro agency Artplan also incorporated YouTube videos of film clips to add a visual presence to the experience. As a result, the OSB saw a 40% increase of young people in the audience. The case study gave a healthy boost to the box office draw as well: all of the orchestra’s concerts in the upcoming season are already sold out. Unfortunately, young people still like Kesha more than Wagner, but I don’t think there’s a lot that the OSB can do to remedy that. Credits after the jump.

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-Chris Paul Finally Sits Down with Long-Lost Brother, Cliff Paul

-Digitas Makes Some Reductions in NY, Boston

-Yes, BBDO NY is Making Some ‘Significant’ Cuts

-Pierce Parts Ways with KBS+

-McKinney Cuts Staff in NC

-The Porsche Review Might Be Coming Down to the Wire

-Digitas GCD Daggett Moves On

-Chris Chalk, who most recently worked on Team Land Rover at WPP, has assumed the president/chief strategy officer for Cheil Worldwide Europe.

-CP+B has brought on BBH New York/Singapore alum Andy Grant as an ACD in its L.A. office.

-M&C Saatchi L.A. celebrates the new Australian Outback exhibit at the San Diego Zoo with a new campaign dubbed “Koalafornia” (above, see more here).

-Yahoo’s acquisition wishlist expands, this time with Tumblr. link

-Dunkin’ Donuts hops on the Vine. link

Numbers have not been revealed but all day, we’ve been hearing from multiple tipsters that anywhere from 50-100 staffers have been affected by reductions today at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. But from what those familiar with the matter tell us, the numbers skew to the lower side and are not in the realm of the Sprint cuts. Anyways, read the San Francisco agency’s co-founder Jeff Goodby‘s note that was just sent to staff verbatim:

“You’ve heard the financial reasons for reducing our staff.  I just want to talk a bit about the human side of it all.

Please be assured: No one takes this process lightly.

As we often say, advertising is all about people and accounts.  David Ogilvy wrote, ‘The assets go up and down in our elevator every day.’  It is so true.  We value our people, and our humanistic environment, more than anything.

Strangely, that’s why, when we lose business or have cuts in fee, it is important to react thoughtfully, but expeditiously.  Companies that don’t are not prepared for the future, and they don’t serve the people who are still on staff.  They endanger present and future jobs.

We are optimistic about our plan to move forward, in terms of serving present accounts and getting new ones, and will share details next week. But we are also thankful for and deeply appreciative of the contributions of people who are leaving.

We will do everything to find them new situations.  And if history is any indication, we will find ourselves welcoming some of them back in the future.

Thanks for your patience about all this.

JG”

Perhaps JD Beebe can create a follow-up to this?

Arguably the best part of the ongoing tech wars is just how catty all of these Silicon Valley giants are when it comes to their competitors. While a Microsoft spokesperson allegedly told Mashable that the above spot was “not meant for public consumption,” it’s an obvious continuation of the brand’s “Don’t Get Scroogled” campaign, which started running late last year. Perhaps all they needed to add before it went live was a Microsoft logo. Oh, and if you’ll notice after the jump, it’s a direct parody of Chrome’s “Now Everywhere” spot from early March.

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Well, you asked for it, and we’re giving it to you. To follow up on our Porsche review post from yesterday, we’ve heard from very reliable sources that the pitch for the automaker’s North American creative account is indeed down to two: Chicago-based incumbent Cramer-Krasselt and, you guessed it, Minneapolis-based Olson. Consider us surprised as we thought everyone’s darling agency Droga5 would be in the mix, but not so. Anyhow, we’re hearing Porsche’s decision is imminent and that the brand is getting more digitally focused in terms of its creative efforts. The other two finalists as mentioned before were CP+B Miami and McKinney. We’ll keep you posted.

The Spy line was spot-on once again as we’ve received confirmation that BBDO New York is indeed making some cuts this week that “are significant and across departments.” No numbers have been revealed (trust us, we inquired), but as your probably know, the agency’s longtime relationship with Gillette recently ended when parent company P&G passed over its shaving brand’s account to Grey a few weeks ago. No word if the “significant” reductions were directly related, but we’ll let you do the math. We’ve been told that the reductions are still happening, so we’ll let you know if we hear more.

Russia’s abysmal track record for gay rights got unnecessarily worse last year, when a court ruling banned gay parades in the country for the next 100 years. Today, Stockholm Pride and M&C Saatchi Stockholm are fighting back with gowest2013.com, a digital campaign that lets Russians celebrate gay rights on Twitter for one well-intentioned thorn in the side of the Russian government: to get “Go West” trending in Russia. How are they going to accomplish this from a Swedish website, you ask? All tweets from the website automatically change location to a Russian city. Got to love technology.

If Stockholm Pride accomplishes their goal, I’d love to see the faces of Russian government officials after “Go West” starts trending. Stalin rolls in his grave, Putin rolls in his bed, Sting makes more music videos like this. If you’re interested in contributing, you can tweet from the website to help the cause and watch as Princeton, New Jersey turns into Ufa, Russia.