DDB San Fran just picked up Planning Director Mike Casey, who's leaving BBDO West in his wake. Although BBDO recently picked up Harrah's, they lost Mistubishi, KFC Malaysia and the Golf Association all in a matter of weeks. Plenty of reason for a person to want to move on.

BBDO West is ECD Jim Lesser's shop, and we're told "there's a life after Mitsubishi, a good life."

So what's Mike got in his future? Working with Mike Follett, New York based head of planning for North America to create strategies for big ideas and their placement in new media. Something smells fishy — anyone's best guess as to what's going on — but with CEO Matt Freeman's departure, leadership is at the top of the shit priority list.

Adweek has reported that Tribal DDB CEO Matt Freeman is moving on to become chief executive at GoFish, an online ad network. Freeman was a founder of Tribal DDB Worldwide in 1998. As Adweek notes, Freeman is the second longtime interactive agency CEO to recently join an emerging media company in as many months. Mark Kingdon, Organic chief executive left the agency last month to take the role of CEO at Linden Lab.

Freeman is quoted as saying, "The honest truth is I'm a pretty entrepreneurial guy. At a certain point, if you're successful, you want to be an entrepreneur again."

GoFish boasts a pretty impressive 66 million users a month. Um, sounds pretty entrepreneurial to me... Their target demographic is mothers and children. I'm personally overwhelmed by the bright colors on the front page of their website, but I do love me some cartoon classics.

Let's play the "Guess Which Account Was Lost" game...

We hear Tribal DDB SF laid off 4 bees last Friday. Clients possibly lost include Glad, ArmorAll, Tilex, Nike...The list goes on. Sorry for the folks who have a few weeks off (hopefully more than that).

OK, so maybe an account wasn't lost, but I'd hope it's that over the alternative — the infamous office party orgy in the ECD's office. Use of One Show awards optional.

Happy Tuesday!

DDB and Tribal, both out of London, have produced a TV campaign with a twist (think "The Crying Game") for a new Philips razor for women.

The ad for the Satinelle Ice Epilator features an LA-based transvestite dancer, Karis, using the shaver -- and it will be shown across Western Europe.

The TV spot is backed by print, outdoor and online ads.

Where there's smoke there's fire, or so the saying goes:

Word on the street (via our killer tip box) is that their is some shit going down at Tribal DDB San Francisco (ed note: yay -- more Tribal DDB stuff to discuss for you all.)

Apparently long time ECD, Mr. Dorian Sweet, has been shitcanned and that it wasn't pretty. Makes you wonder what else is going on, doesn't it?

In the interests of "journalistic integrity" -- we skipped contacting the PR hacks this time and went right to the horse's mouth -- dropping Liz Ross, President of Tribal DDB West, a line...quelle surprise... no word back.

So what is the real deal kids?

The comments have been blazing with folks for or against and the truth is caught between about six players at Tribal and DDB, both. Ah, everyone has their own idea of "truth" and here's the other side of the Ginsberg/January/Shave Everywhere debacle.

Ginsberg and Vernon worked for DDB NY for two years. Creativity got it wrong. Hey, it happens. However, the pair concepted, wrote, cast, filmed, designed, and edited everything from the site to the posters to the 13-inch promotional rulers – all with another team from Tribal: Brook Lundy, Daniel Modell and big deal ECD Steve Nesle.

In this version of events, credit for the project was fought over between Tribal (Nesle) and DDB (Garfinkle). Apparently, politics is nasty no matter where you play it. The supposed compromise was to call it a Tribal DDB NY project, but include Vernon and Ginsberg. Credits for the work vary from including the duo to omitting them.

I have a feeling that there is more to come on this story.

So... who do you believe?

Too bad that this 27-year old twosome are actually at the center of a media shit storm. You see, over at Creativity, January and Scott are being credited with work they didn't actually produce. The normally spot on journos at the mag must have been blind sided by the pair's wildly Uniqlo vibe. A snippet from the article:

"When Vernon (art) and Ginsberg (copy) arrived in New York in 2004, it was to join Tribal DDB, where they worked on the bawdy "Shave Everywhere" online campaign for Philips' manscaping appliance, the Bodygroom."

The duo won an Effie, while working at, yes, DDB for their wild posting campaign for the same brand, Bodygroom. They got some mojo for sure, but um...

"Shave Everywhere" was a much-lauded online campaign that took home a Gold Cyber Lion in Cannes and Pencils at The One Show and D&AD. Who wouldn't want to take a little credit for it or alternatively, let a journalist give them some shine? However, just because you did wild postings doesn't mean that you developed an entire online experience. Apparently, the pair sat in on one meeting where everyone got together to talk shop about the client. One meeting does not a website articulate, create or build. Steven Nesle (Tribal's ECD) and Brook Lundy (the copywriter on Shave Everywhere) have got to be fuming that credit for their idea is going every which way. This is a small navel gazing industry. Did you guys think no one would notice?

The rest of the article has Vernon and Ginsberg rattling off the reasons why they make a good team. One reason is that they don't take the business seriously. Maybe not, but seriously... You guys might want to write Creativity and get them to redact that whole paragraph there. It kind of looks like you're complicit. People are talking. Think of your future and that other people take their work and this business very seriously. Another reason they work well together is that they have the ability to call bullshit on one another. So, hey... when you guys read this article - who called bullshit on who?

Too often credit is not given where credit is due. You'd think that creatives would at least correct journalists when this kind of stuff happens. Hos before bros? No, no... how about do the right thing? Yeah. That works.