Walmart in February rolled out a spot, called “More Than Words,” promoting its partnership with the National Urban League in celebration of Black History Month. The spot, by GlobalHue (named Adweek’s Multicultural Agency of the Decade), shows a young, African-American boy rising to the challenge of tutoring a much older man. (“All I know is his name is James and he needs extra help with his reading,” the boy says.) The spot—which is running at frequent intervals throughout the rest of the year—taps into the African-American mom’s desire to see her child “do good and have a positive impact on society,” said GlobalHue vp and group account director Detavio Samuels. Brandweek spoke with Samuels and the agency’s Vida Cornelious, vp-group creative director, and Ozioma Egwuonqu, vp-cultural strategy director, about the multicultural insights the agency leveraged in creating the ad. Excerpts from that conversation are below.

Why Walmart’s New Ad Speaks ‘More Than Words’.

While the recession has cut a swathe through population groups of all sorts, a new report from AARP makes clear that it has hit older black consumers especially hard. The effects are evident in areas ranging from diminished retirement savings to cutbacks on medications to stress-induced difficulty in sleeping.

Recession Hits Older African Americans Hard.

The debate over when and how Twitter will offer marketers paid placement among its 50 million daily tweets heated up last week when rumors emerged that Twitter will finally unveil its ad platform this month. For now, it’s speculation, but clues to how Twitter might integrate advertising can be found in the clutch of companies already integrating brand messages in the Twitter ecosystem.

via Whither Twitter?.

For the first time, in-stream audio advertisers will be able to target folks listening to Internet radio on mobile devices.

Slacker, a pure-play Internet radio service, has partnered with online radio ad network TargetSpot to monetize its audience that tunes in via applications on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.

via TargetSpot, Slacker Focus on Mobile Audio Ads.

So, are Web publishers totally screwed — or aren’t they?

That’s not the official theme at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting (it’s actually “Revenue: the Next Wave”), but it appears to be the reigning question at the event, which is being held this week in Carlsbad, Calif.

Based on the topics discussed by various speakers thus far, the future of ad-supported traditional branded sites is very much up in the air. The ongoing threat of ad networks, exchanges and demand-side buying platforms turning sites into commodities has many asking scary questions — while others are expressing steadfast defiance.

via IAB Confab: Future of Branded Sites Unclear.

Porsche has called a global media review, the client has confirmed.Worldwide ad spending is approximately $80 million. In the U.S., the client’s largest market, spending totaled about $20 million last year, down from $33 million in 2008, according to Nielsen. Continue reading →

Introduce your work to the world. Enter Communication Arts magazine’s 51st Photography Competition. Hundreds of award-winning images are selected for their creative excellence by an esteemed jury of designers and art directors in editorial, advertising, institutional, for sale and unpublished categories.

Why enter?
CA’s Award of Excellence is one of the most-coveted awards in the industry. If selected, winning places you in the highest ranks of your profession. Ask any creative director which competitions rank as the most influential, and they’ll place Communication Arts at the top of the list.

Submission Guidelines and FAQs:
commarts.com/competitions/photography
To Enter Online NOW:
submit2.commarts.com
Entries must be sumitted by March 26, 2010. Entries submitted after that date require a $10 per entry late fee. No entries will be accepted after April 9, 2010.

Forget gold, Chinese real estate, or Greek debt derivatives, a new champion in the asset bubble wars has emerged: Superman comics.See full story

Google is taking the wraps off its new publisher-side ad platform, combining its technologies with DoubleClick’s systems.

DoubleClick for Publishers melds DART for Publishers and Google Ad Manager. The combined product is designed to ease the complexity publishers face in serving ads, managing ad network relationships and maximizing revenue from inventory sold directly and through ad nets or exchanges.

Google paid $3.1 billion to acquire DoubleClick in April 2007.

New features include an open API that lets publishers tie in third-party applications like forecasting and workflow tools, integration with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and new yield-optimization features. Continue reading →

45 titles representing 15 publishing companies are running ads for the Kia Sorento in their digital editions

Marking an advancement for electronic magazine advertising, 45 titles representing 15 publishing companies are running ads for the Kia Sorento in their digital editions.

The buy launches Zinio’s newly created Publisher Advertising Network (ZPAN), which was recently reported by Mediaweek. Zinio creates digital editions of magazines for personal computers and Apple’s iPhone. Continue reading →

Lou Reed and Gretchen Bleiler make a perfect pair in BBDO’s Olympic spot

If there were a gold medal for the most breathtaking use of music and imagery in a 2010 Winter Olympics commercial, it would go to AT&T and BBDO New York for “Up and Up,” the spot featuring Gretchen Bleiler as a snowboarder in space.

The commercial is as visually dazzling as it is sonically hypnotic. To paraphrase Lou Reed, whose 1972 song provides the soundtrack, it just keeps me hanging on.

There’s incredible mastery (and risk) in the way the music and images match: Both are solitary, spare, stark and slowed down. There’s a kind of unresolved longing in each that makes the combination resonate that much more intensely. Continue reading →

Sneaker campaign takes a holistic lifestyle approach

Asics is rolling out a global campaign from the Vitro Agency, San Diego, that advertises the sneaker brand with the tagline, “Sound mind, sound body.”

That positioning is a play on the brand name “Asics,” an acronym for the Latin phrase “Anima sana in corpore sano” — “A sound mind in a sound body.”

A 30-second commercial breaking nationally this week demonstrates “The cleansing power of sport” — the campaign’s pervading theme — by showing a runner sprinting through walls of water as words such as “fear,” “stress” and “doubt,” rendered in various languages, fall away from his body.

Asics: ‘Sound Mind, Sound Body’.

Mobile advertising, long tabbed as the next big thing, is finally getting its share of attention. Google and Apple, poised in a battle for dominance in what’s being hailed as the successor to the PC Internet, have spent a combined $1 billion to buy mobile ad networks AdMob and Quattro Wireless. And Microsoft last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, previewed its next mobile phone platform, Windows Phone 7.

Mobile’s Conundrum.