Around the ad world

+ State of advertising in Vietnam. Exerpt from the article:

The fledgling domestic advertising industry is losing out to foreign companies because of poor professional standards, high corporate income tax and cumbersome administrative policies, an official from the Viet Nam Trade Fair and Advertising Company has warned.
Hoang Hai Au, director of the Hoang Gia Market Solutions Joint-Stock Company, said the 20 foreign companies operating in Viet Nam held 80 percent of the market. Viet Nam?s 1,000 domestic advertising companies take home just 10-20 percent of the industry?s? 1 billion USD in annual revenue.
Au said foreign companies had the monopoly on the more lucrative full service advertising contracts. No domestic company had signed a full service contract. However foreign ad companies often sub-contracted parts of the full service deals out to domestic firms.
"Poor professional standards in the domestic industry are hindering the development of the entire industry," Au said.
?"There is no school specialising in advertising in Viet Nam. Advertising companies have to train their employees themselves. So I think domestic companies dare not sign full service contracts."

+Improving commuting in Taipei City? From the article:

Taipei City bus riders may have noticed something different in their daily commutes. Now, instead of staring blankly out the window, they can stare blankly at commercials playing on color LCD monitors being installed on city buses.
The project is a partnership between the Taipei City Government, four transportation companies contracted to operate buses for the city and Acer Corporation, which manufactures the monitors and hardware used to run them. A pair of 17-inch flat-panel displays have already been installed in around 1,300 buses and plans call for an additional 2,400 buses to be outfitted....
The 60-second spot won last year's London International Advertising Award for best commercial. Filmed in an Aboriginal village near Alishan, the commercial silently tells a story of a Western traveler who meets a beautiful Aboriginal girl in the wilderness. Unable to speak the other's language, they communicate by drawing pictures using his trusty TravelMate. Yeh Jin-tien, who earned an Oscar for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon designed the costumes for the beautifully filmed ad. Another Acer ad showing on a different route is less well-done; it's a PowerPoint presentation on the company's corporate strategy and global market share.

+Orange Juice makers take on Atkin's Diet/Low Carb Fad. Finally. It's nice to see that someone isn't kowtowing to this annoying fad.