Articles from AdWeek Advertising and branding

When Teddy Bridgewater was 9 years old, he promised his mother Rose that when he made it to the NFL, he would buy her a pink Cadillac Escalade. The first part of Bridgewater's dream came true on Thursday night. The Miami native and University of Louisville quarterback was selected by the Minnesota Vikings with the 32nd and final pick of the first round of the NFL Draft. Cadillac caught wind of the second part of his dream, about the pink Escalade, and helped make it come true. The gift reveal is included in the seven-minute film below, directed by Spike Lee, about Teddy and his family.

As the tulips pop and the winter garb is tucked away in the backs of closets, some of the brands that gave us our biggest ad hits of the week looked forward to the summer days ahead. Others touched on important topics in ways that surprised and inspired. And they spanned the globe, from the U.S. to the U.K. to Brazil, sometimes in the same ad.

What were they thinking in the first place? Now that Publicis Groupe and Omnicom have called off their $35 billion merger, the differences between the two companies as they attempted to combine their operations seem more glaring than any common vision of “equals” they trumpeted back in July. After the champagne flourish in Paris of signing off on a doomed transaction, the relationship between Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy and Omnicom counterpart John Wren quickly soured amid a power struggle for control and consensus upon management structure.

A veteran account man at Merkley + Partners and McCann Erickson has landed at a smaller agency in a bigger role. Tom Lamb, who previously was an executive group account director at Merkley, has become chief marketing officer at Launchpad, a New York independent with about 65 staffers. Accounts include CenturyLink, Fairpoint Communications and the Pat Tillman Foundation. At Merkley, Lamb helped manage accounts such as Axa Equitable, LendingTree, Tic-Tac and Nutella. He spent eight years at the Omnicom Group shop before leaving in January.