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Live blog: Tuesday, July 29

Welcome to Mumbrella’s live blog, our daily roundup of what’s happening in media and marketing. Top Stories:

7.10pm – It’s a tough job, but Ten’s amiable frontman Russel Howcroft is willing to do it…

6pm – A poster for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which opens in Australia on September 11, has begun to create a stir on social media. It features the heroes of the film falling from a NY skyscraper as it explodes behind them.

4:20pm – Mumbrella will be hosting a hangout with Bob Greenberg, co-founder of digital agency R/GA at lunchtime tomorrow. Get ypur questions in via #askbobg and via the comment thread here.

1:52pm – Beyondblue is highlighting how experiences of discrimination are linked to poor mental health in a new campaign which places emphasis on the behaviour of non-Indigenous people and the impact it is having on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

12:59pm – As always there’s extra stories to be found in the FYI section. Stories in the section today include: Screen Queensland appointing a new head of development and productionNews Corp Australia announcing the 2014 Spikes Asia Australian JurorsQueensland Rail donating external ad space to Guide Dogs Qld and creative director Oz Dean joining We Are Social.

11:49am – McDonald’s Australia CMO Mark Lollback has likened questions about the company’s Cannes Lions winning Press ads to ‘tall poppy syndrome’ whilst claiming it was “a test” campaign.

One of the DDB award-winning McDonald's ads

11:25am – The producer behind major Australian dramas including Puberty Blues, Offspring, Howzat: Kerry Packer’s War, Paper Giants and Nine’s eight part upcoming drama Gallipoli has described recent drastic cuts to industry funding body Screen Australia as “realpolitik”.

10:20am – There’s an interesting new entrant to the Australian women’s magazine market, as the publishers of New Philosopher launch Womankind as an alternative to diet tips and celebrity gossip.

Womankind

9:45am – They’ll be dancing in the streets of Pyrmont this morning (at least outside the Ten offices) as the Ten Network grabbed its biggest audience share for two years and won the night with Masterchef’s finale getting more viewers than that of The Voice a week before. Aussie gold in the Commonwealth Games also helped boost the network’s numbers.

8:34am – This is one of the better Twitter misfires of recent months, with English Premier League side Manchester City setting up a Twitter Q&A for their new signing Jesus Navas. Unfortunately they used the hashtag #askjesus, and as you can guess the questions didn’t stay strictly on topic:

Screen Shot 2014-07-29 at 8.38.35 am Screen Shot 2014-07-29 at 8.39.08 am

8.20am – Good morning, here’s what’s broken overnight internationally:

Creativity-Online: Microsoft Pulls a ‘Mac vs. PC’ to Promote Cortana

“Remember ‘Mac vs. PC”? TBWA/MAL’s classic Apple campaign aimed to show the blundering, clunky aspects of working on a PC versus a Mac through a side by side comparison of the two computers, personified respectively by John Hodgman and Justin Long. Microsoft takes a similar A vs. B tactic in this new ad promoting its Windows Phone personal assistant app Cortana over Apple competitor Siri.

Only this time, however, it seems Apple’s app takes on the bumbling “Hodgman” role when a user tests it out against Cortana. A user, for example, asks both an iPhone and a Nokia Lumia to remind him to get roses for his wife when he’s near any flower shop. The latter says “Sure thing,” while Siri responds, “Remind you when you get to flower shop.”

The Guardian: Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson ‘deliberately used offensive racial term’

“Jeremy Clarkson, put on final warning by the BBC earlier this year, deliberately used a pejorative racial term to refer to an Asian man on BBC2’s Top Gear, causing offense without justification and breaching broadcasting rules. Media regulator Ofcom ruled on Monday that Clarkson’s comment, during a Top Gear Burma special aired in March, was offensive and in breach of generally accepted standards required of broadcasters.”

AdAge: Levi’s Ruins the Fun by Trying Too Hard

“I’ve been a Levi’s guy for the majority of my adult life — always despite the advertising, never because of it.

That tradition continues with the latest campaign from the storied denim company.

It seems that upon winning the account, FCB was tasked with putting some distance between Levi’s and its previous “Go Forth” campaign from Wieden & Kennedy. You remember that one, right? The one that linked blue jeans to the American spirit via Walt Whitman. It was a very pretty campaign to look at. But it was such a bummer, what with its focus on rust-belt America and the economy. Gross.”

Campaign: Want a tactical ad? Should have gone to Specsavers

“Specsavers’ creative director Graham Daldry describes how his in-house team turned Luis Suarez biting an opponent into a viral ad for his brand in less than 16 hours.

It’s Tuesday 24 June at around 6:35pm We are watching a pretty dull Italy v Uruguay game, the only memorable thing that’s happened so far being that [Italian footballer Claudio] Marchisio has been rightly sent off. Ballotelli [Italian striker, Mario] has been useless, the Uruguayans listless. However as the game enters its 78th minute there arrives the moment we’ve been waiting for since Brazil and Chile kicked off two weeks ago. In fact, we can’t believe what we’re seeing. Luis Suarez bites [Giogio] Chiellini.”

AdWeek: Who Will Become the Starbucks of Pot?

“During a typical Fourth of July weekend, 1500 Esperanza St., a whitewashed deco warehouse in the Boyle Heights district of East Los Angeles, is deserted. But this year, a line snakes down the broken sidewalk out front and wraps around the bend of Union Pacific Avenue, as 4,000 people suffer the searing heat for an event called the California Heritage Market.

While many cities boast farmers markets, this one is unique: It’s the first in California—and likely the entire country—devoted exclusively to pot.”

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