Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

I’ve always been a great admirer of the work Goodby, Silverstein has done for HP over the years. It’s not only been good, it’s been consistently good. Which when it comes to the creation of IT advertising, is a hard feat to achieve. Even IBM advertising, which was so good, for so long, is now starting to look labored. So I was interested to read today that Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd took home more than $19 million during 2006, including one of the largest cash bonuses in Silicon Valley history. But here’s one of the few CEO’s who in my opinion actually deserve to be rewarded, but maybe not by quite that amount – He also received $24.4 million, in 2005, his first year with the company. But when I think of how his predecessor, Carly Fiorina, earned a ton of money during her five year tenure, leaving with a golden parachute of $42 million, while having driven the market value of the company through the floor and spending most of her time jetting around the world attending “summits” in exotic locations, If I was an HP shareholder, I wouldn’t be complaining, particularly as the companies share price has increased by close to 100% in his two years at the helm. And they’re still doing great advertising!

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