Teufel! The car in front is a Toyota

Gloom everywhere in the car industry. Chrysler is going for a song to Fiat... and GM is going, well, bust  – in a carefully managed, politically sensitive sort of way. And it's not much better in Europe. Sales of new cars across Europe fell by 9% in March 2009 compared with a year ago, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.

But wait, what's this? In Germany, Europe's largest car market, sales are actually up – and by an astonishing 40% last month. The reason for this anomaly is not hard to fathom. It's called scrappage, which means the state doles out cash (€2,500 in Germany) if you exchange your old banger for a new, or near-new, vehicle. Wunderbar! Let's all have more of it. Even at this moment Alistair Darling is preparing a parallel scheme for the Budget, and Gordon Brown has as usual gone overboard by promising to save the consumer – if not the world – £5,000 on the cost of a new electric car. Never mind that these vehicles are, to date, technically inadequate for most daily usage.

Before getting over-excited let's take a closer look at the German scheme, for all is not what it seems. Yes, car sales have soared. But have the German car marques – BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi and VW – been the main beneficiaries? No they have not. Not many of their models, even in nearly new condition, are priced under €10,000. The cars in front are foreign-owned Toyota, Nissan and Honda. So much for propping up the German car-manufacturing sector.

It's no wonder Sarko thinks German chancellor Angela Merkel "doesn't get it".

Campbell Lace – the Beta version

Goodness me. After some last minute shenanigans, the rumour really has born fruit. Lace Campbell is shortly to be an established fact. Actually, the new agency is going to be called Campbell Lace Beta. Who is Beta – the planner perhaps? No it's an idea borrowed from the internet, presumably meaning work in progress. The agency launches in May. This last detail can be inferred from its icon, a maypole – which is also, they tell us, a symbol of riotous pagan creativity. Can we be sure you're not leading us a bit of a dance, Garry? 

Innocent until proved guilty

To listen to the media backlash, you'd think Innocent, the smoothie maker, had just signed a pact with the devil – media-friendly founder Richard Reed being cast in the improbable role of Dr Faustus.

Successful businesses don't continue to be successful by standing still. For quite some time now, Innocent has been underpowered, both in its product range and geographical spread. As Reed tried to explain to a hectoring Eddie Mair on Radio 4, if Innocent doesn't grasp the smoothie opportunity in other, virgin, European markets then the big battalions will rip off their ideas and do it themselves. 

But where do they get the money to do it? Would anyone have objected to a bank about a year ago? Would that have been an unacceptable compromise of Innocent's wholesome ethical brand stance? I don't think so, because Innocent managed to secure a £32m credit line from HBOS (yes, HBOS) without anyone raising so much as a squeak of dissent.

But substitute Coca-Cola for HBOS and what do you get? Universal vilification: accusations which range from naivety to downright cynical hypocrisy.

Lighten up. Innocent is a business not a charity. Where else, in this climate, is the money going to come from –  a private equity house? Don't make me laugh. And, by the way, what's so bad about Coke holding a fairly small minority stake, maybe 15%? 

Ah, you say, this is where you're being naive. It's all part of a carefully premeditated plan... you wait, in 5 years' time the Innocent founders will be on their way, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, leaving behind the husk of an ethical food company which has been sucked dry by the parasites at Coca-Cola.

Come on. Just as McDonald's did to Pret A Manger, which bought back their 33% stake last year?

Why NatMags prefers French dressing

C'est tellement curieux. The magazine publishing business is puzzled by the decision to appoint an unknown Frenchman, Arnaud de Puyfontaine, as the new UK chief executive of the National Magazine Company. Not the least reason for their confusion was a widespread perception that the present incumbent, Duncan Edwards – now moving upstairs to president and chief executive of Hearst Magazines International – had been grooming his managing director Jessica Burley to take over.

Edwards and Burley were – managerially speaking – soul mates, sharing among other things a passion for spreadsheet analysis. That may reek of dullness, but it seemed to work for NatMags, so why look overseas for an alternative?

Well, there's no doubt that M. de Puyfontaine brings with him a genuine exoticism. Born in 1964, he's a graduate of the école supérieure de commerce, so very much a part of the French intellectual and business elite. Over the years he has, in typical haute école manner, put high-level contacts to good use in leveraging his way up the French establishment. He started  as a journalist on Le Figaro, but soon spotted the superior attractions of magazine publishing.

The British connection-in-waiting was Emap, or rather its French subsidiary, where he launched Emap Star and in July 1998 took over as chief executive from Kevin Hand – who at that point had been called back to London to be group ceo. When in 2006 a seriously weakened Emap was compelled to relinquish its French subsidiary, it was de Puyfontaine who handled the negotiations. The upshot was Emap France became a subsidiary of Mondadori, the Italian publishing house, but only after de Puyfontaine had parlayed his way onto the Mondadori board, as chief executive of the group's digital activities. But then, mid last year, he mysteriously quit  – settling instead for "senior advisor" to the head of Mondadori France.

The role of consigliere obviously becomes him, because in next to no time he was also head of a special committee looking into the future of the French newspaper industry, appointed on the personal say-so of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. It was the pay-off for a carefully cultivated friendship which dated back to the eighties when Sarkozy was the relatively unknown mayor of Neuilly. Never underestimate "le piston".

So, the question people are asking is why has such a big fish in France settled for such a small pond here in the UK?  Yes, all right: he will be in charge of such national treasures as Good Housekeeping, Cosmo, Harper's Bazaar and, er, Men's Health. Even so, it looks suspiciously as if there's another shoe waiting to drop. Perhaps NatMags' head of Europe in due course?

Who's fooling whom, BMW?

Spot on. BMW advertising is such a finely tuned piece of engineering after WCRS' 30-year tenure of the account that even the car company's April Fool's Day jokes resonate the brand. In The Guardian today, The Ultimate Driving Machine boasts of its new "Magnetic Tow Technology - For once we're happy to be behind the competition". The idea being that BMW-patented super magnets allow the driver to lock on to the car in front, so saving fuel bills. "Why burn your fuel, when you can burn someone else's?" says the copy. Post-modern irony, or an unconscious revelation of the self-centred one-upmanship at the core of BMW's image?

No crock of gold at end of Red Brick's rainbow

When was the last time you heard anything about Frank Lowe-inspired Red Brick Road - you know, the Tesco agency? I thought so: when it lost its only other account of note, the global Heineken business, to BBH a few months back.

Red Brick Road's inability to win new business after such a spectacular start back in 2006 means it is badly in need of an exit strategy. Which may well account for the following rumour. There's going to be a merger with WPP's JWT some time in the summer. The only real casualty will be JWT's B&Q account. There, that's it.

It's quite an attractive rumour in its way. JWT, which has experienced a "recovery of sorts" following managing director Alison Burns' departure is still weak on top management, the problem being the idiosyncratic personality of JWT Europe executive chairman Toby Hoare. Who better to up the ante than one of London's best managers? Yes, step forward Red Brick Road ceo Paul Hammersley. Add to that the prize of Tesco, which JWT narrowly failed to lure a few years back when it was looking promiscuous at Lowe, and the idea seems juicier still.

There's only one problem. The rumour isn't true. What is true is that 20% stakeholder Sir Frank would like to get out and that he has held intermittent talks with WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell. These talks have considered several scenarios. One was to poach the Tesco media account from Initiative and place it in a WPP-sponsored outlet, probably MindShare. That at least was the WPP angle. Sir Frank had other ideas, such as a joint media venture with WPP in which Red Brick Road would hold a 50% stake. No dice with Sir Martin, it seems. And when finally  the Initiative account did come up for review last year, well it just stayed put. There have also been whispers of  'doing something' with Johnny Hornby's CHI, already part-owned by WPP, but this one was stillborn on the drawing board.

WPP now seems to have given up on any kind of a deal. But that doesn't meant Red Brick Road's strategic problem has gone away. Nor has it prevented the agency's executives from spinning imaginative fantasies about solving it.

Admen rally to the cause of cutting unwanted teenage pregnancies

Finally, something to cheer up adland: the hunting season is about to reopen. The advertising regulator has just announced it is seeking to abolish 9pm watershed restrictions on TV condom advertising; and may also permit pro-abortion ads for the first time.

Result: hysterical consternation among Catholic and anti-abortion groups. But what do admen care about that? This new development can only mean one thing:  some frenzied pitching – at last! – all in the worthy cause of cutting teenage pregnancies. 

The controversy has been stirred by an outline proposal from the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP), which have decided to review the current advertising rules. We can now expect almost round-the-clock condom advertising – the exception being when programmes are aimed at children under 10. So not during Horrid Henry but straight after GMTV. It's all part of a review of advertising codes which is being put out for public consultation. The scrutiny closes on July 19th.

Currently condoms cannot be advertised on Channel 4 before 7pm and on other channels before 9pm. But the soaring growth of teenage pregnancies has prompted calls for change. (Hands up, by the way, anyone who can remember a condom ad on telly, even after the watershed? I thought so: the manufacturers clearly don't see TV advertising as the way forward.)

Not surprisingly, there has been more outraged opposition than support for these controversial proposals. More particularly for the one that would allow abortion clinics to advertise on TV. The ever-entertaining Tory MP and blogger Nadine Dorries has already registered her disgust. It's  "just plain sick", she says.

"I am quite sure that any adverts will depict smiling pretty nurses, gleaming reception areas and leafy car parks," she writes in her blog. She goes on to complain that the ads will not highlight the risks involved. She's pretty ill-informed on the technicalities, as it happens.

Opening up new categories to advertising might, however, do something to restore confidence in an industry trussed by new legislation and battered by lobby groups calling for ever more stringent curbs. Worthy cause or not.