Downtown Partners/Chicago is out.   Sources report the powers-that-be at Downtown Partners/Chicago have changed course and decided not to participate in the agency review drug store behemoth Walgreens launched just weeks ago.  That review, about which ad trade publications have mostly kept  mum because they are not up to speed on it, promises to be one of the spring�

Let’s talk tourism. Specifically the marketing of Chicago to tourists. We’ve actually been talking about the topic for years.  And we’ve often been disappointed by Chicago’s and Illinois’s lackluster, if not downright laughable, efforts to market to — and lure in — more tourists.

Whoever said we humans are creatures of habit was right. For years, however, that truism has been a source of more than a little frustration to more than a few general managers and news directors at Chicago television stations. Over time they have done just about everything thinkable short of handing each and every viewer in the city and suburbs a cool million dollars in cash to get

Let’s just say it flat out.  “Smash” is a train wreck of a show like few others we’ve ever endured on TV. And get ready.  It’s headed right at us in Chicago on Monday, Feb 6., the day AFTER the Super Bowl. In case you haven’t heard (though you should have, given the enormity of the hype this hopeless mess has

In a stunner that is sure to have major ramifications for Downtown Partners/Chicago, sources say Walgreens is launching an ad agency review.  That could mean big problems for Downtown Partners/Chicago, which has been the drugstore behemoth’s agency of record since the shop was founded by creative partners Jim Schmidt and Joe Stuart in 2004.  But Downtown Partners is expected to part