Can you hand-
dance to that?

Observers can almost hear the "Pop Goes the Monkey" music, to which the Mitsubishi marketing department is apparently set. AdAge counts yet another ad head leaving, this one lasting four months, not even as long as the last one (six months). Three other marketing executives jumped since CEO Finbarr O'Neill left in January. Mitsubishi - the first automaker to harbor great online media ambitions - will now spend $50 million less on advertising, down to about $150 million, which will preclude a push for the troubled carmaker's new launch of the Eclipse that is slated to bow next month.

BBDO Los Angeles proved the lucky winner in an agency review in march, although AdAge reports it hasn't yet signed a contract. The account assignment includes local and national creative duties.

Mitsubishi was the first automotive company to take the Internet seriously as a medium that could handle TV-class billings. Those initial efforts that first showed up online a year and a half a go coincided - hopefully without causality - with a dramatic business decline that continues today.