Hagen-Dazs’ marketing chief Nicola Chilton, responsible for the day-to-day running of the premium ice cream brand in the UK, has left the company. Chilton is understood to have left of her own accord and is not thought to have plans to join another company. Her departure comes only months after brand owner Grand Metropolitan earmarked […]

Rupert Murdoch flies into Britain this week to review the newsprint crisis at News International. The worldwide shortage of the newspaper industry’s raw material has hit Murdoch’s empire hardest and print runs have been slashed. Today’s run has been cut by five per cent, or 30,000 copies, while flagship tabloid The Sun has shaved 120,000 […]

Growing competition between named and own-label brands has taken retailers and manufacturers into new areas of the loyalty business. The rise of own-label products has forced brand manufacturers to establish new ways of relating to their customers – trying to attract them with samples, vouchers and mailings, as well as traditional advertising, before they even […]

Chris Boulding refers to AGB Mediaspan in his article “Drowning by numbers” (MW March 10) as a product which links Superpanel purchasing data with BARB data by assuming similar demographic households behave alike, and therefore “the direct impact of airtime exposure remains a mystery”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Superpanel and […]

The number of ads per break on Italian TV was getting beyond a joke, which is when the industry stepped in to bring real value back to the medium. By John Shannon

Interbrand chief executive Michael Birkin is to replace Peter Jones as head of Omnicom’s Diversified Agency Services (DAS) in Europe. Jones will remain as president of DAS – the fastest-growing part of the Omnicom empire – but devote more of his attention to the US. Birkin becomes European director at the end of April. The […]

Tesco’s recent successes have put Sainsbury’s on the defensive. Ivor Hunt, Sainsbury’s marketing chief, is the man charged with freshening the image of a firm accused of resting on its laurels.

Playing a major role in loyalty schemes and looking like coffee table glossies, customer magazines no longer extoll the virtues of goods no-one wants, but give consumers information relevant to their lifestyle.

The airlines have always been one step ahead with rewards for frequent flyers, but the different schemes on offer can be confusing, once you get down to the small print. What exactly do travellers gain?

Agencies are predicting chaos in the national press market if News International’s newsprint supply crisis is not alleviated quickly, following its decision to reduce pagination in its titles last week. The paper crisis is understood to have been caused by NI’s failure to renegotiate a price with paper suppliers when its three-year supply deal ended […]

John Turturro as Maurice, Robert DeNiro as Charles and Stephen Fry as Charlie Scott – the Saatchi & Saatchi saga has hit Hollywood. So Diary thought it right and proper to think up some casting suggestions for the UK end of the story. Former London chairman David Kershaw could be played by Bob “it’s good […]

Retail chain Dixons has drawn up a shortlist of four to pitch for its ú45m business (Register-MEAL). The candidates are the New Saatchi Agency, J Walter Thompson, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles and the incumbent Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, a

Bates Dorland director Mark Palmer gave a truly worthy speech at last week’s Retail Week conference at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. He spoke in glowing terms about the potential of new technology in advertising. Conference delegates were therefore rather surprised at the sight that greeted them as they left the hotel. Bates had decided to […]

After last year’s losses, ITV is taking steps to regain lost ground and win advertiser support.