“Sky Television is not about managing decline, however expertly.” BSkyB director of programmes David Elstein on the challenges facing British broadcasters, notably ITV.

Yvette Turner, Royal Mail head of consumer marketing, is to join Capital Radio as head of market research and sales development for The Capital Radio Group. Turner joins Capital on April 24 with a brief to improve group stations’ output and sales revenue through initiating, managing and analysing audience research. She will report to David […]

Jewellery chain H Samuel has ended its search for an agency with the appointment of Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters. It has also more than doubled its advertising budget. DFGW won the business in a final clash against J Walter Thompson. BMP DDB Needham and Laing Henry were knocked out in the first round of the […]

Honda UK is returning to television advertising with the estimated ú7m launch of its Civic 5 Door model. The new campaign is designed to spearhead a repositioning of the brand in the UK.

Women are twice as likely as men to want sanpro product advertising banned from TV, according to a report produced by CIA Sensor, the fortnightly survey from CIA MediaLab. In the report, 34 per cent of women and 17 per cent of men surveyed said that sanpro product commercials should be taken off the screen. […]

Cable TV was savaged by Grey New York senior vice-president/director of national television Jon Mandel in his presentation on “the US experience” at TV95 in Monte Carlo last week. Mandel said the UK should learn from basic mistakes made in the US more than six years ago. “Cable very quickly went off its strategy of […]

The contrast could hardly be greater. In a hotel in mid-town Manhattan last week two of the world’s most powerful advertisers – responsible for £3bn a year expenditure – told top marketing and media executives to get a grip: “develop or die”. For Procter & Gamble chairman Ed Artzt the event was a reprise of […]

News round-up gives readers an at-a-glance overview of this month’s design news.

Buspak, the Manchester-based bus advertising company part-owned by Tony O’Reilly, has taken over Metrobus Advertising – which handles the giant Badgerline bus advertising contract – for an undisclosed sum. Buspak chairman Peter Cosgrove will be chairman of the new operation. Meanwhile, Metrobus managing director Terry Dyer becomes deputy managing director and Buspak managing director John […]

“Develop or die” was the theme of the TV95 television advertising conference in Monte Carlo last week. While much has changed since the last event two years ago, as much, it seems, has not. Competition in the British market is now “a full-scale artillery barrage”, said conference chairman Harry Turner. The ITV franchise holders are […]

Adrian Holmes, the chairman of Lowe Howard-Spink, delivered a blistering attack on the decline in moral standards and the rise of “new yobbishness” in advertising, last week. In a speech to the TV95 conference in Monte Carlo, Holmes, showed a reel of five TV commercials that had been entered for the British Television Advertising Awards, […]

In his article “Directly right up my nose” (MW last week) Alan Mitchell does us a real injustice. In our remoteness versus purchase propensity model Mitchell is classified as “South Georgia/ give him the full SP”. Our analysts tell me that this segment is likely to respond on the 21st prompt (Mitchell has only received […]

Bacardi International is moving Jim Roche, the marketing director of its UK joint venture Westbay Distributors, over to its whisky division William Lawson, where he will take up the position of assistant managing director. Westbay, which is a joint venture between Bacardi and Martini & Rosso, is promoting former European co-ordinator Geoffrey Bichard to fill […]

Lever Brothers is launching New Generation Persil Liquid on March 20, with a ú1.5m ad campaign through J. Walter Thompson breaking at the end of April.

Procter & Gamble has resolved its long-running power struggle at the very top of the organisation with John Pepper, the president responsible for P&G’s international business, winning the succession battle to replace chairman and chief executi