There have long been stories about petfood makers eating the product to make sure it’s up to scratch, and even apocryphal tales of ad executives having to try it to prove they too are up to the task. But Mattel has taken company loyalty too far. The firm can’t seem to recognise the difference between […]

Steamy love triangles apart, EastEnders has become little more than an extended commercial, probably to distract attention from the acting.

Marcus Plantin, ITV Network director responsible for network scheduling for the past two years, is to take over from Andrew Quinn as Network Centre chief executive. News of the move emerged yesterday (Tuesday) as ITV Network Centre celebrated its first full calendar year in operation with a presentation and publication of its annual review for […]

Reports of the death of the 30-second spot ad may be greatly exaggerated. However, interactive technology and new media look likely to give a new role to an old tool.

Can it really be just two years ago – at TV93 – that ITV Network Centre chief executive Andrew Quinn announced the appointment of Dick Emery as director of market strategy? His arrival coincided with details of a new sales committee structure. Advertisers were promised new systems to evaluate its performance more effectively and prove […]

Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs joins the Quorn Hall of Fame on April 1 when his new commercial for the Marlow Foods meat replacement, breaks on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast. `Giggsy’ is seen enjoying a wholesome post-game snack in this new commercial, part of Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO’s £1.1m campaign. Research proves he has credibility […]

Britain’s biggest media buyer would like to emphasise all the other things it is good at.

I was intrigued by John Shannon’s most revealing article “A message that can wear thin” about the Benetton campaign (MW February 24), but must confess there is one small section which, despite having been several hundred times, still baffles me somewhat. I refer of course to the section where Shannon concerns himself with whether the […]

PowerStore, the southern-based electricals retailer that acquired 71 stores from Homepower two weeks ago (MW February 17), is poised to make further acquisitions. It is believed that PowerStore aims to buy stores from regional electricity company Powerhouse Retail, a joint venture between Southern Electric, Eastern Electricity and Midlands Electric. The PowerStore chain plans to add […]

Three crumpled Saabs, one shattered film camera, and a frazzled crowd of technicians, directors, producers and client – that was the real cost of the spectacular £600,000-plus Saab “Testing” shoot, split between a disused airbase at San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, and the Californian mountains above Bakersfield. The ad follows a Saab 900 turbo […]

It takes wit and guile to get ahead in the music business. Even more to make it in the board games market, according to entrepreneur Dave Klein, who has spent the past nine years creating Chart Moves, a new board game to be launched on TV in the spring. So far Klein has funded the […]

IPC Magazines is planning to launch a CD version of three of its newsstand titles in late spring in a joint venture with the entertainment software company Zone UK. UnZip – a six-hour CD-Rom – will carry three branded sections from IPC’s NME, Vox and New Scientist. The “magazine” will carry new editorial of moving […]

There are a number of exaggerations and inaccuracies in Jo-Anne Walker’s article “Pride after a fall” (MW March 3) that I should like to correct. I would challenge Panini to prove that they sold 1 billion packets of stickers in the UK last year. Given that they accept Merlin has the major portion of the […]

Awareness of Saab in Britain has dropped to less than one in five of those questioned. When your ad spend is a minuscule proportion of the market total and your parent wants results, then whatyou spend it on has to be spectacular. Cue a series

CondéNast has booked a two-week, 48-sheet poster campaign in London to support the April edition of Vanity Fair. The April `Hollywood’ issue carries a four-page gatefold cover advertising Harvey Nichols and starring ten Hollywood actresses. It is the first of a series of promotional activities for the title, whose circulation has been stagnating for the […]