NEWS ROUND-UP

Abbey National will provide Travelex-branded Bureau de Change operations at its branches early next year, after buying a one-third stake in the foreign exchange operator this week. Branches will offer customers instant access to foreign currency and traveller’s cheques on a similar line to the Thomas Cook outlets at Midland Bank branches. Branches may also […]

Pulling together its customer records to set up a marketing database, Guardian Insurance Group called in US firm Harte-Hanks. And, as Jane Dudman reports, the company is already seeing the benefits of tightly-targeted campaigns

CompuServe, the Internet access provider, is to launch the UK’s first fully-fledged on-line shopping service this month. Virgin Our Price, PC World, Dixons, Great Universal Stores, Tesco, WH Smith, Interflora, Past Times and Innovations are among the retailers and mail order firms that have signed up for the scheme, which opens on April 27. The […]

Procter & Gamble has lost a senior marketing director. He fills a year-long vacancy at frozen food retailer Iceland. P&G’s Andy Brent, marketing director for household cleaning products, is to join Iceland in the next two weeks, more than a ye

By considering taxation of TV and radio advertising, Sweden is in danger of sacrificing long-term economic growth for a short-term fundraising `fix’

EURO RSCG Wnek Gosper has pipped Bainsfair Sharkey Trott to the Aero USA sports shoe account, worth ú3.2m over three years. Aero USA had originally planned to launch the brand in the UK using Saatchi & Saatchi subsidiary Wavelength Creative Marketing, but split from the agency after disagreements over payments (MW February 10). Knight Leagas […]

Campbell’s is looking for a new UK marketing director to replace Peter Scott who has moved to take up the position of sales and marketing director at the company’s food service group, Stratford-upon-Avon Foods. Scott has been UK marketing director, later UK senior marketing director, at the world’s biggest soup company for the past six […]

Sunday colour supplements are read, appreciated and enjoyed by around 80 per cent of Sunday newspaper readers, according to research conducted by RSGB for the Mirror Group and two agencies. Mirror Group commissioned the research to show that Sunday colour supplements were suffering a dearth of branded advertising because of a fashion for review sections […]

Direct marketing systems developer AnaData has launched Rapid Selections, which it claims is the first marketing database analysis tool in the UK to offer “almost instant” results to complex on-line selections from large databases. During tests on over a million name and address records, selections of 5,000 were completed in less than ten seconds, AnaData […]

Safeway is the first UK supermarket chain to trial a new self-scanning system for shoppers from Symbol Technologies. The new scanning system, Portable Personal Shopping, which is being piloted by Safeway’s Solihull superstore. It allows shoppers to record product purchases as they take items from the shelves, see a running total of the bill and […]

Thomas Cook and National Westminster Bank have unveiled a chain of multimedia-based information and sales kiosks located in their branches throughout the UK. The Touch kiosks, developed in association with computer manufacturer Olivetti in London, are based on the Travel Kiosk system piloted by Thomas Cook last year. Using the self-service kiosks, at the touch […]

Strategic Mapping (SMI) has launched Atlas GIS for Windows 3.0, a new version of its desktop mapping software targeted at mainstream bus-iness users. The software aids those who want to plan and view the effects of promotional activities region by region. The new software comes with European data – including country, region and county boundaries; […]

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