Holsten ends Tottenham sponsorships

Marketing Week

Holsten Distributors is axing its 12-year sponsorship of Tottenham Hotspurs football club at the end of the season, and could pull out of sponsorship altogether. The last deal the two companies signed nearly three years ago was worth ú1.9m over three years. Tottenham is expected to announce a replacement sponsor within the next few weeks. […]

Life in Mars: Some facts

Marketing Week

* Frank Mars launched chocolate and nougat bar, Milky Way in the US in 1923. He gave his son Forrest Snr $50,000 and the foreign rights to market the brand, which was launched in the UK and renamed the Mars bar. It was produced at a factory in Slough from August 1932. A different product, […]

Pen is mightier than the phone

Marketing Week

Virginia Matthews’ jousting with the customer service industry (MW, February 17) elicited a few sympathetic groans here at The Cade Partnership. As an agency with a good deal of experience helping clients handle customer complaints, we are only too familiar with the “how may I help you?” brigade. Telephone helplines are a marvellous opportunity to […]

Techno probe

Marketing Week

In the past, commissioning market research could be very much like playing Russian roulette, in terms of the quality and honesty of the end results, but advances in computer-aided techniques mean that clients can expect a faster, more accurate

Comet ponders stores closure

Marketing Week

Retail giant Kingfisher is considering shutting down nearly a quarter of its Comet stores in a fresh attempt to remove excess capacity from the overcrowded electrical retail market. Kingfisher, which owns Woolworths, Superdrug and B&Q, as well as Comet, has told City analysts that a review of the chain’s operations could include the closure of […]

Ian Wright in magazine joint venture

Marketing Week

Arsenal striker Ian Wright and upmarket publisher the Magazine Collection have formed a joint venture to publish a football and lifestyle magazine. The Player, to be launched in April, will be a glossy upmarket bi-monthly aimed at men aged 20 to 44 and is the latest entrant to the burgeoning men’s magazine market. Dennis Publishing’s […]

A demand we need to meat

Marketing Week

While many sympathise with those protesting against live animal exports, it should be noted that meat consumption is actually on the increase. By George Pitcher

Timing’s right to take the plunge

Marketing Week

How many people feel at odds with the current practice of marketing and the closely related business of marketing communications? Battered by the recession and controlled by accountants, perhaps despair is just around the corner? Examples of the damage wrought by the combined attentions of recession, and subsequently the bean counters, are numerous. High-street retailers […]

Sampson strengthens First Choice

Marketing Week

One of last year’s most public identity changes was the metamorphosis of holiday company Owners Abroad into First Choice. Following a troubled 1992/93 season, during which the company had been subject to a hostile takeover bid, lost market share and its share price fell, Owners Abroad commissioned research into its market position, with disappointing results. […]

GGT wins ú9m Blockbuster

Marketing Week

GGT has beaten Ogilvy & Mather to the ú9m advertising account for video rental chain Blockbuster UK. Blockbuster put its advertising account up for grabs last November after a change in senior management, when the company brought in two direct

ITC makes changes in Programme Code review

Marketing Week

The Independent Television Commission has amended its rules governing product placement, viewer competitions and promotions as part of an overhaul of its entire Programme Code. The move follows recent breaches of the undue prominence section of the code, which relates to product placement. Earlier this year, Granada TV was fined ú500,000 for promoting branded products […]

No Title

Marketing Week

Pizza Hut is to centralise its international advertising and is ditching its ú2.8m (Register-MEAL) Hit the Hut campaign, developed by Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters.

No Title

Marketing Week

Coca-Cola is building on its `All colas are not the same’ sales drive with a new campaign, which goes on air this Monday. The new commercial, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, is set in Prohibition New York and based on a true story. Shot in black and white, `Feds’ features a raid by the New […]