Archive

TV research is under the spotlight as BARB’s cost and effectiveness comes in for tough scrutiny from both the ITV sales groups and the BBC. Will a new, improved system be the result?

As if being accused of shredding shirts and turning boxer shorts into hoola skirts was not enough, Persil is now being accused of helping to cause the Second World War. According to a new urban myth, Persil was included in the Versailles Treaty in 1919. As part of the ill-fated peace settlement, German chemical manufacturer […]

Traditionally, when it comes to press advertising, buyers hold a prejudice in favour of national titles over regional. However, local papers which can offer quality readership penetration, and hence good returns, are fighting to change this pe

Interactive poster ads for Felix catfood will “miaow” at consumers if brand owner Quaker decides to introduce them to bus shelters later this year. The company has been considering the scheme for a number of months. It is thought to be planning a May launch in Scotland. It is not yet clear how the posters […]

Whitbread has completed a strategic review of Heineken’s marketing strategy, which is understood to include dropping Stephen Fry from the Heineken Export commercials and allocating a far greater amount of Heineken’s total budget to the brand. It is believed the decision to drop Stephen Fry from its two and-a-half year campaign by Lowe Howard-Spink is […]

Thorn EMI, new owner of Dillons bookshops, is planning to turn the chain into an international retailer. The company says that it will integrate management of the chain with its HMV music retail stores after last week’s ú36 million buy-out of the Dillons and Hatchards stores from the receiver. One option being considered is to […]

Whitbread Inns has appointed Clark and Taylor to handle the ú2m account for its chain of 65 Hogshead Ale Houses. Sources say that a press, radio and poster campaign will break at the end of March.

Allied Bakeries is understood to have consolidated all of its advertising into GGK after dropping Lansdown Conquest as its agency for Kingsmill bread. The Kingsmill account is thought to have reverted to GGK. The agency lost the account to Lansdown two years ago when the “butler” advertisements – featuring a butler delivering the bread to […]

Taunton Cider is to lose Liz Broadbent, its key executive for new product development. She is leaving to set up her own npd consultancy. She will act as an adviser for a number of clients including Taunton. The cider companyis now without a new product development team, and future work will be split between the […]

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 […]

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

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]