Reuters Radio News has won the contract to supply news to Virgin 1215 and its new London service. The move is being seen as a boost to Reuters’ hopes of offering a rival syndicated radio news service to Independent Radio News. IRN, jointly owned by major commercial radio groups, supplies 124 stations. It is offered […]
Italian battery brand Volta has called on actor Bill Maynard, who plays Claude Greengrass in the hit TV series Heartbeat, to launch its products in the UK. Already established on the Continent, Volta will this month unveil an ad campaign, featuring the actor. Volta aims to take a five per cent share of the ú460m […]
The NW Ayer offer for Bates may have been officially withdrawn, but a continuing role in the Saatchi saga cannot be discounted. Richard Humphreys, a former Saatchi director close to Maurice Saatchi, and major player at Ayer, is currently in South Korea conferring with Ayer’s main financial backer Choi Won-Young. Ayer money, possibly supplemented by […]
Brookside makes its debut as a national radio soap next week when a version of the Channel 4 soap breaks on commercial radio. The hunt is under way for a sponsor. “Brookside: the radio series” will be broadcast to approximately 95 per cent of the UK’s commercial radio audience through deals struck with more than […]
The NW Ayer offer for Bates may have been officially withdrawn, but a continuing role in the Saatchi saga cannot be discounted. Richard Humphreys, a former Saatchi director close to Maurice Saatchi, and major player at Ayer, is currently in South Korea conferring with Ayer’s main financial backer Choi Won-Young. Ayer money, possibly supplemented by […]
Targeting the working classes effectively is the challenge facing the marketing fraternity.
Jo-Anne Walker paints a totally misleading picture when she assesses direct mail opening and reading statistics (MW December 9). The figure quoted (or rather misquoted) gives the impression, when viewed in isolation, that hardly anybody opens and reads their direct mail. Not true. In fact, if you look at the opening statistics in full you […]
What an appalling mess. No, not the Saatchi imbroglio for once, but the Government’s so-called media policy. The Broadcast Act 1990 seemed ill-conceived at the time. Now it has more holes through it than a piece of timber riddled with death-watch beetle. Will the Government clear out this deadwood with sweeping new legislation? Not before […]
SmithKline Beecham’s Lucozade is preparing for competition from Virgin, which is understood to be planning the launch of a canned sport drink made by the Cott Corporation. The company describes the new product as a high-energy, restorative drink, which will line up alongside the cola it launched last year (MW October 14). Cott also supplies […]
Pharmaceutical companies will be fighting it out in a multimillion pound battle for access to a Government-held database on patients’ reactions to drugs. The database was originally compiled by Vamp Health, which won 25 per cent of the market to supply computer systems to general practitioners. Some 700 medical practices agreed to supply the company […]
In the premier league of consumer goods, a promotion battle is fought out every day as special offers flood the shelves. And the results are good: this summer, items under promotion accounted for 20 per cent of the value of the average British
The Saatchi brothers are, or were, the nearest thing advertising had to a royal family. Their indisputable achievements were surrounded by an aura of mystique and prestige, knowingly and assiduously cultivated by themselves. Like Bagehot’s celebrated dictum on royalty, they determined never to let daylight in on the magic for fear of dissolving it. And […]
Zenith Media has clawed back 5m of Mars brands from rival media buyers days after Maurice Saatchi was ousted from Zenith parent Saatchi & Saatchi plc. The realignment is a signal that Mars’s year-long disagreement with Zenith over its winning of the 5m Terry’s Suchard business is now over. However, the decision appears to have […]
More than half of shoppers are addicted to bargain hunting in sales, according to a new report entitled “The Promiscuous Shopper”, commissioned by loyalty specialist Air Miles. Northerners are generally more enthusiastic about shopping than their southern counterparts: for example, 51 per cent of the former agree with the statement “Shopping is fun”, compared with […]
Grey Communications Group has won the ú8m Nynex account, beating competition from Chiat Day and Teamworks, the cable TV and telecoms giant’s incumbent agency.