MW told to give up Opium habit

Yet again Marketing Week finds it necessary to print that Sophie Dahl photo.

It seems that Marketing Week will use any cheap excuse to print this photo.Usually it is accompanied by a token uninteresting article about the Advertising Standards Authority. Last week it was on the letters page. I am sure all readers have now got the message that the staff at MW love this photo, but can’t you show some imagination and find another icon (nude or fully dressed, take your pick), some new subjects to write about and some more varied images?

Surely the world of marketing is not so short of material that we have to put up with the “Sophie Dahl complaints issue” week in, week out, forever? How about setting yourselves a target of going a whole month without mentioning Sophie in MW? There are lots of other marketing issues out there – you don’t have to focus so much attention on one granddaughter of a children’s author.

Hopefully you’ll get this before Iain Murray’s excellent column is scrapped in favour of “Sophie Dahl’s World of Marketing” thus ensuring yet more exposure for Sophie, Opium perfume and her PR company.

Russell Hill

Marketing manager

Blackwell UK Direct

Oxford

Subs: no more pictures of Ms Dahl for one month – Ed.