Month: January 1995

Brookside hits national radio

Marketing Week

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 […]

Questions to ask

Marketing Week

The NW Ayer offer for Bates may have been officially withdrawn, but a continuing role in the Saatchi saga cannot be discounted.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 […]

Volta calls up Maynard for UK launch

Marketing Week

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 […]

Reuters Radio News wins Virgin Radio contract

Marketing Week

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 […]

Sun Alliance looks like a right turkey

Marketing Week

Sun Alliance and the Turkish Tourism Board are vying for Quote of the Week. Director of the Turkish Tourist Office, Mustafa Turkmen, is about to end his five-year tenure in the UK office with a posting back to the Turkish headquarters. “It’s all very sad. I would prefer Venice or Paris. Ankara isn’t really a […]

Volta calls up Maynard for UK launch

Marketing Week

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 […]

Virgin moots lifestyle magazine…

Marketing Week

Virgin is planning to launch a lifestyle music consumer title with Haymarket Magazines. A men’s music interest magazine is understood to be one option under consideration. The discussions follow Virgin Group’s recent diversification into soft drinks and financial services. However, the initiative is understood to have come from Haymarket, which is assessing the merits of […]

UK smokers are losing their puff

Marketing Week

UK cigarette consumption is expected to fall at an annual rate of five per cent, according to fresh research from Mintel. The market intelligence report shows that consumption sank 11 per cent between 1989 and 1994. But the drop is expected to accelerate because of a mixture of anti-smoking campaigning, increasing excise duties and a […]

A blurring of channel vision

Marketing Week

I was surprised to read your article in Marketing Week last week in which it was stated that UK Living had a share of viewing in cable and satellite homes that was double that of The Family Channel. While we are pleased to applaud the growth of any satellite channel, the comparison that was made […]

Publish and be famed

Marketing Week

Customer service no longer ends at the supermarket checkout – increasingly retailers are turning to customer magazines as a way of raising brand profile, boosting sales and drawing shoppers into the customer loyalty fold. By David Reed

Cross-word solutions

Marketing Week

All eyes are turned to National Heritage Secretary Stephen Dorrell as he struggles to find a panacea for the cross-media ownership grievances, but will a government nervously facing a General Election deregulate and be damned, or fudge a compr

No Title

Marketing Week

While thousands of spotty snorkel-parkered teenagers hook up to the global information superhighway – trading in their train-spotting manuals for modems – global computer giant IBM has proved a little slower off the mark. Hundreds of phone calls, one advertising agency and no less than six PR people were used to set up an interview […]

Barclaycard opens door to Internet

Marketing Week

Barclaycard is to become the first UK credit card to offer services on the Internet with the launch of an interactive electronic magazine. The new service, Barclaycard Netlink, allows Internet users to request a Barclaycard application form and enter prize competitions using e-mail. Card customers will also soon be able to exchange Barclaycard Profiles points […]

VYING FOR PROMOTION

Marketing Week

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