Month: September 1996

Mitre, Europe’s leading teleservicing agency which owns The Decisions Group, Merit Direct, The Call Centre and Merit Communications, has merged with Sitel, the US-based telemarketing operation. Following the transaction, valued at about 208m, Sitel becomes the largest provider of global teleservices with over 5,700 workstations. Following the recruitment of John Menzies to the Smart membership […]

Marco Benatti is a name which has risen from relative obscurity to unexpected prominence in the last week or so. To Mr Benatti this may be welcome news: no more than his due, he might argue. But to his senior colleague, Chris Ingram, chief executive of CIA Group, it is a headache. Benatti is important […]

With readership and revenue falling, Express Newspapers needs large-scale, sustained investment to stem the advance of Associated Press

The message seemed clear enough. Speaking at his company’s interim results presentation last week, Yorkshire-Tyne Tees chairman Ward Thomas took the unusual step of disclosing details of the trading arrangement between the ITV licensee and its airtime sales house, Laser. Part of this deal, Thomas told the attendant City analysts, was a guarantee that YTTV’s […]

– On May 17, 1996 we published an article on the Ministry of Sound which suggested that the club had implemented a policy of carrying out unnecessarily intrusive and offensive body searches of its clients before allowing them to enter its premises. This was untrue. We accept that the club’s policy on searching does not […]

Poster company More O’Ferrall is to change its name and restructure into two operating companies, ahead of planned acquisitions. The holding company will change its name to The More Group and will oversee two separate divisions – Adshel, which will run the company’s bus shelter contracts, and More O’Ferrall, which will run the company’s billboards. […]

Man who ‘Tangoed’ the UK and turned the brand into major Nineties success story Britvic leaves

The launch of Thickhead, which Marketing Week covered in some depth (September 6) has been greeted with the usual media hysteria about kids gaining alcohol problems. Thinking back to my own teenage years, I remember drinking cider and sweet vermouth with lots of mixer which, essentially, is the same thing as alcopops. An attractive bottle […]

Banks Hoggins O’Shea has gained a place on the Weetabix roster after winning the 2m business for Weetabix cereal brand Weetaflakes. The agency joins Lowe How- ard-Spink and Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO on the roster after the brand grew almost ten per cent in a year. Weetabix saw credentials from Mellors Reay & Partners, Rainey Kelly […]

The soap war enters a new phase as P&G and Lever fight for market dominance with format, rather than brand.

COVER LABEL Country Music Television has awarded its 3m advertising account to Harari Page and Zenith. It starts broadcasting around the clock this month.

Alan Mitchell (MW August 30) in discussing loyalty schemes develops the idea further by proposing the concept of consumers forming buyer groups. This idea has already been developed, its called the Consumer Co-operative Movement which has recently celebrated 150 years of trading. Richard Rowe Alan Mitchell replies: The Co-op was a pioneer in at least […]

Supermarket chain Somerfield has restructured its marketing department and appointed Dominic Myers to the newly-created post of associate director for marketing. Somerfield already has a marketing director, David Coles, and Myers will now report to him. The company stresses that the new role does not detract from Coles’ responsibilities. The company says the associate directorship […]

TBWA is tipped to win the Wrigley’s Spearmint gum account, worth 3m in the UK. The agency beat Grey Advertising, after a pitch which originally involved Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters and the company’s roster agencies Young & Rubicam and Bray Lei

Soap giant Procter & Gamble, which built its name on boxed washing powders, is pulling out of big box powders and will axe its standard size boxes in an effort to move the market towards concentrates.