CWC unveils 50m blitz

Cable & Wireless Communications has bought all the colour press ads for every national newspaper on September 15 as the cornerstone of its 50m launch campaign – the largest ad campaign in the UK this year.

There will be poster and TV ads, plus a direct marketing campaign, breaking on the same day and carrying the line: “What can we do for you?”.

The press ads adopt the vivid yellow used in a corporate campaign launched in June through Rapier Stead & Bowden, the agency which controversially won the account in July. They will be supported by a variety of strip ads, spots on TV pages and The Star, which will turn its masthead yellow for the day.

“We want to make as big an impact as possible on the first day and that is why we have gone for this approach,” says a CWC spokeswoman. The bulk of the 50m budget, to attract both business and domestic users, will be spent before Christmas.

BT launched an aggressive pre-emptive strike against CWC this week with a poster campaign carrying the line: “Does your business want to cut bills but not corners?”

But CWC denies it has struck a contra deal that would see the bulk of its 50m budget spent in the Granada group-owned Laser Sales in return for the Granada group switching its cable and telephony contracts from BT to CWC. “We are talking to Granada as a potential customer,” says a CWC spokeswoman. “And we have approached a number of contractors for TV ad sales with a view to buying space – but by no means the bulk of the advertising will end up in Laser.”