Month: April 1998

GQ’s Brown is a real sex machine

Marketing Week

The 18 Awards, hosted by event organiser Wambam, was a maelstrom of adult merriment. The awards themselves, held at Alexandra Palace, recognised adult entertainment across various media. While there the Diary noticed a frisky couple who spent half an hour underneath one of the tables, looking over their finer points. When the pair finally came […]

Imagination still scoring Dome runs

Marketing Week

When Imagination parted company with the Millennium Dome in 1997 there was an astonishingly professional lack of mud-slinging between the two parties – particularly when compared with the foot-stomping departure of creative director Stephen Bayley later in the year. The subsequent revelation that the then Millennium Central paid Imagination over 7.3m for the work it […]

Euro space organisation launches agency search

Marketing Week

The European Space Agency, a consortium behind the launch of the Ariane rockets, is looking for an advertising agency network to raise awareness among taxpayers and governments alike. The ESA, which is funded by 14 member states, including the UK, France, Germany and Italy, has spoken to 16 agencies who are competing to be put […]

SAVINGS’ SCHEME

Marketing Week

National Savings offers government-backed guarantees and has a distribution network of more than 19,000 post offices. It is the sort of advantage other financial providers would kill for. Yet National Savings still missed its 2bn financial target by over 400m this year. With its reputation as a place where grannies put their pensions and kids […]

Players line up to add spice to EMI

Marketing Week

Looking older, but something good has happened to me,” is a line from George Michael’s album Older which appears on page two of EMI’s 1997 annual report. Since then the pop star has been arrested for “lewd behaviour” in a Beverly Hills public lavatory, and EMI – in its 101st year – has again being […]

Martin Dawes axes ‘breathe’ roll-out

Marketing Week

Martin Dawes, the telecoms and TV rental company, has shelved plans for a huge roll out of stores because of delays in the launch of digital TV. Its 1m pilot store, branded “breathe”, opened in Leeds on November 1 1997 (MW October 16). The store is closed for refurbishment and a spokesman for the company […]

Great outdoors can still improve

Marketing Week

For years the outdoor industry was accused of some of the most basic failings – among them scruffy sites, frequent mistakes in posting and no credible audience measurement system. A general impression that most deals were done in the pub did little to help. But at last week’s conference in Spain, StreetTalk Madrid, the last […]

BIB relies on ‘old tech’ for launch

Marketing Week

Home shopping system British Interactive Broadcasting (BIB), will be forced to rely on telephones, faxes, and e-mails to prop up its digital technology in the first months of its retail launch. The embarassing need to fall back on “old technology ” has been forced on BIB by a need to have something to show impatient […]

Three-point plan is key to effectiveness

Marketing Week

When a creative team presents a poster to me for approval, I look for three things: individuality, originality and simplicity. The idea has to come straight out of the product, not bolted on, or the poster will not do a distinctive branding job. Of these ads, only British Gas and One-2-One fulfil those criteria. British […]

Market cuts the big boys some slack as retail bucks the trend

Marketing Week

Debenhams provided an encouraging curtain-raiser to a spate of seasonal results reporting in the retail sector on Monday, by posting a 16 per cent rise in interim pre-tax profits at 77.1m, a nice little premium on the 72m to 76m range that the City was predicting. These were the first results from the group since […]

ITV centralises promotional teams into new London unit

Marketing Week

ITV has axed its regional promotional teams to set up a centralised unit in London in an attempt to cut out duplication and favouritism to local broadcasters’ programmes. The new team, the Network Promotions Unit, will be led by Steve Allen, currently creative director of Granada UK Broadcasting. He will report to ITV marketing and […]

POSTER WATCH

Marketing Week

This month’s selection includes several new advertisers, and some low-budget campaigns, so overall recognition was lower than usual. Only one poster, British Gas’ promotion of its direct debit discount scheme, had been seen by seven out of ten people; the rest all registered less than 50 per cent. Camelot’s Lottery Instant’s had the next highest […]

ASA approves new French Connection ads

Marketing Week

The latest advertising for French Connection, featuring the word “fcuk”, will not be banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, despite provoking eight complaints. The ASA recommended that the independent ASA Council, which adjudicates on controversial campaigns, should not investigate these particular ads, devised by GGT. One poster execution shows a man wearing a T-shirt with […]

Top exit spurs shake-up at Swatch maker SMH

Marketing Week

Swiss watch maker SMH, which owns brands such as Swatch and Omega, has appointed Malcolm Douglas as its new managing director. It follows the departure of Karl Oliver. Douglas was previously brand director for the Tissot watch brand, also owned by SMH. Oliver oversaw the Swatch brand, besides his role as SMH managing director. The […]

Foreign Policy

Marketing Week

A basic building block of packaged goods market research is understanding the idea of the brand. But many of the most dyn-amic – and now most researched – new overseas markets are societies with a history of centralised state control where the concept of the “brand” is either not understood or significantly at odds with […]