Dome organiser the New Millennium Experience Company has appointed DRi Licensing to license Millennium-themed merchandise. DRi will negotiate licensing contracts for official Millennium merchandise “across key product cate- gories”, according to the NMEC, although it refuses to name which ones. It is understood they include clothing and design products such as furniture and household accessories. […]
The Cellphones Direct brand is to disappear 18 months after the company was acquired by Martin Dawes Telecommunications. Cellphones Direct, the off-the-page mobile phone service provider, increased Martin Dawes’ subscriber base to 530,000 and its share of the mobile phone market to 8 per cent when it was taken over in April 1997. But this […]
WH Smith is launching an advertisement, timed for the back-to-school shopping season, once again starring Nicholas Lyndhurst playing each member of the Smith family. This time two new characters, Granny and Grandad, are introduced. The ad, through Abbott Mead Vickers. BBDO, is set at a school prize-giving where all the academic awards are won by […]
Are you getting enough news coverage of your favourite sport or would you like more? About 36 per cent of the population, which adds up to 16.4 million of us, like reading about sport, according to Target Group Index research. Sport is now one of the main battlegrounds within the national press in the struggle […]
Visa International and the Swatch Group are the last two official sponsors to sign up for the FA Premier League’s 1998/99 football season. Visa and Swatch, the watch brand owned by SMH, complete the line-up of second-tier sponsors, which already includes The Daily Telegraph, Sony PlayStation, Nestlé’s Yorkie, McDonald’s and Wilkinson Sword. The seven companies […]
The virtual corridors of Web power have been trembling recently from waves of indignation emanating from UK Web publishers. The centre of this controversy has been the recent publication by the BBC’s ABC//electronic audited Web traffic figures. Unlike other publishers, the BBC issued two figures as part of its audit certificate. The first was the […]
Scottish Telecom subsidiary The CallCentre Service is to recruit its first marketing chief. The move heralds the establishment of a marketing team for the teleservices operation which will report to the central marketing department of Scottish Telecom. The CallCentre Service manages telesales operations, helpdesk and information and its clients include Compaq, Sony and Microsoft. The […]
Ogilvy & Mather has won a Department of Trade & Industry brief to run a 2m campaign promoting the regulations that implement the Working Time Directive, after presenting ideas directly to trade & industry secretary Peter Mandelson.
Sharwood’s, the ethnic food company, is to launch a 3m poster campaign using phrases from the ancient Indian guide to lovemaking, the Kama Sutra, to link the pleasures of food and sex. TBWA GGT Simons Palmer has created the suggestive campaign which will carry the strapline ‘Stir Up Some Passion’. One execution is a close-up […]
The Guardian, which last week unveiled details of a staffing revamp in its new media division, is to introduce registration on its revamped Websites. The move is intended to improve its appeal to display and classified advertisers. Justin Walters, promoted from general manager to head of new media at The Guardian last week, says registration […]
Cadbury is to launch its first TV ad campaign for Cadbury Land, a new umbrella brand developed to house six children’s chocolate brands. The cartoon ads, created by TBWA GGT Simons Palmer, feature animated characters representing each of the six children’s brands – Buttons, Curly Wurly, Fudge, Wildlife bars, Chomp and Taz & Freddo. They […]
This week the Edinburgh Fringe began, a week ahead of the official Edinburgh Festival. And as usual the Fringe statistics – 1,309 shows staged by 9,810 people in 164 venues, all fighting for audiences and attention – are staggering. The arts and entertainment worlds just aren’t used to this kind of competitive, market-driven environment, which […]
Independent gas suppliers are experiencing a dramatic fall in the number of customers signing up for their energy offers, according to two of the country’s biggest gas companies. British Gas Trading marketing director Jon Kinsey says the number of consumers signing up for rival gas companies has declined by more than one third since last […]
Dragon’s Linda Mooney (MW July 30) is right when she says the threshold for numbers in a design consultancy is about 30. This supposed threshold is due more to a reluctance to manage potential growth and change by restructuring the consultancy and developing enhanced working practices than a natural law of 30 or a glass […]
The Cellphones Direct brand is to disappear 18 months after the company was acquired by Martin Dawes Telecommunications. Cellphones Direct, the off-the-page mobile phone service provider, increased Martin Dawes’ subscriber base to 530,000 and its share of the mobile phone market to 8 per cent when it was taken over in April 1997. But this […]