Buying a television set is never going to be the same again. For years we have been able to buy any size or shape of TV and have known exactly what channels we will get when we plug it in at home. Digital television is about to change all this. Viewers are going to have […]
What happens when a company whose market-beating strategy has given it unchallengeable leadership for decades loses its way? Kellogg, the cereal manufacturer, may be about to provide the text-book answer. Over the past week its veteran head of European operations, Don Fritz, and the one time heir-apparent to the Kellogg crown, US president Tom Knowlton, […]
Sainsbury’s is rolling out instant coupon machines into 150 of its stores across the country, after signing deals with six major packaged goods companies. Aspen, the specialist media agency running the scheme, has signed up KP Frisps, McVitie’s Go Ahead Ice Cream and Van den Bergh’s Cup-a-Soup to supply coupons. Cereal Partners and Douwe Egberts […]
Sainsbury’s has adopted some fishy in-store marketing at its Cromwell Road branch in London. The supermarket has decided to join its rivals and has entered the ugly world of grey market supply. And in keeping with this, its posh Kensington branch is stocking men’s and women’s Calvin Klein underwear. Stocking grey market products has its […]
Ambulances are being used to carry advertising in what is believed to be one of the first campaigns of its kind. The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service is advertising on the back of ambulances throughout Scotland, asking people to give blood. Creative work is through Edinburgh agency 1576. Adrian Jeffery, the agency’s creative director, says: […]
The Dial Corporation, a US conglomerate with products ranging from Vienna sausages to soap, is investigating the launch of an air freshener in the UK. In the US, Dial owns the Renuzit air freshener brand. But according to Ron Carpenter, managing director international at The Dial Corporation, in the UK the licence for the brand […]
Sainsbury’s has adopted some fishy in-store marketing at its Cromwell Road branch in London. The supermarket has decided to join its rivals and has entered the ugly world of grey market supply. And in keeping with this, its posh Kensington branch is stocking men’s and women’s Calvin Klein underwear. Stocking grey market products has its […]
The departure of two of Kellogg’s most senior executives over the past week underlined the catalogue of problems facing the US cereal colossus. Donald Fritz, president of Kellogg Europe and executive vice president of Kellogg Company, resigned last week after 19 years (MW September 17). This week, it was the turn of Thomas Knowlton, president […]
The recent closure of the Virgin Megastore in Barcelona was widely covered in the local press. Some observers attributed its failure to an insensitivity to local tastes in a market already well served by established favourites. Although this is an over-simplification, the news comes at a time when Europe’s marketers are concentrating their minds on […]
Marketing Week’s circulation has passed 40,000 for the first time since 1989, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures just published for the year July 1997 to June 1998. The total net 40,208 figure reached by the audit issue marks a three per cent increase on last year’s 39,069. The new benchmark has been achieved […]
London Electricity risks flouting data protection rules by promoting a new Free Energy Mortgage from Alliance & Leicester in its customer magazine. Mortgage provider A&L will pay customers’ gas and electricity bills for the first three years, but only if they switch to London Electricity. A&L will conduct most of the marketing activity for the […]
The US government will pour around US$65m (39m) a year into a new long-term campaign to market the US as a tourist destination – if a bill called the Visit USA Act gets the green light from Congress on October 11. According to a spokesman for the US National Tourism Organisation, which is backing the […]
We wear their baseball caps, sometimes back to front, we eat their disgusting hamburgers, watch their immature, violent films, listen to their rubbishy music, mimic their manners and speech, and watch agog as the man they call Mr President lowers himself slowly into the dustbin of history amid shrieks of global laughter. But do we […]
A US advertising agency which numbers Agfa, Colgate and the famous knife makers Swiss Army Brands among its clients, is in partnership talks with London media agencies. Mullen Advertising, of Wenham, Massachusetts, is negotiating with a number of agencies over setting up a UK buying operation for its clients. According to research from the American […]
The quality of response a call centre yields largely depends on the quality of the brief it originally receives from the client. Yet telemarketers find that clients and advertising agencies still regard call centre selection and briefing as a simple job to be carried out by their most junior staff and at the last possible […]