I have only met Sir Victor Blank, chairman of Mirror Group, on a couple of occasions. Once was in his former offices at merchant bank Charterhouse, in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral. The other time was at his magnificent, walled Elizabethan pile near Oxford, where he hosts an annual cricket match on his own […]
InterAd Holdings, the pan-European Internet ad sales house, has been effectively taken over by US sales network 24/7 Media. 24/7 has agreed to acquire a 60 per cent stake in the company held by German publishing company Rundfunkmedia Rundfunkprogrammanbieter-und-Werbe in a deal valued at $4m (2.4m). The deal means that InterAd Holdings, formed following a […]
Carphone Warehouse head of marketing Ruth Greenwood has left the company and been replaced by Body Shop marketer Isobel Blackie. Greenwood has left to work on a catalogue project for contract magazine publisher Redwood. Her replacement Blackie has joined the mobile phone retailer from the marketing communications department of toiletry and cosmetics chain The Body […]
Thirst for the Coca-Cola Company’s brown carbonated syrup is undisputed, but the fickle world of fashion may well end up taking the fizz out of the number one soft drinks company when it launches a collection of clothing later this year. The Coca-Cola Company’s venture into fashion clothing unveiled exclusively in Marketing Week (January 21) […]
The Office of Fair Trading has taken the unusual step of rapping Sport Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport, over misleading slimming ads. The watchdog has ordered Sport Newspaper’s owner David Sullivan to sign undertakings preventing the future publication of misleading ads. The undertakings were sought following the publication of an ad […]
In his native Nigeria, Malik Ado Ibrahim is considered a big man. He comes from one of the top ten families in the country, with interests spanning oil, food, and politics. Sitting in an office in Soho, the man who has bought 70 per cent of the Arrows Formula One team, valued at 110m, still […]
At the 1997 Edinburgh Festival, Kelvin MacKenzie said: “There is no middle-class friend of mine whose children I do not employ, including my own.” The Talk Radio boss is a man of his word, even if many of them are only four-letters long. MacKenzie bought the station last October and currently employs two of his […]
Ammirati Puris Lintas has won the Parcelforce Worldwide creative account after a pitch involving ten-year incumbent J Walter Thompson and Bartle Bogle Hegarty. The account, understood to be worth 3m, represents a major increase in expenditure for the Post Office-owned parcel carrier, which spent only 250,000 on advertising last year. APL will produce a press, […]
It’s official, women hate shopping. Remember how, just before Christmas, newspapers were filled with stories about how men hated shopping – as if most women needed reminding? Well, the latest research shows that women – particularly working women – hate shopping just as much as men. What’s more, they feel retailers aren’t listening to their […]
CDP has won the task of promoting the UK’s largest cinema screen, the BFI London IMAX Cinema, which opens in London this spring. It will be run by the British Film Institute, which has awarded the operating licence to US company Ogden Entertainment, a division of Ogden Corporation. CDP will work with Ogden to handle […]
General Motors is spending more than 10m on a new branding campaign for Vauxhall in the UK to differentiate it from Ford. The campaign, by Lowe Howard- Spink, is to launch on TV on February 1. It carries a new tagline: “Raising the standard”. The line will feature beneath the Vauxhall name and the Griffin […]
For anyone over the age of 18, the Murphy’s “I’m not bitter…” ads stand out as one of the best beer advertising campaigns of the past decade, alongside Stella Artois’ “Reassuringly Expensive” series and just about any Holsten Pils ads. First aired in 1993 and directed by Alan Parker, fresh from his success with feelgood […]
While Peter Buchanan and I appreciate the unprecedented level of attention you gave us last week, we were amazed to read the first two lines of your News Analysis on the Central Office of Information “Image is a grave matter for the COI” (MW January 14) and at some of the assertions in the rest […]
Cable and telephony company Telewest has reappointed incumbent media company Media Insight to its 6m account. The WPP media agency held on to the account despite competition from MediaVest, Total Media, and fellow WPP agency, MindShare. Media Insight has held the account for four years. The review is thought to be the first marketing move […]
Government departments are making an unprecedented move into TV sponsorship and programme production, which could see the army funding a show about life in the forces or the Department of the Environment sponsoring relevant programmes. Samantha Mercer, head of sponsorship and promotions for the COI, says: “We are looking at sponsorship propositions for our government […]