Top Shop is to sell mobile phones alongside clothes and make-up to cash in on the craze for mobiles among fashion-conscious teenagers. Parent company Arcadia is also planning to introduce phones into menswear chain Top Man before Christmas. Top Shop has so far installed pre-pay mobile phones concessions in five of its biggest stores – […]
Harvey Nichols, the fashion-led department store beloved of Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in the TV comedy series Absolutely Fabulous, is to open a store in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh – its first outside the UK. A licensing agreement signed by Harvey Nichols entitles Saudi development group the King Faisal Foundation to use […]
Economists on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee take all kinds of research in to account before deciding whether interest rates should go up, down or stay the same. Among the financial reports pondered is the British Retail Consortium’s monthly assessment of retail sales by economist Pamela Webber. Last month Webber noted “Rugs performed […]
Sega Europe is hunting for a marketing manager to launch its much trumpeted Dreamcast games console across Europe. The computer games giant, which is offering the right person a £50,000 pay package, is looking for marketers with an Internet, games or consumer marketing background. The task will be to develop e-commerce sales and co-ordination across […]
No one, it seems, can say too much about the evolving art of Website design, with companies continually monitoring consumer reaction to their pages. And yet point of purchase (POP), which performs many of the same functions in the non-virtual world, has never been accorded the same interest. In particular, many clients have rarely invested […]
Companies aim to motivate their staff for reasons that are as varied as the incentive choices available. Whether it is to increase sales, boost productivity, reduce absenteeism, cut costs or encourage them to think more creatively about their role within the business, most companies face the problem of how to get more from their employees. […]
According to economists’ forecasts, inflation is about to breach the one per cent barrier – bringing it to its lowest level since 1964 – notwithstanding the fact that the UK economy is poised for a fresh period of growth. Whether or not the British economy really is experiencing the Goldilocks phenomenon of sustained growth combined […]
The anti-smokers can’t have it both ways. They demand more warnings be put on tobacco products, “ASH and BMA call for impotence warnings” (MW June 3), yet they support the EU-wide ban on advertising which will prevent consumers being able to receive legitimate product information. It is reprehensible to believe in free speech only when […]
I was interested to read about the News at Ten saga as featured in “No news is not always good news” (MW June 10). Not being a specialist in media, merely a sometime consumer of the end product, I cannot but comment that perhaps the obvious conclusion about the News at Ten move has not […]
The normally genteel world of contract publishing has been somewhat ruffled by unkind words from a couple of notable consumer publishers. At the Periodical Publishers’ Association’s Magazines & Business to Business ’99 conference last month, Gruner & Jahr group advertising director, Joanne O’Hara said that reading customer magazines is like “living on a diet of […]
The Fiat Punto was launched in 1994 to rave reviews in the trade press, and it won the European Car of the Year Award for 1995. A pan-European advertising campaign, highlighting the Punto’s technical features, was used to launch the car in the UK. However, despite the undisputed quality of the car, competitive price and […]
Reading Dorothy Mackenzie’s letter (MW June 17) regarding BA reversing its brand identity, I think she missed the point. BA did not change its tail-fin identity because those who “dared to be innovative” were undermined. They decided to change it because their customers didn’t like it. I’m sure the design agency which sold BA the […]
Procter & Gamble has awarded Saatchi & Saatchi the £30m assignment for fruit drink Sunny Delight in all markets outside the US and Europe. It has now become the sole global agency for Sunny Delight.
Marco Benatti, the founder and chairman of CIA Medianetwork Italy and former CIA Group vice-chairman, has quit the company, as predicted in Marketing Week (January 21). The move loosens CIA’s hold on the crucial &£100m Italian Unilever account and has far-reaching implications in the global battle for Unilever’s consolidated media account. Speculation is mounting that […]
The debate on sponsorship effectiveness, entertaining though it may have been, has not been illuminated by recent correspondence from the gurus, as Malcolm Stuart rightly notes in his letter (MW June 10). Sponsorship is a relatively simple form of commercial communication that can achieve a limited number of objectives extremely well. When asked to perform […]