Times Newspapers marketing director Toby Constantine has quit News International (NI). Industry insiders claim Constantine, who was marketing director for The Times and Sunday Times, may have been disappointed after missing out in the latest promotions at NI. Constantine was unavailable and The Times declined to comment on the reasons for his departure. He is […]
Direct Line, the Royal Bank of Scotland’s telephone insurance arm, will offer motor, home and car breakdown insurance over the Internet from this week. The company says the simple, two-minute procedure for taking out online policies provides cover immediately. Ian Chippendale, group chief executive at Direct Line, expects the Internet to account for at least […]
Online toy retailer eToys is to venture outside the US for the first time by launching a UK Website this autumn. The company, which has &£19m a year sales through a US Website set up in October 1997, has timed the launch to coincide with Christmas. Children will be able to post Christmas “wish-lists” on […]
Just as I was beginning to suspect that I lacked the divine ignorance required of a columnist, reassurance came, not once, but twice. After lamenting that, unlike those two masters of the art, Keith Waterhouse and Auberon Waugh, neither of whom had heard of Jill Dando or Helen Rollason, I was sadly, and against my […]
Jeans company Lee has dropped the Ms Lee line of denim-based clothing after just one season as part of a revamp of next year’s spring/summer range. The company is ploughing &£1m into an in-store campaign to promote the revised product line. Parent VF Corporation split the Lee range into six lines in February in an […]
British Interactive Broadcasting (BIB), the company behind digital TV service Open, part owned by BSkyB, is supporting the launch of an online entertainment network. The subscription service, called Switch2.net, is the brainchild of the edison Interactive Group (eIG) – a new media company in which BIB has an equity stake and a seat on the […]
The More Group has won the second round of a legal battle which could spare it the potential loss of &£10m in bus shelter contracts to rival JC Decaux. The More Group’s bus shelter division, Adshel, has a long-standing contract with London Transport to supply 10,000 shelters along bus routes in the capital, half of […]
Avis Europe has hired Susan Hooper, Frito-Lay regional director for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, as vice-president of marketing and sales. Hooper joins the car hire company after two years managing the snacks business for Frito-Lay Europe. She will report to chief executive Mark McCafferty. One of her main tasks is expected to be […]
What are we to make of the $90m (£56m) sponsorship deal between golf tyro Tiger Woods and Nike? Has the world of sponsorship gone mad? I wonder how far this “winner takes all” market can go before it begins to implode, not to mention what such astronomic numbers mean for lesser brands, whose total sales […]
Italian label Prada’s DM275m (£93m) purchase of German design house Jil Sander this week is the latest stage in the battle for control of the world’s fashion brands. Independent labels are being devoured by the largest players such as LVMH and Pinault-Printemps-Redoute and the industry is adopting some of the aggressive marketing tactics used by […]
Tom Bury, former chief executive and deputy chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, is understood to be in talks with Advantage about taking a senior role at the InterPublic-owned sports marketing agency.
Camelot chief executive Tim Holley is calling for European lottery operators to consider launching games across national borders to counteract the threat from Internet gaming. It could eventually lead to the National Lottery linking up with foreign operators to launch pan-European games. In a speech on Thursday at the first annual conference of the World […]
The job at hand for Stephen Pearson is to sell commercial packages, worth up to &£40m, for the most technologically-advanced stadium in the UK. The Arena 2000 stadium in Coventry will have a sliding roof and a retractable pitch, as well as a range of shops and a cinema, by the time of its completion […]
What sort of looney-tune would spend 100 nights out of 365 going to nightclubs? An advertising agency account planner, of course. In this case it was Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters’ Ben Malbon. He was compiling research for a PhD funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. He followed 18 clubbers for a year, from […]
Wendy Lomax (“People power” MW August 5) makes the valid point that few courses train people in the now fashionably derided “four Ps” of marketing. Courses either offer something called “pure marketing” (whatever that means) or training in the physical tools of advertising. But this is not the training needed, and employees and job seekers […]