Premier International Foods group marketing director Andrew Baker has quit the company to join Cadbury Schweppes as director of marketing and commercial strategies of developing markets. Baker, who oversaw Typhoo Tea and Horizon Biscuits brands, including Cadbury’s Fingers, is understood to be leaving Premier this week. His new role will involve developing Cadbury Schweppes’ business […]
The possibility of the EU forcing the renaming of Marlboro Lights as Marlboro Gold may prove to be nothing more than an expensive smokescreen (MW July 6). Renaming a product is unlikely to change the associations which users have with that product. Smokers of Lights will simply make the shift to Gold when they find […]
Department store chain Beales has appointed Caroline Howard, a former Selfridges senior marketer, as its first director of marketing. Howard, who is retail marketing manager at Prudential Property Investment Managers, will be responsible for an above-the-line campaign to include in-store and external advertising. Ad agency Fox Kalomaski has been appointed as the creative agency. Howard, […]
VH1, the music channel run in the UK by MTV Networks UK, is reviewing its £1m creative advertising account.
The Jersey Tourism Board has moved its account worth up to £3m into TBWA GGT Direct after seven years with Grey Advertising.
Vauxhall has handed McCann-Erickson the £20m creative launch account for the GM OnStar vehicle communications system. But in a blow to McCann’s media agency Universal McCann, the car giant has given the media buying to its sister IPG agency Western International Media. OnStar is an in-car satellite-linked navigational system and hands-free mobile phone, which connects […]
Granada Broadband is seeking an ad agency to create a launch campaign for the PowerChannel television Internet service. The campaign, to be rolled-out this October, is thought to be worth at least £5m. It will focus on the free distribution of up to 200,000 “Net-top boxes” in the first six months. These can be plugged […]
Your special report on conferences and exhibitions (MW July 27) glanced over the most fundamental problem with hotels as conference venues – the design of meeting rooms. Most meeting rooms are designed by architects who have been given a brief to create banqueting rooms. This means access doors can be too small, lighting controls located […]
Six-sheets are lagging behind the performance of the rest of the booming poster industry, claims outdoor company Poster Publicity. It bases its findings on figures from Outdoor Advertising Association. For the first six months of 2000, outdoor revenue climbed 30 per cent to &£58m. The 48-sheets are selling eight weeks in advance, leading to a […]
J Walter Thompson executives are mystified and exasperated by the inability of UK chief executive Stephen Carter to commit himself long-term to the advertising network as speculation mounts that he has been offered the post of chief executive at ITV. Carter has been interviewed for the job of chief executive at ITV Network Centre, but […]
Basking in the (admittedly spasmodic) sunshine of a British summer, it’s hard to conceive of the economic miracle which has been with us for the best part of a decade ever coming to an end. For once, everything seems to be in line. Growth of the economy is apparently relentless, yet unattended by those traditional […]
The Net is attracting a growing number of book purchasers and helping lower prices. But overall the future is less rosy, with fewer people buying.
The Diary, as regular readers will attest, attempts at all times to steer away from toilet humour. But some opportunities are just too good to miss. More Group joined with the City of Edinburgh Council to open Scotland’s “first revolutionary automatic public toilet (APT)” – just in time for the Edinburgh Festival, er, rush. But, […]
Online and WAP (wireless application protocol) price comparison service Pricerunner.com is seeking an agency to handle the &£3m above-the-line account for the launch of its UK site. The Swedish company is poised to roll out its service in the UK next month and is looking for creative and media agencies for a campaign to back […]
Supermarket chain vetoes new stocks of Charmin after P&G demands 10 per cent price hike