Month: November 2000

Women making strides in ads

Marketing Week

When I read your review of my report, Women in Advertising – ten years on, I felt I had to respond to the negative view you chose to present. Advertising is a great industry for women. We have four times as many women on the board in advertising as a FTSE 100 company and five […]

Online marketing push sees key appointments at MTVi

Marketing Week

MTVi, the online division of music channel MTV, is accelerating its UK Internet strategy and has announced a number of appointments as part of its “extensive” UK marketing push. Simon Downing, who joins from Electronic Arts, becomes UK marketing director. His brief is to develop a marketing team that will work with both the broadcast […]

WebRewards and Marriott scheme

Marketing Week

In his special report on vouchers (MW October 26), Steve Hemsley stated that Marriott Incentive Vouchers introduced a reward scheme in May of this year. I would like to make it clear that Marriott Incentive Vouchers does not, and has never, operated its own Web reward scheme. We do, however, work with WebRewards.co.uk. Caroline Pearson […]

Learning from Dome PR fiasco

Marketing Week

The New Millennium Experience Company has claimed that it underinvested in advertising support as a result of overestimating the amount of “free media exposure” and “word-of-mouth endorsement” that would be generated by the Dome (MW November 16). One can forgive them for failing to take into account the extreme and somewhat irrational hostility of the […]

Oi! Bagel plots high street assault

Marketing Week

Bagel chain Oi! Bagel is preparing to roll out across the UK and open more than 20 new stores. The chain, set up by managing director Steve King in December 1998, is set to open its third store in London next week. The three-year expansion plan will see a further 22 outlets open in major […]

Cadbury time – a joke that’s cutting it fine

Marketing Week

Far be it for the Diary to berate companies for trying to pull the wool over journalists’ eyes, but do PR departments think we were all born yesterday? One unsuspecting hack, trying to follow up a story about Cadbury Trebor Bassett recently, was caught out by an archaic company practice. Up against deadline and ringing […]

Mr Men haunt Hector’s house

Marketing Week

Few people would detect an immediate resemblance between the Inland Revenue’s cartoon character Hector the Tax Inspector and the much-loved Mr Men. Most readers will know Hector as the oddball cartoon character nagging us about self-assessment forms. But the Diary has discovered that bumbling Hector has close links to the quirky but loveable Mr Men. […]

£4m Royal Liver retains Publicis and Optimedia after ad review

Marketing Week

Royal Liver Assurance has retained both Publicis and Optimedia as its creative and media agencies, following a statutory review of its business thought to be worth over &£4m. Publicis pitched against CDP and Bates to retain the business it has held for four years. The review was handled by the AAR (MW September 28). It […]

Gillette poised for $75m Braun products launch

Marketing Week

Gillette is to introduce three new Braun Oral-B electric toothbrushes to the market, backed by a $75m-plus (&£53m) global marketing spend as part of an unprecedented raft of new product launches. Up to 30 new products are expected to be launched over the next 15 months, including the Venus for Women razor (MW November 9). […]

Goodwill to the Xmas deities

Marketing Week

Christmas does indeed appear to be a period of devotion to two powerful deities. The religious aspect of Christmas has been essentially unchanged for many centuries, at least according to my limited knowledge of Christian history. Those who believe in the events represented in the Bible cherish that belief and base the season’s activities around […]

Mars chief quits for Jacob’s Bakery

Marketing Week

Danone-owned Jacob’s Bakery has appointed Graham Hunter – the man behind the launch of Mars Celebrations – as its marketing director for the UK and Ireland. Hunter spent ten years at Mars, working on Mars Bar, Galaxy and Celebrations, where he was most recently European central marketing brand leader. He reports to UK, Ireland and […]

Common sense staff training

Marketing Week

Having read the full Learning Curve feature (MW November 16) in which Mike Bowen, Ian Millner and myself were interviewed, I think there are two key points that didn’t come across but that are nonetheless important. As Mike Bowen pointed out, people management skills are critical in such a people-based industry but it is not […]

Women making strides in ads

Marketing Week

When I read your review of my report, Women in Advertising – ten years on, I felt I had to respond to the negative view you chose to present. Advertising is a great industry for women. We have four times as many women on the board in advertising as a FTSE 100 company and five […]