ITV1 nets sponsorship double deal

ITV Commercial has revealed sponsorship deals with Standard Life and Uncle Ben’s for ITV1 programming.

Standard Life is to sponsor ITV1’s celebrity travel package that includes Billy Connolly: Journey to the Edge of the World and Trevor McDonald’s Secret Caribbean.

Mediacom negotiated the deal, which includes broadcast and online sponsorship. Valance Carruthers Coleman Priest will devise the idents.

Gary Knight, ITV sponsorship, content partnerships and interactive sales director, says: “It is extremely gratifying that Standard Life has reinvigorated its faith in the television medium as a core component of its brand building and activation plans.”

Uncle Ben’s is to sponsor a strand of cookery programming on ITV1 including the show Taste The Nation, which pits 32 British counties against each other to find out which has the finest cooks.

Other programming includes Britain’s Best Dish: Celebrity Special and Daily Cooks Challenge, hosted by Antony Worrall Thompson. The deal was set up by ZenithOptimedia and includes broadcast sponsorship, online, interactive and mobile interactive break bumpers.

Proximity London is producing the sponsorship idents and they feature both rice and sauce products.

ITV is facing a huge slump in advertising revenues as companies cut back on marketing budgets and the broadcaster is keen to increase revenues from non-spot initiatives.

The broadcaster is to report full year results on March 4 and is expected to announce cost cutting and revenue raising measures, such as the sell-off of Friends Reunited.