Labatt Brewing UK has lost marketing director David Radford, who left last Friday, three weeks after the company was bought by Whitbread. Radford’s departure comes as Whitbread reviews its own marketing department as well as Labatt’s. The brewer has put strategic director Frazer Thompson in charge of integrating Labatt into Whitbread. Thompson says: “The management […]

The Data Protection Registrar is moving to stamp out “host mailings” by electricity, gas and water companies. The news comes after British Gas announced it is planning such a scheme for the autumn – a national Homemovers Welcome Pack targeted at customers who move to a new address. The scheme includes money-off vouchers for The […]

The Network, Ogilvy & Mather’s media department, is pitching to M&C Saatchi to replace Optimedia as its media buying operation.

PepsiCo has joined the growing band of companies exploiting loopholes in the exclusivity protection given to Euro 96 sponsors. The defence rules were created by sponsorship and marketing firm ISL which is to serve injunctions against two companies it believes are acting illegally. Pepsi-owned Pizza Hut has launched a 16-page promotional booklet with football magazine […]

Everyone’s jumping aboard the loyalty bandwagon, with companies happy to invest millions of pounds on supposedly shaping customers buying habits. But the reality could be that they are throwing money away on schemes which will ultimately yield

The role of interactive retail technology is small but growing rapidly. By Luca Newbold. Luca Newbold is a Business Analyst at DataMonitor

Contract publishing, boosted by Dulux’s new Colour magazine, is sometimes just a

Poor Iain Murray. His worries about the destructive effects of tourism “Fat chance of getting rid of Tourism” (MW May 24) must prevent him from ever taking a break from the rigours of his weekly sneer. Or is he a nitby-tiv (tourism is bad but not in the back yards that I visit). There is […]

The Diary is pleased to put the record straight on a misleading story printed last week. We stated that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream had become the first national brand to advertise on cows. The idea was in fact used 13 years ago, as pointed out by David Beadle, media development director at Arc Advertising’s […]

Seagram has always targeted growth areas, built them up and sold them on. Hollywood is its new baby, so will its drinks be next to go? By David Benady

Food giant Heinz is reversing its decision to spend half last year’s 24m marketing budget below the line, by switching more money into TV advertising. Two years ago, Heinz shocked the marketing industry by becoming one of the first fmcg companies to channel substantial spend into a heavyweight direct marketing campaign. The push was designed […]

It may be an old-fashioned concept, but aren’t Diary stories meant to be amusing? Your Diary story criticising the Direct Mail Information Service, and direct mail per se “1995 – a year that’s bin junk”(MW May 24) fails to achieve this. If the Diary editor is having such a problem filling the page perhaps we […]

Seagram UK marketing director John Ratcliffe is leaving to become commercial director of its off-licence chain, Oddbins, which the company is believed to be preparing to sell (MW April 12). It is not clear how Ratcliffe’s position will be filled, but the move is part of a European-wide restructure of Seagram’s marketing, designed to cut […]

Your cover story on sales promotions legalities, “Ill-gotten games” (MW May 24), confirms the bewilderment of the interpreters of the Lotteries Acts, codes of practice and case histories when dealing with the sometimes arcane workings of promotional techniques. The authors of the article themselves also seem to be confused. They say: “For a promotion to […]