TV and commercial radio sponsorship has witnessed huge growth and the future looks bright, but unrealised opportunities abound. Michael Barrett reports

Quaker is battling against Coca-Cola’s big budget launch of new age soft drink, Fruitopia, with a national roll out of Snapple through Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s. Quaker, which took over distribution of the brand from United Beverage Corporation (Ubevco) on March 1, will launch a nationwide PR campaign, plus marketing and sponsorship activities to be […]

GGT media dependent Media Solutions is understood to have threatened More O’Ferrall Adshel (MOFA) with legal action after the scrapping of a poster campaign for Post Office Counters. MOFA had accepted a poster campaign for its six-sheet bus stop sites, aimed at promoting Post Office sales of National Lottery Instants scratch cards. The card game […]

Johnson & Johnson is spending ú5m to promote its baby products through a national TV push. Advertisements break in mid-April and focus on improvements to the Baby Bath, Moisturising Baby Lotion and Baby Shampoo ranges.

The European Commission has moved to curb teleshopping in its revised version of the 1989 Broadcasting Directive. Total time allowed for advertising and teleshopping “spots” combined may not exceed 20 per cent of daily transmission time, according to the directive published last week. Tobacco products may not be sold via teleshopping, and alcohol products will […]

Further to your article “Whitbread hires Clark and Taylor” (MW March 10), the ú5m account was won by Walton & Wiggins, and not WCRS.

Hagen-Dazs’ marketing chief Nicola Chilton, responsible for the day-to-day running of the premium ice cream brand in the UK, has left the company. Chilton is understood to have left of her own accord and is not thought to have plans to join another company. Her departure comes only months after brand owner Grand Metropolitan earmarked […]

Rupert Murdoch flies into Britain this week to review the newsprint crisis at News International. The worldwide shortage of the newspaper industry’s raw material has hit Murdoch’s empire hardest and print runs have been slashed. Today’s run has been cut by five per cent, or 30,000 copies, while flagship tabloid The Sun has shaved 120,000 […]

Growing competition between named and own-label brands has taken retailers and manufacturers into new areas of the loyalty business. The rise of own-label products has forced brand manufacturers to establish new ways of relating to their customers – trying to attract them with samples, vouchers and mailings, as well as traditional advertising, before they even […]

Chris Boulding refers to AGB Mediaspan in his article “Drowning by numbers” (MW March 10) as a product which links Superpanel purchasing data with BARB data by assuming similar demographic households behave alike, and therefore “the direct impact of airtime exposure remains a mystery”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Superpanel and […]

The number of ads per break on Italian TV was getting beyond a joke, which is when the industry stepped in to bring real value back to the medium. By John Shannon

Interbrand chief executive Michael Birkin is to replace Peter Jones as head of Omnicom’s Diversified Agency Services (DAS) in Europe. Jones will remain as president of DAS – the fastest-growing part of the Omnicom empire – but devote more of his attention to the US. Birkin becomes European director at the end of April. The […]

Tesco’s recent successes have put Sainsbury’s on the defensive. Ivor Hunt, Sainsbury’s marketing chief, is the man charged with freshening the image of a firm accused of resting on its laurels.

Playing a major role in loyalty schemes and looking like coffee table glossies, customer magazines no longer extoll the virtues of goods no-one wants, but give consumers information relevant to their lifestyle.