Italian battery brand Volta has called on actor Bill Maynard, who plays Claude Greengrass in the hit TV series Heartbeat, to launch its products in the UK. Already established on the Continent, Volta will this month unveil an ad campaign, featuring the actor. Volta aims to take a five per cent share of the ú460m […]

Commando-style management training courses are in vogue at the moment in Britain. But they leave most participants feeling tired, wet, cold and alienated

Virgin is planning to launch a lifestyle music consumer title with Haymarket Magazines. A men’s music interest magazine is understood to be one option under consideration. The discussions follow Virgin Group’s recent diversification into soft drinks and financial services. However, the initiative is understood to have come from Haymarket, which is assessing the merits of […]

UK cigarette consumption is expected to fall at an annual rate of five per cent, according to fresh research from Mintel. The market intelligence report shows that consumption sank 11 per cent between 1989 and 1994. But the drop is expected to accelerate because of a mixture of anti-smoking campaigning, increasing excise duties and a […]

I was surprised to read your article in Marketing Week last week in which it was stated that UK Living had a share of viewing in cable and satellite homes that was double that of The Family Channel. While we are pleased to applaud the growth of any satellite channel, the comparison that was made […]

Customer service no longer ends at the supermarket checkout – increasingly retailers are turning to customer magazines as a way of raising brand profile, boosting sales and drawing shoppers into the customer loyalty fold. By David Reed

All eyes are turned to National Heritage Secretary Stephen Dorrell as he struggles to find a panacea for the cross-media ownership grievances, but will a government nervously facing a General Election deregulate and be damned, or fudge a compr

While thousands of spotty snorkel-parkered teenagers hook up to the global information superhighway – trading in their train-spotting manuals for modems – global computer giant IBM has proved a little slower off the mark. Hundreds of phone calls, one advertising agency and no less than six PR people were used to set up an interview […]

Barclaycard is to become the first UK credit card to offer services on the Internet with the launch of an interactive electronic magazine. The new service, Barclaycard Netlink, allows Internet users to request a Barclaycard application form and enter prize competitions using e-mail. Card customers will also soon be able to exchange Barclaycard Profiles points […]

In the premier league of consumer goods, a promotion battle is fought out every day as special offers flood the shelves. And the results are good: this summer, items under promotion accounted for 20 per cent of the value of the average British

JWT Manchester is understood to have won the 20-way account pitch for the healthfood retail chain Holland & Barrett. According to sources the account does not represent a huge win in terms of budget for JWT but the pitch has already attracted headlines. A series of agencies are reported to have been angered by Holland […]

BBC1 gained the three highest audiences on Christmas Day, but ITV claims victory in the ratings battle for Christmas week with a 40.6 per cent peaktime share of viewing. This means ITV won the ratings battle every week in peaktime last year, ITV Network Centre said this week… … ITV launches a Monday night movie […]