In-depth features, interviews and insights into marketing’s biggest issues.
Having the right name above an agency door can make or break a company, highlight its ethos and showcase the talent within – at least according to advertising folk. Interpublic Group plans to rebrand the beleaguered Lowe network in an attempt to sever its association with Sir Frank Lowe (MW last week). Up for consideration […]
The appointment of Publicis Groupe and Havas to handle France Telecom’s £200m pan-European advertising business brings to an end one of the most protracted and talked about reviews of recent years. However, the fall-out looks set to continue,
Free DVDs and CDs mounted on newspapers’ front pages have become a source of worry to the bosses of the nationals. They condemn the use of DVDs as an expensive way of boosting circulation, which fails to promote loyalty among consumers; yet marketing teams seem unable or unwilling to plan more inventive campaigns. Newspapers try […]
As “an industry run on gossip”, in the words of one senior agency figure, advertising can often appear to the outside world as frivolous and fragile. Clients and other observers witnessing the ongoing spat between WPP Group chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell and his former top Italian executive Marco Benatti, as well as the shockwaves […]
A bitter row is brewing between major food manufacturers and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) over how best to provide consumers with the information they crave. Consumer group Which? has accused the industry of undermining proposals by the FSA and written to the chief executives of food giants including Danone, Kellogg, Nestlé, Kraft and PepsiCo […]
The news that the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) and the Commercial Radio Companies Association (CRCA) are to partially merge is seen as a positive but necessary step for a medium that has lost its sparkle with advertisers. The plans, which were first revealed in Marketing Week (February 2), aim to help the groups promote the […]
London’s creative community will always toast a great advertising idea that translates into a series of award-winning campaigns, and Wieden & Kennedy has enjoyed its fair share of toasts recently. The agency that made Nike a global household name has been riding high on the back of its critically acclaimed Honda ads, but for all […]
Krow, the communications agency set up last year by a group of former D’Arcy and BMP bosses, has clinched Alfa as a major client (MW last week). It will handle the launch of the Alfa Romeo Brera, on the back of what the shop’s founders claims is a “new attitude to advertising”. Unveiled in October […]
Encapsulating the pop culture of the 1980s, Smash Hits magazine has gasped its last column. But it wasn’t just the victim of changing tastes, like the gallant Pink ‘un and Green ‘un of yore Smash Hits got a good send-off last week, with acres of newspaper and broadcast coverage about its demise. Journalists old enough […]
There is a growing feeling in the sponsorship industry that more brands will shun expensive headline deals in favour of creating their own events (MW last week). An increasing number of companies have turned to event creation in recent years because they do not want to “compromise” on an existing tie-up, according to Brian Greenwood, […]
Reports last week that Lowe London is putting “platinum handcuffs” on creative chief Ed Morris to stop him leaving came as the advertising industry’s trade bodies called for agencies to almost double the profit margin they charge to clients. One leading marketer says that if agencies want to raise their profit margins, they should cut […]
Ryanair took the idea of low-cost flying to a new level when it announced last week that passengers will now have to pay to take bags on flights. The introduction of baggage charges for items over 10kg will, for many passengers, add another layer to the cost of flying, but it should enable Ryanair to […]
Advertising and media experts frequently tell us that the internet will become the dominant communication platform – but not without the advice and knowledge of ‘traditional’ television The internet – not television – is going to be the world’s most important medium. So says Dominic Proctor, chief executive of MindShare Worldwide, one of the world’s […]
John Bartle must have recognised the smell of success when he agreed to join digital media specialist i-level as non-executive chairman in its early days. The former joint chief executive of Bartle Bogle Hegarty has seen the agency grow to 80 people with a turnover of &£50m in six years, with clients including the Central […]
The announcement last week that agency boss Jim Kelly and creative director Robert Campbell, co-founders of WPP-owned agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R in 1993, have joined forces again to take over WPP Group’s struggling London agency United caused some surprise in advertising circles. The successful executives have taken charge of an agency that has few […]