Targeting the working classes effectively is the challenge facing the marketing fraternity.

The NW Ayer offer for Bates may have been officially withdrawn, but a continuing role in the Saatchi saga cannot be discounted. Richard Humphreys, a former Saatchi director close to Maurice Saatchi, and major player at Ayer, is currently in South Korea conferring with Ayer’s main financial backer Choi Won-Young. Ayer money, possibly supplemented by […]

Brookside makes its debut as a national radio soap next week when a version of the Channel 4 soap breaks on commercial radio. The hunt is under way for a sponsor. “Brookside: the radio series” will be broadcast to approximately 95 per cent of the UK’s commercial radio audience through deals struck with more than […]

The NW Ayer offer for Bates may have been officially withdrawn, but a continuing role in the Saatchi saga cannot be discounted. Richard Humphreys, a former Saatchi director close to Maurice Saatchi, and major player at Ayer, is currently in South Korea conferring with Ayer’s main financial backer Choi Won-Young. Ayer money, possibly supplemented by […]

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 […]

Reuters Radio News has won the contract to supply news to Virgin 1215 and its new London service. The move is being seen as a boost to Reuters’ hopes of offering a rival syndicated radio news service to Independent Radio News. IRN, jointly owned by major commercial radio groups, supplies 124 stations. It is offered […]

Sun Alliance and the Turkish Tourism Board are vying for Quote of the Week. Director of the Turkish Tourist Office, Mustafa Turkmen, is about to end his five-year tenure in the UK office with a posting back to the Turkish headquarters. “It’s all very sad. I would prefer Venice or Paris. Ankara isn’t really a […]

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 […]