EVENT MANAGEMENT TRAINING

LONDON – Adidas is to launch its new starred-studded ad featuring David Beckham, Snoop Dogg, Noel Gallagher and Agyness Deyn on Channel 4 this evening.

The new ad, made by Canada-based creative agency Sid Lee, follows on from last year’s ‘House Party’ and is called ‘Street Where Originality Lives’.

The ad features a mix of DJ sets, live performances and street games, all set to a remix of Dee Edwards’ ‘Why can’t there be love?’ by Pilooski, and includes Snoop performing, Beckham shooting pictures on his camera, and Gallagher busking in the street.

The worldwide TV premiere of the ad will take place during the finale of ‘Skins’ on E4 this evening (18 March), under a deal agreed by Channel 4 Strategic Sales and Adidas’ media agency Carat.

The feature-length ad takes up the entire ad break (at 10.10pm) and will be introduced by a special creative made by The Outfit and starring T4’s Rick Edwards.

Danny Peace, strategic sales manager at Channel 4, said: “Channel 4 is always striving to create new and innovative opportunities for advertisers, and using C4 talent to launch a campaign in a programme as perfect as Skins certainly fits the bill.”

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LONDON – Kraft, the US food giant, has given firm indications that it will continue to manufacture Cadbury’s key brands and maintain the company’s marketing and sales operations in the UK.

Kraft executive vice-president Marc Firestone, representing the company during tough questioning from MPs yesterday, said there were no plans to move Cadbury’s marketing and sales operations overseas.

He also emphasised that Kraft had no plans to unify its brands with one ethical seal, adding that existing Cadbury staff  “understand the British market”.
He added: “Cadbury has had success with brands. We plan to persevere with these brands. Our intention is that the Cadbury name will remain on the flag and the name will be on the building.”

Trevor Bond, Cadbury’s former president for Britain and Ireland, who has recently been promoted to head its European food business, said Cadbury’s flagship brands, Dairy Milk and Creme Egg, would continue to be manufactured in the UK.

Kraft also underscored its commitment to the ethical production of its existing and its recently acquired brands.

Kraft has a relationship with the RainForest Alliance, whose ethical stamp some of its brands contain. Cadbury, meanwhile, has strong links with rival ethical body, Fairtrade.

Questioned on Kraft’s commitment to be a long-term ethical producer, Firestone, in reference to both trade associations, said: ” We will synchronise. We do have commitments to honour.”

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LONDON – Today is the 25th anniversary of the dotcom domain name, first registered by Massachusetts-based computer company called Symbolics.

Nearly 200 million dotcom domain names have been registered since 1985.

Symbolics added dotcom to its name on March 15 1985, followed by Bbn.com and Think.com, at a time when the market was small and dominated by computer companies.

Only six dotcom names registered in 1985, compared to 10,000 registered daily today.

Symbolics registered the first .com with domain registration Network Solutions, which was acquired by Verisign in 2000.

Symbolics, a computer systems and software maker, was purchased by XF.com in 2009 and the domain now serves as the XF.com blog.

Nominet, the national registry for .uk internet domain names, is currently reviewing its rules on the registration of one character or two letter domain names.

Brands that could register a new domain name include the AA, BA, 3 and MG.

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LONDON – Cadbury’s Creme Egg is launching two free iPhone apps as part of its digital marketing campaign in an effort to drive up sales.

The first, called Scramble the Egg, is an interactive app which invites users to shake a virtual Creme Egg around the screen, until the egg becomes so excited it bursts its goo all over the screen. Users can also slide and spread the goo around the screen with their fingers.

The second app, called Egg Marks the Spot, encourages people to visit one of 38 landmarks in the UK and Ireland, including Edinburgh Castle and the London Eye. 

The app uses the iPhone’s GPS to guide people to their nearest landmark, where they are supposed to use their cameraphone to take a picture of the landmark. A Creme Egg is superimposed over the picture and users can move it around the screen.

Users can also click through to www.creamegg.com to see if they have won a daily giveaway prize.

Both apps are free to download. Once downloaded, the applications will still be accessible after the Creme Egg season finishes on 4 April.

The apps have taken their lead from Cadbury’s ‘Your country needs goo’ digital campaign launched earlier this year.

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LONDON – Coty, the cosmetics company, is looking for an agency to handle its global digital advertising account.

Agency networks were approached with a request for information earlier this week. A shortlist is due to be drawn up at the end of the month.

The successful agency will be responsible for handling global digital campaigns for all of Coty’s brands, which include Rimmel London, Davidoff, Joop and Calvin Klein in its Prestige portfolio, and fragrances from Adidas, Kylie Minogue and Victoria Beckham in its Beauty range. 

Work will encompass all digital communications activity, with the winning agency also being responsible for web builds and site revamps when necessary.

In the UK, Coty has worked with a number of smaller agencies on its digital business across its portfolio of brands.

These have included Positive Thinking, which has been responsible for the company’s Chloe Perfume and Coty Body Spray brands, and Skive, which has worked on digital campaigns for joop.

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LONDON – Lucozade Sport is preparing its ‘biggest’ marketing campaign to date to promote its affiliation with the England football team and sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup coverage on ITV.

The £15m marketing investment for the campaign, ‘Fuelling England’s Roar’, includes an outdoor advertising campaign starting in May and featuring Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard.

Activity centres around an on-pack promotion created by Billington Cartmell, which also kicks off in May and offers consumers the chance to win a share of one million official England prizes, including classic England shirts, flags and caps.

The campaign will also include digital and social media activity, as well as an iPhone application. Sunderland striker Darren Bent will be featured as part of the digital work.

Last year, prior to his move from Tottenham Hotspur to the North East club, Bent was the centre of controversy after a rant directed at the north London club’s chairman Daniel Levy, through social networking site Twitter.

Matt McKie, brand manager at Lucozade Sport, said: “As the official sports drink of the England team, our objective is to fuel the players to World Cup success, as well as leverage our association with ITV’s coverage of the 2010 World Cup.

He added: “We are confident that as a result of our emotive and engaging ‘Fuelling England’s Roar’ campaign, retailers will experience increased consumer demand and a significant uplift in sales across the Lucozade Sport range.”

In December, it was announced that ITV’s football World Cup coverage would be jointly sponsored by Lucozade Sport and car marque, Hyundai.

The packages run across broadcast, online, interactive and mobile, with the tournament starting on 11 June and finishing on 11 July.

The sponsorship creative for both partners will be handled by M&C Saatchi.

ITV1’s coverage of the 2006 World Cup peaked with 21.3 million viewers for England vs Sweden. The sponsors, in a deal estimated at more than £5m, were EDF and Budweiser.

The sports and energy drinks category was worth £706m in the UK last year. Lucozade Sport has a large share of the market, with sales in 2009 reaching £102m, although this was down 6.4% on the previous year, according to Nielsen. Coca-Cola’s Powerade also witnessed a decrease of 4.6% in 2009, with sales of £34.4m.

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NatMag’s Company magazine has launched a bi-annual spin-off fashion magazine called the High-Street Edit.

The standalone title is in a large format and showcases high street fashion, designer fashion news and insider information from fashion PRs.

It goes on sale from March 5th with an initial print run

Company editor Victoria White describes High-Street Edit as “a title for women who love high fashion, but find themselves stuck between weeklies and designer-only fashion magazines”.

The first issue carries 132 pages of fashion and is produced by the same editorial and fashion team as Company magazine.

The launch of the High-Street Edit will be supported by cross-brand ads in NatMag titles Company, Cosmopolitan, Reveal and Harper’s Bazaar.

Meribeth Parker, group publishing director of NatMag’s Young Women’s Group, said: “We’ve already had a fantastic reaction to this project from both the industry and advertisers.

“Company has always been a strong authority on high-street fashion, and having the High-Street Edit out and on sale will further solidify our position of really knowing what young women want.”

Company sold an average of 240,035 copies between July and December last year, which was an increase of 4.3% period on

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Nissan has launched a below-the-line campaign featuring content from Lonely Planet’s city guides to drive awareness of its new Qashqai crossover vehicle.

The direct mail and online campaign created by Tullo Marshall Warren will direct consumers to a Qashqai microsite ahead of next month’s launch of the car.

The campaign aligns with Nissan’s above-the-line

A microsite, www.urbanproofmastered.co.uk, will offer information on London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Belfast and Glasgow using content from the BBC’s Lonely Planet travel guides series.

Nissan has paid Lonely Planet to use its city information on four themes – cutting edge and cool, culture and relaxation, music and entertainment and shopping and pampering.

The DM packs contain info on the car along with postcards containing quirky points of interest on the five cities and will be sent to existing Nissan customers and drivers of competitor vehicles.

The postcard of the British city closest to the consumer’s house will be visible through the clear grip bag the packs are sent in and the package will contain personalised finance or loyalty offers based on data segmentation.

The packs are designed to drive people to special Nissan dealer evenings and weekend open days to view the new model and the microsite allows drivers to download a city guide, book a test drive, request a brochure and find out more about the Qashqai.

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Marmite is preparing to launch a new print and poster advertising campaign featuring all the brands most controversial product ideas, including a fabric softener, a shower gel and a perfume.

Created by DDB UK the ads break on 1 March. It introduces the spoof products with mocked-up pack shots, accompanied by the text “have we gone too far?”.

Ater grabbing the public’s attention, a second series of ads will be rolled out that go on to admit that while the brand

The ads encourage consumers to try the new bar and then log on to a specially created Facebook page to report whether they “love it or hate it”.

Activity will be supported by direct marketing and sales promotions, created by Iris, which will include a number of spoof Marmite toothpaste packs, which inside will actually include a sample of the cereal bar, along with two discount coupons,one for a Marmite cereal bar and the other for a tube of toothpaste. Consumers can choose which coupon to use depending on whether they love or hate the product.

Samples will also be handed out at selected London Underground stations and commuters will be filmed inside special Marmite booths tasting the Marmite Cereal Bars with the best ‘love’ and ‘hate’ reactions displayed on digital screens in the station.

Tom Denyard, Marmite marketing director at Unilever UK, said: “The question at the heart of this campaign is an invitation to both our lovers and haters to give Marmite cereal bars a try and let fly with their

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Caterer Moving Venue launched its latest menu with an event at The Music Room in Mayfair, and Event has exclusive pictures.

Sternberg Clarke and Fisher Productions entertained at and staged the event, which saw representatives from Haymarket, Coca Cola and Santander in attendance.

“We literally threw out the old book and started again amidst much stress and bother, but in secret a lot of fun [working on the new menu],” said Moving Venue director Matthew Quarendon. “And the result is here, the team have been inspired to hit the streets with a brand new, revised and exciting offer of ‘bowl food, mini and tasting plates, tapas, skewers, things on sticks, etc.”

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