A team of Nottingham event groups said it generated more than £500,000 worth of enquiries in just two days at Event UK this week.

 The 22 – 23 September show featured a stand created by “Destination Nottingham”, a partnership made up of Experience Nottinghamshire, Nottingham Conferences, the Nottingham Hoteliers Associations and Nottingham Arena.

The group  secured “over £509,150 worth of meetings and events enquiries for Nottingham”. 

“Our appearance together is working towards part of a wider campaign; encompassing a rebranding of ‘Keep Britain Talking’ to ‘Keep Nottingham Talking’ designed to highlight the multi million pound economic contribution that the meetings and events industry brings to Nottingham and the East Midlands,” said Nottingham conferences marketing manager Kirstie Danzey.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has given the green light to a £35m museum and event space to be built around historic ship, the Mary Rose, Portsmouth.

 The museum, which developers intend to open before the 2012 London Olympics, will be built to celebrate the 500^th anniversary of the Mary Rose.

The Tudor warship itself will be dried-out in a ‘hotbox’ at the centre of the museum until its full unveiling in 2016.

Melissa Gerbaldi, a spokesperson for Portsmouth Historic Dockyard told Event that the museum would hold educational and family events as well as corporate hospitality functions.

“It will [also] have Mary Rose exhibitions based around the artefacts and the lives of the Tudors, whether it be warfare or medicine etcetera. Obviously we will have a clearer idea of events closer to the museum opening,” she added.

Visitors to the museum will be able to witness the ongoing wet and dry conservation of the Mary Rose through viewing ports from each of the new deck-level galleries.

On completion of the air-drying phase, the hotbox enclosure will be removed, allowing views of the ship’s original timbers as intended when the Mary Rose was raised from the seabed in 1982.

The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) has announced a 12%  increase in visitor numbers on last year despitte the number of dairy producers declining by 3%.

The two-day event, held on the 16 and 17 September, attracted more than 460 exhibitors. 

Attractions at the event included farm health planning and mixer wagons. The soil surgery was popular among livestock farmers.

“We were thoroughly pleased by the industry’s response to the Dairy Event and Livestock Show with many companies across a wide product range, reporting good size orders placed and quality enquiries received, confirming our belief that this is the business to business event for the ruminant sector,” said RABDF chief executive, Nick Everington.

“Despite operating in a contracting market, visitor numbers increased, particularly on the second day, which provided more quality time for farmers and exhibitors to talk and actually complete their negotiations.”

The Tate Modern has told Event that its expansion will have a heavy emphasis on creating space for evening events with music and film nights featuring heavily.

 The Tate Modern will increase its size by 60% after generous support from donors in the recession. The work is expected to be completed in 2012.

It is currently not known how much space will be made available for events, but a spokesperson for the gallery said that, whilst there is ample gallery space at the venue, more areas are planned for exhibitions and events.

This weekend a group of artists will use Lumacoustics YrWall, a digital graffiti wall, to create artworks which will be beamed onto a building as part of Bristol Festival 2009.

 The installation can be viewed from 18-20 September. Visitors will see the artists creations beamed onto a 500msq wall, made to fit the shape using Lumacoustic’s software.

“It will be breathtaking stuff as people will be able to see these massive artworks take shape in front of their eyes,” said Lumacoustics spokesperson Tom Hogan.

“There have been laser pens used to digitally ‘tag’ the side of buildings but with this you can do full colour and detailed graffiti artwork. This is definitely a world first.”

Elsewhere, the festival will feature 200 bands, DJs, comedians, artists and circus performers.

The event’s hub is the Lloyd’s Amphitheatre with an outdoor festival featuring seven stages and family-style entertainment, followed by ‘Rave on Avon’ in ten city centre night clubs.

Ikea is using Blazinstar Experiential for the nationwide experiential launch of its 2010 catalogue.

 Mediacom UK brought in Blazinstar on behalf of Ikea to run ‘activation zones’ across 11 stations and malls nationwide.

The programme launched on Tuesday (8 September) and involves ‘double-stacked’ giant versions of IKEA’s iconic Kassett boxes.

Adscreens playing Abba music have been engaging commuters and shoppers, offering them a copy of the newly launched catalogue.

Blazinstar will also run two promotional bus tours for the next two weeks.

Whittlebury Hall Hotel, located next to Silverstone racetrack, employed 300 people to host Force India F1’s celebrations after the team grabbed its first eight championship points at the Belgium Grand Prix.

Giancarlo Fisichella’s second place finish ensured that the motoring team, formed in 2007, had cause for celebration.

The event took place in The Brooklands Suite at Whittlebury Hall Management Training Centre. The Force India F1 Team and partners were in attendance, with the team’s colours and a show car being used to decorate the space. 

“The event came together in record time of just five days, from menu and invitations to entertainment and all the operational challenges that go with hosting such a large and high-profile event,” said Whittlebury Hall sales and marketing director Michael Stott.

A buffet-style dinner and dance were among the highlights.

The UK’s most famous confectioner Cadbury has rejected a £10.2bn takeover bid from Kraft Foods that the Oreo and Dairylea-owner said would create “a global powerhouse in snacks, confectionery and quick meals”.

In a statement to the stock market this morning, however, the US food giant appealed directly to shareholders, saying it is “committed to working toward a recommended transaction and to maintaining a constructive dialogue and is announcing this proposal as a means to encourage and further that process”.

Kraft has offered shareholders a cash and shares deal valuing Cadbury at 745 pence per share, a 31% premium based on Friday’s closing prices.

Kraft said adding Cadbury would create a company with global revenues in excess of $50bn and create savings across the enlarged entity of $625m annually.

Irene B. Rosenfeld, chairman and chief executive of Kraft Foods, said: “This proposed combination is about growth. We are eager to build upon Cadbury’s iconic brands and strong British heritage through increased investment and innovation.

“We have great respect and admiration for Cadbury, its employees, its leadership and its proud heritage. As we have done, Cadbury has built wonderful brands by focusing on quality, innovation and marketing, but we believe the next stage in Cadbury’s development will be challenging, given the increased importance of scale in the industry.

“Cadbury’s brands, which are highly complementary to our portfolio, would benefit from Kraft Foods’ global scope and scale and array of proprietary technologies and processes.”

Cadbury, the makers of Dairy Milk and Crème Eggs, has been lauded by the ad industry in recent years, most notably for its award winning Gorilla campaign created by Fallon.

In September last year, Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon (SSF) group took over the £100m Cadbury business from Publicis.

Earlier, in June last year, Omnicom-owned PHD picked up the estimated £25m media planning and buying account for Cadbury.

Cadbury was unavailble for comment.

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What happens when you tell your 1,000,000-plus Twitter followers about your broken washing machine? It gets fixed – as appliance brand Maytag learns the unwieldy power of Twitter and mommy-bloggers.

Last month, blogger Heather Armstrong, who writes for the immensely popular parenting blog Dooce in the US, gave the appliance giant Maytag a public relations scare after she asked her million or so followers to boycott the brand after her recently purchased $1,300 washing machine stopped working.

After days of delays with Maytag repairmen, and a particularly bad row with Maytag’s customer call centre, Armstrong wrote on her blog: “Okay then, I say, almost begging at this point, almost to the point of tears, is there anyone I can talk to who might see what I’ve been through and understand?

“And here’s where I say, do you know what Twitter is? Because I have over a million followers on Twitter. If I say something about my terrible experience on Twitter do you think someone will help me? And she says in the most condescending tone and hiss ever uttered, ‘Yes, I know what Twitter is. And no, that will not matter.’”

After speaking to a supervisor, Armstrong writes: “Okay then. I hang up the phone, calmly walk over to my computer, pull up a browser and write this twitter:”

A screengrab of her Twitter account, showing the tweets:

“So that you may not have to suffer like we have: DO NOT EVER BUY A MAYTAG. I repeat: OUR MAYTAG EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN A NIGHTMARE.”

And,

“Have I mentioned what a nightmare our experience was with Maytag? No? A TOTAL NIGHTMARE.”

And,

“That brand new washing machine from MAYTAG? That someone has been out to fix three times? STILL BROKEN. DO NOT BUY MAYTAG.”

All of which were read by her 1.2 million Twitter followers.

Armstrong said within hours, she was contacted by a number of big name appliance brands, including Maytag’s parent company Whirlpool, which fixed the broken machine the next day.

She wrote: “And then the following morning I get a phone call from Jeff Piraino, manager of the executive offices of Whirlpool Corporation in Michigan.

“That, my friends, is service.”

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Organisers of Manchester International Festival have revealed impressive figures, with 230,000 people turning up to the biennial event. Initial evaluations show that the festival, which took place from 2-19 July, increased its economic impact from £28.8m in 2007 to £35.7m.

Local arts organisations were also more involved this year, with 12 local co-productions, compared with two in 2007, and 172 performances overall, involving 331 volunteers.

Attendance was also up, with 231,455 people attending the festival, a 10% increase on the inaugural festival figures.

“We congratulate the festival team on delivering an event that raised the profile of the city and made a significant economic and social contribution, and look forward to another exciting festival in 2011,” said Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese.

Highlights of the festival included Rufus Wainwright’s debut opera Prima Donna; Elbow and the Hallé Symphony Orchestra teaming up for a musical love letter to Manchester; and a double-bill featuring electro pioneers Steve Reich and Kraftwerk.

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