By Stephen Foster on January 22, 2013
As we suspected the airtime row between GroupM, which handles big negotiations for WPP’s media agencies including MediaCom, Mindshare and MEC, and publicly-backed UK broadcaster Channel 4 did escalate to involve the higher ranks of WPP. Which means CEO Sir Martin Sorrell. Sorrell intervened in early January after correctly determining that what started as a [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News | Tagged airtime row, Channel 4, David Abraham, davos, groupm, Lady Sorrell, Mark Collins, Sir Martin Sorrell
By Stuart Smith on January 15, 2013
It has been compared to bottoms – and also the most fiendishly complicated sex toy yet devised by Ann Summers. Yes, the new ITV logo, spearheading the TV station’s most ambitious rebrand in 11 years, has turned us into a nation of amateur psychologists desperately attempting to infer inner meaning from the Rorschach blot of [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News | Tagged Adam Crozier, Channel 4, digital analogue, groupm, itv, new identity, royal mail
By Stephen Foster on January 14, 2013
“Sir Martin Sorrell, boss of the world’s largest advertising group WPP, has been forced into a humiliating climbdown after failing to strongarm …” began a story in Friday’s London Evening Standard – and then, all of a sudden, it disappeared (from the internet anyway). The subject of SMS’s alleged strongarming was, of course, UK broadcaster [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News | Tagged airtime dispute, Channel 4, groupm, london evening standard, Mark Collins, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP
By Stephen Foster on January 10, 2013
WPP-owned GroupM and the media agencies it represents are returning to Channel 4 on Monday, as we predicted over Christmas. Quite what the media giant achieved with this bout of sabre-rattling is unclear but Channel 4 certainly couldn’t afford to reduce its ad rates much (it had already offered to renew the two-year deal that [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News | Tagged Channel 4, deal, groupm, itv, media agencies, WPP, £250m airtime dispute
By Staff on January 4, 2013
The ongoing Channel 4/GroupM stand-off is rather worrying for advertisers for number of reasons. Campaign reports that GroupM’s refusal to accept a renewal of the same terms it was offered in its last two year deal -hardly an unreasonable offer – is because of ‘pressure from new business wins,’ presumably meaning it’s promised new clients [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News | Tagged airtime row, BT, carat, Channel 4, daily express, daily mail, groupm, new business, unilever, WPP
By Stephen Foster on December 12, 2012
WPP’s GroupM, in effect the controller of its various media agencies, is threatening to pull around £200m of ads from UK broadcaster Channel 4 (27 per cent of the total) if the publicly-owned broadcaster won’t agree to revised (lower presumably) terms when their current deal expires at the end of the month. Channel 4′s ratings, [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News, Politics | Tagged Big Brother, Channel 4, channel 5, David Abraham, groupm, ratings, Sir Martin Sorrell
By Stephen Foster on August 27, 2012
There’s a formidable head of steam behind the forthcoming Paralympics in London and Channel 4′s launch ad (by in-house agency 4Creative presumably) is a vigorous piece of work – ‘Meet the Superhumans’ is hardly the stuff of most ads about disability. But do we really need the bit (only a second or so admittedly) showing [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, News, Politics | Tagged afghanistan, c4 creative, Channel 4, Iraq, paralympics ad, politics
By Angie Dean on May 18, 2012
Here’s some intriguing intelligence from the London Evening Standard’s City Diarist. The Channel 4 press office has just leaked to me details of the next Celebrity Come Dine With Me. I can’t wait. You must know the programme. Four or five people who live in the same town take it in turns each night of [...]
Posted in Agencies, Finance, Media, News, PR | Tagged buyout plans, celebrity come dine with me, Channel 4, chime communications, city diary, london evening standard, Lord Bell, Lord Chadlington, Piers Pottinger, saatchi & saatchi, Sir Martin Sorrell
By Stephen Foster on May 7, 2012
The crew at Adam & Eve have a lot of answer for: their emotive epics for John Lewis have sparked a wave of imitators, like this commercial for new-style legal firm Quality Solicitors. Quality Solicitors is a network of 350 or so UK legal firms, designed to bring demystified legal service to the high street [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Finance, News | Tagged adam & eve, Channel 4, emotional ads, hard road to travel, homeland, Jimmy Cliff, John Lewis, legal services network, Phil Clarke, quality solicitors, Rachel K Collins, team saatchi, Tesco, tesco law
By Stephen Foster on March 19, 2012
Mark Thompson (pictured) has been director-general of the BBC since 2004 when he came back to the corporation from a short stint at Channel 4 as the Beeb reeled from the enforced departure of Greg Dyke. Dyke, a former boss of London Weekend Television, has been forced out after the BBC governors, in effect the [...]
Posted in Media, News, Politics | Tagged Alastair Campbell, Andrew Gilligan, BBC, bbc1, Caroline Thompson, Channel 4, director-general, dodgy dossier, Dr David Kelly, George Entwistle, Greg Dyke, Helen Boaden, iraq war, Jonathan Ross, Mark Thompson, media city, Peter Fincham, Robert Peston, Russell Brand, sachsgate, salford, sexed up, Tony Blair
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