Major producers from the beer, wine and spirits sectors have launched a comprehensive initiative to strengthen self-regulatory schemes for alcohol beverage marketing. They have established a set of common, rigorous standards for their marketing communications throughout the European Union.
Under the Responsible Marketing Pact, AB InBev, Bacardi, Brown-Forman, Carlsberg, Diageo, Heineken, Pernod Ricard and SAB Miller [...]

[Read more →]

Post Danmark reports that its Mobilporto service – which enables customers to buy postage via their mobile phones – has sold 400,000 stamps in its first year.
Customers send a text with the word ‘porto’ (postage) to the number 1900 to receive a code which they can then write on the corner of an envelope, where [...]

[Read more →]

Consumers warn brands to tailor personal data into effective insight, or they will shop elsewhere.
The proliferation of marketing channels over the last five years has significantly impacted on the way consumers expect to be treated by brands, reports Experian Marketing Services.
As more and more people embrace the multi-channel environment in their own lives, sharing information [...]

[Read more →]

First published in DMI, May 2001.
As Postcomm has introduced new licensing regulations, the Postal Industry stands on the brink of change – Mark Woodcock (pictured) reports on the likely changes in International Postal competition.
There was a time when dealing with the post in the UK was a simple affair. 
There were few competitors, few options, limited [...]

[Read more →]

Death of the High Street? Highly exaggerated, reports Andy Wood (pictured): research reveals there’s a co-dependence of offline and online for the modern consumer.
The high street is still a vital stop in the customer journey – but it is rarely used as the sole channel for shopping.
On the contrary, modern consumers use shops as showrooms [...]

[Read more →]

Don’t deliver cross-border marketing communications to people who don’t want them – and make compliance with European data protection rules painless. That’s the message from global B2B marketing data and services provider Mardevdm2.
The company has just introduced its new European Suppression File  (ESF) to the market and is helping to promote it with a competition [...]

[Read more →]

The transition from e-commerce to m-commerce is gathering momentum as more and more companies are exploring the possibilities of mobile marketing. Pioneers include pizza chain Domino’s,  which reported £10m in sales via its mobile site and app since its launch, and British retailer Marks & Spencer, which delivered more than £1m in sales via its [...]

[Read more →]

UK advertising spend grew by 2.7 per cent in 2011 reaching £16.1 billion in total, according to Advertising Association figures produced by Warc. 
Growth is expected to continue in 2012 with new forecasts predicting a 3.8 per cent increase, well ahead of growth across the rest of the UK economy.
The AA/Warc Expenditure Report encompasses print, TV, [...]

[Read more →]

Earlier this month, search engine giant Google launched changes to its privacy policy designed to make the Internet search process more intuitive for users, but the changes haven’t gone down so well with some users leading to a love/hate divide sometimes termed the Marmite effect. 
Recent changes mean that instead of operating under a number of [...]

[Read more →]

Emer Timmons (pictured) reports from the recent Retailtopia event in London.
When you look down on the shoppers from nearly 400 feet, Oxford Street looks like the beating heart of British retail. I saw that heart beating as strong as ever earlier last month when I joined Professor Patrick Barwise, chairman of Which?, at the top [...]

[Read more →]