Posts made in June, 2015

on Jun 26, 2015

By John Glenday Trinity Mirror has been forced to redouble its efforts slash costs in an effort to keep pace with ever declining print revenues with the announcement that it intends to double planned cuts to realise £20m in savings. The publishing group had announced just three months ago that it planned to find £10m in structural savings but this initiative has been overtaken by events as the scale of the challenge outlined in a trading update for the first half of 2015. This showed a precipitous 11 per cent decline in print revenues (despite a cover price increase to 60p) with print advertising dipping Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Jun 26, 2015

By Thomas Hobbs In the same period a year ago, UK sales dropped by 4%. The result also marks a slender improvement on Tesco’s fourth quarter, where LFL sales fell at a rate of 1.7%, with the -1.3% decline also beating analysts’ forecasts of anything up to -3%. Lewis, speaking to Marketing Week in a press call this morning, insisted that despite improving brand health scores, Tesco still has “a long way to go”. Tesco saw sales volumes rise by 1.4% – the second consecutive quarter of growth – and transactions up 1.3% over its first quarter. Lewis said that it also added 180,000 new Read full story › Source: Marketing Week...

on Jun 26, 2015

By John Glenday A US public health charity has re-visited the classic 1971 Coca-Cola advert Hilltop to warn of the dangers excessive consumption of sugary drinks posed to individual health. The historic commercial gathered an international group of singers to an Italian hillside before breaking out into song to state ‘buy the world a Coke and keep it company’ and was lent contemporary prominence in the series finale of Mad Men. Now, 44 years after the original, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has assembled a group of its own, albeit in the less glamorous setting of a hospital where they receive treatment Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Jun 26, 2015

By Chris Baylis Cause and issue-based advertising is winning bigger than ever this year at Cannes, reflects Chris Baylis from Iris Worldwide. Read full story › Source: Campaign...

on Jun 26, 2015

By John Glenday Tesco shareholders have been given cause for some rare cheer this morning after the retailer reported a better than expected set of results for the second quarter, with a contraction of 1.3 per cent. This was significantly lower than analysts’ expectations of a 2 per cent fall and much better than the previous quarters 1.7 per cent slip. Tesco hired chief executive officer Dave Lewis to reverse four years of sales declines just one month before an accounting scandal lifted the lid on the firm’s dodgy books, launching a programme of store closures and discounting to counter the threat posed by cheaper Read full story › Source: The Drum...