- Lacoste, the French fashion brand, has appointed MPG Media Contacts to its media planning and buying account for its clothing and leather goods ranges, after a pitch.
- Initiative has boosted its senior team with the hiring of Anna Watkins, the group managing director at the digital shop Grand Union, as its managing director.
- Absolute Radio has launched the latest phase of its long-running 'Faces For Radio' campaign and will target in-car and roadside audiences by using a live "now playing" feed on digital outdoor screens.
- Betfair, the online betting company, has appointed Havas Media-owned Arena Media as to its £2m media planning and buying account, without a pitch.
- The Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA) has created a set of stop-frame animation films as part of a campaign to emphasise the passion readers have for sports coverage in newspapers.
- Jo Bacon, the former business director at Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, has joined MTV Networks UK and Ireland as its vice-president of marketing, creative and publicity.
- Bray Leino, the Mission Marketing Group-owned full service agency, has appointed former Delaney Lund Knox Warren creative director Jon Elsom as its executive creative director, replacing Steve Hall.
- The Radio Advertising Bureau is backing its £350,000 drive to champion higher standards in radio creative with the appointment of Clare Bowen to the new role of head of creative development.
- Channel 5 is locked in a trading dispute with the Havas Media agency MPG Media Contacts.
- Channel 4 has appointed Damon Lafford, currently head of trading at BSkyB's Sky Media, as one of its two heads of agency sales, in the first major appointment of the new Channel 4 sales structure.
- Netflix, the movie-streaming service which officially launched in the UK and Ireland yesterday, has kicked off a major multimedia advertising campaign today (10 January) in its first salvo against rivals LoveFilm and Sky.
- Wonga.com and other payday loan companies are to be banned from signing major corporate sponsorships with Transport for London (TfL), following the highly criticised deal with Wonga for New Year's Eve 2010.
- The consensus among media agencies suggests the TV ad market will be flat year on year in the first quarter, a result many would welcome given the comparatively strong start to 2011.
- Media owners with share of a market in excess of 50% should automatically be "subject to undertakings which would prevent them from abusing their position", the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) has told Ofcom.
- Simon Pardon, global chief trading officer at Aegis Media and the former managing director of ITV sales house Granada Enterprises, has left Aegis to "pursue other interests".
- The television advertising market is expected to have grown by around 2% in 2011, with the biggest year-on-year rise achieved by Channel 5, while Channel 4 is expected to have performed the worst on a like-for-like basis.
- Dave Buonaguidi, founder and chief creative officer of ad agency Karmarama, played table tennis for 24 hours last week to raise money for Age UK.
- Errol Baran, the head of future and digital media at Channel 4,is leaving the company to pursue other interests, amid a restructure of the Channel 4 sales team.
- VCCP's Comparethemarket.com campaign was the most creative ad judged by the Radio Advertising Bureau in the third quarter, beating quarter-two's winner, Autoglass and Radioville, into second place.
- TalkSport, the UTV Media-owned national speech station, is to launch its own ad campaign to promote digital radio on Monday, with a special limerick targeted at its listeners.
