Stella Artois is repositioning its marketing strategy to focus activity on the quality and heritage of the 600-year-old Belgian beer brand.

The brewer has launched a major new outdoor advertising campaign with product-led ads at key roadside, underground, rail and city centre sites.

It marks a strategic shift away from the 1960s-inspired ads of the last three years that focused on the chic style of the French Riviera.

Taglines now include ‘We were brewing beer in Belgium before Belgium was Belgian’, and ‘Master ...

Eurostar is to include comments and pictures from Facebook and Twitter in a new outdoor advertising campaign that kicks off tomorrow (February 23rd).

The railway company is incorporating live social media content into 363 digital outdoor screens across London and the south-east to build customer loyalty.

Dubbed Eurostar Live, the integrated marketing campaign promotes the company’s new service from London to Amsterdam via Brussels.

Eurostar claims it is the first major brand to integrate social media into a large-scale outdoor campaign in this ...

Virgin Media crashed ITV’s screening of the Brit Awards last night (February 21st) with TV ads designed to highlight the frustrations of slow broadband.

The firm interrupted adverts for Yeo Valley and Citroen with the familiar buffering wheel, with viewers able to see just a few seconds before the ad froze.

It resumed before freezing again, asking viewers why they put up with internet buffering when they would not stand for it happening on TV.

Virgin Media said more “ad takeovers” will follow ...

The first TV ad for Carling’s new Chrome variant will air during the Brit Awards tonight (February 21st), kicking off a new £7 million marketing drive.

Carling Chrome was soft-launched in August last year, allowing the beer maker to establish its distribution network ahead of a major cross-platform campaign that gets underway this month.

The ad, called Anticipation and featuring T-Rex’s hit song Get it On, kick-starts a campaign that will include video-on-demand, cinema ads, outdoor marketing and press activity.

It will air ...

Sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic Games has delivered a boost to BP’s brand image, according to new research.

The company has been struggling to rebuild its reputation since the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster in 2010, the worst in US history.

As the official oil and gas sponsor of the Games, BP will provide fuel for more than 5,000 official vehicles and offset the emissions produced by them.

According to the study seen by Marketing, 13 per cent of over 3,000 UK ...

Twitter, which has recently started offering enhanced corporate pages to brands, is launching its new self-service advertising platform for small businesses.

The microblogging site said the initial roll-out of the platform will be confined to advertisers who accept or use American Express credit cards.

From late March, the new platform will allow small firms to take advantage of Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products without the need to speak to a sales representative.

Until now, Twitter’s in-house staff have sold advertising products ...

A street advert using facial recognition technology to distinguish between men and women is being launched in London this week.

People viewing the electronic outdoor ad, which will be unveiled at a bus stop on Oxford Street, will see a different message depending on whether they are male or female.

The 40-second advert was commissioned for Plan UK, a charity promoting women’s rights around the world.

While women will be able to view the entire ad, men will simply be directed to the ...

The Sun on Sunday will be launched this week, News International has revealed following speculation that a replacement for News of the World would appear soon.

Today’s edition of the Sun (February 20th) broke the news, which has taken the newspaper industry off-guard.

Sun editor Dominic Mohan said: “This is a truly historic moment in newspaper publishing and I am proud to be part of it.”

It follows the closure of the News of the World last year as advertisers abandoned the newspaper ...

Barclays is looking to target its new smartphone app Pingit beyond its own customer base via a range of marketing channels.

The contactless payment system will enable customers with current accounts, which number 11.9 million at Barclays, to send and receive cash using their mobile phones.

Existing customers will be targeted initially through Barclays branches throughout the country.

The lender is planning on supporting the Pingit launch to customers from other banks with a TV advertising campaign and social media strategy.

At the moment, Pingit is ...

Consumers are becoming more receptive to online video advertising, with greater numbers watching full ads that are loaded to content.

The findings appear in the latest FreeWheel Video Monetization Report, which draws data from the analysis over 45 billion video and 28 billion ad views.

Consumers watched twice as many ads during videos exceeding 20+ minutes in the last three months of 2011 compared to earlier in the year.

More consumers are watching video adverts all the way through too. Completion rates for ...