Pembroke: Pleasure-marketing hound comes out of the freezer
SWAPPING Haagen-Dazs ice cream for Winalot might not seem the best trade in the world but it has kept one man's dog straining at the leash. Simon Esberger was the marketing director at Haagen-Dazs, who managed the 'dedicated to pleasure' campaign for the premium ice-cream, which had young lovers daubing each other with the stuff. Yesterday he started work at Spillers pet food, the Dalgety subsidiary whose most exciting advert features Arthur, a white cat who digs catfood out of a tin with its paws.
Mr Esberger said he had yet to devise plans for Spillers' advertising and admitted he didn't know that much about pet food anyway. 'I've got a dog but that's about it,' he said. 'I didn't even use to buy his food as I used to get it free from a friend who worked for a (rival) pet food company.
Amber, Mr Esberger's cocker spaniel, who is described as 'on his last legs' by his owner, is thought to be taking the news lying down. He prefers cat food anyway.
AN ERA ended yesterday at Attwoods, the waste disposal company, when Sir Denis Thatcher bowed out after 10 years on the board.
Board meetings may be less smoky for his absence but no less prickly given other changes in the company's board structure. The chief executive, Ken Foreman, who is married to Mandy Rice- Davies of Profumo fame, is handing over the position of chairman to Lord Lane of Horsell.
A stringent campaigner on corporate governance, Lord Lane is co-author of a dry little book on the subject that flopped on to reviewers' desks last week.
Given that Lord Lane's thrust in the book is that the Cadbury Report didn't go nearly far enough, Mr Foreman and his colleagues can expect a bit more than some good-natured heckling from the head of the board table.
NEWS THAT Bergval & Hudner, owner of the Braer, the tanker that sank off the Shetlands, is relocating some management operations might send a few eyebrows heavenwards given its chosen new home. B&H has opted to shift its vessel accounting and other ship management divisions from Connecticut to Limassol, the Cyprus home of many a rust bucket. The company, which no longer operates oil tankers, cites cost-savings as the reason for the move.
TALK OF eyebrows brings me to Denis Healey, the former Chancellor. The cuddly politician crops up in the latest adverts pushing the Visa Delta debit card. But it is not the eyebrows or the punning catchline 'With Visa's Delta Card I'm an Ex-chequer' that grabs the eye. It is Lord Healey's eyes. In David Bowie fashion one pupil looks dilated while the other is not. Some sort of funny eyedrops? 'I think it was just the lighting,' a spokesman said.
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