Let's do lunch inside the world of advertising

Martini, which has spent months auditioning "beautiful people" for its new campaign, is finally launching the lucky winners in a new TV commercial this week. If you didn't make it, don't worry. Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury has more plans up its sleeve. The agency has devised a range of "Martini mirrors" to be put up around London. Some of them have cameras installed behind them. So if you want to guarantee an appearance, just promenade before these mirrors in a Carmen Miranda outfit striking fancy poses.

We should have guessed Abbott Mead Vickers was up to something. Only weeks ago, the agency group raised pounds 18m on the stock exchange with a rights issue. Then last week AMV splashed out pounds 5m on the purchase of Fitzrovia media outfit Pattison Horswell Durden. This, combined with some media work which AMV snaffled up from Leagas Delaney earlier this year, and AMV's own media function, will form a top-five media brand with billings of around pounds 260m. But what next for David Pattison, Nick Horswell and Jonathan Durden? Retirement to the country, or to some desert island? No, they'll carry on working, if AMV has anything to do with it: the terms of the sale require them to stay with the new outfit for five years. Only John Ayling, famously grumpy sleeping partner in PHD, gets to walk away with his money. Who knows, maybe he'll allow himself a smile?

What with a general election coming up, adland is steeled for abuse by politicians. This week Labour landed a couple of blows. First, they released research they had carried out into the work of M&C Saatchi. This was the pounds 1m Conservative Party campaign that blankly stated "Yes it hurt. Yes it worked." A Labour spokesman declared "We have tested the campaign thoroughly and we can only view it as a disaster."

Labour couldn't leave it there. Next, they turned their fire on Bates Dorland, which produces one of the nation's favourite ad campaigns, for Safeway. But nine Labour MPs didn't like the latest twist on Safeway's children-as-adults series (boy says to girl: "no chance of a snog, then?"). These MPs signed a House of Commons motion deploring "sexually suggestive adult-dubbed dialogue" which will "probably enthuse paedophiles". Golly. Bates Dorland, consider yourselves sent to bed with a smacked bottom.

Five months after quitting as joint deputy managing director of Mellors Reay and Partners, Dragana Hartley has joined Walsh Trott Chick Smith in an as-yet unspecified role. Her stint at Mellors Reay was understood to have been less than happy, as she seemed to confirm in comments about the new place: "Walsh Trott is a bullshit-free zone where it's possible to work with experienced people who know what they're doing." Ouch.

ALEX SOMERSET