Carlton Secures Sponsor For ITV’s Today With Des And Mel
Carlton has secured a deal with Westmill Foods that will see its new range of Ken Hom products sponsor ITV1’s daytime chat show, Today With Des And Mel.
The deal includes full broadcast sponsorship of the series, which returns to ITV1 next week for its autumn run. Celebrity chef Ken Hom and his new pan-Asian range of sauces, rice and noodles will be featured in a series of 15-second front credits, with six 5-second break bumpers and a ten-second end credit.
Talks are already underway for the brand’s continuing sponsorship of the light entertainment series into 2004. Compilation repeats will be sponsored when they are included in this autumn’s night-time schedule.
The deal was negotiated by Joe Mather at Media Campaign Services and Peter Manten, sponsorship manager at Carlton, who said: “We know that TV sponsorship produces a variety of different communication benefits for our clients and it is only just beginning to be recognised that product sales is one of these benefits.”
Debbie Thomas, marketing manger at Westmill Foods, added: “With a total of five daytime transmissions per week and a campaign spanning 70 shows, the sponsorship gives an extremely high opportunity to see figure, with compilation night-time repeats adding even more to the total impact of the campaign.”
The latest data from BARB shows that viewing figures for Today With Des And Mel have increased steadily since last September. Ratings slipped slightly in April, but the programme regularly averages around 1.4 million viewers.
ITV’s director of programmes, Nigel Pickard, recently outlined plans to revitalise the schedules at the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster, despite news that ITV1’s programming budget for next year will remain static at around £835 million (see MGEITF 2003: Pickard Outlines Plans To Revitalise ITV).
Carlton: 020 7663 6363 www.carlton.com
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