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Harlequin, the Canadian publisher best known for its Mills & Boon

books, has picked Davies Little Cowley Fiddes to drive sales across

Europe.

The pounds 4 million assignment will allow the agency to extend the

advertising it developed for Mills & Boon in the UK, which features a

woman reading a book while taking a bath and the line, ’Makes any time

special.’

Davies Little won the pan-European task after a pitch in Milan in

February against Ogilvy & Mather - which handles Harlequin in the US -

and J. Walter Thompson.

Frontline Media, which runs media buying for Mills & Boon in the UK,

will co-ordinate media arrangements for the new advertising - which will

begin in June in 14 European countries, including Harlequin’s key

markets of Germany, France and Italy.

Guy Hallowes, Harlequin’s executive vice-president for overseas, cited

Davies Little’s ability to ’develop ideas that work in a variety of

marketing communications and languages’ as the reason for the company’s

choice.

The new appointment ends the existing arrangement under which European

advertising was handled on a country-by-country basis.

The agency’s brief is to devise a through-the-line campaign, designed

not only to win new readers but persuade retailers to stock many of the

50-plus Harlequin titles published each month.

Davies Little, which won the Mills & Boon UK account in September 1997,

took the brand on to TV for the first time with a ten-second spot last

summer.

Don Cowley, the agency’s joint chief executive, said: ’The advantage of

running the advertising across Europe is that we can put more money into

quality TV production.’