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Nestle's confectionery brand Smarties has partnered with

smashhits.net, which launched one month ago, in a sponsorship deal worth

in excess of £1.5 million.

Under the 18-month cross-media deal, Smarties will be the headline

sponsor of one of the three main sections of the Smash Hits web site,

called Your Pop. It is the high-traffic, interactive part of the site

that includes message boards, email and Pop Brother, a music star

take-off of Big Brother.

From next month, each page of the section will be branded and will

include the strapline 'smart zone with smarties'.

The deal incorporates a number of offline tie-ins with Emap, including

radio and TV sponsorship and a branded section in the print version of

the pop magazine.

"The deal with Emap enables us to secure well-targeted exposure for

Smarties across a variety of media," commented Andrew Harrison,

marketing director at Nestle Rowntree.

Twelve online competitions will run during the sponsorship period. The

first one, to start in August, will be a T-shirt design competition

involving pop starlets Atomic Kitten. Running for around a month,

would-be young designers can email or post in a T-shirt design to

smashhits.net, with the 10 best being displayed on the web site. Users

will then vote for the best one.

The winner gets to attend a photo shoot with Atomic Kitten, wearing

their creation.

A run of T-shirts featuring the winning design will be made available

for purchase on www.smashhits.net.

"Our audience is mainly seven to 14 year-olds, and Smarties is a good

fit with the whole social and community aspect of smashhits.net," said

Mandy Key, commercial director of Emap Digital's music and entertainment

web sites. "We're looking forward to developing a number of projects

together."