Telegraph and John Smith's team up for press ad campaign

IAN DARBY

September 06, 2002

How long?

3-4 minutes

Telegraph and John Smith's team up for press ad campaign

Scottish Courage brand John Smith's, the UK's top-selling bitter, is developing a press advertising campaign involving Telegraph Group readers to support its "No Nonsense television activity.

The Telegraph Group has won a pitch to respond to a brief from MediaVest and Steam, Scottish Courage's media and promotion agency.

The Daily Telegraph readers will be invited through newspaper, online and direct mail activity to submit journalistic comments about top televised sports events. The best four "pundits will see their comments on specific events such as The Ryder Cup published in half-page press ads running in the paper's Monday sports section.

Ads will run in The Daily Telegraph from this weekend inviting readers to take part. They will supply comments via sports.telegraph.co.uk.

The idea is that readers will write no-nonsense comments of up to 100 words to reinforce John Smith's positioning.

MediaVest's media strategy has been to buy space for John Smith's television advertising, by TBWA/London, around sports events.

Giles Smith, The Daily Telegraph's sports columnist, will judge the competition.

The deal was negotiated by James Mann and Caron Stewart, strategic planners at the Telegraph Group, and Gail Skeoch, an associate director at MediaVest.