Christine Ohuruogu has been named the latest Virgin Media ambassador, joining the likes of Usain Bolt, Mo Farrah and Richard Whitehead in the marketing activity for its ‘superfast broadband’.

The announcement was made following Ohuruogu’s success at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow last week. She became the first British woman ever to claim a second individual world title, after winning the title for the first time in Osaka in 2007.

“We’ve been talking with Christine for some time now so it’s with great pleasure that we’ve signed this sponsorship deal now she’s done the double,” said Jeff Dodds, Virgin Media’s chief marketing officer. “Usain has too; and Mo; and marathon champ Richard Whitehead. And so have we, by doubling the broadband speeds of millions of customers this past year. Now we’re getting excited about 2014 as I know Christine hopes to compete for what could be yet another double – her second Commonwealth Games gold next year in Glasgow.”

Virgin Media is an Official Partner of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

A series of letters penned by Queen Victoria using informal language, including a number of abbreviations common to today’s generation of text massagers, have been sold at auction for £15k.

The letters were written by the Queen to James Forbes, her estates manager at Balmoral, and include shortened versions of words such as ‘shd’ for ‘should’ and ‘abt’ for ‘about’.

A swell as their construction the correspondence is notable for its content, which expresses concern for the welfare of staff and tenants and interests in life.

In one such missive she remarked upon an aristocratic neighbour: “I have never invited the Duke of Atholl to come over with his men and I think it wd. be better not to do so this year. It wd. entail the encampment of his men in our grounds wh. wd. be inconvenient.”

Written from her Windsor home the letters are all written on ‘mourning paper’ following the death of her husband, Prince Albert, and most are signed VR1.

Andrew Currie, a spokesman for Bonhams auctioneers, said: “The writing is quite untidy and the abbreviations are interesting, a sort of early form of texting which suggest Queen Victoria was a hundred years ahead of her time.

“Sales of this sort are not that rare, but what is unusual is the letters show the Queen was keen to strike up personal relationships with her staff, showing her concern for her household, tenants and neighbours at Balmoral.”

Samsung has unveiled a global campaign, ‘companion stories’, with Jam, which aims to celebrate the most important relationships in people’s lives.

The first of the films focuses on old-school skateboarding legend Richy Carrasco, with viewers being encouraged to tweet their own stories with #companionstories.

Wayne Deakin, executive creative director of Jam and The Engine Group, said: “This is storytelling about Galaxy S4 being an authentic connector in people’s lives and how it brings people together.”

The campaign is to be housed on YouTube as well as a special tab on the Samsung Mobile Facebook page, which will also feature additional facts, back-story and behind-the-scenes elements.

The films have been produced by Annex Films and directed by John X Carey.

David Beckham has officially launched his latest H&M collection with a new campaign after the fashion brand and former footballer teased fans this week by trickling out some campaign shots on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The series of print ads show Beckham posing in loungewear and underwear from the collection. A ‘behind-the-scenes’ video of the photoshoot has also been released on H&M’s YouTube channel, gathering over 120,00 views in two days.

"I love the heritage athletic style of the new pieces in my Bodywear collection at H&M. The vests, pyjama pants and raglan sleeve tops are already like wardrobe favourites for me that I know I’ll wear all season long,” said Beckham.

"It was great to shoot them in an old-fashioned East End changing room. It was like I had gone right back to my roots."

This is the fourth collaboration between H&M and Beckham. The collection hit stores today, 22 August.

The Weather Channel is ramping up its ad targeting opportunities for brands ahead of a major original video-content drive planned for later this year.

The NBC-owned channel is focusing heavily on building more ad targeting capabilities for brands that capitalise on both its social, mobile and weather data.

It has launched a web and mobile destination, called 'My Friends’ Weather' in the UK, designed to let people view the weather conditions in their Facebook friends’ locations.

They can see whether their friends are being affected by any severe weather conditions around the world such as heat waves, storms, flooding, or gales. The service will also provide weather news and content around international events such as festivals and sporting events and bank holidays.

It is currently on the lookout for advertisers to sponsor the new web and mobile environments.

Mike Zarilli, VP International, The Weather Channel, said it is harnessing more data sets including social data to help unlock further ad targeting opportunities for brands and more personally relevant experiences for consumers.

“The data and science we have as a company are the building blocks for our whole business. We are nothing without the accuracy and relevance of our data. How we apply it becomes a multi-pronged effort revolving around building engaging and relevant products while using the data to enhance ad initiatives,” he told The Drum.

The Weather Channel will provide campaign tracking metrics to measure performance on behalf of advertisers.

The company is also planning to work more closely with brands to unite offline sales data with its own weather data to drive dynamic ad targeting.

The aim is to overlay clients’ sales data with weather data to create predictive analytical models and let advertisers run weather-triggered, location-based messaging across the web and mobile devices.

An ad for Foot Locker takes the lead in this week's viral video chart, receiving over 3.8 million views and over 11,000 Facebook shares. Meanwhile Samsung and Coca-Cola have also done well, with each of the brands seeing two adverts make this week's brand viral chart.

Mercedes-Benz, Nokia and Barclays also made this week's chart.

In the user generated content chart, the most important question of the week seems to be 'how old are your ears?', with a video on the subject featng a hearing test receiving almost five million views.

The charts are compiled with the Viral Ad Network and are based on the number of shares each video has received on social media over the last seven days.

BMW Group Financial Services has appointed River Marketing to run the company’s annual Business Manager Awards event.

Set to be held in February 2014, River will brand the event with its own identity and build a website to communicate and promote it to invited guests in the build up.

Claire West, client services director of River, who was part of the recent management buyout of the Oxfordshire agency, said: “Winning any piece of business is exciting but we’re particularly pleased to be working with BMW Group Financial Services for the first time.”

Sophie Grimshaw of BMW Group Financial Services added: “River Marketing has an impressive track record and their proposal for this important event has given us every confidence that they will deliver something very special.”

The event will include an afternoon conference for around 350 guests followed by dinner, entertainment and an awards ceremony.

Reviews websites are four times more influential on consumer purchasing than social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, according to research from Kaizo PR.

Looking at electronics buying behaviour, the study found that almost half (44 per cent) of consumers said reviews websites helped them decide what to buy, compared to only 12 per cent who are influenced by content on Facebook and five per cent by content on Twitter.

Twenty-one per cent of people said news stories in traditional media affect what they buy.

Specifically looking at consumer technology brands, consumers are more interested in receiving news about PCs and laptops than about mobile phones, cameras or smartphones. 26 per cent of people are interested in news about mobile phone brands; compared to 50 per cent who are interested in hearing about PCs/laptops. Just over a third of people (36 per cent) are interested in news about smartphones, and 30 per cent about cameras.

“We wanted to find out more about the part that social plays in a consumer’s decision to buy. Brands that look at numbers of Likes and expect that to correlate directly to sales aren’t getting the full picture – recent investigations into click farms show just how meaningless Likes can sometimes be,” said Rhodri Harries, managing director of Kaizo.

However, social does have a valuable role to play for some as, although a third of people on Facebook never Like a brand (32 per cent), 22 per cent interact with a brand once a month or more on the social network. Eight per cent of people tweet about a brand once a month or more.

Harries added: “What really works is when brands use Facebook to interact with people who already have a relationship with them and create opportunities for their community to reach out to others – usually not even online.

The survey was conducted in June 2013 with 1,453 UK respondents.

Nigella Lawson has resumed tweeting following the public break up of her marriage to Charles Saatchi.

Lawson had maintained silence since late June after pictures emerged in a Sunday newspaper of her being strangled by Saatchi at a restaurant. Their 10-year marriage was dissolved at the High Court on July 31.

Saatchi has been more vocal on the incident, describing the incident as a “playful tiff” in which he held his wife by the neck to “emphasis my point”. He later accepted a police caution.

Lawson broke her Twitter silence to more than 430,000 followers with a tweet about The Great British Bake Off cookery show on 20 August and appears to be back to her social media self.

Yum: settling down to The Great British Bake Off with a slice of this blackcurrant Victoria sponge #GBBO pic.twitter.com/Bvn3UjvGPy— Nigella Lawson (@Nigella_Lawson) August 20, 2013

Radicchio, squash and pomegranate salad for lunch today: as beautiful to look at as to eat pic.twitter.com/Er1oQmCejW— Nigella Lawson (@Nigella_Lawson) August 21, 2013

#recipeoftheday is hardly a recipe - more a happy memory of my ma's fave salad at the resto at extinct. Biba http://t.co/fN4n02Qilb— Nigella Lawson (@Nigella_Lawson) August 22, 2013

NFL.com has signed a deal with Sports Revolution, the sports media and marketing agency, and its digital subsidiary Snack Media, to sell UK digital advertising around its site.

Over the past three years UK traffic to the website has increased by 78 per cent, largely due to NFL hosting two sell-out matches at Wembley Stadium resulting in expansive coverage on both Sky Sports and Free-to-Air Television.

With NFL’s commitment to invest even more, the decision was made to partner with Sports Revolution, who has worked with clients including Nike, Lynx, UEFA, Fiat, and L’Oreal Men Expert.

“We are seeing great traffic from the UK to NFL.com, ranking it one of our top three International markets,” commented Michael Markovich, NFL’s international media director of business development.

He added: “We expect this growth to continue as we continue to invest in the market. Sports Revolution and Snack Media have expert knowledge of both UK advertising and UK sports fans so we are very pleased to partner with them.”

Publicity company Way to Blue has announced it will "no longer" work on the film 'A Belfast Story' and has dropped the account following a third party sending mailers to promote the film which included a balaclava and a bag of nails.

The mailer, sent to journalists at magazines such as Empire, led to people saying that they would not see the film.

Way To Blue said in a statement about the mailer: “We wanted to assure you all that press mailers for A Belfast Story have not been created, produced, or distributed by Way To Blue. We were very surprised to hear of the content via Twitter and do not in any way advocate these having been sent to anybody as a promotional tool.

“Our involvement on this project to date has been PR strategy and screening and in light of this very misguided activity, we no longer feel we can be associated with this film and will no longer be working on the publicity campaign.”

It is still unsure who created the mailer.

Guinness has rolled out a new TV campaign to promote the ‘Arthur Guinness Projects’, a new philanthropic initiative from Guinness which aims to find and celebrate creative talent in Ireland.

Developed by AMV BBDO, the campaign comprised of two 30-second TVCs which showcase a broad mix of applicants to the project.

In keeping with the theme of championing Irish creative talent, the spots were directed by Dubliner Joanna Bailey. They will run across the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland for the next six weeks, encouraging people to submit creative ideas via a dedicated website.

Projects will then be voted on by the Irish public, with the most popular then being judged by a panel including The Script and actor Chris O’Dowd. The winning projects will then receive mentoring and promotional support.

Guinness is investing €3m in the venture over the next three years, hoping to support 20 creative ideas each year.

Young people expect ‘showrooming’ to be the “core function” of the high street in future, according to a study of 10-15 year olds by Amaze.

The findings mark the latest wave in a five-year research project kicked off by digital agency Amaze in 2010 to monitor a select group of 20 young teens’ attitudes towards the digital landscape and emerging technologies.

Three years in, the study has revealed that the same group regards digital as an “intrinsic” to the shopping experience, preferring online shopping to in-store, while 'showrooming' is expected to become the main purpose of high street stores in future.

Almost all the youngsters and teenagers questioned have bought items online, with three quarters of them stating a preference for online shopping, perceiving there to be more choice online than on the high street.

The group was questioned on their attitudes towards the increasing number of store closures, which has recently seen the closure of HMV, and high street brand Nicole Farhi. The study revealed the group had a “rational” and “unsympathetic” view towards the recent store closures, with participants showing they have little loyalty towards traditional retailers.

They felt that stores have closed “because of tastes and preferences of consumers” and that stores have “had to close down due to massive changes in how people use technology.” One participant sums up the group view: “Even though I rarely actually bought anything from there [HMV] I enjoyed browsing.”

The youngsters had a bleak view of the future of the high street, with the majority of them predicting it will be “quieter” with fewer stores.

The overall view was that “there will be very minimal stores as most shopping will be done online due to people being lazy and thinking it’s easier to do it at home. There will be lots of fashion stores around and expensive designers”.

Some participants predicted that the recession would continue to see high street stores culled, while budgeting shops like Poundland would thrive.

One of the group said: “I think it will be full of shops like Poundland because the economy gets worse and people won’t be able to afford high quality things.”

Meanwhile social shopping is also a popular and important part of the purchasing process for this age group, with friends and family playing an influential role.

Two thirds of the group have shared a photo of items they were considering buying with friends and almost the entire group has done this while shopping online. The same number have shared a photo whilst shopping in-store, and also read online product details and look at reviews.

The groups make considered purchases despite only spending small sums of money, with clothes and music shown to be the most popular online purchases and electronics, birthday cards and food also topping the bill.

The majority use a PC or laptop to buy online, with a third making purchases via tablets.

Mobile, however, is still to emerge as a shopping channel for this age group with only one participant having made a purchase from their phone.

The majority of the group spend up to £30 a month online but are likely to get permission from parents before purchasing, with three-quarters doing so all the time or depending on what they are buying.

Amaze CEO Natalie Gross said: “The shopping habits of the Amaze Generation has undergone a revolution, with shopping online clearly gaining in popularity. Whilst the use of mobile for shopping has yet to take hold with this generation, it will be extremely interesting to see how this develops given the overall increasing popularity of the device. This savvy, technologically connected age group are clear about what they want – ease of use, convenience and choice.

“The importance of social shopping and the influence of peers online is also a huge factor that retailers and brands need to take into account to connect with this group of digital natives. It is interesting to see how the group uses technology as an easy way to share and decide what to buy, even when purchasing in-store. The process of shopping is changing forever and the trends we can observe from the group give us a unique insight into the future of online retail.”

Interactive video ads drive more brand awareness and message association than regular pre-roll, research has found, with purchase intent also increasing from 4.4 per cent to 9.9 per cent.

The research from TubeMogul and Innovid found that the click rate is identical for both mediums: at 0.9 per cent each.

Data for this report comes from top brand campaigns supported by Innovid and run through TubeMogul’s media buying platform.

The report found that there were some sectors which saw higher engagement rates than others, with restaurants (1.7 per cent), technology (1.1 per cent) and CPG (1.0 per cent) topping the list.

An interactive video ad engagement was defined as any action taken by a viewer to interact with an ad, usually hovering or clicking an icon to explore a slate of additional content. On a movie trailer, for instance, a viewer might hover to open a slate of content that lets them watch additional previews, find local showtimes and buy tickets – all within the ad unit itself.

The Department of Transport has rolled out a new campaign as part of its ‘THINK!’ initiative, aimed at male motorists aged between 18-29 years.

The campaign, created by BlisMedia, looks to warn of the dangers of drinking and driving, and will look to target mobiles devices connecting to the internet with an interactive ad acting as a ‘scratch card’ unveiling the impact drink driving can have on their lives.

Using Infinity+ Blis’ proprietary real time bidding (RTB) platform with market-leading technology, the company is able to target users based on their location and demographics in real time enabling Blis to deliver highly targeted advertising.

Greg Isbister, CEO and founder of BlisMedia said: “Provisional data shows that drink driving death rates are 25% higher than in 2011 and we were keen to raise awareness of the risks using our intelligent targeting technology to try and help reduce this figure. We have proved with previous campaigns that targeting audiences according to their location, demographic and at the right time of day significantly increases the click through rate (CTR) of digital campaigns.”

The media planning was handled by M4C.

MiAwards 2013 is now inviting nominations for the Marketing Director of the Year and Marketing Team of the Year public vote categories.

Last week saw the launch of the Public Vote categories with the launch of the Agency Supplier of the Year, which aims to find the best companies that supply products and services to agencies.

In last year’s MiAwards, the Marketing Director of the Year award was won by Andrew Garrihy, formerly of Samsung, while Marketing Team of the Year is a new category for 2013 and aims to identify the clientside marketing team that has made a big impact on their brand and/or company in the last year.

Last year Public Vote winners also included MD of the Year Gellan Watt of Thinking Juice, Marketing Personality of the Year Rob Morrice of Stein IAS, Creative Director of the Year Vince McSweeny of McCann Birmingham and Emerging Marketer of the Year Fiona Gandy of 7thingsmedia.

Once all the nominations are in, the public will be able to vote on the eventual winners from mid-September up until the end of October, around two weeks before the MiAwards take place in Manchester on Thursday 14th November. For more MiAwards categories click here.

If you would like to nominate one or more of marketing directors or marketing teams that you and/or your agency works with then please email your nominations, along with up to 100 words outlining why you are nominating them to Nikki Gillies who is organising the MiAwards 2013.

More MiAwards Public Vote categories will be officially launched next week.

The Future Tech Studio, Warrington Collegiate’s new studio school, has announced the appointment of Forever Creative to work on its launch.

Set to open in September 2014, Forever Creative has not started to work on the build-up to the launch event.

Laura Dowell, marketing manager for Warrington Collegiate, said: “We were really impressed with the work Forever Creative presented at the pitch and their track record in this sector. They totally grasped the brief and have been able to turn things round incredibly quickly for us.”

Jane Hudson, managing director of Forever Creative, said: “We are delighted to have been selected to work with Warrington Collegiate on such an exciting new project. We enjoy working in the education sector and are looking forward to seeing the brand go live.”

As part of the pitch process, Forever created the branding and strapline for the school which will now be applied to a range of marketing materials including advertising, outdoor, direct mail, signage, brochures and a website.

Red Bee Media has appointed Andy Booth as group creative director.

Booth has been tasked with overseeing the agency’s work on BBC campaigns, having previously worked at AMV BBDO on the edf ‘Feel Better Energy’ and Galaxy Audrey Hepburn campaigns.

Charlie Mawer, executive creative director of Red Bee Media said: “Andy brings us a unique blend of experiences, developed during his time working both in some of the UK’s leading creative agencies and in a more specialist environment at 4Creative. I am thrilled that he will bring his eye for powerful and memorable ideas and a deep understanding of broadcast brands to Red Bee Media”.

Facewatch, which describes itself as the leading online crime recording and reporting system for tackling low level crime in shops, licensed premises, hotels and other businesses, has named the former President of Crime Stoppers International as its Police and International Operations director.

The news comes as the system aims to “focus on the National and International roll out of the service to Police forces.”

Michael Gordon Gibson said it was “a superb opportunity.”

“My recent experience with Crime Stoppers International and having served the public and third sectors for over thirty-four years allows me to bring a wealth of knowledge to Facewatch which I intend to use to accelerate the use of the system across all UK Police forces,” he said.

“Facewatch became a corporate partner with Crimestoppers in the UK in 2012 with the intention of enhancing the opportunities for the public to give information to the police by identifying images posted on the 'Facewatch ID' mobile application but also using the anonymous Crimestoppers on-line reporting site alongside the Facewatch application. The partners have agreed to develop the existing Crimestoppers interface to enable a single image upload interface which will populate both Facewatch ID and the Crimestoppers ‘Most Wanted site’ thus saving the police many hours of administration dealing with two separate systems.”

Simon Gordon, Chairman of Facewatch said: “Michael is a very important addition to our senior management team at a crucial moment in the roll out of the Facewatch system both in the UK and abroad. His wealth of experience in the public sector and more recently with Crime Stoppers International makes him the perfect fit for us and I am delighted that he is joining us with the kind support of his Crimestoppers senior management with whom we are working ever more closely.”

Channel 4 has rolled out a new campaign devised entirely by the pupils featuring in Educating Yorkshire, the follow-up documentary series to Bafta award-winning Educating Essex.

4Creative, the channel’s in-house agency, went to Thornhill Community Academy near Dewsbury to give the kids a lesson in advertising and what is involved in coming up with an idea. They then briefed the school, passing the responsibility of making the ads over to the pupils.

Several designs were chosen for national poster boards, digital and press ads which official launch on 26 August.

Chris Bovill and John Allison, heads of 4Creative said: “The 400 strong creative department did us proud – A stars all round.”

The marketing campaign was managed by clients Laura Ward, group marketing manager, Factual and Drama and Grace Ayres, marketing manager, Factual.

The campaign creative was conceived by 4Creative’s Pablo Gonzalez de le Pena, Molly Manners and Emily Grover, directed by Chris Bovill and John Allison, executive creative directors, with Nik Windsor, Business Director, Tabby Harris, Producer and Nicky Campbell, Digital Producer.