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The Sunday Telegraph is to close its standalone health supplement,

RX, after January 7 and incorporate it into the revamped Sunday

Telegraph Magazine, which will also include listings. The magazine will

relaunch on February 14.

Sky Television’s sales and marketing director, Tony Vickers, is

understood to be leaving the company at Christmas.

Pepsi is poised to sign a deal with pop groups Eternal, Hanson and

Coolio as part of its music programme for 1998. The groups will appear

in music promotions alongside The Spice Girls.

Scottish Gas has secured a pounds 3m, four-year deal to sponsor the

Scotland International football squad following the team’s qualification

for the World Cup finals in France next year.

United Biscuits has appointed Stephen Leadbeater as the new managing

director of Young’s seafood and potato products division. Leadbeater

replaces Wynne Griffiths, who left to become managing director of UB’s

snack subsidiary KP Foods earlier this year.

Sony Music Entertainment Europe will present the two official theme

songs for World Cup France 98 this week at the Draw Ceremony in

Marseilles.

The Official French Anthem and the Official International Song of the

World Cup will be performed by Youssou N’Dour and Ricky Martin

respectively.

Centrica, which trades as British Gas, has tied up with general insurer,

Privilege, to launch a home and contents insurance package offering

average savings worth pounds 75. The package, to be piloted under the

British Gas and Goldfish brands, will combine a high level of cover with

rebates redeemable against both brands.

Digital set-top boxes will be present in 11% of European homes by 2002,

according to a new Datamonitor report.

Marketing 97, the relationship marketing exhibition, which took place at

Olympia last week, attracted around 3000 visitors. About a quarter of

these work at director-level and 40% claimed marketing as their main job

responsibility. Organiser Miller Freeman declared the event a success

and said that many exhibitors had already booked for 1998.

The New Millennium Experience Company has appointed specialist marketing

communications company HP:ICM as a designer of the Millennium Experience

in Greenwich.

Tower Records is to sponsor Videotech, the first ITV programme to be

broadcast live on the Internet.

Wagadon is launching a new men’s lifestyle title called Deluxe next

spring. It will have a cover price of pounds 2.50 and an initial print

run of 180,000.

This article was first published on Marketing