Leading partworks publisher Marshall Cavendish has recruited Mathieu
Thomas to handle public relations for its first venture into the world
of CD-Rom publishing.
Marshall Cavendish, best known for the aggressive marketing of its
gruesome Murder Casebook and other partworks, will seek to exploit its
partworks back catalogue on the CD-ROM format with a pounds 50,000 PR
fee spend.
Mathieu Thomas won the account following a nine-way pitch. The agency’s
PR push begins in earnest this month with the publication of the first
two of a dozen titles planned for release over the coming year.
Peter Swanston, Marshall Cavendish’s head of international marketing,
said the launches would be supported by a mix of PR and advertising work
in the specialist press, but that the public relations brief also
covered getting coverage for Marshall Cavendish’s ‘corporate story’.
‘The company needed to do two jobs - a consumer publicity job through
specialist magazines and a corporate job,’ said Swanston. ‘There’s a
limited number of consultancies which can do both at the same time.’
Mathieu Thomas is already active in the CD-ROM field through accounts
held with Philips Consumer Electronics, and software group Warner which
is developing Video CD movie releases for the platform.
Account director Rachel Huggard said the account win was strategically
important for the agency as it attempts to carve out a niche as a
specialist public relations outfit for multimedia ventures.
