Postar, the audience measurement body for out-of-home advertising, has hired technical research consultants Katherine Page and Ivor Hussein to support its development process.  

BJÖRN EDLUND, former VP of Communications for Royal Dutch Shell, joins the Echo team as Senior Advisor.

Will Scougal joins the management team at Resonate, part of the Bell Pottinger Group.

James Clifton has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of award-winning, full service marketing agency, balloon dog.

Victoria Bevan will take up a newly created position of Head of UK Press at Albion Media in May 2001.

Travelodge has appointed a new Marketing Director, Emma Williams, who is responsible for the operational leadership of the company’s marketing function.

Emma will report to Charlie Herbert, Travelodge E-Commerce Director and manage a team of ten people.  

Emma joins Travelodge from Wickes where she was responsible for developing the successful ‘It’s got our name on it’ campaign.  Prior to Wickes, Emma was with Camelot for nine years, where she was responsible for inventing and launching the EuroMillions lottery game. Emma has also worked for Boots, Pepsico and confused.com
 
Charlie Herbert, Travelodge E-Commerce Director said: “We are delighted to have attracted a leading marketer from such a high profile brand to this role. Emma’s vast experience will help drive the highly acclaimed strong Travelodge brand into new segments of the consumer marketplace, enabling more people to stay in hotels than ever before and helping us to stay ahead of our competition”. 

Emma Williams, Travelodge Marketing Director said: “I am thoroughly enjoying my new role. Travelodge is an exciting brand which still has a huge growth opportunity and growing brands and businesses is what I thrive on.“

“My first priority has been to oversee the production of the new ad, which has been great fun. Our ‘Sleep Tight’ campaign last year was incredibly successful and Mr Sleep really struck a chord with consumers. So following on from this success, we have taken Mr Sleep from the hotel room to the outdoors; to communicate Travelodge has a range of hotels in various locations across the UK. Enabling customers to go where they want to go and do what they want to do and sleep tight from £19.”

The ad has been produced by award winning advertising agency Mother and was directed by Ben Gregor. The voiceover artist is Simon Greenall, the famous British actor, writer and voice artist - who also provides the voice for of Aleksandr Orlov in the comparethemeerkat.com adverts.

Mother strategist Jess Lovell said: “This ad continues the ‘retailer of sleep’ programme Travelodge introduced last year which brought the characters, Mr Sleep and the Zzz squad to national attention.

“This year we are using Mr Sleep and Big Ted as brand ambassadors to communicate the fact that Travelodge has a range of different styles of hotels in various locations across the UK.”

Also featuring in the new ad is Sian Ledlie, a 20 year old receptionist from Farnborough Travelodge. Sian has been with the company since September 2010. Prior to joining Travelodge Sian worked at Tesco’s for three years.

Travelodge has announced it is building 35 new hotels this year and will be creating 700 new jobs. The hotel chain will also be the largest hotelier in London by th spring 

In addition, the hotel chain has also announced it has increased its growth targets and plans to have 1,100 hotels and 100,000 rooms by 2025. 
 
Over the last five years Travelodge has heavily focused on city centre growth to rebalance its portfolio - away from roadside locations. Today these motorway and trunk route sites represent just 25% of the company’s hotel stock with the remaining three quarters being in suburban, seaside and tourist locations.

Policy Exchange today announces that it has hired Nick Faith, currently an associate director at Luther Pendragon, as its new Head of Communications.

Lucre is driving its expansion with the appointment of a Group Head of Corporate PR. Former Hill & Knowlton Managing Director and board member, Mark Jackson, has joined the agency to develop further Lucre’s corporate and B2B offering across both of its offices, in London and Leeds.

As part of strategic brand and marketing consultancy Prophet's ongoing European expansion, it announced today that Philip Otley has joined the firm as senior partner.

College Hill has further strengthened its Business Communications team with the appointment of award-winning PR practitioner, Carolyn Dealey.