Capital 95.8 secures £1m bmi sponsorship

LONDON - Capital 95.8 has secured airline bmi as the £1m sponsor of Johnny Vaughan's Breakfast Show.

The year-long partnership, which starts next Monday, will include online as well as on-air activity.
The first major partnership between bmi and GCap Media will centre around the brand's "That's bmi Time" message, designed to encourage consumers to book early.

The sponsorship will include breakfast show promotions for bmi throughout the year, as well as outside broadcasts to increase its profile within the show.

The deal was coordinated by GCap Media's SPICE account manager, Julia Scales, and head of GCap Solutions, Anna Pennington, together with PHD's business director, Matt Sanders, Drum's senior account director, George Howard, and account manager David Foggon.

In a separate deal, bmi will back the traffic and travel news on fellow GCap Media station Classic FM.

Simon Daglish, national sales director at GCap, said he was "thrilled" to be able to offer the radio owner's varied portfolio to reach two separate audiences with both Classic and Capital.

Andrew Dufty, general manager of marketing for bmi, said the deal would "bring to life" the company's current "bmi time" campaign.

Capital's last breakfast show sponsorship deal, with Sunsilk, ended in January after a 46-week run without another sponsor in place.

Prior to that contract, Kellogg's spent three years as the show's sponsor, signing a £6m deal for Chris Tarrant's London Show in early 2003 and later re-signing a new £8m contract in 2004 that included Capital's Century stations in the north.

Vaughan regained the number one breakfast show slot in London in the Q1 Rajars released in May, knocking Heart's Jamie Theakston off the podium where he had reigned for only one quarter.

A marketing campaign in March was the first big push for the re-branded Capital 95.8 since the arrival of Emap marketing man Nick Button as marketing director and Scott Muller as programme director.

Media Week 26-Jun-07, 10:50