He will work across Havas Media Group UK and Mobext, the mobile agency. Shepherd will report to Julia Jordan, the managing director at Havas Media Group UK Investment and Digital, and Marco Rigon, the global head of Mobext. Shepherd will work across the O2, Pernod Ricard, Nationwide, BBC and Ubisoft accounts. He has been asked to "build long-term, tactical and strategic growth".

Norwich City has unveiled a new sponsorship deal with bookmaker Coral, which will be the club's official betting partner ahead of the new season. The deal will also see Coral sponsor the Barclay Stand at the Premier League club's Carrow Road stadium. It marks the first time that the 6,000 seater stand has been sponsored and will see it feature the bookmaker's branding at the front and back while the stand itself will be labelled as the Barclay Stand sponsored by Coral.

When it comes to the rapidly expanding TV and movies division of Seattle-based retailer Amazon, you might expect the company that religiously studies customer order histories, when and how people buy, what they're buying and a slew of other metrics to bring that same zeal for data to its slate of original content. As Amazon Studios chief Roy Price explains it, however, when it comes to Hollywood, data isn't everything.

Amid increasing concerns that Britain is failing to live up to the legacy promise of the London 2012 Olympics, a public consultation as the government warns the mounting cost of success for Britain's Olympic and Paralympic athletes is "at odds with the current financial climate." Almost 250,000 people have stopped taking part in regular activity over the past six months, and a major shakeup of the way sport is funded will now be considered, with money potentially diverted away from national governing bodies (NGBs).

Panasonic has gone from running just 80 marketing campaigns a year across its B2B channels to one every 2 hours and 15 minutes -- or 902 in 2015 -- since making the decision to transform its advertising division into a programmatic-led business back in 2013. Its European marketing director for B2B Stephen Yeo says he believes programmatic will "rightfully" become the future of marketing.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) has cut the number of agencies it works with by 40%, allowing it to save around $300m on agency and production costs in 2015 versus the prior year. The business is on a mission to weed out non-working costs from its mix. These cuts have not been so apparent because most of them have been achieved by funnelling budgets from one channel to another. One area that has had an instant impact on P&G's bottom line is it's decision to trim the number of agencies it works with.

Revenue declines 11% at Trinity Mirror, owner of the "Daily" and "Sunday Mirror," amid a "more challenging than anticipated'" print advertising environment. Trinity Mirror, publisher of the "Daily" and "Sunday" Mirror, said it still expected to meet growth forecasts for the year despite a continued slump in print advertising.The company said revenue had fallen 11%, or 8.7%, when the closure of some print publications and the end of a print supply contract with the Independent and i were taken into account.

Linear TV viewing figures are set to drop worldwide for the first time next year, with online video consumption set to rise by 23.3 percent in 2015, according to a report by ZenithOptimedia. The Publicis Groupe-owned media agency's Online Video Forecasts report found that the market will expand by a further 19.8 per cent in 2016. ZenithOptimedia also claims the number of linear TV viewers will begin to decline in 2016 for the first time, after a peak this year.

Virgin Active, the gym chain, is believed to be speaking to three agencies ahead of a pitch this month. The company used to work with Karmarama as its lead creative agency, although the pair parted company last year. Virgin Active is in the process of renewing its marketing arrangements after financial group Brait paid GBP682 million for an 80% stake in the gym in April. Virgin Group owns the remaining 20%. The gym chain is currently reviewing its media planning and buying business held by Manning Gottlieb OMD.

Concerns about the general economic situation in the UK over the next 12 months are weighing heavily on consumers' minds as GfK's UK Consumer Confidence Index for July dropped three points. The overall index score fell to 4 points this month having reached a score of 7 in June; the latter, a level not seen for at least 10 years. In July, expectations for the general economy fell five percentage points to -1 compared to the previous month.