WITH the launch of the Irish edition of the Daily Mail last week, an already saturated daily newspaper market has become even more crowded. The verdict is still out on the new edition and it will undoubtedly take some tweaking before the Irish version settles down. What has drawn Ad Lib's attention is the adverts running to support the publication. There was a time when it was generally known where a newspaper stood . . . politically, at least.

That's not obviously not enough now. Newspapers want to tell readers where they stand socially, too.

The television spot for the Irish edition of the Daily Mail tells viewers that the paper stands for family values. That's all fine and well, but it's interesting that it should want to point it out. That can also sit uneasily with the fact that stories about celebrities' affairs, marriage problems and other such difficulties sell mid-market papers.

The Daily Express has been running ads, produced by RSA London, on British channels that attempt to appeal to those who may think, every time they watch the evening news, that the world as they know it is coming to an end. The ad begins with a wedding scene, and a voiceover telling the viewer how "we're for traditional values." Other scenes follow. A pregnant woman on a busy tube is offered a seat by a young black man, who says to screen: "We're for good manners." And it goes on, all part of a ploy to boost circulation and draw readers from the Daily Mail by lowering the newspaper's price.

But the message seems wholly disingenuous considering that the owner of the Daily Express, Richard Desmond, made his fortune from pornographic magazines and television stations. In 2004 he famously goosestepped around the office during a board meeting with executives from the Daily Telegraph, for which German media group Axel Springer had made a bid.

Daily Express directors greeted the rival newspaper executives with German phrases, while Desmond labelled all Germans "Nazis".

The danger of issuing a mantra on the social perspective of a publication is that it is very easy to carry conflicting messages in a newspaper, even inadvertently.

KERRYGOLD BUTTER CONTRACTS GO TO UK

LONDON-BASED agency The Marketing Store has been contracted to deliver below-the-line campaigns for Kerrygold butter brands, owned by the Irish Dairy Board. There was a three-way pitch for the UK business and The Marketing Store will also develop campaigns for new products. The Irish Dairy Board has also recently hired London PR agency Lawson Dodd to handle work for the brands. PR was previously handled by Shine Communications.

LUCOZADE ENERGY AIMS FOR 'LOST' AUDIENCE

LUCOZADE ENERGY has taken over the mantle from O2 as sponsor of Lost, the second series of which is currently airing on RTE 2.

The seven-second stings for the GlaxoSmithKline product, developed by Ogilvy & Mather, air for the first time tomorrow night and will run until the series ends in June.

The first episode of the second series, shown last week, saw an average of 413,000 adults tune in, representing a 31.5% share of all viewers at that time.

Peak viewing figures were 460,000.

Lucozade Energy, a heavyweight buyer of spots during the first episode of the series, is spending a total of 1m on its campaign, which will also run across cinema, radio and outdoor.

WORLD CUP SCORE FOR GERMAN ADVERTISING

ADVERTISING spending in Germany is expected to rise 2% to just over 30bn this year as the economy begins to expand and the country hosts the FIFA World Cup during the summer. The championship is expected to attract one million people to Germany over a four-week period beginning in June. The country's advertising industry association, ZAW, said that growth in the industry last year was 1%.