Unilever, which also sold its Bird's Eye brand last month, is still probably the biggest buyer of advertising in the country, with numbers as high as 18m spent by rate card reported two years ago when the company's media business went to Mindshare.

Despite worries in some quarters that Unilever's continuing search for savings would result in ever-more marketing decisions leaving Ireland as well, Mindshare's David Sneddon doesn't believe there will be many repercussions.

"Very little of the marketing is created in this country, " he said. "It's no more globalised than any other FMCG account, but we have big autonomy on the media side."

UNIVERSAL SELLS OUT, WHOLESALE It's been years since it was newsworthy that a TV advert would license a pop track.

It might have been notable when Microsoft paid $8m to the Rolling Stones to launch Windows 95 with 'Start Me Up'.

Moby took it a step further when every track on his 1999 album Play was prelicensed for ad campaigns before it was on release. If you were wondering where it would end, last week we found out.

Giant marketing conglomerate WPP or rather its Group M combined mediabuying arm, created a 50:50 joint venture with Universal Music called BrandAmp. The new venture, it was reported, would give pre-clearance for creatives in WPP-owned agencies to use tracks by Universal artists to be the soundtrack for their work. Cue Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' for a satellite navigation system, for example.

Dublin arms of the WPP octopus with whom Publius spoke last week were still "guring out late last week whether the news would actually affect them in a meaningful way. With Dublin being home to an ever-decreasing amount of creative work, it seems unlikely.

For artists, however, it could mean that signing with Universal could be just the route to market to getting their track in front of a global audience: who, other than holdouts like Franz Ferdinand, would turn down the chance to be the next Dandy Warhols/Vodafone or the mood music for the next Sony Bravia 'balls' ad?

BROWNE IN TROUBLE OVER RTE JIBE?

Rumour has it that not everyone in the upper echelons of the national broadcaster is thrilled about recent attacks published in Village magazine that, among other things, blame RTE for the death of John Carthy in Abbeylara.

Vincent Browne's contract is up next summer. Watch this space, sources say.

NEWSTALK GETS STUCK IN NATIONALLY On its inaugural morning as a quasinational station on Friday, Newstalk breakfast presenters Ger Gilroy and Claire Byrne got stuck in, with Claire reminding Ger he would have to stop referring to residents of the other 25 counties as culchies.

It's not a comfortable match just yet.

The sunny Byrne sounds as if she's wondering why, as the big 'get', she shares a mic with Gilroy, who consistently sounds like he's just bit into a lemon while reading a column by Diarmuid Doyle. We'll see.

WE'RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BOAT The danger in praising some, but not all, winners in any contest is that some people go away feeling unloved.

Publius possesses a vast store of affection for ye who soldier in the marketing and media trenches. And we would frankly be mad to pass up the opportunity to name-check the best promo . . . and some of the best creative . . . of the past year in the kinky guise of Paisean Faisean for TG4 (pictured below), dredged from the "lthy minds of Dave Cowzer and Eavan Ryan of Publicis QMP The promo won two golds in Kinsale for the agency.

Chemistry's gold for Trocaire is also worth noting, as the agency's more recent non-traditional media work demonstrates that its creative cred is in "ne form.

TIPS, BRIBES & ABUSE all welcome at rdelevan@tribune. ie