THE U.S. MARKET FOR GOURMET FOODS AND BEVERAGES: report found that nearly one-fifth of American adults can be considered gourmet consumers, fueling a $41.2 billion industry. The market for gourmet foods and beverages is expected to top $62 billion by 2009.
U.K. MOBILE PHONE USERS: sent a record 2.7 billion text messages in July (87 million per day on average), according to data released Tuesday by the Mobile Data Association. The volume of text messages was up 24% from one year ago. Some 30 billion text messages are expected to be sent in 2005 in the U.K., compared to 26.2 billion in 2004, Dow Jones reported.
SHARPE PARTNERS: a New York interactive marketing firm, has promoted David Kegel, as creative director. He had been the associate creative director and has been with the firm since January 2004. Luke Monaco was promoted to associate technical director after working for three years as the firm’s senior producer. New hires include Susanna Tully as management supervisor, responsible for leading the agency’s account management team. She joins the firm from RGA, where she worked on SC Johnson, Aveeda and IBM. Catherine Lim joins as director of project management, coming from Grey Interactive where she worked on brands such as M&M/Mars. In addition, Meeghan O’Rourke joins the firm as associate media director, coming to the firm from Eastman Kodak.
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