Xerox Adds Colour To National Newspaper Cartoon

For the next six weeks, readers of UK newspaper, The Daily Telegraph's business section, will see its popular cartoon strip, Alex in full colour for the first time.

For the next six weeks, readers of UK newspaper, The Daily Telegraph's business section, will see its popular cartoon strip, Alex in full colour for the first time.

The colour is courtesy of Xerox.

The new-look Alex will front the company's latest multi-platform UK colour brand campaign, encompassing television, outdoor, trade, national and online media.

It is said to be designed to underline Xerox's position as the leader in business colour with the industry's largest portfolio of colour devices coupled with a strong heritage in colour innovation, claimed the company.

Created by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor in 1987, the Alex cartoon strip made its debut in The Daily Telegraph in 1992 and follows the working life of City of London high-flyer Alex Masterley, sharing his wry observations on the corporate and financial world.

As part of the Xerox colour brand campaign, for the first time in his history Alex will appear with all four frames in colour - the first strip appeared yesterday morning.

Special story lines have also been developed by the cartoon strip's creators in support of Xerox's colour message, themed on the benefits that Xerox colour can bring to business.

The campaign extends to on-line, with readers able to download a specially designed Alex 'skinker' - a technology that delivers information to the desktop - from The Daily Telegraph website.

This will feed through breaking business news three times a day.

"We are delighted to be partnering with Alex for our latest Xerox brand campaign.

He is a fun character, loved by everyone, and we're looking forward to injecting some extra colour in to his life - and brightening up Monday morning for Telegraph readers too," commented David Millican, head of communications at Xerox UK.

"The new all-colour Alex cartoon and desktop icon are a real departure both for Xerox and The Daily Telegraph.

Xerox has a history of colour innovation, with our unique solid ink technology that delivers crisp, vibrant images and more than 2,700 additional colour-related patents, so it is only fitting that we should choose such a breakthrough media solution to lead our colour initiative," he added.

Rich Astley, account director for Xerox at MEC Interaction, added: "Xerox's partnership with Alex is a great platform for connecting with business people in the UK.

We were looking for a way to demonstrate the unique benefit that adding colour to documents can deliver and this opportunity met our criteria perfectly.

With Daily Telegraph readers seeing Alex in colour, and then being able to download a desktop version from the website to deliver news, we have content of real value being supported by Xerox on-line and off-line." The idea for the new all-colour Alex was developed by The Daily Telegraph's in-house advertising projects team, Telegraph Create, with campaign planning and buying carried out by media agency Mediaedge:cia.

The Xerox colour brand campaign, targeting a business and IT audience, also incorporates advertising across on-line, outdoor, on television and in print.

Highlights include a special build outdoor campaign that will be launched on March 20, as well as advertisements.

Advertisements will appear on the Times Online, VNU.net and MSN Video, a new service launching in the UK at the beginning of March.

Outdoor advertising includes a special-build 96-sheet London campaign on 20 March, supported by fully liveried taxis.

Television advertisements will appear on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 as well as on multiple cable and satellite channels.

In print, advertisements will appear in titles including The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and The Evening Standard and in specialist IT press such as IT Week, Computer Weekly and Computing.

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