It’s somewhat ironic, but the Packer-owned magazine arm ACP hs helped competitors Pacific Magazines and Emap in more ways than one to lift their marketing game. Peter Zavec is the group marketing boss at Seven’s Pacific Magazines, having moved there from News Ltd and ACP.

And now Emap, the big British-owned publisher (New Woman, FHM, Barbie among others), has just secured the services of Cameron Hoy, who left ACP earlier this year after cavorting with buxom US starlet Anna Nicole Smith during and after an Oscars function in Sydney. ACP and Hoy parted ways because ACP claimed he upset clients and had left them at the function to hang around with Ms Smith.

But big clients denied this and it became known from within ACP that Hoy was on the outer with its management team of John Alexander and his deputy David Gardiner. Hoy briefly surfaced at a small outdoor media group, Media Puzzle, and then was revealed yesterday as the group sales director of Emap, starting September 19.

Emap is said to be planning the launch of a new weekly magazine in the first quarter of 2006, for which Hoy will prove ideal. Since he departed ACP, Hoy has missed the final work on the launch of Madison, the launch of Real Living this week and the re-launch and re-design of the Australian Women’s Weekly next month.