Marketing
Offering readers music across the spectrum
We set out to appeal to all types and ages of purchaser during two consecutive weekends in July:
On July 13, we gave away Can’t Smile Without You: The Very Best of Barry Manilow, an exclusive compilation of studio and live versions of his classic hits, including Mandy, Can’t Smile Without You and Copacabana. We also offered readers the chance to win tickets for his forthcoming shows at the O2 Arena.
Posters were displayed by retailers, in-store displays and merchandisers were in evidence on the Sunday plus a full, prime-time Saturday night TV schedule meant high visibility for the promotion.
The following weekend we bagged another world exclusive with the release, through The Mail on Sunday, of McFly’s brand new CD, Radio:ACTIVE. This fantastic giveaway benefited from huge advance publicity: in the preceding weeks, McFly were on many of the top TV and radio chat and morning shows promoting the new album and its innovative method of distribution, generating plenty of news coverage in the process.
We gave the promotion plenty of advance publicity both in the newspaper, where readers were offered the chance to win a Gibson guitar signed by the band and in Live magazine with an in-depth cover story. MailOnline carried an exclusive video: an acoustic version of Everybody Knows, one of the tracks on the album. On the day of release, singer Tom Fletcher gave us a track by track breakdown of the disc and readers were offered free downloads of the acoustic recording of Everybody Knows. The chance to win a signed gold disc was flagged up in the following week’s issue.
The McFly tie-in was particularly important in bringing in readers who may previously not have tried The Mail on Sunday. This was promoted in a number of new ways: on YouTube with a film of the band talking about why we were their distribution point and leaflets were distributed at T4 on the Beach. More in line with our usual activities, leaflets were distributed the week before through retailers, 10,000 posters were displayed plus we had a major merchandising push in branches of W H Smith, with staff wearing McFly T-shirts and big in-store displays. Some of the larger supermarkets carried our new mega-displays with merchandisers to encourage purchase.
A sales uplift was generated across both weekends which was key to our strategy - this is an important time of year to keep newspaper purchase front of mind as school holidays begin and people start to travel around the UK or abroad. We want that newspaper to be The Mail on Sunday.
Mail on Sunday MD, Stephen Miron was pleased with the results: “We have brought in a whole audience that would never have talked about The Mail on Sunday…I don’t think there is a brand out there in the UK at the moment that wouldn’t want to be talked about in a way that marks them as different and innovative.”
Bowie promo good news for readers and advertisers
In another world exclusive for The Mail on Sunday, cultural icon David Bowie chose the newspaper to distribute his new CD: iSelect. It is a collection of Bowie’s own favourite tracks, spanning his career from 1971’s Hunky Dory (the unforgettable Life on Mars) to 1984’s Tonight (all 7 minutes of Loving the Alien). Plus a live version of Hang On To Yourself from his new album: Live Santa Monica ’72, recorded during the 1972 Ziggy Stardust US tour.
Readers were also offered the chance to win the live album or an exclusive framed poster of the artist by phone or e-mail.
This fantastic giveaway was heavily promoted: with a cover story, written by Dylan Jones, in Live magazine the previous week, a trailer on MailOnline all week, an e-flyer to our own and record label EMI’s databases and a Saturday primetime TV ad. In TMoS2 on the day, we had an exclusive insight into the choice of tracks in Bowie’s own words.
The Mail on Sunday’s music giveaways are highly-regarded by our readers and our advertisers, as both benefit from this innovative marketing programme.
And then there was...Genesis
Our 2007 giveaway of Mike Oldfield’s original studio recording of Tubular Bells, followed by the launch of Prince’s new album, Planet Earth, changed the face of newspaper promotions.
Previously, music giveaways were artist or themed compilations but we changed all that and have continued to lead the market through 2008 with, amongst others, UB40’s latest release TwentyFour Seven and Paul McCartney’s Memory Almost Full.
To celebrate the launch of their new DVD, When in Rome 2007, Genesis created a unique CD of tracks from the DVD and new studio mixes of classic tracks for distribution with the June 1 edition of The Mail on Sunday.
In addition, readers were offered the chance to win ‘ultimate Genesis’ prizes, including the When in Rome DVD, SACD/CD and DVD box sets and tour memento books, plus discounts on Genesis merchandise at Amazon.co.uk.
This promotion was trailed in the previous week’s newspaper, e-mailed to our MailOnline database 
and advertised in Saturday night TV schedules. It generated a sale of 2.45 million copies.
Another fantastic music first for TMoS
In another great musical coup, The Mail on Sunday gave away the latest album from Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full, with our May 18 issue. In an exclusive interview with Live magazine, Macca gave a track by track run down of the album, revealing the inspiration behind the songs, the process he uses to compose the lyrics and how he still thinks of the debt he owes to the people who inspired him – John Lennon, Elvis and Little Richard.
Music Week called the promotion “attention-grabbing”. Memory Almost Full was originally released by Starbucks’ Hear Music Label, selling almost 100,000 copies. Packaging the CD with The Mail on Sunday generated a sale of just over 2.4 million copies.
Simply Irresistible
We know that Mail on Sunday readers love their music: they bought 14 million CD albums in the last year. We also know that Simply Red are a reader favourite after the success we had when we gave away an exclusive live CD of tracks from their Cuba! DVD, a couple of years ago. So when we got the opportunity to give readers a copy of their classic studio album, Stars, we knew we had a hit on our hands. And hits were the order of the day, Stars hit the number one spot on its original release and generated five hit singles, including Something Got Me Started, Thrill Me and of course, Stars.
We also premiered Mick Hucknall’s new solo album, Tribute to Bobby, through a /mailonsunday link on mickhucknall.com and offered readers and site visitors the chance to win a trip to the Montreux Jazz Festival and tickets to every concert on Mick’s forthcoming UK tour. The sale generated by this fabulous promotion was the best of 2008 so far: 2.52 million copies. Simply excellent!
Joint promotions generate long-term gain
For three weeks in April we ran a joint promotion with our sister title. Launching on Saturday 12th and running over the weekend with a free DVD on both days, we offered readers 23 classic war films to collect. Titles included Reach for the Sky, In Which We Serve, The Battle of the River Plate and The Heroes of Telemark – all classics, perfect for watching on a rainy afternoon of which there seemed to be many in April. 
Return From The River Kwai generated a sale of 2.42 million on the first Sunday and from the Monday onwards, readers could collect the day’s DVD from branches of Tesco, WH Smith and Eason by presenting a token from that day’s paper. They also had the option to collect all of the tokens printed during the three weeks of the promotion and send off for the whole collection.
This type of extended promotion encourages new readers to sample the newspapers over an extended period with the aim of giving them the full ‘flavour’ of the content and converting them into regular purchasers. It also rewards our 2.3 million loyal purchasers.
We know that these long-term promotions work for us. Last year we gave away 14 episodes of Sir David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals to great effect. We are saw a solid uplift in sales over the period of this exercise and expect a good retention conversion rate.
Watch the TV ad
Well-timed Time Bandits
Timed to coincide with the start of the Easter school holidays, The Mail on Sunday gave away a DVD of a great family film: Time Bandits. Produced and directed by Monty Python alumnus, Terry Gilliam and featuring the talents of other ex-Pythons John Cleese and Michael Palin, Time Bandits is a classic adventure full of weird and wonderful characters. We know that Mail on Sunday readers enjoy the film experience: over 700K go to the cinema once a month or more and they’ve bought 14.9 million DVDs in the last year.
Time Bandits obviously appealed to our family audience, generating a sale of 2.43 million copies. The promotion was trailed in the previous week’s main newspaper and the TV ad scheduled in Saturday night prime time.
Oscar-winning DVD giveaway
Bafta winner Daniel Day-Lewis was the favourite for Oscar glory on Feb 24. To capitalise on the buzz that weekend, The Mail on Sunday gave away a DVD of My Left Foot, Day-Lewis’s previous Best Actor Oscar-winning film. We also featured the actor on the cover of Live magazine the previous weekend to add to our promotional campaign for the Feb 24 issue.
This well-timed marketing exercise generated a sale of 2.4 million copies. And of course, Day-Lewis took home his second Best Actor statue later that day.
Watch the ad here
Launching our new section
On January 13 and 20 we needed to generate interest in our new newsprint section: The Mail on Sunday2. We used a mix of television advertising, PR and high-profile DVD/CD giveaways to encourage sampling of the brand.
Our regular readers always respond well to our music and film promotions which also generate extra sales, bringing new purchasers to the product, some of whom will enjoy our offering enough to buy it again.
For January 13, Neil Diamond’s Golden Globe-nominated film, The Jazz Singer, was given away on environmentally friendly EcoDisc and the following week we included a remastered recording of Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene, packaged in the original sleeve artwork, plus a chance to win tickets to see a live performance of the work at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Both weeks saw a sale well in excess of 2.4 million copies, contributing to a year on year ABC increase of 1.2% for the month of January.
eFlyers
The Mail on Sunday’s CD giveaways are designed to reward long-term readers and to appeal to potential new purchasers. Targeting the fanbase of the artist featured is one way of encouraging sampling of the brand and we have developed our own eFlyers for online communication. We used these for both the Jean Michel Jarre and Lenny Kravitz promotions: using the artists’ MySpace pages and fanclub databases.
Circulation – behind the scenes
We have the largest newspaper sales team in the UK: a field sales force of 32 throughout the country, who work with retailers to grow their business and run promotions with The Mail on Sunday plus a team of 10 marketing and sales managers to drive our relationship with all major retail multiple accounts.
We are in the middle of the most targeted direct mail promotion ever run by a national newspaper and our most successful circulation sales building activity to date, targeting existing home delivery customers to convert them to The Mail on Sunday. In 2007 we achieved a 4% conversion rate: 20,000 new Mail on Sunday readers with an 85% retention after six months, thus building long term loyal customers.
The Mail on Sunday has the prime location in 80% of supermarkets. Our product is front of store, in the main line of customer flow, the most valuable retail display space. We capitalise on this positioning and our good relationship with traditional retailers by using teams of merchandisers to generate extra sales, using promotional tactics such as linksaves (buy X half-price with The Mail on Sunday –used for products as diverse as chocolate bars and dictionaries) and giveaways/sampling exercises (free cup of coffee when you buy The Mail on Sunday).
The majority of our multiple copies (‘bulks’) are supplied, paid-for, to major airlines, plus selected hotels and fitness clubs where the profile matches our target market, thus providing a cost effective sampling channel.
The majority of our overseas copies are printed in situ – we have sites in Spain, France, Portugal, Greece and Florida. This ensures our issues are always in the market earlier than our competition and helps account for our 23% share of the overseas Sunday sales market.
The logistics of successful print, delivery and motivation to purchase are complex. At The Mail on Sunday our aim is to always optimise all three. The fact that our circulation numbers are holding steady and our share is increasing in the face of a declining market is testament to our success.