NME Secures ShockWaves To Sponsor Annual Awards
IPC’s veteran music weekly NME has secured Wella ShockWaves as the headline sponsor of its annual awards, which are to be broadcast on Channel 4 early next year.
The event will be held on Thursday 17 February in London and will be promoted by a week of programming on Channel 4 featuring highlights from the awards tour followed by an hour-long broadcast of the awards event itself.
Previous NME awards have been sponsored by beer brands including Carling and Miller Genuine Draft. Highlights from last year’s event included performances from Scissor Sisters, Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines, all of whom have gone on to enjoy major chart success during 2004.
Commenting on the deal, Nick New, senior marketing manager at NME, said: “The ShockWaves NME Awards 2005 will attract over 60,000 gig goers, two million website visitors, over one million television viewers and more than three million readers. Shockwaves are completely in tune with what makes this event so distinctive and we are delighted they are joining the party.”
Paul Cornell, brand manager for ShockWaves at Procter & Gamble, added: “We’re very excited about the NME sponsorship. We’re always looking to associate ShockWaves with everything that is quintessentially cool and NME is spot on for our unisex target consumer.”
The Wella sponsorship, which was negotiated by ZenithOptimedia, comes as NME revamps parts of its editorial with the introduction of a new reviews section called Tracks. It has also merged its Gig Guide and Agenda sections to form a single weekly planner called Access All Areas.
NME editor, Conor McNicholas, said: “These changes make sure we deliver the best in new music first every week. Most UK singles are now available for download as soon as they go to radio, sometimes six weeks in advance of being available as a CD single. Tracks is a completely new way of reviewing music that will take the NME forward, playing to its strengths and making it more addictive than ever for passionate young music fans.”
The latest ABC results for the six months to June 2004 show that NME saw its circulation drop by 3.4% year on year to just over the 70,000 mark. However, the long-running music newspaper remains popular with its target audience of men aged between 15 and 24, trailing only slightly behind its higher profile monthly competitors.
IPC Media: 0870 444 5000 www.ipcmedia.com
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