International media group, Pearson’s flagship publication, The Financial Times has announced that it will launch its annual Lunch with The FT promotion this Saturday, 12 February.
The national promotion, sponsored by British Airways, involves 150 ‘hand-picked high quality restaurants offering special lunches for £12.50 or £15 and is part of a special 16 page colour food and drink supplement included in the paper.
The special supplements will only be available in the Weekend editions on Saturday 12, 19 and 26 of February, additional passes however, will be available via the ft.com/lunch website.
Radio adverts, using Tara Fitzgerald and Lloyd Grossman will run on Magic FM, Jazz FM and LBC London, while the adjacent online advertisements will feature in Londoneating.com and Lastminute.com.
The campaign joins forces with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), a UK charity dedicated to protecting the marine environment, and will see chiefs from the participating restaurants having to include at least one fish or shellfish from a MCS list of 15 ‘fish to eat’ on their menus during the three week offer.
Earlier this month industry reports suggested that at least 20 journalists would leave the Financial Times following a voluntary redundancy programme, designed to cut costs at the paper.
The redundancies follow a wide-ranging cost-cutting programme, designed to save around £7 million, which saw the papers respected Creative Business supplement being closed last year. The newspaper blamed the closure on a failure by the 16-page supplement to bring in adequate advertising revenue, a move that reportedly saved the paper around £400,000 a year.
The cuts come, despite Pearson issuing a relatively positive trading statement at the beginning of January stating that the paper was on course to break even in the fourth quarter, reiterating expectations in the Group’s November trading update.
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