Evening Standard to go free for a day

The Evening Standard will be distributed across London for free on Monday in a bid to promote its relaunch.

The newspaper, which usually runs with a coverprice of 50p, is set show off its new-look with 650,000 free copies, which will be handed out across the capital.

The freebie move follows a teaser ad campaign that has been running all week, which aims to broaden the papers audience under the new ownership of Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

Additional marketing activity for the new Standard includes offering the paper half-price to Oyster card-holders and selling left-over titles for just 10p to late-night travellers.

Under its new editor, Geordie Greig, the title has been re-designed to offer a more upbeat and politically neutral view of London and events in the city.

Earlier this week, the Standard said sorry to readers for its previous negative view of London.

Lebedev, who bought a majority share in the Standard from Associated Newspapers in February this year, has been forced to delay payment of salaries to 120 reporters on his Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta due to cashflow problems.

However, he has reassured Standard staff that they will be unaffected by the situation.

In today’s ABC release, for April 2009, the Evening Standard‘s circulation was down 6.4% year on year, leaving its total at 263,312 copies (see ABC London Newspaper Focus: Apr 2009).