Now And Asda Team Up To Promote Friends DVD Launch
IPC Media’s flagship celebrity weekly Now and Time Warner stable-mate, Warner Home Video, have secured an exclusive deal with Asda to promote the video and DVD release of the final series of Friends.
The partnership will see co-branded dump-bins – designed to hold copies of Now and Friends DVDs and videos – placed in the majority of Asda stores across the country for four weeks from this month.
Now will also run a bespoke competition in which readers can win a holiday to New York and the Friends DVD back catalogue. Friends DVDs and videos going to Asda stores will be labelled with details of the promotion, which will also run on the cover and within copies of a specially produced Now magazine.
The month-long promotion, which was put together by IPC Media’s distribution business Marketforce, marks the first retail marketing initiative between Now magazine and Warner Home Video.
Commenting on the deal, Sarah Fisher, publishing director of Now, said: “We’re thrilled to be working with Warner Home Video and Asda on this exciting promotion. Readers across the country will have tuned in to see the final episode of Friends and will be keen to get hold of their copy of the final volumes.”
Stephen Hirst, marketing services director of Marketforce, added: “The fit between Friends and Now couldn’t be better. And with the support of a retailer with the class of Asda, this is the perfect partnership.”Last year IPC Connect’s Chat magazine teamed up with Asda to launch a pre-Christmas promotion designed to boost sales amongst supermarket shoppers. The initiative offered readers the chance to win one of £10,000 worth of prizes from Asda’s exclusive Schneider and Pacific brands (see Chat Magazine Launches Pre-Christmas Promotion).
The latest ABC results for the six months to December 2003 show that Now saw a 6.1% year on year decline in circulation to 592,076. However, the title quickly launched a £6 million television advertising campaign in an attempt to strengthen its position at the top of the celebrity magazine pile.
IPC Media: 0870 444 5000 www.ipcmedia.com
Recent Magazine Stories from NewsLine ELLEgirl Secures Nivea To Sponsor Annual Model Search Total Film Secures Movie Partnership With Stella Artois Hachette Launches Sugar-Branded Programmes On MTV
Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive