Virgin Secures Sainsbury’s For Nectar Promotion

Virgin Radio has secured the deal to promote Sainsbury’s ‘win a million Nectar points’ competition during its Virgin Confessions evening talk show.

The package has been developed as part of Virgin’s Access All Areas initiative and will include promotional trails and competitions linked to in-store activity at Sainsbury’s throughout February.

On-air trailers using the strapline “Nectar-better rewards for everyone” will be used to promote in-store prize-draws to win reward points, holiday vouchers, DVD players and PlayStation 2 consoles.

Brian Commins, promotions director at Virgin Radio, commented: “This package is designed to reach both current and new customers, while reinforcing Sainsbury’s brand image. Our tailored approach to promotions, through the Access All Areas initiative has paid dividends.”

According to Virgin, the Access All Areas initiative was developed to replace traditional off the peg approaches to sponsorship prevalent throughout commercial radio. The initiative gives brands access to programming, research and production departments, allowing the creation of bespoke sponsorship packages tailored to clients’ needs.

Kerry Lowis, senior manager of customer marketing at Sainsbury’s, added: “Virgin Radio’s on-air campaign brings alive our promotion in a fun and engaging way. We are always looking for routes that will allow us to communicate to a large audience and through Virgin radio we can bring the benefits of an in-store promotion alive as well as building the Sainsbury’s and Nectar brands.”

The latest RAJAR Data for the period ending December 2002 brought bad news to Total Virgin Radio, which saw its weekly reach decline 12.9% year on year to 2,817,000, down from 3,234,000 in the same period in 2001.

London based Virgin 105.8 FM also fared badly, with RAJAR data for the period ending December 2002 showing weekly reach dropping by 17.7% year on year to 890,000, down from 1,081,000 in the same period in 2001.

Last month Virgin Radio announced its biggest ever advertising campaign, investing £3 million to promote its rock sound across the UK (see Virgin Radio Invests £3m In Biggest Ever Ad Campaign).

Virgin Radio: 020 7434 1215 www.virginradio.co.uk

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