January 29, 2008

Sun and Mail on Sunday toast giveaway success

The Sun sold nearly four million copies on Saturday – its highest sale since 2005 – thanks to a promotional giveaway of energy-saving light bulbs.

The paper put on an estimated 400,000 in sales as a result of the promotion.

Readers picked up 4.5 million bulbs for free from newsagents, without the need for a coupon, with some readers picking up more than one copy to get their hands on the eco-friendly bulbs.

The revamped Mail on Sunday, meanwhile, has achieved a second consecutive circulation figure of just below 2.5 million after its relaunch as a two-section newspaper.

Press Gazette understands the paper sold in the region of 2,479,000 last weekend, up from last week’s 2,445,000, boosted by a promotional give-away of a Jean-Michelle Jarre album. This compares with an ABC in December of 2,209,642.

Editor Peter Wright said: ‘We are very pleased with the sales figures for both weeks and it shows readers like the new-look paper and are staying with it.

‘What it means is that instead of doing a main paper which could be up to 160 pages and then a much smaller financial supplement and a smaller property supplement which only ran in London, we’ve now got two sections around 128 pages.

‘I think we’ve got two complete and distinct newspaper sections – it’s a newspaper package that makes sense.”

The first section includes news, City, business and sport while the second part, which is stapled, has features, book serialisations, travel and property. The paper’s two magazines, the male-targeted Live and the female-oriented You, remain unchanged.

The Mail titles’ move to full colour this year has meant that the two newspaper sections can be colour-coded throughout by section, with a coloured strip at the top of each page.

‘I think it enables us to run 10 different sections without doing them in a dozen different folded newspaper supplements, some of which I’m afraid will be thrown away,’said Wright.