Two of the most aggressive and demanding newspaper brands are battling it out for middle England’s pennies. The Sun this week are giving away a series of middle England brand promotions, all spend related, from Lush to Thorntons, Halfords to Debenhams. The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday on the other hand are giving £20 of Tesco vouchers away to every reader and offering readers the chance to take their kids to UK wide attractions for free. Either set of promotions could sit quite nicely in the competitive title. In fact the Tesco promotion began life in the News of the World last year and was so successful that the new Mail Marketing Director, who used to work at the News of the World, has taken it with him and had similar success with it their.
If the new ABC’s are an indication then both brands are holding their own with these type of promotional initiatives but the runaway success is the price cutting 20p Daily Star. Could it be that consumers want cheap rather than added value in a recession even if the added value actually saves them more money?
