Dutch newspaper launches merchandising stunt around Dutch artists

As of Saturday, October 15, the Dutch newspaper “Algemeen Dagblad” (AD) will launch a major advertising campaign with entertainment products. The newspaper will offer twenty albums of popular Dutch artists through a coupon in the Saturday edition. With this coupon, readers can buy a CD and a corresponding magazine for € 5,95. The action will last twenty weeks, but real fanatics can also order the whole collection all at once for € 99,-. The artists involved have compiled the albums in collaboration with music editors of the newspaper. Also, record labels such as FRS, Universal, Sony, EMI and V2 participated in the AD project.

Remarkably, readers can also hand in this voucher at the Dutch chain of music stores ‘Free Record Shop’, among 4000 other selling points.  Previously, in a similar AD campaign where the CD of Dutch singer-songwriter Trijntje Oosterhuis was given away for free, Free Record Shop fiercely criticized the marketing move. Perhaps it makes a difference to music retailers that CD’s are not given away completely for free this time and that costumers will actually set foot in their stores to collect the promotional items. Music stores in the Netherlands struggle with declining revenues these days. By the way, other artists seemed to be enthusiastic about the promotion generated by the free distribution of the CD and considered it as a smart move, because a greater audience could be attracted in this way.

Reference: Entertainment Business