Good marketing for a fallen Rock Star

The Mail on Sunday appears to be vindicated in its decision to give away the new Prince Album with its editions last Sunday.

Reports suggest that sales were up a third on their usual levels,however will the paper retain this new customers.

Philip Stone writing in follow the media gives his analysis of the decision,this morning

For Prince, the pop musician from Minneapolis, it was
marketing bordering on the genius that has UK CD retailers furious but got the
singer untold millions of $€£ in free promotion for his European concert tour.
For The Mail on Sunday newspaper it was a marketing gem that probably cost
around £500,000 ($1 million) and boosted its circulation by some 500,000 on the
day. So, was it a win-win to give away Prince’s new Plant Earth CD and not sell
it in the shops? For Prince, absolutely, For the Mail on Sunday the jury is
still out.

As he points out for the Mail

early indications are that many of those extra copies
just went for the CDs and the newspapers discarded. A BBC presenter said that a
studio guest had said she was going out to buy 20 copies of the newspaper so her
son could give all those CDs away to his friends.

So perhaps a one off gimmick for the paper and lots of free publicity for a fallen rock star

Mail to give away brand new CD

Quite a rumpus seems to broken put about over the Mail On Sunday's decision to give away copies of Prince's brand new CD this weekend.

We have had CD's,DVD's given away for many years now in an attempt to boost circulation but this marks a new departure as the album has yet to be released and coincides with the artists return to the limelight.

Not suprisingly it is the music industy which is veermently against the move.The Entertainment retailers assocaition describing it as " an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career."

The record will be available in normal outlets from the 24th July.

For the paper which currently sells around 2m copies it will no doubt provide a massive circulation boost and much publicity.For the artist probably the same and will give the album more exposure which may lead to greater sales.