Broadsheets embrace digital cover-mounts

20 October 2009

Back in June 2007, the issue of cover-mounts on newspapers took a new turn when Prince overrode Sony BMG to give away his new album, Planet Earth, as a cover-mount on the UK’s Mail On Sunday.

The weekend papers are now, however, a major part of marketing campaigns, with classic albums such as Dare by The Human League and Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield both being given away in recent years. Except that now digital is where broadsheets are placing their cover-mount efforts.

On the weekend of October 10th-11th 2009 in the UK, this digital cover-mounting reached a new peak. Firstly, REM gave away a full live album on Saturday’s issue of The Times to promote their new concert album, Live At The Olympia. Via an iTunes voucher, users were able to download ten live tracks, pre-order the album and click through to The Times’ website to see the band talking about each track on the digital bundle.

The next day, Robbie Williams used the Mail On Sunday to promote his comeback album (Reality Killed The Video Star), giving away a CD of hits (studio and live versions). It also came with the CompleteMyArtist software, designed to get readers to buy more of his catalogue. The software scanned the user’s digital music collection and informed them what tracks they were missing from Robbie’s releases and then facilitated a click-through to buy them. The disc also came with a playlist created by Robbie of his favourite songs which readers could go on to buy.

These moves are symbolic of a renewed focus on efficiency in digital marketing. A covermounted CD is a good promotional tool, but the relationship with the reader and consumer ends when they buy the paper. They are still offering readers ‘free’ music, but digital avoids any waste and the need to produce millions of CDs, a proportion of which will never be listened to, ensuring the campaigns are more cost-effective.

Digital covermounts are all about data capture for the labels, the newspapers and the affiliated retailers. This allows the opening up of an ongoing relationship with a whole new consumer bracket.

The Times has similar offers planned for the coming weeks and this sector is set to grow.