Land of the Free
The eastern end of Broad St is a good place to loiter, these days, for freebies. Recently, free fruit juice samples were presented to passer-bys. I can’t recall the name of the product, but it’s said to contain the five portions of fruit a person is recommended to consume every day. The juice’s marketers should work on the brand, I think, for a more fruitful outcome.
Late Sunday afternoon, free samples of The Observer were offered outside The Oracle, making this particular news junkie very happy indeed.
Initially, DVDs were given away with the Sunday papers (the newspaper is dumped, unread, in many instances, with the DVD sold on eBay). Today, an entire newspaper was offered for nothing. It’s a competitive market.
And what did I think of my free Observer? I liked the neat, condensed format and the bold style. The content wasn’t bad either (great article about excessive packaging in the UK). But I still prefer its website GuardianUnlimited, still the best news site around alongside BBC News and, ahem, this little site here.
January 30th, 2006 at 4:10 am
Damn. I paid for my copy this morning. And with the Guardian now costing 70p a day, any free (decent) newspapers are more than welcome. However, the big question, I guess, is when will newspapers fully cotton on to the fact that it’ll take more than a few freebies to stem the long-term decline in circulation?
February 4th, 2006 at 3:12 am
“…when will newspapers fully cotton on to the fact that it’ll take more than a few freebies to stem the long-term decline in circulation?”
They won’t. It’ll be an endless cycle of free DVDs, CDs, and ‘Learn Spanish’ books.