Bags? Great! Now for the free DVDs

Turtle and a plastic bagLast week the Daily Mail launched a large campaign to ban plastic bags in the UK.

Now it pains me to say this, but for once I’m in agreement with the Daily Mail. I usually read the paper just to discover what I shouldn’t be thinking, rather than what I should, but this is a campaign that, for once, is spot on.

But not wanting to let the Daily Mail off the hook, I had a little think about their contribution to the UK’s rubbish mountain and I thought about CDs & DVDs.

The Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday, you may have noticed, are quite keen on giving away CDs and DVDs to promote their newspapers.

Now, I know that many of the titles do this, but the Mail has the largest marketing budget of all the UK newspapers.

In fact, the Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday have been recognised as the largest buyer and distributor of silver discs in the whole of Europe. Yup, more than the likes of HMV and Amazon.

And, pray tell, what do most people do with these free CDs or DVDs? Well, many probably go onto a shelf to gather dust, while many tens of thousands go straight into the bin – creating yet more landfill.

Anyone who heard the infamous Prince album giveaway last year would have probably decided that was the best thing for it, once they’d heard the whole thing through.

And this is where the Daily Mail’s ‘holier than thou’ attitude falls down, in my eyes. Just imagine the amount of rubbish they produce with all these bloody DVDs they give away.

I mean who seriously buys any paper simply for the freebie? With the odd exception of the Prince album, do they really have that much of an impact on sales?

Clearly they do, otherwise the papers wouldn’t keep ‘flogging’ them, but there must come a point where they’ll run out of appropriate films or TV shows to sell.

So this is a plea. Please stop giving away crap with your newspaper that most people simply chuck in the bin and think about the sort of freebies you accompany with your product.

It takes more than one crusading bandwagon-jumping campaign to become a ‘green’ newspaper.

Mum’s the word

Kym Ryder & Mum of the yearWhat is the world of celeb endorsement coming to? In the same week, we have not one but two Celeb Mums of the Year!

Kym Ryder was unveiled as Celeb Mum of the Year for her ability to have a job and bring up kids – blimey, don’t any other mums do that!?

And last week, Suzanne Shaw was revealed as the La Redoute Celeb Mum of the Year – note the sponsorship angle of this gong.

I’m not knocking the recognition of mums, although the fact that two female members of Hear’Say are the only two celebs in the running is rather worrying, rather the fact that there are now two ‘competing’ awards. Why? How many celeb mums do you need to honour every 12 months?

This is the kind of pointless promotion that will put the proverbial nail in the coffin of celeb journalism – a demise that is again high on the prediction list.

The signs that celeb journalism is starting to fade have been all too evident in the past week or two. ABC figures released last month showed a sharp drop in circulation of 3 of the biggest celeb weekly titles (Heat, Now and Closer), while last week Mark Frith announced he’s leaving Heat (the magazine that spearheaded the celeb boom) after 10 years.

Clearly, there’s life in the genre for a while longer, but if sales of these magazines decline further, something else will inevitably come along and take its place. What will it be? Watch this space…