Auto Trader pushes promo with industry gifts

MediaWeek, Media Week, Tuesday, 14 December 2004, 4:00pm,

Used car magazine Auto Trader has sent its key industry contacts early Christmas presents of free mobile phones and £10 phone cards as part of a direct mail campaign to promote its section for new cars.

The drive comes as Buy New changes from a monthly to a weekly insert within the main body of Auto Trader and is part of a push to plug its weekly glossy insert for classified advertising for new cars and vans.

The 200 media planners and buyers and key motoring manufacturers who have been targeted use the phones to call Auto Trader to gain entry into a prize draw to win £70,000 of free national advertising with Buy New.

Buy New was originally launched as a monthly supplement in June 2003, and featured editorial, features, classifieds and other adverts.

The new weekly version of Buy New will be available in all 13 of Auto Trader’s regional editions, and will also be made available on Auto Trader’s website.

Auto Trader has a circulation of over 350,000, and its website, which features over 300,000 ads at any one time, attracts 2.3 million users, making it one of the top 20 most viewed sites in the UK.

The campaign for the January 2005 launch of the weekly Buy New was masterminded by Scream Design.

By Martin Hemming

This article was first published on Media Week