The News UK team is producing a family-orientated content campaign - Proper Good Food for Proper Good People - that will run across print and online platforms under The Sun brand to promote Iceland’s food products. As part of the campaign, The Sun newspaper will also be sold in Iceland stores.
Debuting News UK’s newly developed Battenberg format, the campaign’s sponsored and display content will appear in the print edition of The Sun from 13th June running across a double page spread. The advertising features will consist of an advertorial positioned on the top left of the first page, containing a profile of a real Iceland shopper discussing a selected product or service, such as free home delivery, from the retailer. To complement the shopper profile, a display advert featuring the chosen product or service will appear on the bottom right of the second page, providing further visual support for readers.
Eight months of collaborative planning went into the partnership, seeing News UK’s marketing, promotions and commercial departments form a project team tasked with sounding out the voice of the Iceland shopper. By fully immersing itself in the brand via branch visits and interactions with on-the-ground employees, News UK deepened its understanding of the company’s values and products. This helped to identify the strong synergy between Iceland’s customers and The Sun readership; establishing clear justification for a long-term commercial undertaking, says News UK.
The campaign covers key dates in the retailer’s calendar such as the World Cup, and summer, and aims to involve The Sun readers who shop at Iceland by inviting them to be profiled in future customer case study advertorials. These will be transposed from the newspaper and published to an online hub also launching 13th June. In addition to this, the online hub will be updated with free supplementary content exclusive to the web, including additional articles, social media activity and extra video content.
Jacquie Duckworth, Creative Solutions Director at News UK Commercial commented: “It has been exciting to break new ground with this campaign, and Iceland is the ideal brand to partner with for this type of venture. The campaign has seamlessly incorporated multiple News UK departments and competences, in order to develop content that will generate excellent exposure for Iceland’s products. The commitment to such a long term campaign underpins The Sun’s status as Britain’s most popular newspaper, and it’s been great to demonstrate the value of print by letting this medium set the agenda of the campaign.”
Nick Canning, Executive Director of People and Customers at Iceland, said: “We are delighted to be entering this genuinely ground-breaking new commercial partnership with The Sun. Iceland has always been at the forefront of innovation in UK food retailing, whether that is in being the first supermarket to take artificial colours, flavours and non-essential preservatives out of our products, or in launching our still unique free home delivery service. The ‘Proper Good Food for Proper Good People’ campaign is a great way of telling people about the products, services and values that set Iceland apart, and allowing our own customers to play an active role in the delivery of those messages. We very much look forward to working with News UK and The Sun over the next year to deliver this campaign.”
