This is two ideas I had for a gossip magazine. Instead of using the real name of the magazine I will call it Gossip.
The budget was 50.000 euro so we could not pay any A-class celebrities to do anything. The target group was women in US between 18 and 40 with a focus on the 24 year old. She shoppes at Wal-Mart, she don’t read the same magazine every week and she is not very sophisticated. She don’t really participate in events or charity, but she loves watching Oprah because it makes her feel like she participate with charity.
Celebrating the fans
In the magazine there is an article saying that if you buy a Gossip Magazine you might be the lucky winner of a surprise. Outside different places that sell Gossip We place our gift givers that give out gifts to buyers of Gossip Because Gossip Love their costumers.
A 24-year-old woman is out grocery shopping at wall mart after work. She gets to the magazine ale and picks up this weeks edition of Gossip She swipes thruh it to see if it is the most interesting and on the first page it says that you can win a surprise if you buy the magazine. She decides to buy it and walks to the counter and pays. She packs down all her groceries but lets the OK magazine stay visible so that she can win.
A man is chilling outside the store. He sees the woman with the Gossip Magazine and walks up to her. He tells her how happy Gossip Is that she bought their magazine. He wants to thank her for being a customer by treating her like a star for a while. He offers her a haircut in one of the best salons in town. Together they take a cab to the salon and she gets the best haircut in her life. She feels more beautiful than she has in a long time.
After the haircut she gets together with her friends to tell them about what happened. She feels so beautiful and just have to tell them everything about it. Her friends are intrigued and happy for her. But they still want to experience it for them self so they buy the magazine as well as telling the story to all their friends. Maybe one of their friends also wins a price.
There can be different prices for different places and people. If you see a girl with a great haircut you might give her a free dinner together with her friends in stead. Or if there is a massage studio around we can give her a massage or maybe what she would want is a make over.
The prices should be in the 100euro class so that they feel exclusive but can be given to as many people as possible.
The only demand for wining a surprise is that you carry Gossip. If many people carry around Gossip Others that don’t know about the surprises will want to know what is so interesting in this edition of Gossip.
What’s good with this idea is that it links directly to sales.
Kidnapp a dog
Everyone loves their pets and many celebrities have pets. Since the readers of Gossip clearly care about their celebrities and their happiness, they sure have to care about their pets as well. That’s why Gossip is going to kidnap Jennifer Aniston’s pet, Enzo. After kidnapping Enzo Gossip will post an article about how sad Jennifer is without her dog. They will also write about the ransom Gossip demands from Jennifer fans for her to get her Enzo back.
The reason why Gossip wants the fans to pay and not Jennifer is because she can afford it and it wouldn’t make as much of a buzz. The reason that goes out to the readers is that the fans have to prove that they think Jennifer deserves to get her dog back.
All this will generate a lot of negativity around Gossip but all PR is good PR, right? And anyways the story will have a happy ending.
When Gossip has collected the ransom Jennifer will get her dog back. Gossip will now donate the ransom money to troubled pets. Homeless pets and pets that are badly handled by they owners will be saved. Maybe Gossip will offer the opportunity to adopt one of the saved pets. This will now generate the opera effect making everyone happy and thirsty for Gossip
the good thing with this idea is that it has a good story. It could easily make a morning show, but we cant really steal Jennifer’s dog, and paying her would be to expensive. So for this budget we could instead make up a fictional story about stealing the dog of a celebrity that don’t have a pet in the first place. This will even spark the conversation “did he really have a dog?”
