The Week is to give away 100,000 free copies on Friday to mark its 20th anniversary in the largest sampling campaign the weekly news digest’s history.
Copies of the special anniversary edition of the magazine, featuring a caricature of prime minister David Cameron bursting from a giant celebration cake, will be handed out in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham.
The 100,000 copies will also carry a #trytheweek hashtag, which will allow readers who grab a promotional copy to tweet to then get sent another one for free.
“We’ve never done sampling on this scale,” said Kerin O’Connor, chief executive of The Week. “In the early days it was the single biggest driver of subscriptions. Now we will [also] be able to see if there is a move in web traffic, people searching for subscription information, it is an important test for us”.
The promotion, which will be sponsored by longtime partner Rolex, will focus largely on London, where 75,000 will be handed out, with 5,000 apiece in the other cities.
Distribution will target commuters between 7am and 10am and then workers on their lunch break between 11.30am and 2pm.
The Week, which turns 20 on Friday, usually costs £3.10 a copy, less for a subscription, and has an audited circulation of just over 200,000 copies.
However, 22% of the print circulation is given away for free. The news and current affairs title also has 27,000 subscribers to its digital edition.
Dennis Publishing founder Felix Dennis bought The Week from creator Jolyon Connell, a former deputy editor at the Sunday Telegraph, soon after its launch in 1995.
