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Harlequin Enterprises, the Toronto-based fiction publisher best

known in the UK for its Mills & Boon novels, is spending pounds 10m on a

pan-European push aimed at attracting both potential and lapsed romantic

fiction readers.

The new work, which breaks next week in the UK in a pounds 1m two-week

campaign, is Harlequin’s first pan-European initiative. It has been

created by Davies Little Cowley Fiddes, Mills & Boon’s UK agency for the

past three years, and was bought by Frontline Media.

Since its appointment to handle Harlequin in Europe, Davies Little has

spent a year developing the campaign and researching concepts in four

European countries. The agency was briefed to modernise image values for

Harlequin books, which are printed in all major European languages.

A new 30-second commercial features a woman on a train who appears in a

purple bubble bath when she opens her Harlequin book. As she closes the

book on reaching her destination, she returns to real life while the

voiceover ends with the line, ’Makes any time special’.

The commercial will run initially in the UK, Poland and Italy, with

press ads in other markets continuing the ’Makes any time special’

theme.