IPC shakes up real-life sector with launch of Pick Me Up

LONDON – IPC Media is launching a new women's weekly, Pick Me Up, to be supported by a £6m television advertising campaign in an attempt to shake up the real-life sector.

The magazine aims to offer real-life stories in an "accessible and entertaining way" and will shake up the women's real-life sector, which currently accounts for a third of all women's weeklies sold in the UK.

The launch is being supported by a heavyweight national TV campaign, which will also highlight IPC's women's weekly portfolio.

Heresy will develop the creative for the campaign and MediaCom will handle planning and buying.

Pick Me Up will initially be given away free with IPC women's titles Woman, Now, Chat and What's on TV from January 11, with the first paid-for issue hitting newsstands on sale on January 20. With 3.5m copies being given away, IPC is claiming it as the largest sampling undertaken in the UK to date.

The title was initiated by IPC chief executive Sylvia Auton and editorially developed by group editorial director Mike Soutar, who last year oversaw the launch of men's weekly Nuts. Editor of Chat, June Smith-Sheppard, is the launch editor.

In the latest set of ABCs, the real-life sector sold 2,389,038 from January to June 2004, selling almost 200,000 more copies each week than it was three years ago.

Pick Me Up will go up against H Bauer's Take a Break and That's Life and The National Magazine Company's Best.

Auton said: "There is clearly a huge appetite for enthralling real-life stories. With Pick Me Up, we have truly created a magazine that gives its readers 'real life as you've never seen it before'."

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