Hearst, Lowe’s Team for Quick & Simple Sweeps
Hearst Magazines and Lowe’s have built a print and online sweepstakes with a different prize pool every week.
The Super Sweepstakes runs nationally in Hearst’s Quick & Simple magazine, with special distribution in Lowe’s home-improvement stores. The grand prize, a $15,000 kitchen makeover from Lowe’s, will be awarded at the end of the campaign. Each week, players can win a different small appliance: a slow cooker, Hoover cordless mop, Nespresso espresso machine or Biro cookware.
The next four issues of Quick & Simple will have stickers with game codes on the cover. Shoppers enter the codes online at QuickAndSimple.com to trigger an instant-win message. All players who register at the site are automatically entered into a random-draw sweeps for the kitchen makeover.
This is the first time that Quick & Simple, a newsstand-only weekly that launched in fall 2005, has been sold in Lowe’s stores. For the sweepstakes issues, Hearst puts a second sticker on copies sold at Lowe’s to co-brand the magazine.
The game begins with the June 12 issue, which hit Lowe’s shelves yesterday, and ends with the July 10 issue. Prize values go up as the weeks progress. In all, the promotion will award 165 appliances as prizes.
Hearst first approached Lowe’s to provide the grand prize, since the retailer is “on-brand for our readers. Many of them shop at Lowe’s,” said Lauren Ruotolo, Hearst’s director of retail promotions. Now Quick & Simple gets additional distribution and Lowe’s gets a national boost among the magazine’s 325,000 weekly readers.
The magazine could get permanent distribution at Lowe’s if the promotion goes well, Ruotolo said. The magazine sells nationally in supermarkets and mass-merchandise outlets.
Quick & Simple is no stranger to promotions. The magazine runs weekly and daily sweeps in its pages and online. But the Super Sweepstakes is a bigger deal, designed to boost awareness around its July 12 double issue.
“There’s such a huge element of sweepstakes in the magazine, but we wanted to bring that to the front of the book and make it as grand as we could,” Ruotolo said.
