Meredith Publishing’s Family Circle magazine is producing a holiday TV special, set to air on national television November 16.
The half-hour program û Family Circle Magazine’s Easiest Holiday Party Ever û will pull entertaining and recipe tips straight from the pages of Family Circle. Sandra Lee of the Food Network will host the program.
“First and foremost, one of the things we were looking at was to leverage our brand strengths and expand our footprint in appropriate areas,” said Jim Carr, VP and group publisher for Family Circle. “That’s been an ongoing effort of ours. We are a very well known brand, and we have an enormous amount of trust in the consumer marketplace. One of the areas we are exceedingly strong in and are known for is food, so we talked to Meredith Video Solutions and came up with a concept to produce a holiday food show.”
Dodge Grand Caravan is signed on as a program sponsor and will be featured both in the content of Easiest Holiday Party Ever and in traditional commercial spots throughout. Dodge has also purchased print ads in Family Circle magazine. Additionally, the Grand Caravan will be shown in a 15-second pre-roll to segments of Holiday Party shown on Better.tv, Meredith’s digital video network.
“Dodge is trying to reach families with their all-new minivan, so it was a natural fit for us to go talk to them about leveraging the Family Circle brand,” Carr asserted. “A major focus of ours is focusing on families with tweens and teens, and Dodge was trying to reach moms with tweens and teens, so we approached them.”
Easiest Holiday Party Ever will feature a sweepstakes with a grand prize of a new 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan and $10,000 cash. Viewers will be encouraged to sign up for the sweepstakes online at www.familycircle.com. The sweepstakes was first announced in the November issue of Family Circle, and Carr reports that 100,000 entries have been recorded in the first two weeks. The December issue and the Family Circle Web site will also tout the sweepstakes.
Easiest Holiday Party Ever is expected to reach 80% of US households through its two-month run on television. It will also run online at www.Better.tv. It is the second nationally syndicated program by Meredith Video Solutions. The first, Cool Kitchens and Baths, reached 1.5 million viewers.
Family Circle is published 15 times a year. It has a circulation of 3.8 million and an estimated 21 million total readers.
