IF you have been reading the Adver this week then you could not have failed to notice the double page poster we have been publishing of Swindon Town player, Lee Peacock.
Over five days, we have been printing a life-size poster of the striker and it will be interesting to gauge public reaction to the idea.
The poster principle is something which was tried at my previous newspaper in Southampton where we produced life-size posters on a regular basis of sports stars and pop entertainers.
Yes, it is a sales tool, it is a bit of entertainment too, but it is also a means of getting the Adver into more people's hands.
It is why we recently launched a campaign of adverts which go along the line of: "Have you seen how good the Adver is lately?"
The Adver has changed a little in design and concept since I took over as editor last October; not hugely, but I have tried to make the paper more reader-friendly through its design, and more community-based.
Over the years, people's news-reading habits change. Because we have less spare time, so inevitably people don't read newspapers. It is reckoned someone spends on average just over 20 minutes reading a newspaper. So we have to design something which is a good, solid read which draws the reader everytime.
Promotional devices like the Lee Peacock poster, special offers and competitions are there to pull in more readers, perhaps lapsed readers, who will hopefully find something about the paper which will draw them back the following day.