It’s not unusual to see Richard Branson flashing his pearlies on
the front pages, so Virgin’s advertorial cover-wrap on Monday’s Metro
had an unusually authentic feel to it. Certainly it didn’t put
Underground folk off their favourite free-sheet - Associated printed
more than the usual 350,000 copies, and claims new records for the
number of issues shifted. But, according to Mike Anderson, deputy
managing director of Metro, the paper will ’never, ever’ sell anyone a
cover-wrap again. ’This was a brilliant sell,’ he said. ’It makes the
right kind of noise to attract other brands of a similar calibre.’ The
wrap was the brainchild of Matt James, board director at Virgin’s agency
Manning Gottlieb Media, who negotiated the deal with Anderson. ’Matt
came up with the cover-wrap. The PR people wrote it, we looked at it,
they re-wrote it and so it was born. It was a bit like a 57lb baby -
easy to conceive, harder to deliver.’
