About 250,000 households across Canada will receive an Eaton’s back-to-school catalogue this August that will look more like a magazine and will include third-party advertisers.
Teletoon, Levi-Strauss and Nike are all advertising in the magazine-style mailer, according to Beverley Paton, president of youth marketing agency Paton Marketing Resources (pmr) in Toronto.
The project is the first for the just-signed partnership between pmr and Today’s Parent Group an alliance formed to create integrated programs for children and parents.
According to Mitch Dent, publisher of Today’s Parent magazine, the partnership will allow the two companies to create large-scale programs to ‘target kids with the parents’ approval and endorsement.’
Besides product, the catalogue, called ‘Eaton’s Kids Club’, will carry editorial of interest for both parents and children. Today’s Parent will be handling the parenting editorial while pmr will take care of the children’s articles.
The book will invite other advertisers to participate and will be published four times each year, says Paton.
pmr is the creator and publisher of pop! magazine, a national in-school publication that targets children in 30,000 classrooms across Canada. It is published three times a year and includes sponsors such as Christie Brown, Canada Trust, Kraft, Nestle and Microsoft.
In other news, pmr created the Silly Summer Snaps program for Kodak Canada. The program invites kids to mail in their addresses and photos. A separate piece was created for parents to encourage their kids to get involved in Kodak or, at least, photography.
Today’s Parent Group of Publications, which publishes Today’s Parent magazine, also publishes other free books such as Your Baby, The Pre-Natal Class Kit and New Mother.
