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Regional daily’s sister free relaunched with new name

A free weekly has been relaunched with a new look and name to bring it into line with its sister regional daily title.

The Leicester Mail has been rebranded as Mercury Extra in a bid to revive the free paper and make it more attractive to advertisers.

The move aims to strengthen the identity of the Local World paper and align it more closely to the Leicester Mercury.

It has been redesigned by niche production editor Russ Taylerson who worked alongside the commercial team to create the new-look product.

The distribution of the paper has also been extended, with 10pc of papers being available at 12 key supermarkets around Leicester.

Russ said: “The content is snappier focusing on local news, local and national celebs along with a greater emphasis on entertainment.

“I think the vision for the new product gives a revitalised approach which will please readers and advertisers alike.”

Advertisement director Richard Clay added: “We needed to do something to revive the product and give it a new identity aligned with our daily.

“We have also taken the step of putting 10pc of the distribution through 12 key supermarkets around the city to ensure visibility and response for advertisers.

“Russ has done a fantastic job in matching our brief for the product and we are really pleased with the result.”

The paper is published on Thursdays and the ABC figures released last week show the title had an average circulation of 57,862 for the last half of 2012.

East Midlands sister title the Derby Telegraph renamed and redesigned its weekly free title Telegraph Lite in March last year.

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  • March 5, 2013 at 9:21 am
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    Floundering around with redesigns and re brands wont fix it.

    Free’s other than metro and ES are a flawed concept now.
    They grew up on the back of the property booms of the 80’s 90’s and the inability of established publishers to respond to entrepreneurs because of restrictive labour practices, lack of colour print capacity and complacency. By the time they fixed all that and bought out the competition along comes the internet.

    End of.

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  • March 25, 2013 at 11:41 am
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    QUOTE
    “The distribution of the paper has also been extended, with 10pc of papers being available at 12 key supermarkets around Leicester.”

    if this is the case. that the distribution has been extended then WHY have so many rounds been stopped so not delivering, to houses anymore……8 rounds that i know of …..or don’t you want the advertisers to know that

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