Toronto-based creative agency The Artist Group launched Cheek Weekly yesterday, a free online newsletter touted as a guide for ‘beauty queens, fashionistas and culture cravers everywhere.’ It drops into subscribers’ inboxes once a week with the latest in celebrity beauty and fashion trends, application tips and product reviews. Reach for the first issue is 25,000 per week with the initial list of staffers’ friends and business contacts already spreading virally to that number.
Julie Miller, agency director at The Artist Group (an agency that reps photographers, stylists, and makeup artists) and Cheek’s head of business of development, says the newsletter will take a light look at a combination of beauty, fashion and cutting-edge popular culture. Miller says her audience is North America-wide. The site will offer advertisers ‘a number of integrated and customized advertising solutions such as banners that click through to the advertiser’s site.’ Miller says: ‘We’d like to keep the mainframe more editorial but there will be other opportunities to tie into product placement and subscriber contests. We’re open ideas to how to stretch the click-through.’ Cost for these ventures varies. A vertical banner is $350 while a sponsored link combo is $650. Miller says the target market is wider than one might expect. Age-wise it runs the gamut of adults and there isn’t even the expected female skew. She says men are more interested in grooming products these days but even the ones who aren’t, will like the cultural edge.
