According to mediainfo.hu, Budapest has just joined a group of eight European cities getting the “Le Cool” weekly e-mail newsletter. The free “e-magazine” offers tips on concerts, exhibitions, dining and other related fare. The tone is informal, and the publisher claims it won’t take money to promote specific events or businesses, instead relying on user-generated recommendations.
The Le Cool network was launched in 2003 by a Swede and an American who decided to share their experiences from a trip to Barcelona with friends via the web. It has since added editions for Dublin, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Madrid and Moscow. The Budapest edition is being published by media agency G&E Vision, which is best known as the exclusive sales agent for ChelloZone’s TV channels. It was launched last Thursday with upwards of 1,000 initial subscriptions.
What’s interesting about the launch is that it comes amid signs that the print guides that have long dominated the Hungarian market for such program guide information are finally hitting the wall, both because of the softening of the ad market in general, and the increasing migration of the core audience of young spenders to the Internet. Indeed, early last week we heard from one very large advertiser in the segment who commissioned a study which revealed that more than three-quarters of the company’s customers get such information mostly or only online, rather than from such “dead-tree” sources as Pesti Est or Flyerz. And now the competition has only gotten cooler.