Is media the new creative?
08 February 2012 · by Zac Skulander
I’m going to write about innovation and creativity in media and the role that I feel they play in the day-to-day running of a newspaper. Unlike advertising revenue, creativity cannot be measured. Similarly, the feeling a client gets when you create something specifically for them cannot be measured. I strongly believe if you come up with creative media solutions for clients, in turn revenue will reflect this. If great journalism is the cornerstone of any great newspaper, then I think innovation should be the cornerstone of every sales floor.
There is a lot of talk in the industry at the moment about the emergence of creative people working within the walls of media owners.
Firstly, let me make myself clear: I don’t believe that any one person is more creative than another simply because they have the word “creative” on their business card. Anyone can be creative, and we all need to be creative. It could be anything from coming up with a new revenue stream for newspapers, to an idea which can increase circulation through a marketing promotion, to coming up with an idea that has never been seen before. Our business is diverse and so is creativity.
The latest trend is seeing former creative agency staffers taking on roles to help media think creatively. However, media is a totally different beast, and there is a lot of fear amongst advertising agencies that media owners are trying to step on their toes to create the ads. They should fear not.
...[more]Web radio venture yields some early surprises
30 January 2012 · by Harold Grönke
A couple of weeks ago at HNA we started a Web radio based on local news and a popular variety of music. We thought it made sense to add this component to our newspaper and Internet business.
Honestly, we aren’t totally sure where this cross-media venture will end up. All we know for sure at this point is that it seems to be prompting all of us to look at our business in a new way. It is a real nudge toward increased innovation, impacting our journalists and sales staff alike.
Our staffers love to tell the story that they are involved with something new, and they are keen to develop ideas on how we can make it profitable.
Unexpected Result. So far, the most impressive result has been receiving calls from relevant and serious customers, asking if and when they would be able to advertise with our Web radio station. Such calls are unbelievable to me in my 30 years of media life. Having customers actually call US instead of pitching THEM because they want to be part of our new experience, and spend money for the opportunity, is as unique here as anywhere.
Here’s something just as unique: Our response is to thank them for their interest and ask them to wait a bit. That’s because we don't have a concept on advertising yet, because there is no experience with a newspaper Web radio in Germany. So we are telling our customers we are striving to be “accident free” for a couple of weeks; we want to perfect our product before we approach them with advertising solutions.
...[more]Speaking the language of your sales staff and customers
25 January 2012 · by Tyler Mack
For smaller newspapers in small and medium markets, to advance in digital advertising means to maximise results within limited budgets and constrained time commitments. This is the reality of being a small- to medium-sized operation; the true cost concern is opportunity cost. For a newspaper to adapt to the needs and desires of today’s readers, it has to evolve in multiple areas. But with limited resources (staff and money), the choices we make in terms of prioritisation, of which areas to focus on first, become all that much more important.
Having recently transitioned from my role at a larger newspaper group, Stephens Media’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, to my family’s newspaper (I’m in the fourth generation of family ownership) in Eugene, Ore., The Register-Guard, the most obvious challenge has been the tighter resource constraint. Not an unexpected challenge and in some ways, it can be a benefit — to be smaller, tighter, more nimble, and have fewer complexities in terms of herding the collective cats toward getting all ducks in a row (sorry to mix metaphors). With the wealth of challenges that lay before newspapers, it’s hard not to attempt to attack on all fronts at once. Of course, in doing that (or attempting to do so), it quickly reminds us that there are only so many hours in a day and that everyone has a breaking point. So, priorities must be made and reality checks must be acknowledged.
...[more]Mapping out the crossover point for digital vs. print
24 January 2012 · by Adam Burnham
Happy New Year to all, and I hope you have as high aspirations for 2012 as I do — both personally and professionally.
I want to start by letting everyone know my wife and I are expecting baby No. 4. Lillian Sue Burnham should be here on or before February 14, but if you ask my wife, any day now is good with her. We are very excited to welcome the last addition to our family. That is my advertising innovation at the home front.
Now for an entertainment update: Two movies I watched for the second time over the holidays, which I thoroughly enjoyed and have important messages that correlate to our changing industry: “Moneyball” and “The Social Network.” Both are great examples of challenging contemporary philosophy to create new dynamics and new business models; buck legacy thoughts and expense; invest in your future; create products the audience wants in ways never seen; and rethink your plans regularly. All key takeaways. If you have not seen them both, you should.
OK, on to business and the topic I want everyone to plan for: The Crossover Point.
My friend and colleague, Kirk MacDonald, blogged last month about the need for all our peer companies to set their digital growth goals at 50% for 2012, and honestly, this has to be the minimum expectation.
I took this a step further recently while in California meeting with our sales teams at our Los Angeles properties. During those meetings, I posed this question to them:
What do you need to do to double digital revenue in 2012?
...[more]Forget (almost) about Google
10 January 2012 · by Harold Grönke
Common sense dictates that newspaper circulation that costs more to deliver than it pays in return is useless.
But most newspapers abandoned their common sense when it came to creating their online versions and courting Internet readers. Like frightened birds pecking for crumbs, we were just grateful to see our online community growing in any direction.
Because most of us had a background in print media, we weren’t sure how to generate those online relationships. So we became totally dependent on search engine optimization (SEO) and long tail and other such tools to handle it.
But have we done the right thing to over-emphasise the importance of these tools?
I think we haven’t.
A couple of weeks ago, I got the first market research results for newspaper cross-media reach in Germany. They blew me away because they were very different from all polling we had done ourselves about our online users. According to our new analytics research, fewer than 15% of our newspaper readers used our Web site on a regular basis, (compared to the 50% shown from our polling).
Furthermore, the analytics showed most of our users came from outside our market.
I couldn’t believe this.
So we took a closer look at those Google and Yahoo! analytic tools and discovered one remarkable result: Those tools told us that we had more users in a city within our market than in the whole market.
...[more]Benchmark for 2012 should be 50% increase in digital revenue
03 January 2012 · by Kirk MacDonald
Here is the one professional New Year’s resolution you need to make in order to make it a great year:
Grow digital revenue 50% year over year.
Before you click the close button, think about what this looks like:
First and foremost, digital growth of 50% or more is attitude — a belief that it can be accomplished and the will to pursue a big goal with energy and confidence. It is serious “culture change,” on which Earl Wilkinson spends the first three chapters of his recently released, must-read Newsmedia Outlook 2012.
Single-digit digital growth is a non-starter. Double-digit growth in the range of 20% won’t get you there. But 30% digital growth rates put you in the game. And 50% growth rates start to cover up print revenue losses and create a bright future for newspapers in their local markets.
Every time I have this discussion, people say, “Don’t forget about print.” Don’t. I have written and spoken at length about the effectiveness of the total-audience, integrated sales model that combines digital with print.
...[more]Local is our future: treat it well and let it lead the way
06 December 2011 · by Adam Burnham
When evaluating our revenue trends at Digital First Media, we look at more than 60 revenue categories in digital. These range from simple banner ads to more complex re-targeting products — all tracked down to the individual sales person level with performance analysis versus goals.
We spend a considerable amount of time at this level of detail so we can monitor what is working and what is not. Where do we need to put more focus, and in the same vane, where do we need to back off? This follows our “try fast, fail fast” mentality.
However, the real focus here is on predicting where the future digital revenue will come from. Aside from obvious product lines like mobile, video, and email, we know our future is in local digital sales. And all our digital pure play competitors know this as well. Google and Facebook are already looking at building local sales teams, but can they really compete with us?
While the brands are cool and exciting, we already have a large, local sales infrastructure in place and building a new one is very expensive.
Let’s take a look at Patch for a second. This latest attempt by AOL to build a local platform is not working. Content is adequate at best, and sales are very low. Even with the power of AOL and Huffington Post traffic, they are challenged. Why? How can one editor and one sales person compete in a market where we have five to 10 times those resources? Answer? They can’t!
In the meantime, we offer the best local relationships with businesses, strong brands, strong digital products, and, in most cases, the largest local audience. Through partnerships, we can expand that audience to reach virtually everyone in the market. Some use Yahoo, MSN, or third-party exchanges, but all offer the same audience extension model.
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Viewing digital as a start-up business brings success
14 November 2011 · by Adam Burnham
Let’s be honest, shall we? Newspaper companies have dabbled in digital on different scales for the past 10 years. While we dabbled we have seen print revenues decline at a pace nobody expected. Some will tell you print will recover and will continue to be the backbone of their revenue model. That may be the case, but I am not willing to bet the future on it.
Today, we are all rushing to commit to a digital strategy in one form or another. Some through allocation models still tied to print sales, while others focus on building new digital revenue on new digital platforms. But have you truly committed?
At Journal Register Company, we view our digital first strategy as a start-up business. This means we expect to see a heavy investment with aggressive revenue growth.
As we approached the end of 2010, eight months into our digital first sales model, we had a series of annual budget meetings for our 2011 plan. During those meetings I listened to all of our sales leaders present a plan to me that collectively rolled up to digital increases of 42% year-over-year. On the surface, that sounded aggressive, but nowhere in line with a start-up mentality.
...[more]So what does Digital First really mean?
18 October 2011 · by Adam Burnham
I get this question all of the time. So Journal Register Company is dumping its print way of life and only focusing on digital? Hardly, but in some respects, yes.
Change is something that too many in our industry fear. We have spent the last 10 years watching our classified business erode into virtually nothing. Monster.com, autotrader.com and realtor.com have taken what was the bread and butter of newspapers and moved the medium of choice to the Web…and we let it happen. We can no longer afford to look the other way. We can’t simply wait for an economic rebound and assume all of those print dollars will come streaming back in. Mark my words, it will not happen. It is time to invest in a new model, the digital first model.
Since launching our Digital First strategy in May of 2010, Journal Register Company has been producing year-over-year results in digital revenue that are 7 times the industry average. This is something we are very proud of and also something we are very transparent about. No smoke and mirrors here. This is a dedicated approach to selling true digital products and solutions to our customers, with the large majority of this revenue coming from local selling efforts.
If I told you two years ago that you could replace every dollar of print loss with digital gains and build a plan in which digital could sustain your organisation for years to come…hell, if I told you that today, what would your response be? Probably something like, sign me up!
That is exactly what JRC is doing.
...[more]Creativity transforms advertising executives into true media marketing consultants
02 August 2011 · by Tyler Mack
Special sections and banner ads alone are not going to see news advertising organisations grow beyond where many of them currently stand.
For us to make true progress and not only see larger revenue gains but also become a vital cog in our local marketing wheels, we’re going to have to prove how invaluable we can be to local business. This takes creativity and strategic positioning, and in some cases a retraining of the sales organisation. We’ve got to go beyond the servicing of accounts through standard print and online ad options to become real media marketing consultants.
At the Las Vegas Review-Journal, we’re approaching our advertisers with this expanded consultant mentality on the digital side. We’re presenting them with programmes that include traditional print and fairly standard online ad placements, but also consulting with them on their mobile and social strategies as well as their Web site purpose and goals. We’re assessing our clients’ needs on analysis calls, returning to the office to share them with a fulfillment team, determining difficulty and internal costs of the tasks requested, then pricing and proposing back to the client.
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