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Inland's 124th Annual Meeting
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Richard Cichelli and I attended the recent 124th Annual Meeting of the Inland Press Association in Chicago on October 25 - 27. In our opinion this is one of the most valuable newspaper association meetings that we attend; we always come away with new ideas and insights and this year was no exception. Below I summarize just some of them, and you can download the full presentations from the Inland website.
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The death of the newspaper?
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Earl Wilkinson, executive director of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association presented "No Iceberg: Separating Truth from Fiction on Newspapers in Recession."
His main message was that the newspaper industry worldwide is not dying. It may seem so because there is an economic downturn and a recession, hysteria is being generated by journalists writing about journalism, and some newspapers are severely debt-ridden.
The largest number of debt-ridden newspapers are in the U.S. and the U.K. There is also an accelerating trend toward use of the internet and mobile technology in these countries. This, combined with poor public perception of news on paper and of local newspaper brands, means trouble.
There are problems that are not unique to the U.S. and the U.K. including capital tied up in printing presses, internal cultures that have not adapted to the "market culture", vertical organization that discourages communication and innovation within a newspaper, the credit crisis and the collapse of classifieds.
Wilkinson proposed strategies for newspaper survival including
- using print to build a bridge to multi-media
- adapting from "audiences of geography" to "audiences of passion niches"
- integrating multi-media advertising sales with involvement of the advertising community
- resolving internal culture clashes between online sales staff and print sales staff
- developing more content for consumers who will pay for it (by subscriptions) and less for those who won't
Read his slides for more detail.
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Use strong branding and be conservative about the balance sheet
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Christie Heffner, former CEO of Playboy Enterprises, drawing on her own
experiences guiding the family-run business through serious financial problems,
gave a strong presentation entitled "Challenging Times for Publishers:
Dangers & Opportunities.
She began with the observation that the Chinese character for
"Danger" combined with the first part of the character for "Opportunity" creates the character for
"Crisis".
危 + 機會 = 危機
When Ms. Heffner joined Playboy and then became CEO, the company was in financial trouble. She decided it was crucial to protect
the Playboy brand and to expand it beyond print. Her first step was cable tv
(rather than more magazines) and Playboy TV is now the largest revenue
generator for the company. And then she met Jim Clark of Netscape and
they created playboy.com. At the time there were only about 10,000
websites in the world, so this was a truly innovative move.
In order to spread a brand beyond print (think of your newspaper's brand now),
it is not enough to find ways to just republish the content. You need to look
for audiences and look for ways to bring content to them that they want.
"Is there still a need for news publishing in this time of 24/7 access to
online news?" she asked. Yes, if the newspaper has generated trust
(here's the role of your brand) and provides thoughtful summary, analysis and
context.
A crisis, like the one that newspapers are in now, creates the motivation for
change. A business model so dependent on advertising is no longer a good
one. "If we value our product, we need to determine our value to the
reader." If it is high, we will attract readers.
Collaborations between newspapers and other media sources are being seen.
Ms. Heffner called this "coopetition"; an example is PBS delivering
science content for CNN. Our competitors may become suppliers of our content.
Newspapers need multiple revenue sources and multiple distribution
platforms. One of these may be mobile; in the U.K. paid applications are being
developed to distribute to mobile phones.
Whatever newspapers do, they must be conservative about the balance sheet so
that they will survive to be trusted sources for information. One danger
of the internet is that people do not get multiple points of view - they
"become trapped in their own viewpoint universe."
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Letting the reader guide your innovation
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Laura Gordon, former senior vice president of Marketing/Chief Innovation Officer, The Dallas Morning News gave us some good lessons about identifying audiences and creating products that appeal to these audiences. And then the salespeople, working closely with and listening to advertisers, can sell a marketing plan from a "portfolio" of products.
Following are her five most important take aways:
- The consumer is in control; portfolios must be co-created.
- A portfolio is not a series of brands; it is your strategy for serving market needs.
- Don't follow the competitor, follow your audience.
- You cannot be all things to all people; choose!
- It's not about what you can afford; it's about how you use what is available to you.
Download the much more extensive presentation.
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SCS offers enterprise-wide and modular publishing solutions for advertising order entry and billing, edition design and ad dummying, press configuration, classified pagination, ad production workflow, digital asset management, editorial workflow and archiving. Visit us at our website. Send me email with suggestions for stories or anything else you'd like to say. Call our salespeople at (800)568-8006.
It's time to be BOLD. We're moving forward, and you should come with us!
Keep Being Good. Why? How? Get a Button
Sincerely,  Martha Cichelli
Software Consulting Services |
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