Daily Star bombs The Sun newspaper (but is an in-joke really a good campaign strategy?)
With bingo bringing in high revenue streams for online newspaper editions, it is little wonder that the Daily Star chose to hit The Sun where it hurts with its bingo advertising campaign - but bombing The Sun's Wapping HQ with Bingo balls?
I'm sure the Sun's staff in Wapping will see the hilarity. After all, James Murdoch has recently decided to postpone the move from the Wapping site to a new venue, at least until financial conditions improve.
Whether any Daily Star readers will understand the in-joke is quite another matter.
Evening Standard Snorts at Cocaine Deaths?
You could be forgiven for thinking that the Evening Standard, sister paper of the Daily (our-country-is-going-down-the-drugs-pan) Mail, has just revealed a coded stance to the cocaine-snorting public.
Beside the doomful story 'Record numbers killed by 'dinner party' cocaine', it juxtaposed a small inset that highlights the increase in deaths from 'superbug' Clostridium Difficile. The contrast between the two is so stark, you couldn't make it up. You could argue that this was just a coincidence, but not many would be suitably high to believe you.
The drugs story tells of 196 Cocaine-related deaths in the UK last year - a 16 per cent rise on 2006. The Superbug story talks about 8,324 C. Diff related deaths last year, a 28 per cent rise over 2006. Putting one beside the other, invariably invites a comparison, not very typical of the Standard.
To see the story in readable size click here.
Newspapers don't usually leave things like this to chance, so either someone played a subtle trick, or missed the obvious. Either way, I don't think the editor would be pleased.
Cox Newspapers see audience aggregation as key strategy (Leon Levitt)
Leon Levitt - Vice President Digital Media, Cox Newspapers
New Media Conference & Expo 2008 - Bucharest (live blogging from the event)
Some highlights:
- Newspaper circulation is dropping.
- Cox Newspapers have been profitable in the digital space since 2004/2005.
- Cox wants to aggregate audiences in print and online. This is the key piece of their strategy.
- Thus, if you look at the combined print and digital audience, audiences are actually growing.
- The question we ask ourselves: how do we win in the face of the prevalent "lifestyle wind changes"?
== Discretionary time is precious and competition is for people's time.
== People get information from various sources.
== Barriers to local market protection are diminishing.
- It's all about the engagement of local audiences.
- And the need to re-engage youth and non-"newsies".
- And aligning our online and print business models.
- We learned we had to publish to digital first. This puts the news cycle in context, when the print edition comes out.
- One of our earlier mistakes was to take old print rules and try to apply them to new media. It is a new media, and therefore new rules apply.
- Our journalism is still a core part of our strategy, as well as any content that we can use to "sell around".
- We have adapted to how the media day has changed for our users: in the morning we are more news focussed, in the afternoon, it's more about user serendipity in finding content.
- Money: the key to our long term success is in the display revenue and targeted ad serving.
- We need to learn to manage our ad revenue in a smarter way, a bit like the airline model: if we're sold out, then we are probably selling inventory too cheaply.
- We need to assess ourselves against the digital marketplace, not the newspaper marketplace.
- "Not all pageviews are created equal", for example, slideshows are counted as pageviews, but they are not necessarily of the same value.
- We need to ensure that one-time visitors actually stay longer and give them more content and linking that engages them to stay.
- Need to be conscious of "The clutter issue" - where pages are too cluttered. This comes up in every usability site review, for any news site.
- Our sales strategy, done the right way is the key to success, with appropriate methods, tracking and management.
* Context and disclaimer: reports from the conference were captured in real-time. If anything is well expressed, it is to the credit of the presenter. If anything is not completely clear or could have been put better, it is probably down to me. I didn't try to capture everything, just some of the key soundbites. Anything that is my comment, will be qualified as such, under "DD:"
The death of newspapers – a prediction for 2018
I know it's like a madman's lot-throwing competition out there, with constant battles between doom mongers and those they call dinosaurs.
"The newspaper is dead!" shouts one camp at the other, who then throws the argument right back: "How can it be dead, if it's still making so much money?" and "yes, there's a drop in circulation, but that's cyclical". "You’re blind to change - retorts the doomsayer, "can't you see that within a few years you'll disappear?"
In the time that I have worked for News International and The Sun newspaper, there was a constant stream of arguments from both sides. It's fair to say that all the newspaper people that I met, be it in my employer’s newsroom or in other papers, were pre-occupied with this same discussion. The heated debate often resulted in waves of investment in newspaper digital divisions, followed by lulls of calm, when suddenly it didn't seem so important – because the revenue from digital, though growing, was nothing like the bread and butter newsprint on 'proper paper'.
It's interesting that both sides of this debate in the newspaper industry often define each other in terms of whether they "get it" or not. I can recall numerous occasions when newspaper old hands explained to me that digital is very important, but digital people don't always 'get' the essence of what good journalism and editorial is all about’. You leave the meeting and go to the office next door, to speak to the digital guy, and he would say the same about newspaper people: they don’t always ‘get it’.
So against that backdrop, here are my predictions:
Newspapers will not die, but within ten years will be available almost exclusively on e-paper, as constantly updating news sources, in a format that is more pleasing than screens. There will be significant consolidation within the industry during this time, but news content providers who will survive ten years of decline in print with their content gathering and production operations intact will live to benefit from a lucrative market, and make lots of money.
Now let's unpick this statement:
e-paper - is at a very early phase of its development, but as Bill Gates said, "...people tend to overestimate what can change in a year or two, and they underestimate the cumulative effect of change that can take place in a 10 or 15-year period" (source). The vision is of something that looks very much like newspapers today, but is dynamic and interactive and the content on the pages is constantly updated through GSM/Wifi. When I did some research about e-paper in a previous role, I found that people who watched Minority Report understood the reference better (as John Anderton runs from his pre-crime colleagues onto a subway train, he looks over another passenger's shoulder to see the e-newspaper update to the breaking news [that he is wanted]). This is the concept at the core of what I’m taking about, and its beauty is that because it is constantly updating there is a subscription model right there in the updates, and the ability to serve dynamic advertising.
Constantly updating news sources: readers now expect news to be up-to-date and fresh all the time. The 24-hour news-cycle is well and truly engrained in our expectations, and although commentary and features can have a longer time-span, traditional newspapers will have to adapt to this. The ability of e-paper to do so, is therefore a great selling point for epaper. Did I mention subscription model?
In a format that is more pleasing than screens: we know that people do not read large chunks of text for prolonged periods of time online. This is in part what still keeps print media in business. However, if you can replicate the same tactile and visual serendipity effect you have in newspapers in a digital format - then you've won. Pure and simple..
Significant consolidation within the industry: newspapers are already downsizing editorial staff in the wake of the tough market conditions. But the key to newspaper survival is in understanding that their product is the content. No blogger, citizen journalist or news wiki can replace a well-edited, reliable primary source that subscribes to journalistic standards. No brand extension, digital initiative or diversification will change this basic premise. Those who manage to continue their support for good accurate content will survive. Others will slide gradually into oblivion.
Here endeth my prediction. Let’s revisit this again in 2018 and see if I was right.