Consumers’ habits define the future of advertising

“The future of advertising is linked to the media consumers’ habits” says Bernard Asselin, Vice President for Marketing and Reader Sales of The Gazette in Canada. Mr. Asselin will be one of the speakers during the INMA’s conference in Kraków this September.

Two years ago in Vienna, Bernard Asselin spoke about the case of “Words Matter” marketing campaign which reached its goal by changing the perception of the newspaper. After this campaign, “The Gazette” was perceived as being more innovative, and less conservative (read more about this campaign).

This year in Kraków, Bernard Asselin will participate in the discussion about how to attract and quantify total audience across platforms. Before that, he answered some of our questions:

Forum4Editors: How does the editorial office of “The Gazette” cooperate with its advertising department?

Bernard Asselin: In the past years we have eliminated the silos not only between advertising and Editorial but also between Advertising, Editorial and Marketing. Every important project is now driven by a joint team composed of representatives of these departments. As long as everyone respects each other and understands the limitations, we have had tremendous success with different projects. And it’s more fun!

Would you give any advice to the marketeers about what they should or should not do in order to cooperate fully with the editorial office?

Bernard Asselin: Marketing should be able to show Editorial how they can benefit from their expertise because at the end of the day, the goals are the same: More readers, More revenues.
One of the most successful initiatives I have done at The Gazette was to meet every section Editors and ask them simple questions like:
1. You often have to take Editorial decisions, what would you like to know about your readers habits?
2. How do you think you can improve your sections?
3. What keeps you awake at night?
With all their concerns and ideas, we created a questionnaire and asked our 2,000 online panelists and in some cases we held Focus groups with readers and invited journalists to listen to the comments behind the one-way mirror! It worked so well that now consumer research is part of our culture!
Secondly, to have the Editorial people involved in the creative process of campaigns helps them understanding marketing and appreciating the effort made to support in most cases… their work!

The Gazette is well known for very creative campaigns and ideas of promoting the paper and its content. What’s next, what do you have in stock for the next couple of months?

Bernard Asselin: It’s a secret but I will tell you that we are finalizing a 2nd generation of our Words matters campaign. The ultimate convergence of the brand, words and content. More to come…

What is the future of advertising in print and online? Can the drop in print circulation be replaced by the rise in price of print advertising? Will the inefficient advertising online be replaced by advertising on tablets?

Bernard Asselin: The future of advertising is linked to the media consumers’ habits. Our challenge is to deliver the most efficient campaigns that will create results to our advertisers and we need to have all these tools in our toolbox for our clients to keep the maximum share of their ad budget. Print and online are only two platforms because we must be ready to become advertising solutions experts on the iPad, mobile, SMS, database and whatever new technology we’ll see. Revenue is a challenge but with the increased competition, keeping the relationship with the clients is even more challenging. At The Gazette, we already switched our focus from selling ad space to selling solutions and our sales force is already been selling multiple platforms for more than two years.

Thank you very much

Bernard Asselin will be one of the guest of this year’s INMA/OPA European conference in Kraków. Make sure you read the conference programme.

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