Mission 21: UK students crash Polish stereotypes

Grzegorz Piechota, Head of Social projects and mobile applications, Agora, spoke during the INMA European Conference in Cascais about Mission 21 – a social project that helped look at Polish society through foreign students’ eyes.

Mission21 is an idea to look at Polish society through eyes of other people. 21 students from London were invited to 21 Polish cities to survive a week there. They had to write blogs and articles with their experiences from the cities they visited.

It was a great editorial challenge. The project involved 60 people in the shadow. 50 stories from the students were filed daily. More than 80 news bits were posted online. There were five editors engaged who were the filters for the ‘outside’ content.

Mission 21 quickly gained enormous popularity in Poland. There were more than 260.000 online followers (87% were younger than 35, 41% younger than 25). The project gathered more than 3 million page views.

Mission 21 was an interesting lesson to Polish society, as it could learn what are its down sides. Those, as seen by foreign students, included:

• travelling through Poland is very hard
• not many Poles speak English
• the nation is rather sad and does not smile a lot
• many many more

But the project was also an excellent possibility to learn about journalism and building engagement online. It was a totally new working model for journalists and amateurs.

Last but not least, in this project whole interactivity went online. There were 5000+ online comments but no emails, no letters, and no phone calls at all.

Kleine Kinderzeitung – use the power of your brand

Wolfgang Bretschko, Member of the Board, Styria Media Group, Austria showed during the INMA European Conference in Cascais how the publishers can use the power of their brands.

What should publishers use the power of the brand for?

• to launch new products
• to build communities
• to open new profit pools

Kleine Zeitung has approximately 280.000 sales. 50% print reach and 33% tablet reach. Kleine Zeitung is perceived in Austria as a strong brand.

Kleine Kinderzeitung is a spinoff product of Kleine Zeitung. It is a weekly newspaper for children, published on Saturdays, for children between 6-11 years old. With one ad they got 8000 subscribers in one go for the first editions. This proves the power of newspaper brand.

Kleine Kinderzeitung seeks contact with kids and is part of their lives. Some events:

• summer festivals
• reporter camps
• educational meetings (in schools discussing topics for next issues)

It shows how the power of the brand can be used to build communities, products and opening new profit pools.

Using data to deliver an audience-driven strategy

Stuart Colman, Managing Director Europe at Audience Science spoke during the INMA European Conference in Cascais about the importance of data in delivering the audeince driven strategies.

While technology is vital to delivering effective targeting online, “audience” must remain central to all your activity. Stuart Colman explored the importance of data today and the role it plays in helping both understand a define audiences in order to ensure you deliver relevance and value to them.

How are we doing as the industry?

YoY growth of formats 2010

• Display: 21,1
• search 15,7
• classifieds 7,5

In UK, the quarter I figures prove to be continuing this trends

Audience targetting is helping drive this and makes budgets work harder

So What is market telling publishers?:

• display was the fastes growing area in 2010
• behavioral targetin is a key in that process
• Stuart Colman gave some suggestions to the publishers:

1. Move from environment to audience.
Site context was seen as a substitute for audience. A specific audience is reached irrespectively of where they are online
2. Move to more sophisticated targeting:

• geotargeting
• retargeting
• behavioral targeting
• customer audiences
• audience targeting

Central to targeting is the fact that people buy products. We can see nowadays the inreasing adoption of audience targeting:
1. graularity of real data drive targeting
2. recency and frequency are critical for relevancy
3. multiple data points build precise audience
4. transparent audiences are important for brands

Advertiser onsite behavior is based on:
offline registration data
search data
email list
3rd party microsite
facebook site
this is all information publishers should be getting about their readers

Stuart Colman summarized his speech with following key points:

• display advertising is boomin and a key driver is data
• people must be put at the core of targeting and advertising
• targeting is becoming more sophisticated
• there is no substitute for building an audience based on real, precise data
• QED, audience driven marketing is here, it’s driving advertising success, so if you’re not doing it, you better start soon

Success factors to conquer the local classified market

Matthias Olten, Head of Jobmarket, Kalaydo.de, Köln, Germany spoke during the INMA European conference in Cascais about how to become a dominant player on the local classified market.

Kalaydo.de was founded by six newspapers to find an offensive approach to get back a strong position in the online classified market. The presentation gave an insight about the main success factors in terms of online marketing, product development, brand building and sales.

Key facts:

1. it started 2006
2. it had 4,2 million visits per month with 9 minutes retention time
3. it had 350,000 new ads daily

Kalaydo.de bar appears in all internet portals of the newspapers involved in the project.

They are acting in a competitive market. Nobody could believe it when they made first steps in this business because the common opinion said that it was much too late.

The service proved to be succesful and not too late. Olten gave some suggestions to publishers looking for a niche like that:

• Start when your storage rack is well filled, not earlier
• Don’t start with 0 Euro offers – you will never get down from it
• Employ best sales team. Don’t save money at the wrong end
• Have the best product. Keep it simple and user-friendly. Usability first!
• Raise the number of job-ads but don’t forget to grow on traffic as well
• Use the advance of short distance to your user, invite them to point of interests
• Point out your unique sales proposition

Newspaper Academy: online training programme for media professionals

Erik Grimm, Research Director, Cebuco (Netherlands) spoke during the INMA European conference in Cascais about Newspaper Academy (www.dagbladacademy.nl) – the online training programme about advertising in newspapers.

Newspaper Academy (www.dagbladacademy.nl) is the online training programme about advertising in newspapers. The newspaper is a unique advertising medium, Newspaper Academy makes sure that mediaplanners and advertisers get the most out of it. The training is also open for the sales staff. Media professionals can get their “Newspaper Master”.

Knowledge about newspapers was poor, and newspaper planning was not attractive. The Newspaper Academy was planned to change this.

A new brand was created: “Newspaper Academy”. Target group was the young media planning professionals. Philosophy was based on the fresh approach: no barriers, serious and playful. The formula consists of: website, e-book, rehearsal tools, reference book. Content is up to date with tools and links and very interactive.

Website characteristics: center of the program. It had lots of features: self training option, built in planning tools, starting page for print planning and others.

There were 12 chapters with media landscape, media expenditure, newsaper landscape etc included in the program. The Newspaper Academy managed to train 250 people which is a lot for a small market such as The Netherlands.

Tickles is Archant’s response to Groupon market dominance

Jonathan Hustler, Group Managing Director of Archant, UK spoke during the INMA European Conference in Cascais about Tickles – th elocal competition to Groupon.

There are 50.000 people in the Tickles’ database – every night a newsletter is sent to the users. The service is also promoted on all Archant newspaper pages. Tickle is promoted throug social media: facebook and twiter

For user:

• it brings opportunity to experience new products
• allows to save money

for merchants:

• is a measurable medium
• is a targeted medium
• is a performance based medium

Differences from Groupon:

• Groupon pays in 3 tranches (30, 60 and 90 days), whereas Tickles pays in 3 and 30 days
• Groupon does not pass on payment for un-redeemed vouchers while Tickles does
• Groupon admin and copy is done in Chicago, and Tickles is local
• Groupon are greedy, inflexible and keeping 100% of new deals, while Tickles wants to work with a merchant to meet their needs

Jonathan Hustler finished his 7 minutes speech by stating that Groupon are not invincible. Groupon growth has slowed massively. There are doubts emerging about the cash flow. In Norwich (local market) Tickles is No. 1. More deals, more sales, better reputation for merchants.

Groupon has created a brand new market, but their scale is not an advantage. The revenue belongs to newspapers and Groupon is stealing it. Publishers should win it back.

How to market and promote your news channels towards all clients

Marcelo Benez, Advertising Director of Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil) spoke during the INMA European Conference in Cascais about how to market and promote the news channels towards all clients.

For Folha there are two main group of customers: readers and advertisers.
Folha is crazy about understanding the readers’ profiles: from religion to political preferences, from bed to children and habit. They want to know the reader in order to give best product possible.

Folha has been leading the circulation in Brazil for the last 25 years.

It drives multiplatform transition from theory to practice. Newspaper knows that readers have less and less time, so Folha wants to be where readers need it. That’s why they decided to launch the news reception center, opened and available 24 hours a day with almost 400 journalist working there, responsible for all aspects of everyday life in San Paulo.

Folha’s content is tailor made for each device. In order to give best offer they know they must exist on each platform. This is not the end of their experiments with innovations, for instance they released first video in 3D for children.

Folha also covers social media well and is a leadeer in this sector in Brasil. It is available on Twitter and Facebook (600.000 fans).

Here is how Folha’s news flow looks like:

Marcelo Benez inspired the delegates at the conference with many examples of non-standard advertising campaigns. One of many examples was the campaign in the newspaper driving traffic to Johnie Walker’s facebook fan page. Users could watch following commercial there with a picture from it printed on the Folha’s first page:

Another example was the case when Folha included a picnic towel that was sold together with the newspaper. At the same time the newspaper was promoting the idea of spending family time on a picnic. In the same issue readers could find a map of best places for picnic in Sao Paulo.

Last tips given by Marcelo Benez tu publishers were:

• break paradigms
• be where readers are
• give advertisers what they expect

Edda Media: from print to multimedia

Erling Omvik, Editor in chief of Fredrikstad Blad together Geir Bakken, Editorial Head of Development of Edda Media (Norway) gave the presentation at INMA European Conference in Cascais about how a local Norwegian House went through transformation from print to multimedia.

Those are the challenges that the newspaper faced in 2009:

• strong local position but under pressure
• circulation falling faster and faster (-4,1% in 2009)
• advertising revenues at risk
• searching for total coverage – print and online
• need for much more resources for development
• traditional editorial organization

What was done inside the organisation:

• mental revolution
• new editorial organisation, 1/3 in completely new functions
• community manager and front page editors
• continuous of development online and print

The whole process was all about guiding the customers using strong leadership with some help of success stories.

The target of the operation was to reach as many readers online as in print and make online 25% of the business. The newspaper succeeded:

• EBITDA grew from 16 million Norwegian Crowns to 27 million in 2011
• The advertising digital share was raised from 6,3% in 2009 to 18,5% in 2011
• The digital revenue share grew from 61% in 2009 to 87% in 2011.

The do’s suggested by the speakers:

• joint projects across departments – project management group:
• CEO/sales/editors/headquarters
• focused and intensive management – demanding for the staff
• close follow-up from Edda – task force
• defining ambitious targets – simple and visible
• selling the vision (make people believe in the project)

Fairfax story: from print-only to multimedia

Robert Whitehead, the Director Marketing, Fairfax Media (Australia) spoke during the INMA European conference in Cascais about the transitions and development of the printed brands, monetisation of online and building new profit streams.
Australia is a market of continuous high newspaper ad spend. In online, seven of the top 10 news websites are owned by newspaper companies.

Fairfax does its best to create a product portfolio to target audiences as they move and change through a day. 3 months ago they broke a story about what Australian soldiers have been doing in Iraq. The publisher had a video footage so it gave them possibility of multimedia usage. The story lived for 3 days thanks to multiplatform strategy: print, iPad, web, multimedia, mobile, long form.

Fairfax’ mobile website trafiic is exploding. Mobile after 5 years of development is becoming a serious income force for the company. Fairfax has a mobile application for basically every type of content they have, such as: weather, real estate, employment, dating, etc.

There are 3 ways Fairfax wants to be making money:
1. Free model based on display advertising. They are against paywalls on most of the sites.
2. People will be able to consume content of some platforms for free but will have to register with their data. This will allow to use the behavioral and contextual advertising.
3. Paid products: newspapers, tablets, smartphones, some websites.

In terms of multi-platform advertising sales, the upsides are:
1. group deals
2. large cross-platform wins
3. Day-to-day lead generation and improved responses

Spreading the wings across platforms is important for Fairfax. Food&Wine started as the newspaper section. Later it became a separate website. Next it turned to a book, which again turned into a series of books and then the series of apps. Thanks to experiment such as this one, actions like that became for Fairfax an opening of new sponsorship and transactional revenues.

The challenges for Fairfax are:

• make as much money as they can from print to fund growth investments
• reallocate resources for tomorrow
• re-invent scarcity and specialization of content

Profitable circulation depends upon following actions:

• make every channel sale profitable
• price, distribution and platform review
• create self-funded marketing promotions

Fairfax makes interesting market moves to gain customers. Last December they partnered with Apple and for 24 days before Christmas they gave the readers different content from iTunes. Since it was the time iTunes was expanding in Australia, it was a win-win situation for both parties that costed Fairfax nothing.

Fairfax sees new profit streams in online video, especially long form videos and live experiences. The reasons for it are as follows:

• online video is booming
• explosion of video capable devices
• high levels of illegal file sharing
• smart consumers want smart products

Today Fairfax produces 684,348 shows a month with 211,818 viewers who watched it.

The speaker mentioned also the events which should be part of each company. It opens up not only sponsorhip but also advertising opportunities.

Robert Whitehead summarized his speech in four points:

• think multiplatform
• organise for multiplatform
• create and monetise across platforms
• re-allocate investments now

Journal Register’s “no-print” option

U.S.-based Journal Register Company Editor-in-Chief Jim Brady discussed during the INMA European Conference in Cascais how their Digital First strategy has turned the company from bankrupt in 2009 to a $41M profit in 2010.

Journal Register had a huge financial and reputation problem. Here is what they did to improve this situation:

• Implemented digital first strategy in July 2010.
• Recruited new executive team focused on digital.
• Established advisory board of leading digital thinkers
• Added leading digital journalists to staff
• Promoted JRC’s most digitally savvy employees

In 2010 Journal Register saw first effects of the new strategy:

• Digital audience grew 75 percent
• Total audience grew 20% to 15,8 million per month
• company turned 41 million dollars in profit
• company gave empployees a week pay as a bonus

Today Journal Register is a totally different company:

• It produces 1000 videos per week (vs. 400 videos in 2009)
• JRC customers now stream 1,3 million videos per month vs 117 ooo in Jan 2009
• 1033 community bloggers now producing content being linked to off JRC sites
• 199,534 customers following JRC on Twitter
• 78,132 customers following JRC on Facebook

All good journalists still need to be able to: report, write, edit, interview, tell stories. Everything else in the industry changed.

Tenets of the new newsroom according to Jim Brady:

1. The business side isn’t your enemy. Work with them.
2. Hire content creators. Without them you can’t succeed.
3. Understand that good content comes from places other than your own newsroom.
4. Fully dedicate people to anything deemed essential. Don’t devote anyone to things that are not essential.
5. Newspapers adn journalism are not synonymous. Good journalism wins out on any adn all platforms – be on them.
6. Learn any and all skills. All will be needed at some point in your journalistic career.
7. Understnd that we are not in control anymre. So engaging the community is of the utmost importance.
8. Be willing to leave comfortable things behind. Serve the community.