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.

Sport.pl is available on the Internet since 2007 and is co-developed by the team of Gazeta.pl portal as well as the journalists, who for years have been arranging the sports supplement of ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ as well as commenting on sports events in ‘Gazeta’, online, on the radio and on TV. Sport.pl features news on most sports disciplines, popular blogs, readers’ forums, as well as numerous top-class video coverages – both self-produced and provided by partners, e.g. Ekstraklasa.

In June 2010, Sport.pl websites were visited by more than 3.5 million users, each spending an average of half an hour on the Group’s websites (according to Megapanel/PBI Gemius). Marcin Gadzinski, the editor-in-chief of Sport.pl will present the successful case of Poland’s AGORA sport websites during this year’s INMA/OPA conference in Krakow. Today, he answers few of our questions just before his interesting presentation in Krakow.

Marcin Gadzinski

Forum4Editors: How does the work in the integrated sports newsroom look like. Does each of the journalists have same skills or are they specializing in different tasks and topics (audio, video, live coverage)?

Marcin Gadzinski: Our team is divided in three parts – people working for online only, crossmedia group – journalists writing both for online and print, and a few editors focusing almost only on print.
We managed to find few journalists/reporters in our traditional editorial team who managed to use multimedia while covering a sports event – they write a coverage for the newspaper, create quick news for the web, blog, tweet, take pictures and make videos for the web. Their work is the greatest success of our integration process.

Agora brought different sports editorial teams together and integrated them under one brand: Sport.pl. What effects did it bring?

Marcin Gadzinski: There is less repeating and coverages of the same sport events on different platforms. The content is more complex for our readers now.
It is also easier now to promote and advertise our sport media platforms, when they are under one strong brand. What’s more, we managed to gain higher profits thanks to our integrated crossmedia advertising offers.

Was the process of integration itself very complicated? Did the structure of employment change during or due to that process?

Marcin Gadzinski: Integration in media is not a process that has a specific ending date. Even when the structure of the department is set, the budgets are integrated and so on, the real integration proceeds (or suffers a loss) during the everyday work of the editorial team. Definitely, most valuable are those journalists who know how to work for different media platforms, and are very intuitive about this.

One of the most popular sport sites in Poland is your light and humorous zCzuba.pl website (live coverages of sport events with funny, personal commentaries). How many people are behind this project? How many smaller sport websites do you own and what are your plans for the future?

Marcin Gadzinski: ZCzuba.pl is one of the greatest success of Agora (our owner/publisher) within the online projects. It is created by just a few workers and co-workers, and to greater extent, by thousands of users who became fans of zCzuba.pl.
Except for zCzuba.pl, in our group of sport online services we also have:

• Ciacha.net – a website for women who enjoy the pictures of handsome sportsmen;
• Ekstraklasa.tv – a website with exclusive videos from the Polish ekstraklasa soccer league;
• Sport websites of our special editorial action, promoting healthy and recreational lifestyle – polskabiega.pl (Poland runs) and polskanarowery.pl (Poland on bikes).

We also plan to start a recreational website about fitness.

Thank you very much, and see you in Kraków!.

Among those who took advantage of the first deadline for early bird rates and registered to the conference are editors and managers of the leading European newsmedia such as the Daily Telegraph, Corriere della Serra, Der Spiegel, El Pais, Helsingin Sanomat, Irish Times, Le Monde, Mecom, New York Times, Ouest-France, Schibsted, or Styria.

In total organisers of the Krakow event expect more than 200 newsmedia executives from all over Europe to gather this year at the main annual conference of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association and the Online Publishers Association in Europe.

The programme of the conference includes topical seminars on local newsmedia, research, sports journalism and marketing, and plenary sessions on innovations in news content, advertising, promotion as well as new mobile devices like tablets. (Check the latest version of the programme at the conference site.)

Confirmed speakers include David Montgomery, CEO of Mecom Group (UK), Shailesh Gupta of Dainik Jagran (India), Bernard Asselin of the Montreal Gazette (Canada), Espen Hansen of Schibsted’s VG (Norway), Massimo Russo of Gruppo l’Espresso (Italy), Chris Pennock of Johnston Press (UK) and Florian Nehm of Axel Springer (Germany).

Krakow, the host city of the conference, is itself a reason to come. Recognised throughout the world as an authentic and charming historical city, it is one of Europe’s official cultural capitals. It has a great location between the West and the East, and travel has become easy with affordable direct flights. (Learn more at this site.)

Check who’s already registered to the event (the list updated as of July 25th):

• Belden Associates (USA)
• ComQuotidiens (F)
• Corelio (B)
• De Gelderlander (NL)
• De Persgroep Publishing (B)
• DNA (F)
• Edytor (PL)
• Ekstra Bladet (DK)
• Gijbels Groep (B)
• Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso (I)
• Helsingin Sanomat (FI)
• Il Sole 24 Ore (I)
• The Irish Times (IE)
• Kurrier (A)
• Le Monde Interactif (F)
• Le Temps (F)
• MatchWork (UK)
• Mecom (UK)
• Media Convergence (NL)
• Media Regionalne (PL)
• Mediasite (N)
• New York Times Syndicate (US)
• Ouest-France (F)
• PBI (PL)
• Prisacom (E)
• RCS Digital (I)
• RCS Media Group (I)
• Schibsted (N)
• Styria Media (A)
• Spiegel QC (D)
• Telegraph Media Group (UK)
• Verlag Dierichs (D)
• WDM Belgium (B)
• Xtreme Nordic (N)

Join them by registering here. The next early bird deadline is September 15.

Here’s an overview of the latest developments in the mobile Internet industry. I used current reports from Morgan Stanley, Distimo, NetMarketShare and other sources published in June or July 2010.

The presentation features also some early findings on usage of newspapers on iPad thanks to John Einar Sandvand of a Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten. John Einar disclosed them during his speech at the Oxford Tablet Summit organized in May by INMA, Innovations Media Consulting Group and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. We had been trying to ask the right questions in Oxford — the list is included in the slideshow. Where to find the answers?

I hope we will be able to learn more this September in Kraków, Poland, at the annual INMA/OPA Europe Newsmedia Conference where we plan to have a special session on tablets and mobile reading devices. As we want to share the most current case studies, we are going to put them on the programme very close to date of conference. Expect then the unexpected.

Update: This deck made one of three Top Presentations of the Day at SlideShare on July 28, 2010. I think it just proves how important this topic is today.

The goal of the competition is to reward the excellence in marketing and creativity in using newsmedia in the media mix. This is the first competition ever to promote the innovation in advertising usng all platforms from newsmedia companies: print, online and mobile. Most likely, the non-traditional advertising solutions (on one platform) and a mix of standard advertising solutions in an innovative way (multiplatform) are sought.

All entries – the best examples from the newsmedia market – will be gathered in one publication: a special report that will be published in both English and Polish. This report is set to be an inspiration for the advertisers, and other publishers, and at the same time to be the proof of strength, innovation and flexibility of newsmedia companies in terms of advertising.

The jury of this competition will be called and recognised by the International Newsmedia Marketing Association in cooperation with the two Polish press associations: Zwiazek Kontroli Dystrybucji Prasy and Polskie Badania Czytelnictwa. Only real campaigns (not advertising offers or possibilities) will be judged. The campaign has to be from the 2009-2011 time period with the use of at least one medium. What counts is the non-traditional use of one platform sollution or creative combination of standard sollutions. The jury will judge ideas for the campaign, creation and its results.

All entries are free and should be submitted online by September 10, 2010. Click here if you are interested in submitting your case study online. For more information please refer to the competition’s announcement site. Remember, all ideas count! Best of luck, and see you in Kraków.

The competition is organised by International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA), and is supported by two Polish media associations: Zwiazek Kontroli Dystrybucji Prasy (ZKDP) and Polskie Badania Czytelnictwa (PBC). The sponsor of the non-traditional advertising awards competition is ATEX.