He hasn’t met Rusty, and he doesn’t know Jerome. He doesn’t live in a castle, and truth be told, he probably can’t even play a recorder.
Meet the friendlier giant.
When Jeffrey Shearer took over as vice-president of marketing for The Toronto Star almost two years ago, he recognized the need for Canada’s largest daily newspaper to improve its track record at servicing advertisers. Many remedial steps have followed in the months since then, among them an aggressive trade advertising campaign portraying the paper as – you guessed it – the ‘Friendlier Giant.’
‘This isn’t just about telling the ad community that we’re friendlier and more approachable,’ Shearer says. ‘It’s also there to remind our own bloody staff.’
Like many major Canadian dailies, the Star is increasingly aware that some advertisers and agencies don’t see it as particularly friendly at all – that, in fact, they see it as inflexible and unresponsive. And like many other dailies, the Star is trying to figure out ways to rectify that.
As part of its commitment to ‘friendliness,’ the Star has retooled its Sunday edition, launched the new ‘Greater Toronto’ section and themed its ‘Life’ section by day.
In addition to offering formats such as flex-forms and gatefolds, the paper has introduced the ‘Toronto Star Belly Band’ – a full-color band encircling subscriber copies of the paper, on which advertisers can place their messages. A similar wraparound is used by The Gazette in Montreal.
The Star has also invested heavily in its production facilities, budgeting $60 million for increased color capacity, which should be available by next summer.
A number of other dailies – notably The Vancouver Sun, The Chronicle-Herald in Halifax and The Globe and Mail – have taken similar steps to enhance their printing capabilities. The Gazette also recently announced the investment of $64 million in a new plant, which should be operational by July 2000.
Jim Orban, vice-president, sales and marketing with The Ottawa Citizen, is another senior newspaper executive who acknowledges the need for dailies to become more accommodating. At the same time, however, he says it’s difficult to hold the entire industry to a single standard of service.
Each paper is subject to singular constraints, he explains. While the Star, for example, might be capable of printing a 32-page front section, the Citizen can only run to a maximum of 20 pages.
‘Right away, there’s a supply-and-demand dynamic that kicks in,’ he says. ‘Especially in terms of color ads and position requests. It’s not necessarily a level playing ground.’
Still, Orban says, dailies have in general shown an increased commitment to delivering better value for advertisers, whether that means improving reproduction quality, offering superior positioning opportunities or introducing alternative formats such as gatefolds.
Recently, for example, the Citizen gave Molson Breweries the chance to try out a new ad format – a post-it note, which was affixed to the front page of home-delivered copies. A few years ago, Orban says, such opportunities simply weren’t available.
Michele McDonald, director of marketing resources with The Calgary Herald, says that her paper is increasingly being pressured by advertisers in highly competitive sectors – such as telecommunications, airlines and financial services – to answer their needs with more creative solutions.
The Herald has responded in part by restructuring its salesforce.
‘The creed is to sell marketing solutions, as opposed to just selling ad space,’ says McDonald. ‘Senior reps service the national accounts with agencies, while retail reps will actually go in, perform a needs analysis and write marketing and promotional plans for clients.’
In Halifax, The Chronicle-Herald has also moved to improve the structure of its salesforce. Mike Foran, the paper’s sales manager, says the national salesforce has been segmented into a major client group and an agency group, each headed by its own manager. A specific sales rep is assigned internally to each agency.
Foran says The Chronicle-Herald is also stepping up its capabilities in the area of flyer distribution, and has worked recently with a major packaged-goods client to distribute cereal samples with home-delivered copies.
‘Gone are the days when a sales rep slapped together a spec for a half-page ad, threw it on the client’s desk and walked out the door,’ he says. ‘We’re trying to form relationships beyond that, and become business partners.’
Most major dailies across the country have lately invested considerable time and effort in developing targeted editorial features and special sections designed to widen the array of opportunities for advertisers. The Chronicle-Herald, for example, recently introduced a section called ‘Foundations,’ focused on home renovations.
Similarly, the recent overhaul of The Globe and Mail has ushered in quite a bit of new content – notably the ‘Health’ section, and a feature called ‘Enterprise,’ which focuses on entrepreneurial issues.
Sandy Muir, the Globe’s vice-president, advertising sales, says the overriding objective of all this has been to make the paper better for readers – although it does, of course, open up some niche advertising opportunities as well.
According to Muir, the Globe’s salesforce has significantly improved its ability to service advertisers in the last three years.
Still, the paper continues to grapple with the fact that demand for ad space – particularly color spots – is outstripping supply. And Muir says the sheer volume of requests has also inhibited the Globe’s ability to improve response time.
Immediacy is one of newspaper’s key points of differentiation as a medium, says Kevin Bent, vice-president, advertising sales for The Vancouver Sun. That’s why his paper has lately focused its attention on learning how to process orders more efficiently.
‘We can take an order up to 24 hours in advance, and advertisers can see their ad in the paper within a day,’ Bent says. ‘We’ve got a long way to go in terms of the service aspect of our business, but we’re making incremental steps year by year.’
Bent says the Sun is also responding to advertiser demand for greater targeting capabilities, by experimenting with zoned products. Special sections have been created for each of the four major districts in the B.C. Lower Mainland. One goes out each day, Monday to Friday.
Can dailies offer advertisers greater ability to target their messages than they do now? That, says Robert Attala, vice-president, advertising sales with The Gazette in Montreal, is an issue that newspapers have yet to resolve.
‘We’re a mass medium,’ he says, ‘and advertisers would like to use our distribution capability as they do direct mail. It’s something that the industry is grappling with, in terms of whether it actually wants to evolve in that direction.’
As for what’s in store for The Gazette itself, Attala says any major changes will have to await the completion of the paper’s new plant in 2000.
For now, The Gazette is attempting to interest advertisers in opportunities such as its new color-ready ‘Weekender’ section, and its ‘hawker’ program, in which street-corner sellers, outfitted in advertiser-branded gear, will peddle the paper to passersby at a reduced price.
Nissan Canada, for one, recently availed itself of the program, Attala says, and generated considerable attention.
Also in this special report:
– Dailies still in the Dark Ages, say media directors: Despite the imminent arrival of a deep-pocketed competitor, Canadian dailies have remained largely oblivious to the needs of advertisers, planners and buyers charge p.27
– Demand outstrips supply at Post: New national daily to honor FP’s advertising commitments p.29
– Poor repro robs GAOO of ‘wow’: Agency learns valuable lessonp.31
– Great writers lend name to Chapters: Newspaper essays by well-known authors encourage consumers to widen their reading tastes p.32
