In an effort to shed its blue-collar image and attract some very white-collar advertisers, The Hamilton Spectator is following the lucrative lead of other dailies and launching a weekly business section.

‘Enterprise’ will be a 12-page stand-alone section, containing local business news, along with advice to new entrepreneurs, mutual funds reports, stock listings, and a topical column, according to Spectator marketing director Lynn Longwill.

‘When (advertisers) think of Hamilton, they think of steel stacks,’ admits Longwill, adding that despite the city’s reputation as an industrial centre, the newspaper’s readership in Hamilton, Burlington and surrounding areas is actually very economically diverse.

In fact, says Longwill, the Spectator, with a circulation of 115,000 Monday to Friday and 136,000 Saturday, enjoys a potential audience in what the paper has defined as the Greater Bay Area (Hamilton-Wentworth, including Ancaster, Dundas, Flamborough, Glanbrook, Hamilton and Stoney Creek, as well as Grimsby and Burlington) that is 50% white collar, with over 115,000 managers and professionals.

Further, the average per capita income for this area is $53,900 – 6% above the Canadian average, according to Enterprise’s promotional material.

The newspaper claims (with the support of NADbank figures) that it reaches more business managers, professionals and decision makers in the Greater Bay area than The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail combined.

Carolyn Press, database marketing manager for The Hamilton Spectator, says the perception by advertisers, especially in Toronto, that Hamilton decision-makers can be reached through Toronto papers is just not true.

In terms of readership figures provided by NADBank, 62,500 managers, owners and professionals in the Hamilton area read the Spectator on an average weekday, while 23,400 pick up the Star and a mere 18,700 peruse the national daily.

To get the word out, the publication has created a campaign that includes transit, radio, tv and print in and around Hamilton, with the tag line ‘We mean Business!’

Longwill would not release the names of the advertisers in the first issue, dated Feb. 18.

She says the rates for Enterprise are the same as for the Spectator’s other business section, which appears daily on the final two pages of different sections throughout the week. However, she says the paper is offering a 13-week trial for new advertisers.