WE launched our Ad Awards 09 earlier today, and already there has been positive feedback about our new digital method of entry.

By Brett Taylor, PANPA

For years, entering PANPA awards has meant gluing tearsheets to black cardboard and sending a bulky display parcel to PANPA’s offices. By deadline week, we would have every courier in Sydney descending on our doorstep – and we’d know them all on a first-name basis.

This method served us well to a point. It was a comprehensive process and most importantly, it didn’t lack integrity. But there has been a feeling that ‘there must be a better way’.

Which brings us to our Ad Awards 09. We’ve teamed up with Workstream Solutions to deliver a system of online entry that makes participation so much easier.

In the new system, PDFs of your pages and ads are uploaded, and inserted into a digital template that is reminiscent of that good ol’ piece of black cardboard. You type in your statement of purpose and it too is dropped into the design.

A few clicks later and you can enter your payment details through a secure online system – better than putting cheques in the mail.

The system is normally used by real estate agents as a do-it-yourself ad builder. With that in mind, if you have any difficulties with your entry, give us a call or email.

I shouldn’t divert too much attention from the awards themselves. We’ve completely overhauled the categories to cater for multi-platform advertising. The circulation categories have been adjusted to create a fair playing field – this time it’s 0 – 25,000; 25,001 – 90,000; and 90,001+.

The individual awards have been expanded as well. In these tough conditions we feel it is more important than ever to recognise those who are fighting hard for the industry against economic conditions and new competitors.

Head over to our awards page here to see a full list of categories, and download the all-important briefing document for criteria and further instructions.

Awards time is always an exciting time for PANPA – we get to talk to our members and celebrate your brilliant work.

So good luck, have fun digging up your best ads, tell your colleagues about us and enter soon before you miss out!

By Rob Duffield, The Guardian, Swan Hill, Victoria

Did anyone catch Lateline – ABC 1 on Thursday night (19/2)?

ANDREW NEIL: the former editor of the London Sunday Times and now publisher of the Spectator magazine was interviewed by Lateline’s Leigh Sales. This was a fabulous late night interview in the finest Lateline traditions. Neil was questioned on politics, the global economic crisis and the future of the embattled Newspaper industry. The interview was extremely entertaining and most educational.

Neil was asked the perennial question: Are Newspapers Dying? He said: “No, they are not. Some are, some deserve to die. The trend is most pronounced in the United States because the United States is dominated by inefficient high cost big city monopoly newspapers that are not used to competing.

“So, they’re really taking a hit because they’ve been fat cats they can’t handle the revolution that is the Internet and multichannel TV. I don’t think that’s true of British or Australian newspapers.

“We’re much more competitive. Yes, some of the weaker brethren will go; they deserve to. Will there be a move to the web? Yes.

“But I think the strong newspaper brands in Britain and Australia will survive and they will have very strong websites as well.

“Our strongest brands also have strong web plays, and we’ve stopped thinking it’s an either/or proposition. Indeed we know you can’t have one without the other, and the opportunities are great.

“You think of famous British brands that went global before the internet age. ‘The Financial Times’, ‘The Economist’.

“Well, there’s a third called the ‘Guardian’, because the Guardian web site is now the third biggest website in American newspapers. It’s bigger than the ‘LA Times’ or the ‘Washington Post’.”

Neil also talked about the technological challenges and differences between now and his time working at the Sunday Times in 1983. He said: “But the difference with the Sunday Times in ‘83 was that is we knew the technological change was there, we wanted to take advantage it but the unions wouldn’t let us. That’s gone now.

“No management can use the excuse of unions now stopping technological change. If you were running a newspaper now it has to be lean and mean.

“The days of having 10 people cover a story are gone; you’ve got to be more efficient. You have got to build a strong web presence, and you’ve got to extend your brand into that web.

“And you’ve got to not just think, as we did in the early days, post the paper on the web and that’s your website. A website has to take on a life of its own, and you’ve got to let people post the stories and not wait until the following morning. And then you build a community.

“For example, ‘Telegraph’ newspapers in London, which is part of our group, we find most of the people using the web are people who also buy the paper, and you’ve a community going there.”

Andrew Neil also discussed Rupert Murdoch and then went into advertising mode to promote the Spectator’s new Aussie edition, which he is in Australia to launch. His views on British politics and the global economic crisis are certainly worth consuming.

ONE copy costs less than a loaf of bread, a cup of coffee or a bus ticket. These everyday items are essential in their own way but do not inform, entertain or inspire. Do they provoke emotion, offer knowledge or improve lives?

By Brett Taylor, Editorial Coordinator, PANPA

Newspapers are complex: whether the staff is two or 200, the editorial, advertising and production functions must work together with intricate systems and equipment. If you compare that with a $3.50 coffee or $4 loaf, newspapers are value.

Do readers know this? And if they don’t, why haven’t we told them?

The Chronicle of Toowoomba did just that last Saturday, running a Page 12 article, modestly headlined “HOW THE CHRONICLE SAVES THE DAY!”

Editor Steve Etwell told readers why his newspaper is a good buy in hard times: “Every single day we supply in-depth material in both editorial and advertising columns that will save you MUCH more than the cost of the paper.”

He backed up this claim by pointing to four special advertiser deals in that edition.

“It’s an action-packed, bargain-stuffed package that offers hundreds of ways to save you time, energy and heaps of dollars…not bad for just $1.10 daily,” he wrote.

Etwell, who chaired a session at PANPA08, credits the idea for the piece to his group editor-in-chief, APN Australian Publishing’s Terry Quinn. Some of The Chronicle’s sister publications will be running similar articles.

The self-promotion strategy has contributed to The Chronicle adding an extra 410 subscribers, with a goal of 750 by year’s end, Mr Etwell said.

Traditionally, the news may have sold the newspaper. But these days, a reader can get similar stories from a variety of sources. “Newspapers are traditionally the worst self-promoters,” Etwell lamented this week. “We know we have a great product, but do our readers know?”

In the US state of Maine, a city’s daily paper is taking the value proposition a step further with a money-back guarantee.

Lewiston’s Sun Journal is running a daily box on its front page featuring ideas for pinching the pennies in tough times.

Readers can claim back some or all of the $97 six-month subscription fee if they don’t recoup that much in savings by following the everyday tips.

The paper hopes the offer will prevent it from being chopped from the tightening family budget.

AMERICAN small-to-medium size newspaper consultant, Gary Sosniecki, has written a useful column about selling ads on your community newspaper’s website.

We found the article on the e-newsletter of another US newspaperman, Ken Blum (blummer’at’aol.com)

Your web site should be a revenue stream, not a revenue drain, even for the smallest weekly newspaper.

Even in a recession.

The keys are for you to be passionate about your newspaper’s web site and to have a plan that turns that passion into dollars.

Online advertising isn’t charity. Advertisers can and do benefit from advertising on web sites of community newspapers – the stats from your own web site should prove it. The day you convince yourself of those benefits is the day you’ll have the passion you need to sell online ads.

Next you need a plan.

A community newspaper has two options for selling online ads.

If your site is hosted by a company that specialises in newspaper Web sites, that company probably has an internet sales consultant you can hire to sell ads for you. That sales consultant will come to your town, make four-legged sales calls with you and your staff and use his or her knowledge of online advertising to make thousands of dollars – even tens of thousands of dollars – for your web site.

You will pay a commission to the sales consultant or the company, usually based on a sliding scale for the amount of advertising sold. But you’ll more than cover that expense with the revenue the professional sales effort will generate. You’ll also learn good sales techniques for selling online advertising on your own. Much of what I know about selling online ads came from the sales consultant we used at a small daily newspaper in 2002 and 2003.

Your second option is to sell the ads yourself. If you have the passion and a plan, you can do it. In fact, if I could do it, anyone can.

When we launched a web site for our mum-and-dad weekly newspaper in 2004, I came up with a plan that offered three benefits to advertisers who agreed to a 12-month commitment:

1. The first month was free. That covered us if our launch was delayed for any reason, or if we didn’t get all the ads posted on time. Besides, advertisers like the sound of the word “free.” For the next five months, they paid half-price. I told my advertisers that we’d be building traffic during that period, and I wasn’t going to charge them full price while we learned what we were doing. We charged full price the last six months, when we expected 300-500 visitors a day.

2. I offered a second ad location free. We had plenty of ad locations on our site, more than enough to offer a free, less-prominent second location to any advertiser willing to commit for 12 months.

3. Every ad on our web site would be reproduced every week in a house ad in our print edition. The headline on the house ad read: “They make Vandalia click,” with the subhead, “Look for these advertisers 24 hours a day on www.vandalialeader.com.” The added exposure in print was a safety net for advertisers who might not be sure about the value of online ads.

With so much bang for the buck, this package was hard for advertisers to resist. We made money from the second month on. By month six, we were bringing in $800 to $900 a month from online advertising in a town of 2,400. That soon grew to $1,000-$1,100, almost matching what we brought in each month from our two biggest print advertisers. In effect, our online ads were like having two extra supermarket inserts.

How much can you make from your web site? Take the population of your town and divide it in two. That’s what you should generate in online advertising each month. If your newspaper is in a town of 2,000, you should bring in
$1,000 a month from online ads. If your town has 3,000 population, you should make $1,500. And so on. And that doesn’t include what you can make from classified ads, special sections, paid archives and e-Editions, subjects for another day.

Get passion, get a plan – and make some money!

THREE of New Zealand’s key real estate sites have embraced Google’s Street View technology.

Realestate.co.nz, Nz.open2view.com and Fairfax-owned TradeMe.co.nz are now offering the functionality to would-be buyers. Previously, TradeMe had a similar service that was provided by a Wellington based company, called Project X. However, after two years of trials, the site management has now switched to Google and more than half its listings are already accessible through Google.

Photos of the outside of each house are taken by contractors to Google. Cameras are mounted on the cars and the snaps are taken as they drive by. Major cities in New Zealand, Australia and the central suburbs of Singapore and Hong Kong have all been catalogued in this way.

Some real estate agents have resisted the StreetView technology, believing that buyers would see the properties promoted and deal with the owner directly, cutting the agent out of the loop and denying them their 2-3 percent commission, according to aimgroup.com.

IF you haven’t read about News Ltd’s new ‘Think Outside the Rectangle’ creative book, it’s worth catching up on our news blog here.

To summarise, they have produced a high-quality publication that showcases innovative ads that have featured in their newspapers. They’re issuing a challenge to creatives to use new techniques that extract more value from the newspaper medium.

By Brett Taylor, Editorial Coordinator, PANPA

I, for one, commend the publisher for putting this together. It’s an impressive product and I’m sure they’ll get some benefit from it.

There’s no reason why the rest of the newspaper industry can’t benefit from it as well, should it help spark a bit of an industry wide re-think of advertising in newspapers.

Who says advertisements have to be in square boxes towards the bottom of the page? The notion of rigid, rectangular modules that separate the news from the ads is obviously down to a convenient consistency for a publication – one shape, one design, one price, repeat. It is also pleasing for the editorial department to have their content neatly separated from – and uninterrupted by – those pesky ads.

But that notion has to be redundant, especially when you consider the limitations of newspapers compared to the interactive, animated, audio-assisted ads that can be delivered online. Newspapers shouldn’t be limiting the effectiveness of their ads any further than the medium inherently dictates.

I don’t want to sound overly critical here. It’s not just papers who need to refresh their outlook. The traditional delivery of TV advertising baffles me. 30-second ads, packed into 3-minute timeslots, show after show, night after night. There are very few variations on this; there’s the occasional minute-long ad, or a 15-second one, or some in-show scrolling advertising (usually by the network promoting its other shows, or for cold drinks during the cricket).

What about some two or three-second long ads squeezed between scenes during a show? This might work for something like Pizza Hut during an evening show like Neighbours in Australia. Imagine a quick, almost subliminal shot of someone biting into a tasty slice, with the Pizza Hut logo and URL below them, popping up between one scene and the next.

If this is thought to be an irritation to viewers, maybe they would be appeased by a net increase in show-time and decrease in ad-time should these super-quick ad shorts attract a premium rate that are worth more than the normal 30-second slots.

That is one possibility off the top of my head, but surely something, anything, that challenges the status quo would be worth trying or at least considering.

Consider KFC’s marketing in the past few months. I’ve noticed that basically every month or so, the fast-food retailer hits the small screen promoting a new product. This new hotrod/snack wrap/chicken taco/whatever is basically the same raw ingredients – popcorn chicken, cheese and BBQ sauce – delivered in a new way.

The new products last for a limited time. But their appeal is the response in the consumer, which I take to be: “Look at that new thing, I’ve got to try that at least once!”

It’s innovation for the sake of innovation, and I assume it works (they keep doing it, after all).

I think there’s a lesson for newspapers in this. The sorts of ads in News Ltd’s big book of ideas, and indeed those shown at PANPA 08 by Mario Garcia, are worth trying, for the same reasons KFC’s strategy works.

People are intrigued by new things, things that are out of the norm. Look at the ‘curiosity pieces‘ that register endless hits on newspaper websites…people are curious beasts. People will see circle ads, triangle ads, J-shape ads, smelly ads, and pay attention to them because they are different. And, if the ads are weird enough, they’ll talk to their friends about them, snap them with their phone and share them online.

Newspaper ads that break the mould can be successful purely because of their mould-breaking nature. And the beauty is, all that needs to change is the newspaper’s mindset. These ads rely only on creativity and hard work in the layout and design. No new technology or infrastructure needs to be purchased to make them possible.

If you really think about, it’s almost cheeky that newspapers will charge significant premiums for uniquely shaped ads. I’m not saying they shouldn’t – of course they should! They should take what they can get in the current climate. But in theory, advertisers will have to pay extra just to unlock the full potential of the newspaper’s pages. TV doesn’t charge extra for ads with sound, or colour. Clients will essentially pay more for a change in mindset.

By unshackling their pages, which are just ink on paper, newspapers can unlock a whole new world of attractive opportunities for advertising.

THE Newspaper Works website has this year’s Caxton Awards winners and images available, for those who haven’t seen them.

Even The Newspaper Works themselves won an award in the copywriting category, for an ad promoting the power of newspapers to tell a story.

http://thenewspaperworks.com.au/go/news/caxton-winners

THERE’S a story on The Australian’s website today that any newspaper sales executive should be aware of.

The Transport Accident Commission (TAC), which is the road safety body for the Australian state of Victoria, has signed a deal to spend $A100,000 on in-game advertising.

By Brett Taylor, editorial coordinator, PANPA

The TAC is trying to reach its target audience or males aged 18-30 with its anti-speeding campaigns. That audience is spending less time watching TV and more time in front of the X-Box or PS3 (I know I am).

At this year’s PANPA conference, our CEO Mark Hollands showed an IBM-sourced slide in his State of the Industry address that showed in-game advertising had a forecasted compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 19 percent for the period 2006-2010.

The TAC deal is a major real world example of this predicted trend.

(For the record, newspaper advertising had a forecast CAGR of 2 percent. Mark’s slides are available from Factiva’s PANPA conference page)

Some of the ads will appear on virtual billboards in the racing game Need for Speed, which features car chases through city streets.

It would be interesting to know whether ads in this location are likely to have a greater mental effect on young men than other channels, or whether the TAC just sees this as the most viable place to reach the right eyeballs – regardless of the context. What do you think? Leave us a comment below.

The Caxton Committee and The Newspaper Works has announced that Droga5 founder David Droga’s keynote 2008 Caxton speech is now available to download as a video/podcast from the Caxton website at www.caxtonawards.com.au.

Droga was the keynote speaker at this year’s Caxton Seminar, held at the Sea Temple Resort, Port Douglas from 24 -26 October, 2008.

“David Droga has created one of the world’s most respected organisations in Droga5. He has rewritten the book for contemporary ideas development and he is possibly the most successful Australian creative export. David often speaks in Cannes and is a real coup for the Caxtons,” Caxton chairman Rob Belgiovane said.

“David’s speech was inspiring and truly wowed the Caxton audience with his philosophy and approach turning traditional creative models on their heads.”

Other speeches from the Caxton weekend are also available on DVD from The Newspaper Works by emailing admin@thenewspaperworks.com.au.

THESE are testing times for the industry.

Falls in revenue for newspapers’ key advertiser segment, Retail, have hit quickly and fiercely. Top retailer Harvey Norman has this week reported a 31 percent slide in profit. Owner Gerry Harvey was on TV complaining about his margin on electronic goods, blaming that as a major issue. Though, of course, we all know his type of store uses good deals on flat-screen TVs to drive store traffic and sell other items at a better margin.

By Mark Hollands, CEO, PANPA

David Jones, another Australian retailer, has seen a 6.3 percent fall in sales – though it is not complaining about its margin. However, both these major retailers’ troubles underline the economic difficulties that our publishers are facing. And unfortunately, there are similar stories in Singapore and New Zealand.

It’s not like the old days when retailers were not the major part of a big metro’s revenue. The dollars used to come from classifieds, of course, and newspapers were never dependent on a small number of clients to be successful.

The money engine of classies allowed newspapers a much better bargaining position with the likes of Harvey Norman. The shoe, now, is on the other foot. Newspapers now have to balance its traditional business-to-consumer model (B2C) with an emerging business-to-business (B2B) engagement, in which a smaller number of organisations and executives (e.g. Harvey Norman and Gerry Harvey) can determine your success.

This change in dynamics has been happening for several years but this lightning-speed downturn has brought it into sharp focus.

The key in any B2B business is the ability to forge and grow relationships. To do this, you need salespeople who do more than stay 18 months on a journey to work in some pseudo-glam business like TV.

Good salespeople are hard to find. They need to be looked after – with the right systems to maximize their time and decent remuneration for their success. Decent sales people do not work for peanuts: make them rich, they make you very rich.

Management now have an opportunity to analyse the quality of the relationships with their major clients, as well as review the tools, rewards and culture that should encourage successful salespeople to blast through their targets.

Senior managers should be asking:

• Do our sales departments run with decent CRM and forecasting tools?
• Are we looking after our key clients – have we prioritised our relationships and are we carefully monitoring our meetings and conversations with them to maximise every opportunity?
• Do all our business units to work together constructively to create great newspapers that delight readers and demonstrate return on investment for advertisers… or do the these departments work in isolation or fail to collaborate for whatever reason?

Rupert Murdoch has being doing a series of Boyer Lectures in Australia, and he has focused on the importance of technology and the right people to use it for business success. World-class companies see a direct link between good technology implementation, sound business processes, and successful people and profits.

American sales-software specialist, salesforce.com, which offers predictive tools and contact management applications, has just announced a 21 percent leap in sales as companies refocus their efforts on improving their client engagement and sales processes. At the Herald & Weekly Times, I understand Siebel (a salesforce.com rival) has just been installed.

The right tools are essential for staff to compete in a tough economy. I have seen the IT industry have two meltdowns in the last decade – the dotcom bust of the late 90s, and then after 9/11. As hard as this might be to believe, those days felt every bit as vicious as the downturn confronting our newspapers today.

What emerged was that companies with strategy, good processes and good people not only survived but grabbed market share. Those who ignored these realities invariably fell by the wayside, or were lucky and got bought – mostly for peanuts.

If your sales processes are not the best they can be; if you do not reward excellence and success to retain staff who create relationships with key advertisers, then the economic downturn is not your problem. You are.