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“I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it.”
- Janet Flanner |
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Unique Content Keeps Your Pub from Becoming a Titanic |
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| January 15, 2000 |
Longtime media and placement tracking house Bacon's estimates that in the United States and Canada alone, there are 1,543 daily newspapers and 9,441 weeklies.
That might seem like a lot of ink until you consider that Publications Management research indicates that there are about 50,000 corporate pubs on the print scene as well. And those tallies don't include the river of other information consumers face, from calls and e-mails to faxes and advertisements.
All of these, in reality, are competition you can't rule out when understanding what you're up against when trying to grab a reader's attention. Whether your publication goes to an external audience or an internal group, the truth is there are hundreds of information channels vying for the eyeball or the ear, and you must study how readers spend their time or what formats, mediums and messages are competing against yours.
"Internally, we know we're competing with just about everything, from job activities and e-mail to the regular mail and correspondence employees get," says Don Empie, editor of Exxon-Mobil Today, a tabloid that's fashioned after USA Today.
Part of the strategy behind this pub is a model everyone should consider in reviewing and sizing up the impact of a publication.
When Exxon Today was first launched, it came out every two weeks and was newsier than it is today. But execs quickly realized that with this era's proliferation of information channels and 24-hour news operations, trying to complete with the likes of The New York Times (six internal communicators against hundreds of newshounds) isn't smart.
Exxon-Mobil Today now comes out monthly, but offers perspective that isn't provided by mainstream news outlets, including trades and Web sites. And because employees face a stream of pubs and dozens of other information and entertainment alternatives when they head home, the corporation sends Exxon-Mobil Today to employees' physical work locations. There, communicators can also observe what employees actually read and speak to them about their impressions.
Surely, studying your audience and the effect of your pub is a given no one overlooks, right?
Not necessarily. An article penned for the Newsletter Publishers Association by Andy McLaughlin, president of PaperClip Communications, provides insight into the kinds of analysis often discounted.
Here's one: Instead of a focus group reviewing copies in advance and later providing overviews, watch a customer open your pub, he says. "The point is that your readers may be using the product differently than you assumed," he adds. "Simply put your latest edition [one the readers haven't seen] into envelopes and distribute them. When they open the envelope, and begin reading, watch how people are using the publication."
Competition Savvy
Exxon makes its pub competitive and indispensable by regularly surveying employees and implementing their suggestions. (More than 65 percent say they read all or most of the pub.)
Based on feedback, Exxon makes sure: stories are about 325 words; charts and graphics are integrated into copy; bulleted items call attention to key points; and lighter fare, such as "The Write Stuff" cartoon, appears in every issue.
"One of the big things that I see with our publications is that people don't necessarily need it to do their jobs or do their jobs better. They receive a laundry list of other information - from instructional manuals to edicts from their bosses - about how to perform their jobs and that's the stuff they have to read," he says. "I've got to make them want to read this so I have to think beyond that. We're the informative piece that helps them define the job universe overall [not in small pieces] by telling them where we're going and what's going on in the big picture."
Casting Its Net
Beyond print, watchdogs say the Internet is one of the primary drivers influencing how companies view reader competition today, regardless of whether their pubs go to consumers or employees. To help put in context the kind of information overload consumers are facing, PM conducted a Web search solely about "Internet news sites."
Yahoo.com alone returned 35,748 possibilities - just a virtual smidgin' of the total cyber cosmos. And from msnbc.com to stock portfolio sites such as The Motley Fool (www.fool.com), chances are employees are also logging onto more broad-appeal - than industry-specific - URLs during the course of a workday, which means you have a window of opportunity to provide the insider's twist others can't.
The Web, however, isn't the only medium vying for readers' attention in the new millennium. Companies are also placing TV monitors, which broadcast internally produced news as well as packaged network/cable feeds and breaking headlines, in their office buildings. One such provider, TargetVision, has about 500 such contracts, according to Phyllis Ely, marketing director.
And the U.S. Postal Service's yet to-be-released annual report reveals a hardy 11 percent increase in all mail categories in the past few years from 178 billion pieces in 1995 to 198 billion pieces in 1999.
The increase in mail is expected to continue, especially in the direct-mail category. Sixty-one percent of respondents in a recent DIRECT magazine survey said they plan on spending more on direct mail in 2000 - making it the fourth fastest-growing category.
Driving That Train
Bacon's reports that in the consumer category alone, there are 397 travel magazines, with newcomers and veterans continuing to revamp what they provide readers.
One of those is the company that runs the famed Orient Express train. Aware that it must be part of that competitive loop, it provides high-brow articles and visuals about posh vacations and foreign travel to promote its interests among the upper crust. Parent company Venice Simplon-Orient Express contracts with The Illustrated London News Group. The custom publisher produces a quarterly four-color glossy that's placed in luxurious hotels and in other venues where E&O Magazine comes up against its print competitors (its print run is 30,000-plus).
For example, the magazine is available on Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airline Systems and Cathay Pacific junkets, explains Executive Editor Allison Booth. "To stay competitive, we pick articles that tie in with the places we visit," adds Booth.
Though she won't speak in detail about its measurement devices, she will say that hundreds of readers annually request additional information about train trips via "response coupons" in the magazine. Execs also gauge what readers enjoy doing and what else they read.
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