Friday, January 05, 2007
Record PM moves to Plan B
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mirror/story/0,,1983633,00.html
Well, the Daily Record’s cheapo free editions weren't as popular as they hoped (and probably prayed too).
So, in an increasingly desperate attempt to replace the readers being taken by The Scottish Sun, they're biting the bullet and coming to terms with the fact that the only way they can gain, or regain, new readers from the dwindling evening market is to shift to Plan B — to give their product away, hopefully to the young cash-rich ABC1s their advertisers want (they haven’t said how it’s to be distributed.)
Meantime they're also going to try Plan A in Aberdeen and Dundee, just in case there are people there with an appetite for it. Competition there will be a novelty for the incumbents — the Evening Express and the Evening Telegraph, now both owned by D.C. Thomson.
So what does this tell us?
Well, the good news (for the big city evenings at least) is that their established readers clearly weren't prepared to desert them for a paid-for Record PM (or at least not enough of them were for the Record's needs).
The bad news for Trinity is that any notion of getting copy sales revenue for the product seems to be a fantasy. So the now-established model of city centre free evenings to grab demographics to please advertisers (as per the London war and the part-free initiatives in Manchester and Liverpool) seems to be the model that will work for their brand.
The other bad news for them is what it says about the value of the Record brand now. Giving it away free will only make that worse, at least in terms of perception.
And being prepared to do all that tells us exactly how "Jerry Maguire" things have become at Trinity Mirror. If Sly Bailey hasn't actually screamed "show me the money!" at her regional executives yet, I'm pretty sure what she has been saying amounts to that. Clearly the fall-off in revenues from conventional advertising is so bad they've got desperate enough to look at measures like this.
But also it shows that the assets they've said they're going to retain are going to be expected to up their financial performance.
Once upon a time being an exec at the big building at Anderston Quay was a bit of a sinecure. Not any more. Changed days indeed.
Well, the Daily Record’s cheapo free editions weren't as popular as they hoped (and probably prayed too).
So, in an increasingly desperate attempt to replace the readers being taken by The Scottish Sun, they're biting the bullet and coming to terms with the fact that the only way they can gain, or regain, new readers from the dwindling evening market is to shift to Plan B — to give their product away, hopefully to the young cash-rich ABC1s their advertisers want (they haven’t said how it’s to be distributed.)
Meantime they're also going to try Plan A in Aberdeen and Dundee, just in case there are people there with an appetite for it. Competition there will be a novelty for the incumbents — the Evening Express and the Evening Telegraph, now both owned by D.C. Thomson.
So what does this tell us?
Well, the good news (for the big city evenings at least) is that their established readers clearly weren't prepared to desert them for a paid-for Record PM (or at least not enough of them were for the Record's needs).
The bad news for Trinity is that any notion of getting copy sales revenue for the product seems to be a fantasy. So the now-established model of city centre free evenings to grab demographics to please advertisers (as per the London war and the part-free initiatives in Manchester and Liverpool) seems to be the model that will work for their brand.
The other bad news for them is what it says about the value of the Record brand now. Giving it away free will only make that worse, at least in terms of perception.
And being prepared to do all that tells us exactly how "Jerry Maguire" things have become at Trinity Mirror. If Sly Bailey hasn't actually screamed "show me the money!" at her regional executives yet, I'm pretty sure what she has been saying amounts to that. Clearly the fall-off in revenues from conventional advertising is so bad they've got desperate enough to look at measures like this.
But also it shows that the assets they've said they're going to retain are going to be expected to up their financial performance.
Once upon a time being an exec at the big building at Anderston Quay was a bit of a sinecure. Not any more. Changed days indeed.
