Bulletin

Dear Circulation Friends,

The Hotel Syracuse, Syracuse, New York, was the site of the annual Fall Board of Directors Meeting on Friday, October 1st. Mark Vinciguerra, Training Committee Chairman from The Syracuse Newspapers announced that Tad Kilgore from the Ithaca Journal and Lou Sococio from the Times-Union in Albany have joined our training committee and will be helping with our Spring Training Session. In a similar note, Mark Kukiela, Carrier of the Year Chairperson from The Citizen in Auburn will be handing over the reigns of Carrier Day next year to Kevin Hinterberger from the Buffalo News. At the close of the meeting I accepted the resignation of one of our board members, Dwane Bivona from the Observer-Dispatch in Utica. On behalf of the association, I would like to wish Dwayne and his family the best of luck as he accepts the Circulation Director's position at a newspaper in Kentucky.

On Saturday, October 2, 1999, we held our annual Carrier of the Year event in Syracuse. Thanks to Mark Kukiela for all his hard work in putting together such a fine program. Look inside this Bulletin for the article by Mark that covers this event.

Our third annual "P.A.C.E. the Future" Fall Training Session was held on Wednesday, October 6, 1999 at the Wyndham Syracuse in Syracuse. Special thanks to Mark Vinciguerra, Training Committee Chairman from the Syracuse Newspapers, Melissa Rosenthal and Stephen Schaeffer from NYNPA, Nancy Meyer, President of NYNAME from The Times-Union in Albany and Claudia Hartz, 1st Vice President of NYSCMA from the Observer Dispatch in Utica, for all of their help in planning such a successful day filled with quality speakers.

Lastly, preparations for our 2000 annual sales conference are continuing. Our officers will be gathering at Sagamore in Lake George on Thursday and Friday, October 14th and 15th, to meet with the management and review all the details for the event. Those that have been to The Sagamore assure me that this is truly a five star resort that can accommodate all of our needs.

Please let me know if there is anything the association can do to assist you in any way. Also, if you are interested in getting involved with the association please let myself or any of the board members or committee chairperson know.

Best Regards,

Will Kustyn
President, NYSCMA

Will Kustyn
President, NYSCMA

By Mark M. Kukiela

The 25th annual New York State carrier of the year awards were presented at the Raddison Plaza, Hotel Syracuse in Syracuse, New York on October 2. A total of 26 carriers were honored at the event. Parents, carriers and newspaper representatives alike attended the banquet. The yearly awards were presented by the Circulation Management Association.

All nominated carriers received plaques for being the best carriers for their respective newspapers. Three carriers were recognized for Special Recognition, while one carrier received the Good Samaritan award.

New York State carrier of the year for the adult division was Christopher Velush of the Times Union in Albany. Other winners in the adult division were: Connie Pierce of the Press and Sun Bulletin, Peter Lindner from the Journal News and Tom Newcomb of the Democrat and Chronicle.

In the senior division, New York State carrier of the year was Corey Kirkpatrick of The Leader Herald. Other winners in the senior division were: David Miller of the Press and Sun Bulletin, David Rath from The Times Herald Record and Stephen Scull from the Buffalo News.

Junior division New York State carrier of the year was Nicholas Bubniak from The Leader Herald. Also honored in the junior division were: Cory Schad from the Syracuse Newspapers and Gregory Hare of the Buffalo News.

Overall carriers of the year were awarded a $1,000 U.S. savings bond and plaque. Runners up were awarded a plaque and a $500 U.S. savings bond.

The chairperson the judging committee also served as our guest speaker at this year's ceremony. Professor C. Marshall Matlock is a professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Along with carrier of the year nominees, other carriers were recognized for other honors as well. The Good Samaritan award, presented to carriers for performing a good deed, was presented to one carrier. Edward Puma of the Syracuse Newspapers received the award along with a $50 U.S. savings bond. Special recognition awards were given to Matthew McDonald and Joshua Schutrum of the Buffalo News and Brad Barth of the Observer-Dispatch.

All participants were presented with door prizes including a commemorative baseball cap and a flashlight. Many positive comments were made about the program from those in attendance.

Thank you and congratulations to all!

 Branding: The Marketing Buzz Word That Keeps on Buzzing

After a while, most buzz words fade faster than bumblebees in late autumn. Branding earned little more than a passing glance when it first started buzzing around the heads of busy newspaper marketers in the mid-'90s. But today, at the threshold of a new century and as newspapers scurry to develop core brands and increase their long term competitiveness, branding is seen as the hope of tomorrow.

Because the powerful branding process is a hot topic in the newspaper industry, NAA recently published a 109-page primer that illustrates the concepts of branding and provides the know-how to develop a long-lasting strategy. The publication, divided into three distinct sections, is called "Newspaper Brand Development: Learn It, Launch It, Live It." (see sidebar, this page)

Each panelist discussed one portion of the primer at a session titled "Branding: Learn It, Launch It, Live It."

"We're very excited about this book," said Terrie Robbins, vice president and director of marketing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "There's been a lot of talk in the newspaper industry about branding, and some newspapers are really diving into it. Others are saying, "now wait a minute, we're a newspaper, we can't brand; we're a lot more complicated than toothpaste."

But as more and more newspapers started to recognize the power of branding, Robbins began to realize that a primer such as "Learn It, Launch It, Live It," could take the pressure off the tight budgets, especially for newspapers that can't afford $200,000 branding consultants. "That's what this book is all about," she said.

Learn It. Robbins played a key role in branding initiatives at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. For Robbins, the two initiatives represented "a long and extensive time of learning" about branding, said Robbins, who shared some of those learning experiences with the audience.

A branding effort cannot be initiated unless the entire newspaper, from the top levels of management on down, are in support of it. Once support is obtained, the first important step, said Robbins, is to envision the work ahead and assemble a "brand team." In St. Louis, Robbins formed an "interdepartmental" team that included one or two people from all the major divisions within the company. Early in the discussion process, everybody agreed that nobody in the group really knew enough about branding to proceed. Clearly, more knowledge would be needed. So Robbins took the lead and contacted four advertising agencies in town. She invited each agency to come to an offsite meeting and speak to the group about branding.

For the offsite, the entire team took the day off and headed to a city museum. "We had a wonderful day there," said Robbins. As planned, representatives from the four ad agencies came in every other hour to talk about branding and answer question. "So we had four different perspectives on what branding is, and every single one of those ad agencies brought in how they lived it with clients. It was a lot of fun and an intense day of learning."

Launch It. Once you learn it, you'll need to do some research that will help you launch it. There are three primary functions that research addresses:
1. Strategy
2. Testing
3. Tracking

The research begins with an internal audit in the building, said John Bartolomeo, managing partner at Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo Inc. in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. The internal audit is equivalent to doing internal focus groups to get input from the newsroom and others about what the branding position should be. "This can be an arduous exercise, because people in the newsrooms and elsewhere in the paper often don't think in those terms," Bartolomeo said.

But once you get the employees talking, they have very interesting things to say about what is, fundamentally, that they do, said Bartolomeo, "and what it is, fundamentally, that should be put forth in the way of brand positioning."

Focus groups with external audiences also are important, said Bartolomeo. "Draw together groups of people who represent your target audiences and ask them" "What is this newspaper really about?"

Step two is to do a testing phase with all the materials your ad agency develops for the campaign - a campaign that presumably captures your positioning.

Step three, in terms of research, is to track it. "Conduct interviews episodically," said Bartolomeo. "Key it to the flights of advertising or other promotions to see what impact they've had on the key measure that you're interested in following."

Branding truly does work, said Bartolomeo. It transforms a person's perspective of a product, and in fact even transforms their experience with the product. "That's the magic of branding."

Live It. So you've learned it, and you've launched it. Now it's time to "live it," and to reinforce the brand. Terrie Mitchell, brand and consumer marketing manager at Orlando Sentinel Communications, has successfully "lived it" since launching a campaign in 1997.

The company began the process by looking outside the newspaper industry to see how others had done their branding. From that, Orlando Sentinel Communications realized it needed to move beyond looking at its brand as a newspaper product. So a new approach was adopted, and that was to "look at our brand as information, and that allowed us to open up many, many doors," said Mitchell.

Drawing from her experiences, Mitchell shared some advice with her colleagues: Consistently examine your business models. What you do today may not be what's going to be successful tomorrow. Promote a culture that's open to saying, "We can maybe do it better or differently. Let's try it."

Be open to shifting your culture. This means working from the top down and from the bottom up. "Get folks from your human resources department and folks that have an ongoing job of communicating with your employees to really work with you on this piece," said Mitchell.

Establish a brand standards manual. "This was arduous for our organization," she said. But in this "visual society" that we live in, it is critical to have a logo, a look, a design of your products that you stick with and that you can own.

Push branding outside of marketing. Branding is not an ad campaign. It is important that everyone understands how a piece of what they do in the organization builds to the strategy.

Shift your culture. Look internally. Try treating employees like customers first. If they are not buying what you're saying, if they are not believing it or understanding it, then how can you expect the customer to grasp it?

Finally, your customers want to believe in your vision, said Mitchell, so deliver. "Be a champion across the company. When I say your customers are depending on you and want to believe in you, I mean internal customers as much as your external customers."

Branding: Learn It, Launch It, Live It
What's Nike's brand? Think fast now. Is it the "swoosh?" Or is it "Just Do It?"
Would you believe...neither? Branding is about much, much more than an icon or a tagline. Branding is about defining the most meaningful, distinctive qualities that a company or product has to deliver to customers, then expressing those qualities in every connection or contact the company or product makes.

The Market Development & Promotion Federation realized the newspaper industry was in  need of a primer that would help newspapers of all sizes develop their brand and implement that brand at their companies. Released in July, the primer: "Newspaper Brand Development: Learn It, Launch It, Live It," is quickly becoming an NAA bestseller.

The book gives the "what-is-it?" and the "how-to-do-it" basics to organize this important marketing discipline.

You'll learn about the concept of branding and how to understand your product's brand attributes in your own market. That research will be used to determine "the brand" that will move you toward your future goals. You'll learn that it is not about a tagline or promotional campaign; it's about the product satisfying the promise every time the customer picks up the paper or encounters an employee.

To order a copy of "Newspaper Brand Development: Learn It, Launch It, Live It," call the NAA Fulfillment Center at (800) 651-4622 and ask for item #90540. The book is available to Federation Members for $29.95.

Elliot Wittenberg, chairman and chief executive officer of Customer Strategies Worldwide LLC in New York City, was surprised he was invited to speak on Sunday afternoon, at the beginning of the Marketing Conference.

"I'm a troublemaker at heart," said marketing strategist Wittenberg. "Much of what I see happening in the retail future is not popular or comforting."

Retailing has changed enormously, said Wittenberg. In the 1700's, importers held the power and decided what should be in Americans' homes. Then came the 1800's, when manufacturers took hold. "As the U.S. became self-sufficient, power moved to the manufacturer," and it was the vendor that decided what people wore, ate or drove, he said.

By the 1950's, retailers gained that power, which was accelerated by the arrival of UPC coding and the ability of retailers to attract a growing number of young customers instead of depending on traveling salesmen.

But since the 1970's, "retailers have seen the power slip away," pointed out Wittenberg. Today, "it's Mom, the CFO of America," spurred by tightening household budgets and the pressing need to save, who decides what America stocks and what we consume.

"Mom's a better buyer than we are sellers," said Wittenberg. Mom is deciding who will be her partner in acquiring goods and services, he said. "She's opened her bidding war to the media, vendors and retailers." Whoever wins her loyalty will get the big prize, he said - a customer relationship and brand loyalty.

Baby boomers are having a tremendous effect on retailing, he said, pointing out that their "peak spending years" are upon us but only for about another decade, when they'll be forced to downsize, just like their parents before them.

Wittenberg predicted 10 major paradigm changes to help retail cope with a changing society, including transitions:

• From selling needs to selling wants. "People need cars, but they want Porsches," he said. "There's no margin in needs [which only generate contentment]," he said, "but there's a ton of margin in wants."
  
• From general merchants to specialists. For some reason, he said, "retailers believe they can sell anything to anybody." Today's consumer doesn't want to find televisions in drug stores, he joked. Wittenberg said the original retailer - the general store owner, succeeded beyond modern retailers, because his space was small, and he knew where everything was. In today's large diverse stores, "no one knows where anything is," he said.
  
• From managing inflation to managing deflation. "We all know how to manage inflation," he said, pointing out that deflation is inevitable. "Few of us know how to make it in a deflationary cycle," he said. "Retail is vulnerable to deflationary pressure because the costs of goods drops and inventory becomes overstated." His next point: "Technology is playing havoc with products because marketing has been unsuccessful at getting product information away from the geeks." Technological innovations are killing retail margins, he suggested. The good news for newspapers, he told those at the session, is that retailers need media to help them draw people into their stores. "Retail is a local business," he told the roomful of local-market specialists.

Be Penelope A. Colston
M.A., Journalism, 1999, Syracuse University

Saturday afternoon's "Transactive Content" panel opened on an odd note. "The bad news is, we up here don't know what the hell transactive content is," said panel moderator Michael Romaner, director, online services for Morris Communications. "And the good news is, we don't know what transactive content is." With that established, Romaner began by addressing the following question: Is transactive content just another cryptic industry buzz word, or does it define a cutting-edge concept in new media that can't be ignored?

Perhaps a little of both, it seems. "Transactive content really does mean different things to different people," Romaner said.

The heart of every definition points to one thing: the creation of opportunity through the pairing of site content with need. Through user participation, transactive content matches user need with the information, services and purchasing opportunities that best meet that need.

How does transactive content achieve such a personalized match? Two of the four panel members were armed with examples.

Michael W. Bales, general manager of Orlando Sentinel Interactive, and Roxanne Oswald, new business development manager, new media, at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, walked the audience through their recent experimental brushes with transactive content.

Bales showed how visitors to the Orlando Sentinel's travel Web site, Go2Orlando.com, were able to plan personalized vacations through "transactive matchmaking" and "audience segmentation."

Users create a personal profile by filling out an on-site electronic form. The submitted information enables the audience to be broken down into "segments," such as young, childless couples or families with kids. Once established, the groups are matched with appropriate hotels, services and events. Special promotions and hotel discounts encourage their participation. The profile also can be conducted for future promotional campaigns, another business benefit for the Sentinel.

Bales called the response to Go2Orlando.com's transactive features "flabbergasting." For example, Bales said users responded to a promotional email blitz to the tune of 60 percent. And 43 percent of the audience segment called "Adults With No Kids" have consulted Go2Orlando.com's tailor-made calendar of events page. Furthermore, users spent more time overall on Go2Orlando.com.

"By giving them what they want they're going to be inclined to stay on your page longer," Bales said.

But some members of the audience seemed skeptical about such percentages and whether they are a concrete measure of success, or indicate mere browsing. As visitors to Go2Orlando.com don't actually book hotels and travel through the Web site, it is not possible to tell exactly how much business the site is generating.

Another audience concern was the cost of experimenting with transactive content. Indeed, Bales urged potential candidates to "proceed somewhat cautiously." But he expressed unswerving confidence in the potential of Go2Orlando.com. Though still in an experimental stage, Bales said he sees transactive content as a worthwhile investment.

"I think it's not only reasonable, it's essential," Bales said. "Whatever the costs end up being, we will be able to recover the costs."

Aside from being cost effective, panel members cited transactive content as a means of uniting a community's resources. Users, advertisers and local organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, can work together in a situation with winning potential all around.

That was the focus of Oswald's presentation - an experiment with transactive content in the form a startribune.com/travel, a travel Web site that targets visitors to the Midwest.

By featuring a local travel agent, Atevo Travel, on the site, startribune.com/travel staff enables users to book hotels and make travel arrangements electronically. Startribune.com takes a cut of the revenues.

As on Go2Orlando.com, visitors are routed to the information and local services that best cater to their needs. On startribune.com/travel, a user's gravitation to the relevant site features is driven by content layout, organization and presentation - major challenges posed by transactive content, Oswald said.

Creating alliances with local businesses and services, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the office of tourism, were also among the goals of startribune.com, as was getting local advertisers on board.

But any frontier-busting innovation in new media must be subjected to healthy scrutiny. And that scrutiny was on hand courtesy of the panel's office curmudgeon, Robert Cauthorn, technology director of the Arizona Daily Star's StarNet.

While transactive content's ability to tailor information is ground-breaking, Cauthorn warned the audience against customization overkill. Giving site viewers exactly what they want, and expect, lacks inspiration and can bore them.

"We're primates. Primates browse. Primates dig through the forest and they look for things," Cauthorn said. "[Customization overkill] is the death of the imagination. People want to be surprised. That's the formula for success."

Furthermore, transactive content has the potential for what Cauthorn described as "user trauma." Cauthorn cited BabyCenter.com, a site that targets pregnant women. Through user profiling, BabyCenter.com aspires to address the needs of pregnant women via email. The site regularly sends tailored information and advice, effectively engaging its users in an electronic friendship that last the duration of their pregnancy. But how does BabyCenter.com know when one of its users has suffered a miscarriage, for example? "That's a web site that has the serious potential for user trauma," he said.

Cauthorn also warned his audience that while transactive content has the power to unite a community, it also has the power to break it apart. Sites must engage users with local resources, he said, or they run the risk of alienating people from their community and killing local, small business.

"Local businesses can be closed down, people can be ignored and communities can lose out," he cautioned. "Take local people on board. Create a space where everybody's needs are met. Everybody wins in that environment."

By Tracy Ulin
Online Editor, San Jose Mercury News

The money may not be there - heck the money may never come - but news organizations adding community to their online sites may yet find rewards. That was the consensus among experts sitting on the Friday afternoon community publishing session at CONNECTIONS '99.

Elements of community publishing that appear to take away from a news site actually are complements, according to Bruce Siceloff, content director for The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. His site's community section, NCneighbors.com, offers services that benefit news organizations - breaking news, free distribution, personalization and interactivity.

Add to that list the benefits described by Community Newspaper Company Editor-in-Chief Mary Jo Meisner - reader's goodwill, the unique content generated from community sites and retention of a newspaper's traditional role as a public voice of organizations - and what seems like revenue drain may become a powerful tool is newspapers' fight to protect their local franchise.

Their software selections target one of the primary goals of community publishing: making it simple for the user. Limited staff building and maintenance of community sites, simple user interface and streamlined, basic design features help get groups publishing with minimal support. Education and awareness go a long way in making not-for-profit groups feel comfortable in community publishing. Meisner's site offers weekly training to learn KOZ's publishing software, provides a user's manual and a support line.

New Jersey Online developed its own software to build community. Philly.com and Town Online rely on outside vendor KOZ; the News & Observer, as part of McClatchy, uses Waveshift Inc., a company in which McCatchy has invested.

Beyond that, getting the word out, and gaining reader's trust, is a challenge. "They want to know, what's the catch?" said Sara Glines, editor in chief for New Jersey Online. "And the catch was, we wanted to help keep them on our site."

NJO employs what Glines called "marketing from the top down and bottom up" strategy to get people interested in building community sites. When NJO decided to get youth soccer groups online, the staff thought it would be simple as going to the state organization and letting the information trickle down to the local teams. "But that's a long, slow road. It takes time to pass the message down, and we didn't have time," Glines said. So NJO let the information trickle down, but it aggressively went to the bottom - even employing a soccer mom - to get the word out among the local teams. The result is nearly 900 soccer team pages.

As one of the newer kids on the community block, Philly.com's site has what General Manager Fred Mann called "a one-trick pony, but it's a pretty good trick." Mann said that having a community site allows The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News to be "local local," something readers complain is lacking. In turn, information published in group pages has led to ideas for feature stories in the print edition.

Since none of the four sites represented on the panel accepted advertising, streamlined pages, small staffs and functionality for users help keep costs down. All four panelists acknowledged that paid sponsorship might come in the future. For now, the "profits" from a community site are reflected in other areas of a news site. Having community brings "richness to the site, added depth," Meisner said. "It is valuable when it comes to advertisers on other parts of the site."